Editor's desk: Week of July 3, 2006

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Friday July 7


Australia's Channel Seven may have given the All Blacks a little extra motivation for Saturday evening's Bledisloe Cup match in Christchurch. The TV network's computer-enhanced promo featuring a handbag haka doesn't impress assistant coach Wayne Smith who says it could be disrespectful. Then again, if certain New Zealand rugby players learned how to behave themselves in bars, the Aussies would never have come up with what, to most people, is probably just a good laugh. See you next week, and in the meantime, Go the All Blacks.
- - - posted 3.15pm by Neil Sanderson


The stats are in and here are the most popular stories on nzherald this week:

1 Peace activist hit rocker in spat over girl, say UK police
2 NZ teacher dies in Bangkok stabbing
3 'You're famous,' mates told teenage murder accused
4 Bikini streaker bathing in attention
5 Italians drive ahead with Car Mate haka [video clip]

The top story has been downloaded 275,000 times so far. It was so popular on Thursday morning that our web server could not handle the demand and the whole website crashed. Apologies if you were unable to get to the site. The tech staff have made a few changes and we're all hoping the system will cope better next time.
- - - posted 2.45pm by Neil Sanderson


The NY Post takes a typically restrained approach in its front-page report today of the sudden death of Enron fraudster Kenneth Lay.
- - - posted 11.00am by Neil Sanderson

Thursday July 6

Blogging star off to Hollywood:

Fans of video blogging phenomenon

Rocketboom

will be shocked by the departure of the show's host

Amanda Congdon

. That certainly answers the questions "why hasn't the hair-tossing, script-flinging Amanda been on the show lately?" and why has Rocketboom been running "filler" video in her place.

In a message on the Rocketboom front page, founder Andrew Baron says "Amanda Congdon has decided to move to L.A. to pursue opportunities that have arisen for her in Hollywood. We wanted to meet her demands to move production out to L.A., however, we are a small company and have not been able to figure out a way to make it work, financially and in many other ways at this time. While we continue to remain with open arms, Amanda has in fact quit and left Rocketboom. So sadly, we bid Amanda adieu and wish her all the best.

Andrew says he will continue to produce Rocketboom from New York, and that he has "big plans" to make the show "better than ever".

I once asked Andrew how he and Amanda got together to start Rocketboom back in October 2004. He said it was as simple as placing an advertisement for a video blog host and auditioning the applicants. Guess he'll be dusting off the job description. This time though, he shouldn't have to explain to anyone what Rocketboom is.

- - - posted 9.30am by Neil Sanderson

Apologies if you were unable to visit nzherald this morning.

Heavy demand from overseas readers overloaded our systems, causing visitors to get the dreaded "Page cannot be found" message. Our technical team are trying to figure out how we can avoid this in future.

The surge in traffic to nzherald was caused by our story

Peace activist hit rocker in spat over girl, say UK police

, which was prominently featured on a popular US site

Drudge Report

.

Wednesday July 5

Reader comment:

I think over the last three years, the nzherald.co.nz has taken several steps in online journalism, that brings it closer to a highly interactive online publication. Unlike, some other websites of print newspapers in New Zealand, nzherald.co.nz has emerged as a stand-alone newspaper, not a mirror-image of the print parent. The frequent updating content, new media-rich content such as blogs, video, graphics have put nzherald.co.nz ahead of others.

As a student of mass media, who had recently researched the online newspapers of New Zealand, I find nzherald.co.nz interactive, user-friendly and see in it the promise of participatory journalism. I hope nzherald.co.nz would emerge as the leader in changing the top-to-down news model of print media to bottom-up and participatory model of journalism. The next major step, for nzherald.co.nz, is to provide the readers the options for personalisation.

- - - posted by Ali

Response:

Thank you very much, Ali, on behalf of the whole team. Our goal is to continually improve nzherald, and the feedback we receive from readers is a great help.

- - - posted 6.20pm by Neil Sanderson

"The world does not need more blogs,"

says Nick Denton. An interesting comment, coming from someone who owns 15 high-profile blog sites and who has been described by

David Carr on nytimes.com

as "an overlord of the blogosphere". Denton's company Gawker Media publishes Gawker (famed for its

Gawker Stalker map

), Wonkette, Gizmodo, Gridskipper, Deadspin and Valleywag, among others. He announced a few days ago that he would sell tabloid news site Sploid and video humour site Screenhead, so that he could focus on those with better potential. The timing appears to be related to the fact there's a lot of investor interest in blogs. As Denton told Carr "There is no doubt that there is a bubble right now."

- - - posted 9.20am by Neil Sanderson

Tuesday July 4

Yachting reporter

Julie Ash

is making an impression with her coverage of the

America's Cup pre-regatta

. Website

Valencia Sailing

refers to her as "the authorative and exhilarating reporter of the New Zealand Herald here in Valencia".

Julie isn't the only yachting star of course. Dean Barker and his Team New Zealand crew not only won the pre-regatta but also the 2006 series.

- - - posted 10.05am by Neil Sanderson

Haka controversy:

Today we'd like to hear what you think of the TV commercial for the Fiat Idea. The ad, which is being broadcast in Italy, shows women performing the Ka Mate haka and has been described by some Maori as culturally insensitive. You can watch the

video in our report

and send us your comments on the

Readers' Views page

.

- - - posted 9.18am by Neil Sanderson

Thanks to everyone who partipated in our

discussion of speeding tickets

yesterday. Some strong views on both sides of the question. And we have

more on the story

today.

- - - posted 9.12am by Neil Sanderson

Monday July 3

A police manager has been criticised

for encouraging officers to enforce speed limits. On our

Readers' Views

page today we'd like to hear your view:

Should the police be permitted to issue speeding tickets?

- - - posted 9.25am by Neil Sanderson

Superman returns

may be just a movie, but at

USA Today

Patrick Cooper

reckons there are some serious ethical questions relating to mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent and his employer, the

Daily Planet

.

- - - posted 9.15am by Neil Sanderson