Left field

from Photographers Blog:

How a simple tentacle became a media star

Sometimes I hold seminars about journalism – photo journalism in particular of course. Most of the time I start talking about the journalistic rule number one.

What is rule number one? Journalism works very simply. When a dog bites a man – this is not a story. Dogs bite men. Unless the man is Prince Charles or the President of the United States, nobody is interested. But the opposite case - when a man bites a dog – that's a story. The story will be even bigger if the man who bites the dog is the U.S. President and the dog belongs to Prince Charles.

However, in the future I must change my seminars and change the picture from the dog to the octopus “Paul” -- better known as the “octopus oracle” at the Sea Life Aquarium of Oberhausen, a former coal mining and steel producing city in western Germany.

The two-and-a-half year-old octopus has become a star all over the world by predicting all six of Germany's 2010 World Cup games correctly - two defeats and four victories.

McGwire the latest in line for smooth rehabilitation

Simon Evans

Jan 14, 2010 13:26 UTC

America knows how to ‘do hype’ and the Stateside public lap up a good scandal but when it comes to cheating by use of performance enhancing drugs, the appetite for mass media coverage seems to vanish.

At the end of 2009, there wasn’t a website or newspaper in the States, whether celebrity gossip, high-brow politics or sports-obsessed that wasn’t delivering real-time updates on the infidelities of a golfer. America couldn’t get enough of the Tiger Woods story which, in the end, consisted of little more significant than a sorry list of rather mundane affairs.

from Raw Japan:

Japan’s Tiger in the tank?

What goes up must at some point come down.

The world of sports is full of examples of bright lights who shone briefly before crashing back down to earth.

Tennis burnout used to grind teenage sensations into the dust with alarming regularity, with even all-time greats such as Bjorn Borg stressed into premature retirement, albeit the Swede was 26 when he made his shock decision to quit.

Murray climbs rankings despite media pressure

Andy Murray will go where no British man has ever gone before — next Monday he will become the first Briton to climb to third in the ATP rankings.

But instead of rejoicing in Murray’s achievements, sections of the British press appear hell bent on heaping more and more pressure on their number one player.