EDITOR: Dave Cross
Posted by Dave Cross
March 4th, 2009
Who am I?
I’m Dave Cross. I’m a geek who lives in Balham and I’ve been blogging on various topics at davblog since 2002.
I’ve always been interested in politics and the media and I run a few web sites that cover those subjects. You might have seen the Battersea MP Blog, Planet Westminster, Political Web (which is, unfortunately, currently a bit broken) and my list of newpaper web feeds.
The Daily Mail has always interested me. My parents read it when I was growing up so it was the first newspaper that I read regularly. It wasn’t long before I began to question some of the things it was printing and as I got older I became equally fascinated and appalled by what the paper was telling its readership.
What will I be writing about?
“Write what you know”. Isn’t that what they tell aspiring writers? I make my money using computers and I spend far too much of it on consumer technology. So those are the two areas that I’ll be concentrating on
There’s plenty to choose from here. Most Mail writers seem to have an innate distrust of technology. That distrust leads to fear and if there’s one thing that the Mail excels at, it’s telling their readers what to be scared of. Whether it’s Petronella Wyatt overstating the problems of Wikipedia, the dangers of letting children talk to each other over the internet or (from just last month) how Facebook gives you cancer, the Mail’s technology pages are full of misunderstandings, misinformation and (not to beat around the bush) lies.
In addition to that I’ll be involved in a lot of the practical geekery that keeps the site up and running. I’ll also be helping out with admin stuff and general strategy (along with Tim and BigDaddyMerk).
Why am I doing this?
Probably for very similar reasons to the other people involved. The Mail reinforces the fears and prejudices of its readers. Many of these fears and prejudices have no rational basis, so the Mail needs to lie to its readers. I want people to realise how little of the Mail’s output can be trusted.
In particular, I believe that technology can be a powerful force for good and if the Mail stopped treating it as something to be feared and encouraged its readers to embrace it, then many people’s lives could be improved.
Why have you chosen your specific beat and/or what skills and expertise can you bring to it?
I’ve chosen to cover technology because it’s what I know. It’s therefore a subject where I can probably detect more of the Mail’s lies than I could in any other area. It’s also a subject where they talk an awful lot of nonsense. So it’ll be easy to find things to write about.
Categories: Housekeeping | Tags: editors
Hail to you, fellow crew member.
Thanks Dave.
Hi Dave,
I really like your dissection of the Daily mail’s interpretation of the information on cannabis (He blinded me with science). I write media studies resources for a publisher called Zigzag publications. We are producing a resource on the newspaper industry, with a predicted circulation of 50-150.
Could I please request your permission to reproduce your article?
Kind regards,
Pete
I wrote to Leeds city council suggesting that like some places in Holland they turn non critical traffice lights off at night. I received a letter back saying that if they were to turn the traffic lightd off.Blind people would not be able t o see them
Would you like a copy of this letter Its a scream.I have just been trying to contact a department in the council So far seven telephone calls and 40 minutes on the phone,Not resolved