First: Medium is a relatively new site created by Twitter founder Evan Williams. Writers can create beautiful looking stories and essays very quickly. The site has the clean and spacious aesthetic that has become fashionable recently. Design led by the need for readbility and usability on tablets, mobile phones, while also providing a reading experience on desktop and laptop monitors that is easy on the eye. I was delighted that my request for an early-bird account was granted by Medium’s Director of Content, Kate Lee, and I have just uploaded a story to the site to try out the composition features.

You can read ‘Northern Line Lovers‘ on Medium (and if you like the story, please hit the ‘recommend’ button below the text). I think I will post my other ‘Ficciones‘ there at some point.

Another story on Medium reminded me of the popular ‘Snow Fall‘ article produced by the New York Times last year. Developer Cody Brown is working on a tool that will allow anyone to create similarly immersive, full-screen stories.

Brown also links to another publishing platform, Marquee, that assists in the design of articles with a similar visual style. The Narrative.ly website uses the Marquee technology, and their long-form journalism is beautifully presented. It is of recognisably the same aesthetic as the ‘Snow Fall’ piece.

Do we need a name for this style in online design? Has someone coined an appropriate term? It seems to me to be an evolution of the Web 2.0 aesthetic we see deployed on web-pages for start-ups. But it the style sufficiently different that we can call it a new species?

The Government has said that around 600 translators will be given the right to settle in Britain. That’s a bit of U-turn and its annoying that the media and the public had to mobilise on this issue… but at least the Government has now done the right thing.

Can remember the meetings where we planned package for Iraqi interpreters – glad government is honouring service of those in Afghanistan.

— Jacqui Smith (@smithjj62) May 22, 2013

The first instance of this hope being realised is ‘Papercuts and Curses‘ by Sam Meekings. It uses my scanned image of a young and now anonymous aquaintance of Harriet Bennett to illustrate a story about a young adventurer.  Sam begins his story with a liberating broadside against an old writing cliche:

The standard advice to those thinking of becoming writers is to write what you know. The fact that this is clearly the most ridiculous and restrictive piece of advice imaginable does not seem to put people off from repeating it again and again. Edward Gregory Charles was determined to follow it to the letter: with the pragmatism typical of the late nineteenth century, he made it his mission to fill up his mind with experiences.

Read the entire piece on Medium (Twitter founder Evan Williams‘ new project).

I would be delighted if other authors (on Medium or elsewhere) wrote stories based on other images in the Harriet Bennett collection.

Lumley was engaging and hilarious when recounting her famous lobbying of Phil Woolas on the subject of immigration rights for Gurkhas in 2009. She is a purveyor of a kind of Occam’s Razor form of political campaigning, scything through civil service obfuscation and demanding politicians stop delaying, and act. She says this is the reason why she would never go into politics herself – idealistic people with fire and passion are swallowed up, and begin to speak like apparatchiks.

RT @ya5min_bl: “It’s easier to move like a snake thru water if you can’t be pinned down” ~ Joanna Lumney on being apolitical#LibertyConf2…

— robertsharp59 (@robertsharp59) May 18, 2013

During the Q&A, I was able to make the point that ‘Joannah Lumley’ has become a byword (‘that’s two words’, says Shami) for a celebrity campaigner. I noted that every human rights group now seeks a similar ‘Lumley’ stand-in for their cause. What does this requirement say about British politics?

Interesting question from @robertsharp59 to Joanna Lumley – do you need a celeb for successful campaign? If so, is that ok! #libertyconf2013

— Dr Evan Harris (@DrEvanHarris) May 18, 2013

Lumley made two points. The first was to acknowledge that the media like to take photographs of women ‘with yellow hair’ but she also pointed out that the Gurkha campaign was ripe for a win. Other campaigns that she works on, such as for Tibet, seem to have much less momentum. So the Gurkha campaign was not won solely because of her involvement, rather that others had worked hard to stack up the arguments in favour of the Gurkhas. She was therefore able to put a cast iron case to the media and politicians, who had no choice but to agree with the aims of the campaign.

This discussion yielded some other interesting insights, especially on young people getting involved in activism. Relevant Tweets are pasted below.

Lumley: so many young people suffer from political inertia. We need to inspire ‘carpe diem’ in next generation. #LibertyConf2013

— robertsharp59 (@robertsharp59) May 18, 2013

Important audience point: POOR CITIZENSHIP PROVISION IN SCHOOLS #libertyconf2013

— robertsharp59 (@robertsharp59) May 18, 2013

There’s a free speech issue emerging here at #LibertyConf2013 How to give young people a voice in politics/society?

— robertsharp59 (@robertsharp59) May 18, 2013

Brilliant from Joannah Lumley: “An old person is just a young person with more apps” #LibertyConf2013

— robertsharp59 (@robertsharp59) May 18, 2013

And, ahead of a long battle to save the Human Rights Act, this:

Joanna Lumley says she’s with us “a million times over” on the fight to protect the Human Rights Act #LibertyConf2013

— Liberty(@libertyhq) May 18, 2013

I would love to see Joannah Lumley confront some politicians, asking them the simple question: Which right protected by the Human Rights Act do believe should be abolished?

Speaking first, my co-panellist Ian Dunt made a pertinent point about how the low financial barriers to free speech online are also the reason that online speech may be threatened. People do not need financial reserves in order to publish online – It is cheap and quick. However, this lack of money also means they are more vulnerable to being sued by those who do have money and power. The publishing divide is not between online/offline, but between those with lawyers, and those without.

I began own my remarks by noting that speech was most certainly not free online in other parts of the world. I cited the recent manoeuvrings to criminalise online dissent by the Azerbaijan parliament; China shutting down dissident Sina Weibo accounts; and Fazil Say’s suspended sentence in Turkey.

I spoke about the recent prosecutions from remarks made on social media, and the fact that current laws include the word ‘offensive’ as a trigger for prosecution, which is open to abuse. I noted how the immediacy of social media messaging meant that immature political views follow you around long after they should have been discarded, but that Tweeting and Facebooking are forms of publishing and could never be cordoned off as some special type of speech that is subjected to different laws. Parents and teachers need to help the young ‘uns be savvier about what they choose to publish online. I finished by warning that we cannot take our free expression for granted when we use social media spaces that feel public, but are in fact owned by corporations with a profit motive to censor if it is in their financial interests to do so.

During the Q&A I also managed to slip in a few re-tweetables about the nature of free speech and ‘counter-speech’.

#libertyconf2013 @robertsharp59 points out to right wing columnists that twitter storms are not *censorship* they are *counter-speech* #nice

— Dr Evan Harris (@DrEvanHarris) May 18, 2013

Robert Sharp, English PEN: “The brilliant thing about free speech is that no one gets to have the last word.” #LibertyConf2013

— Glyn Ley (@GlynLey) May 18, 2013

Here’s the view from the panel just before the start of the session, as people began to filter in.

“Dear Alan, sorry we fucked you over. And thx for helping us win war and create computing. Yours, the Guv” services.parliament.uk/bills/2013-14/…

— David E (@Eastmad) May 10, 2013

The Alan Turing Statutory Pardon Bill has been published on the Houses of Parliament website.

Turing was a mathematician and philosopher who cracked the Nazi Enigma code and invented electronic computing. He was also a homosexual, and was convicted of ‘Gross indecency between men’ in 1952. As a result he lost his security clearance, was subjected to chemical castration, and committed suicide when he was only 42.

This statutory pardon seeks to atone for the Government’s appalling treatment of a national hero.

Nevertheless, the idea of such a narrow pardon worries me a little. The implication seems to be that Turing gets a pardon because he achieved so much. But that should not be how the law and justice works. What about all those under-achievers and ordinary men who were convicted under the same iilliberal and unjust law? Why do they not get a pardon too?

Alan Turing

Who drives our culture? Conventional wisdom says it is Hollywood. After all, it is the film industry that produces the most highly paid artistes and the most visible ‘A listers’. Film is a visual medium and it churns out icons at a steady, lucrative rate. The four-hour Oscars telecast is beamed live around the world.

By contrast, the announcement of the Man Booker Prize does not even get its own TV slot in schedules. The announcement is allowed to interrupt the news broadcasts, but the analysis and reactions are made to wait until a scheduled bulletin and it’s never the lead story.

Film claims global relevance, whereas publishing is parochial. Film claims to be popular, whereas publishing is elitist.

But winning the popularity contest is not the same as being culturally influential. Where are film’s ideas coming from? The answer is: the publishing industry. Of the ten highest grossing films released in 2012, seven were adaptations or derived from books. They included Marvel Comics’ The Avengers, DC Comics’ The Dark Knight Rises, Skyfall (featuring Ian Fleming’s James Bond), the first part of The Hobbit trilogy, and adaptations of Young Adult (YA) series The Twilight Saga and The Hunger Games. Of the top fifty grossing films of all time, twenty-five are drawn directly from books.

One might argue that the adaptations on the list are so numerous because of the large number of sequels, and the prevalence of genre stories like Harry Potter and Twilight, which are both at once fantasy, and YA stories. But why does that matter? JK Rowling and Stephanie Meyer are writers working in the medium of the novel.

What about the Oscar winners? Surely the less populist and rnore worthy Best Picture winners are less reliant on literature’?

Not really. Ben Affleck‘s Argo, which won the Best Picture statuette at the most recent awards ceremony, is based on The Master of Disguise, a memoir by the CIA agent Tony Mendez. The King’s Speech was also a memoir before it was a play and a film, Slumdog Millionaire was adapted from Vikas Swarup’s Q&A. Cormac McCarthy wrote No Country for Old Men.

In all cases, the stratospheric success of these stories began as a partnership between an author and a brave publisher, both willing to take risks, in order to bring their ideas to readers. Hollywood may be making money from these stories now, but it was the publishing industry that incubated the idea and took the real risks.

It is noteworthy how publishing shapes other areas of culture too. Look closely at the investigative journalism or the tales of adventure, power and celebrity featured in the Sunday newspapers, and you will find a great deal of it is extracted from a memoir or other non-fiction. Academic ideas and political philosophies are given their definitive expression in the form of the book. A packaged collection of words is still the most durable way we humans can disseminate meaningful, world-changing ideas and stories.

Why does this most obvious of truths need to be restated? Because driving and changing our culture requires certain arrogance, and I worry that the current mood of the industry discourages such self-confidence in young publishers who are just starting their careers. Publishing has been shaken by the digital revolution, and the threat that cheap print-on-demand and e-Book publishing poses to its business models. Large companies merge, and acquire the independent presses. In doing so, the workforce is ‘streamlined’ to ensure margins are maintained. In such an economic climate, risk taking declines as publishers seek the safety of tried and tested genres and authors. None of this encourages the self-belief that young publishers must internalise if they are to become the cultural influencers that we need.

This is a shame, because it is precisely the digital revolution that will allow a new generation of publishers to make their mark on culture. For one thing, start-up/up-start publishers no longer need to sink money into extensive print-runs, when one can publish digitally or PoD. But more importantly, our networked globe brings new, unheard voices closer to British publishers and Anglophone readers. An author in Australia can submit their manuscript to an editor in the UK, and the editorial meetings can take place over Skype or Google Hangout. The publisher does not need to keep an office in Bloomsbury – Sudbury, Norbury or Shrewsbury will suffice.

Most importantly, globalisation means the increased availability of authors from other cultures and countries. Despite efforts from the publishing industry, and the fantastic work of organisations such as the British Centre for Literary Translation, Words Without Borders, Literature Across Frontiers and English PEN, the amount of literature published in translation in the UK and USA is woefully small.

If were a young publisher today, I would look abroad to the untapped reservoir of literature written in other languages. Pick a country, do some online research, make contacts via social media, and then take a literary trip to discover some new writers to translate and publish in the UK. It is in this manner that the next cohort of publishers will make their names and their fortunes. But to take such a step requires huge self-confidence, grounded in a belief that publishing – and publishers – are the true cultural engines of our time.

During the Parliamentary debates, the Government flatly rejected proposals to extend the Derbyshire principle to private companies spending taxpayers money. British citizens are therefore confronted with a looming democratic deficit. As private companies take over the running of prisons, waste collection, school dinners, care homes, and large swathes of the NHS, the space to criticise them is squeezed. By leaving the Derbyshire principle to the courts to develop further, the Government have introduced an unwelcome ambiguity into our public discourse, especially at the local level. It will be left to citizens to closely monitor how the big subcontractors behave in this area. Any hint that these corporations are stifling public criticism through use of the libel law must be met with a public outcry.

Read the whole article, What next for libel reform?, on the OurKingdom blog.

Via Aavaz, I learn that the British Government may now repeat this shameful episode in relation to translators working with British forces in Afghanistan.  They want to give compensation, in lieu of asylum.

This really is not good enough. We have a duty to protect these people.  Failure to do so would not only be a moral outrage – it would damage the reputation of British forces abroad and make it much harder to recruit local translators for future military operations.

Aavaz have a petition, which I have signed. Please do the same.

Why does the British Government drag its heels on these ethical no-brainers?  I worry that it is down to the confused debate about immigration in this country.  Asylum seekers, refugees, economic migrants and illegal immigrants are all very different types of migrant, but they are all spoken of as similarly illegitimate and unwelcome.  We cannot allow an immature debate at home to hobble our soliders working abroad.

Jubilate!  The Defamation Bill recieved Royal Assent yesterday.  It is now the Defamation Act 2013.

Watching the legislative process up close has been fascinating.  It fills me with confidence that candidate laws are put to such detailed and rigourous debate.

To give a sense of how a Bill changes as it passes through both Houses of Parliament, I have created a Defamation Bill (Tracked Changes) document.  Download a PDF [223 KB] or a Word Document [49 KB].  It is based on the successive Bills and amendments found on the Houses of Parliament website.  In the document, you can see how some clauses were tweaked, with the alteration of a word here or there.  In other places you can see where whole clauses were added and then removed, as the House of Commons disagreed with the House of Lords.