A weekly roundup of media news, sans effort

Quote of the week

“This is a private matter”. Downing Street’s response to questions surrounding the David Cameron’s late father and tax avoidance in light of the Panama Papers leak this week. Best. Answer. Ever.

Weekly High

Here on the Smoking Gun blog we try to avoid political biases, but are always quick to pick up on instances in which any of the parties has been caught out, or, even much rarer, has managed to do something PR or marketing-related that’s actually good. Hence our high point from the last seven days being the Greens and their #GrownUpPolitics video, which makes a good point about the rather immature nature of Westminster and its populace.

Weekly Low

It’s the April Fool’s joke Google wants us to forget about ASAP. Costing people work, jobs and a lot of time spent sending apologies, Gmail users were given the option to send emails with a ‘witty’ GIF embedded, showing a minion from hit movie Despicable Me dropping a mic. Any replies to emails sent like this would not cause an alert in the usual way. The problem was the button was deceptively close to the usual ‘send’ option, loads of people found themselves mailing ‘mic drop moments’ to their bosses/clients/significant others, responses were missed, and by mid-afternoon Google had apologised and removed the gimmick. FAIL.

Stories to keep an eye on

In Pennsylvania, USA, a nine year old is reporting for, editing and publishing her own local news website, much to the dismay of some adults who took umbrage with her scooping the pros on a story about a local murder.

Moleskine, the firm that makes the most beautiful mass-produced notebooks known to mankind, has just unveiled its Smart Writing Set, in effect a notebook that is a tablet, and back all your notes up digitally. We want.

Virgin Galactic is helping to develop a new supersonic commercial airliner which could reduce flight times between London and New York to just four hours.