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

Quote of the week

“I don’t think anyone steals anything; all of us borrow.” Legendary blues-man B.B. King, who sadly died this week, aged-89. He probably wasn’t talking about PR and the media at the time, but nevertheless it works.

Weekly High 

Geek chic aside, Silicone Valley isn’t renowned for style. As such it was with raised eyebrows that the world learnt of the tech capital’s inaugural Fashion Week. Part comedy, part intriguing display of innovative wearables (we want a backpack that can charge devices), take a look at this brief news clip and get ready to laugh, cry and go “Ahhhh, that’s interesting”.

Weekly Low 

U.S. rail giant Amtrak has had a fight on its hands this week following the derailment of a passenger service travelling from Washington D.C. to New York, killing six. The crisis response from the firm’s communications team has been criticised for not engaging on social channels properly, meanwhile the next day the company also publicised its the results of its Customer Satisfaction Survey, angering many.

Stories To Keep An Eye On

ITV staff staged a 24-hour strike this week, coinciding with the broadcaster’s annual general meeting, with the chief condemning the decision and calling for tougher regulation of the BBC.

Reddit has unveiled a new policy it hopes will curb harassment on website, which comes after a survey of 15,000 users showed that negative comments in response to posts have made people ‘uncomfortable’ about contributing to or recommending the domain.

Facebook has revealed a new way to read items in its News Feed. Instant Articles is currently being trialled by a small number of major U.S. publishers, and allows people to read an article within Facebook itself, rather than being redirected to the host site.

Just in case you missed it

On this week’s blog we’ve been looking at how businesses can pull in more traffic to their website, and- perhaps just as importantly- keep people on their domain for longer. Take a look here.