Google crap destroys searchable record

Read this post at Cameron Slater’s blog Whale Oil Beef Hooked.

### whaleoil.co.nz July 5, 2014 at 7:30am
Google’s demise starts here, ctd
By Pete
Not only are Google changing history, they are effectively censoring you, and me, and journalism too. This morning the BBC received the following notification from Google:

Notice of removal from Google Search: we regret to inform you that we are no longer able to show the following pages from your website in response to certain searches on European versions of Google: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/legacy/thereporters/robertpeston/2007/10/merrills_mess.html

What it means is that a blog I wrote in 2007 will no longer be findable when searching on Google in Europe. Which means that to all intents and purposes the article has been removed from the public record, given that Google is the route to information and stories for most people. So why has Google killed this example of my journalism?
Read more

█ Whale Oil Beef Hooked

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

Whaleoil: Rodney Hide on Dunedin’s Luddite Council

Ever since Helen Clark allowed councils general competence we have seen debt burgeon and empire building of armies of council staff increase. It is time to rein in the excesses. The reforms have largely failed. I’m not even sure we need local councils in any case….except to just provide essential services. –Cameron Slater

### whaleoil.co.nz May 24, 2014 at 5:00pm
Rodney Hide on Dunedin’s Luddite Council
By Cameron Slater
Rodney Hide excoriates the Dunedin City Council for their embracing of a buggy culture. [NBR paysite]

“I was taken aback by Dunedin City Council committing to invest ethically. I would have thought it was already beyond reproach. But it turns out it’s not about the council not taking back-handers and the like but rather what it can and can’t invest in. Henceforth, it won’t invest in porn, munitions, tobacco or gambling. Seriously? Was investing in porn ever in prospect? I once took a paper to the cabinet to circumscribe council activity. I wanted to limit them to core services. To buttress my argument, I had examples of the nutty investments that councils had entangled ratepayers in. I remember dairy farms, property development, Lotto shops and cinemas. My concern wasn’t ethical investing but rather local government’s proper role. I wanted councils to stick to basics. I didn’t succeed but would have had a chance with the Dunedin example: a council having to make a rule to stop itself investing in pornographic movies.”
Read more

█ It matters enormously that city leaders are declaring fossil fuel extraction unethical. –Rodney Hide

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

What if? Stadium of Dunedin… features in Special Collections de Beer Gallery exhibition

@five15design (Paul Le Comte) drew attention to this excitement late on Saturday night with a Tweet…

Exhibition poster:

Snippets from exhibition cabinets:

“The short unbound or loosely bound publications we know as pamphlets (less than 48 pages) suit topical subjects, especially if they smack of propaganda and the polemic.”

“Hocken was very good at clumping like-pamphlets together, often centred on themes such as ‘Old New Zealand’, ‘Botany’ or ‘Travel’. Later volumes are arranged more randomly and were not bound under his direction.”

From exhibition catalogue:

VITRINES
1. A selection of blog sites: the modern-day pamphlets?
2. A selection of pamphlets from the Hunter Pamphlet Collection, Hocken Library.
3. A selection of pamphlets from the Hunter Pamphlet Collection, Hocken Library.
4. A selection of blog sites: the modern-day pamphlets?

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A sample page of What if? Stadium of Dunedin… features in Vitrine (read: window) 4., outside the Special Collections de Beer Gallery, 1st Floor Central Library, University of Otago.

Post by Elizabeth Kerr

Blogs are fun are news and comment

BROADCAST ALERT

Sunday Morning with Chris Laidlaw
on Radio New Zealand National
10 May 2009

11:05 Ideas: The Future of Journalism
We’ve been hearing a lot about the death of newspapers lately.
In the US the national daily ‘The Christian Science Monitor’ recently went web-only, and a question mark hangs over such well-known titles as the ‘Boston Globe’. But with the rise and rise of the internet are we simply seeing quality journalism switch from one delivery medium to another – or is it something more serious?
Robert McChesney – the founder of the half-million strong American lobby group, Free Press, for one believes the future of journalism itself is in peril.
Ideas talks to Robert McChesney, former newspaper editor and current head of the Whitireia journalism programme Jim Tucker, and Julie Starr – journalism commentator and one of the team responsible for the Daily Telegraph’s internet strategy.

Links
Free Press
Robert McChesney
Julie Starr’s webpage

Presented by Chris Laidlaw
Produced by Jeremy Rose

{see audio link at Comment}

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