Posts by Damian Christie
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Up Front: Oh, Grow Up, in reply to David Cormack,
I see Damian has helpfully defined what a young person is in his blog post.
Well, yes. Sort of. Having just this week had the last birthday I'll have before I turn 40, I'm grappling with the same issues as everyone else - a refusal to admit I'm a grown up, it would seem. All the while paying a mortgage, raising a child, managing people and all those other grown-up things. But dammit I still wear sneakers!
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Cracker: It's urs!, in reply to Dan Salmon,
I had no idea about the youtube’s blanket music agreement.
Neither did I until I made a courtesy call to Chris Caddick at RIANZ to discuss exactly how we might mitigate any issues arising from kids using copyright music in their videos. Apparently if it's on YouTube, it's not an issue. I'd still like to insist that the artist/song are credited as a courtesy.
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Thanks Emma (and Russell!).
Yeah... "age appropriate"... tricky one eh. Just one of the minefields. You don't want to say "hey, these thoughts of yours aren't valid or appropriate", but on the other hand...
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Hard News: My Food Bag: is it any good?, in reply to Andre Alessi,
By getting the service for free, you’re not reacting to the service as it would be for someone who was paying for it
Same goes with almost every review - even with restaurant reviews, it's the magazine (generally) not the author paying for it.
We're smart enough to be able to work out whether we 'felt' we got the prescribed value for it, whether it would be worthwhile doing it again, how much it would cost... it was definitely a talking point in our house.
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Hard News: My Food Bag: is it any good?, in reply to BlairMacca,
Even if it isn’t part of their story, they are essentially being paid in food to talk about a product.
There's a HUGE difference between being paid by the Casino and casually mentioning how much you like certain restaurants there while on TV; and getting sent a product to review.
I was only half being flippant when I suggested to Drinnan (via Twitter) that anyone who thinks media can be bought with $140 worth of produce must work in newspapers. But of course, it's a sliding scale, and a student journo might find themselves hopelessly compromised by a couple of duck breasts. Or the free glasses of wine or beer that are pretty standard at any media launch, and no-one ever seems to question.
The question that seems pertinent to me is whether the compromise/conflict is one which interferes with one's ability to do one's paid job - and as Dylan points out, I wouldn't do a One News story about My Food Bag. But a couple of months back, despite stuffing my pockets with their croissants and sweet treats, I still managed to do a decent story about Sky City's questionable 'outside' gaming room. Obviously if I was receiving tens of thousands of dollars a year from them, it would've been a different story.
All of which is to say, it's a valid concern, the influence of free shit, but it needs to be kept in perspective, and in the perspective of the people whose influence is apparently being bought.
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Hard News: My Food Bag: is it any good?, in reply to Russell Brown,
Audiences aren’t dumb.
Only when they seek to be. I hoped that my tweet "I'm trialling #myfoodbag for a week" was about all I needed by way of disclaimer (on my personal twitter, about a product I'm not being paid to endorse), but of course if someone chooses to wilfully misinterpret something, they can. And as I've found with almost any Twitter argument I find myself involved in, they will.
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I can assure you that Christie's duck tasted as good as it looked ;)
If I can add my thoughts on the Gourmet Food Bag (designed for 2 people, 4 meals each week rather than 4pax x 5days as RB tried)...
Day 1's "asian style" foil wrapped snapper was delicious, as was Day 2's duck (pictured), the lamb chops on day 3 I could take or leave, and the pine-nut stuffed eggplant on day 4 was another new delight.
I'm not quite the foodie that RB is, and so it was nice to be prodded into some new, albeit relatively simple directions. We'd never cooked duck at home before, for instance, but certainly will now.
There is a degree of planning and routine involved, by day 3 I was hankering for a night off cooking/dishes, but thought that might be a slippery slope to a fridge full of rotting veggies, especially with the weekend beckoning. Even with Harry, we're still not great at being home and cooking every night, but if you have a bit more order in your life and are cooking anyway, it would be fine.
We thought we'd like to do it perhaps one week a month, but the way the system works at present requires you to sign up (no minimum contracts though) and then "pause" your weekly or fortnightly delivery when you don't want it. I'd rather opt in than have to remember to opt out. Obviously the latter is better for business, short term at least.
There were a few things called for that we were expected to have - some normal, like cooking oil, some a bit more unusual - rice wine vinegar, sesame oil, and without a master list of stuff you'd already need to have you could end up substituting/omitting or doing those annoying trips to the supermarket this thing is supposed to avoid. I wondered if the sesame oil/rice wine vinegar perhaps could've been provided in small sachets.
I thought it was probably good value for money - you could buy it yourself cheaper, but you'd probably have to go to two or three places to get everything, and convenience comes at a cost.
The concept is apparently really successful in Sweden and Britain. The question is whether the niche here (people who have enough money, and enough time to cook for themselves, but not the time or foodie inclincation to shop/think for themselves) is big enough for it to thrive here. With the memory of that duck still front of mind, I wish them all the best :)
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Hard News: The Next Act, in reply to Sacha,
Though you can guarantee some reaction against change from all those viewers of the old show.
Yeah - although even with a bit of an outcry, I think all of 70 people 'unliked' the site (unless 30,000 unliked and 30,000 new people suddenly came along, but let's assume that wasn't the case, not even a little bit). So the vast majority of those 30,000 probably made no decision at all, probably didn't know or care why Seven Sharp stuff was coming up in their news feed, or if they did put two and two together we can only assume the overwhelming reaction was 'meh'.
@Kristen - yes you can start from the ground up I guess, and be proud of your however many genuine 'likes', but in the end a facebook page is nothing more than a marketing tool, and I'd rather have 30,000 than 0 when I'm trying to launch - and many people (myself included) 'like' pages just so they can criticise them, so that's not exactly a guarantee of positivity either.
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Hard News: The Next Act, in reply to Kristen Hill,
Also, it looks like they’ve changed and re-skinned their FB page from CloseUp, rather than develop a genuine and authentic audience
This was discussed, dealt with, criticised and the subject of a tweet by someone at Seven Sharp a week or two back - not that I'm saying you should have known that, but just that there's plenty of comment on it already if you want to look around. Taking over the Close Up page was a smart move, albeit ethically dubious - but when it comes to facebook pages, is it really a huge ethical consideration? No. And having a built in audience of 30k sort of trumps that when you're launching a new show.
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Having worked fairly closely with Paul - sort of - over the past 4 years on Q+A (I wrote his opening monologue from the outset, sometimes with, sometimes without his input), channelling his voice etc, I have been struggling with my feelings on the whole topic, and deciding whether the world really needs another piece from a "former colleague". In the end my laziness/busy-ness may win out over my desire to put forth any of my own thoughts on the man and his legacy. We'll see.