The demise of Lehman Brothers a year ago sparked a collapse in financial market confidence and set of a series of reactions that have spread hardship into the four corners of the globe.
Reuters News has charted the key events and their impact in "Times of Crisis" -- a major new multimedia production on Reuters.com. (See it here.)
We'd like to add the experiences of Reuters readers. So, if you or your family have been affected by the events of the past year then use the comments section below to share your story.
We've been edging towards this with previous social media segments in Reuters-hosted NewsMaker events like those with Conservative leader David Cameron and World Bank President Bob Zoellick who have taken questions from Twitter and the like after making public policy speeches.
But Monday's event was purely online, with an agenda driven entirely by web participants. And, in weaving together four elements of social media practice, we think we've come up with a possible template for interviews in the age of Web 2.0:
We know this isn't new -- there have been radio phone-in interviews based on listeners' questions for decades. But the questions that we prompted weren't exclusive to our service - they existed on other platforms where side conversations could and did take place. That notion of setting off a distributed conversation is new-ish.
The most interesting of those questions were put direct to Nick.
Again, not brand new -- the CNN/YouTube Presidential debates last year were a powerful illustration of this strand of new media. But the Reuters approach was agnostic over form -- questions and comments could be text, audio or video and not limited to any one social media platform.
2. Aggregate the conversations around the event
The best of the rest of the comments and questions were aggregated and pulled together in various modules on the page containing the live video interview. The idea was to enrich the experience of participants by offering them a filtered guide to the best side conversations.
At it's simplest this merely involved setting up a hashtag on Twitter -- in this case #askclegg. But we also pulled in audio, video and pictures from social media sites like audioboo, 12 Seconds, Qik and Flickr to modules on the page and the highlights put on the timeline of the CoverItLive widget.
For those with deep interest in the interview we had meant to offer a full, unfiltered view of ALL conversations around the event by aggregating material tagged 'askclegg; but we forgot to link to it during the event.
3. Use the live Web
Live responses from social media participants were woven into the live interview making it dynamic -- participants could and did follow up on answers given by Nick so influencing the direction of the conversation.
Again, this is something that phone-in interviews have facilitated for some time. The difference is that our curators could choose the most interesting responses from a wide range of participants rather than the handful of listeners who get fed into radio phone-ins.
4. Use social media to promote the event
Content on Qik, Flickr, 12 seconds, audioboo and Twitter was used to update potential participants on what was going on behind the scenes as we built up to the event itself.
NIck Clegg got the ball rolling by asking a couple of video questions well ahead of the event including one on "greedy bankers":
This is akin to what broadcast media has always done with programme trails but the difference here is that we were using raw, unvarnished content with immediacy the key and making use of the social web's amplification to promote what we were planning.
Another good example: the in-cab interview with Nick conducted by Documentally (aka Christian Payne) on the way to the Reuters News London HQ.
So what was the net result of all this? There did seem to be high levels of engagement all round. The unpredictability of the questions helped, as did the near-live responses from web participants. There was also a strong sense that the role of the journalist in such an interview is fundamentally different -- more about keeping up with the side conversations and adding the context that the 140 characters in a tweet can't possibly do.
Perhaps we should ask Jordan’s baby daughter Princess Tiaamii when she grows up. Or Geri Halliwell’s girl Bluebell Madonna and Nicolas Cage’s son Kal-el, named after Superman.
The list of bizarre celeb names goes on and on, but for most of us the choice comes down to classic, cool or slightly quirky.
While official figures show that old-fashioned names are still among the most popular choices, some classic names remain firmly stuck in the history books.
Norman and Gertrude top a list of names that have fallen out of fashion over the last 100 years, according to research for the mother and baby website Gurgle.com.
While Ruby and Olivia are all the rage, Edna, Ethel and Irene are strictly off limits.
Other unloved entries on the list of endangered names include Clifford, Frank, Arnold, Leonard, Ada, Agnes, Elsie and Mabel.
Do they deserve to be neglected? Which of the current crop of quirky celebrity names or classic choices should join them in the history books?
Should women be allowed to fight on the frontline? Is it time for complete equality in the armed forces? Is society ready for the idea of female soldiers routinely fighting and dying in combat?
The death of Sergeant Sarah Bryant, the first female British soldier to be killed in Afghanistan, has reignited the long-running debate over women’s role in modern warfare.
The existing rules that exclude women from situations where the primary duty is “to close with and kill the enemy” are irrelevant in Afghanistan and Iraq where there is no single front line, according to some commentators.
Instead, British forces are engaged in a “360-degree war” where all soldiers, male or female, could be in the line of fire at any time, Catherine Philp wrote in the Times.
“In times gone by, rules like these kept women far behind the men,” she writes. “In the heat of the Iraq insurgency, however, all that began to change. In reality, the rules are already stretched to breaking point.”
The old arguments that women are not physically capable to fight or might disrupt “unit cohesiveness” no longer hold water, she added.
The Ministry of Defence says there are now about 18,000 women in the armed forces, just under 10 percent of the total. The Sex Discrimination Act (1975) allows the armed forces to exclude women from some posts.
“I’ve yet to see a woman who could withstand the mental and physical pressure of infantry work,” he wrote.
Not so, said Jo Salter, the RAF’s first female fighter pilot. She said society’s attitudes have changed over the years and the sex of a soldier is no longer the issue it once was.
That view was echoed by the parents of Flight Lieutenant Sarah-Jayne Mulvihill, who died in Iraq in 2006.
“Sarah did not distinguish between herself and the boys she served with,” her father Terry told the Daily Mirror. His wife Sue added: “There were four others with her and their families’ grief is equal.”
A quick look at the front pages after Bryant’s death suggests newspaper editors may not see it that way.
Pictures of Sgt Bryant in her wedding dress were splashed across several front pages under headlines such as “Our Afghan Heroine”. Most ran long stories on inside pages about her life and career in the army. The deaths of male soldiers typically receive far less coverage. There were few details of the three male colleagues killed with her.
Whether the media coverage of Bryant’s death reflects the wider views of society is hard to tell.
The last word goes to an unnamed military source who told the Herald newspaper: “Every man - and woman - is born equal under the 7.62mm gun law”.
Despite concerns over issues such as Iraq, the economy and extradition treaties, Bush was “never disloyal or ungrateful”, the paper said.
He acknowledged Britain’s unparalleled support after the Sept. 11 attacks, the newspaper noted. And Bush backed Britain over Northern Ireland and the Israeli-Palestine roadmap, the paper said.
“A country, like a man, can have friends who are difficult. But sticking to them is the essence of friendship,” the paper said.
The Independent wasn’t quite so gracious.
It featured a cartoon of Bush, caricatured as a duck with a leg in plaster and carrying a crutch, greeting Gordon Brown, portrayed with a large beak and tail feathers. The pair are standing next to the bony corpse of the dove of peace under the caption “Rendezvous”.
Bush says to Brown: “The Dodo of Downing Street - Yo!.” Brown replies: “The Lame Duck of the Lone Star State, I presume?”
As MPs prepare to vote on cutting the time limit for abortions, the Daily Mail says the current system “shames our nation”.
Foetuses are being aborted at a late stage in their development when they would have had a good chance of survival outside the womb, the Mail says in an editorial.
“An attack on women? Utter nonsense. The campaign to cut the time-limit is an attack on an everyday practice that shames our nation,” it says.
There is no significant evidence to support the claim that the foetus is more viable at up to 24 weeks than in 1967 or 1990 when the law was last changed.
“If viability isn’t the test - as it was claimed to be back in 1990 when the limit was reduced from 28 weeks - then the judgment must be that some folk simply don’t like abortions and wish to restrict them as much as possible,” he writes.
There is little doubt that the “temperature of the debate about abortion” has changed in recent times, says the Independent.
“The introduction of 4-D ultrasound techniques, showing foetuses of just 12 weeks with apparent facial expressions, has dramatised the debate,” it says in an editorial. “So have couples coming back from hospital and proudly showing off photos of their baby at its 12-week scan.”
It says that only a small number of terminations take place at more than 22 weeks. However, there are 200,000 abortions in Britain each year at 12 weeks or less.
“Governments routinely launch campaigns telling us not to drink, smoke, take drugs or eat to excess; yet there is no sense of a similar effort being expended on advising women about the medical and psychological trauma of abortion,” the paper says.
Guardian columnist Jackie Ashley says the debates over abortion and research on embryos highlight a wider divide between the two main political parties.
She argues that there is a real difference between a progressive, pro-science Labour government and a backward-looking, “finger-wagging” Conservative opposition.
“If the reactionary arguments are successful, throwing out vital medical advances and criminalising frightened, often young, women, then it will mark a real turning point,” she writes.
“Whatever you think of the New Labour years, it has been a decade of social liberalism, when racism, homophobia and anti-science voodoo became steadily less respectable.”
THE GUARDIAN: Recession alert as Brown fights back
Gordon Brown’s drive to recapture the political agenda with a programme of new laws to create “an opportunity-rich Britain” was badly shaken yesterday by King’s warning.
“The nice decade is behind us,” Mervyn King declared in funereal tones, warning that the economy was “travelling along a bumpy road” as he predicted rising prices would put a squeeze on take-home pay for millions of workers.
Britons should not expect another cut in interest rates for at least two years, the Bank of England indicated yesterday as it warned that inflation would rise far above its previous forecasts and persist at levels well above the government’s target until early 2010.
The annual scourge of deaths and severe illness caused by meningitis could be consigned to the history books after scientists announced startling results from trials of a potential vaccine.
He’s just two days out of rehab - but as troubled Paul Gascoigne staggers along a road at 8am yesterday, it’s clear he is still urgently in need of help.
The ex-England star, 40, looked dazed as he tottered along in Gateshead with a towel flung over one shoulder.
From a haunted church in Abington, Cambridgeshire, to a spectral white bird spotted in the Devon village of Zeal Monachorum, England’s towns and villages are full of ghost stories.
While some may scoff, the collection contains hundreds of accounts from people convinced they have seen headless horsemen, screaming skulls or supernatural packs of dogs.
Poltergeists, ghostly figures in country churchyards and strange auras in houses are recorded across the country.
Have you seen a ghost? Do you believe in the supernatural? Or do you think it’s all in the imagination?
In an age of viruses, fraud and identity theft, who should be responsible for policing the Internet?
Governments, private security companies and law enforcement agencies all play a part in tackling cyber-crime.
But author and academic Jonathan Zittrain argues that we should be wary of “locking down” the Internet with increasing amounts of centralised rules and sealed gadgets that can’t be tinkered with.
In a new book published by Penguin and Yale University Press, he says part of the answer lies in greater freedom and trust, rather than more rules or technological solutions.
We don’t have police on every street corner in the real world, so why have that online, he asks?
People should be encouraged to see themselves as “netizens” — active participants in the online world, rather than passive consumers of Internet content.
They could share the load of policing the net, reporting threats and working together to combat the risks.
He says Wikipedia has shown that online collaboration can work.
“The challenge to the technologists is to build technologies to let people of good faith help without having to devote their lives to it,” he says.
Supporters say it’s just common sense, while at least one critic has described the approach as “utopian”. Who do you think should shoulder the burden of Internet security?
The demise of Lehman Brothers a year ago sparked a collapse in financial market confidence and set of a series of reactions that have spread hardship into the four corners of the globe.
