A weekly roundup of media news and talking points, sans effort

Quote of the week

“While the 700 guests – who paid either £450 or £1,000 a ticket depending on where they sat – whooped with delight at video images of Ed Balls’s defenestration at the general election, the mood on the evening was understandably restrained following recent shocking events in Tunisia.??? The Guardian’s Marina Hyde, quoting a Daily Mail report on this week’s Conservative Party summer party.

Weekly High

Manchester has enjoyed a glorious week in between the torrential thunderstorms we danced in the other night. Firstly, The Whitworth Art Gallery in Rusholme was named Museum of the Year 2015 following its £15million expansion, and then Manchester Central Library and Town Hall Extension, which both underwent a huge, three-year renovation and facelift, fought off stiff competition to win the Judges Supreme Award and Project of the Year Over £50million at the Construction News Awards. Oh, and there’s some International Festival thing launching today too…

 

Weekly Low

Twitter Q&As are still proving popular, despite how easy it is for them to go terribly wrong. This week, 50 Shades of Grey author E.L. James was described by Yahoo! as being ‘eviscerated’ by tweets, largely concerning how her bestseller purported the message that it’s OK for women to be in abusive relationships, and her ‘questionable’ writing. Here are a few examples…

Stories To Keep An Eye On

Hundreds of Reddit’s most popular community pages have ‘gone dark’ as users protest the apparent dismissal of Victoria Taylor, the employee allegedly responsible for the ‘ask me anything’ community r/IAmA.

The BBC has announced 1,000 job losses are imminent in a bid to create a ‘simpler, leaner’ organisation. And cut costs.

Pinterest ‘buyable pins’ have are now being rolled out as the social network makes its first steps into e-commerce.

Just In Case You Missed It… 

The latest issue of Smoking Gun PR’s newsletter, John Watson’s Case Notes, is now available. This edition includes: Journalism isn’t dead, And the most engaged media brand on Twitter is…, Key takeouts from the Trendwatching.com seminar, Our flying visit to Gorkana’s Mirror Online media briefing, and June 2015 in the Smoking Gun study.