Tag: f1

When The Blogging Flag Drops…

Posted on by

Veteran F1 reporter Joe Saward talks about the issues around blogging, wire services, quotas for stories, attendance (or otherwise), in the world of online F1 coverage: In part this is due to people called news aggregators. These are the bottom feeders of F1 who pick up stories wherever they can, in whatever language. They have no means of checking the information they gather and so they package up the stories in bite-sized chunks and pump them out to dozens of lazy websites that run the same stuff. This has two effects: the first is that they have deals for x

Content farms, old school journalism, and Formula One

Posted on by

Joe Saward, a decidedly old school journalist who has strong views on the modern web and sports reporting The secret of the F1 media is that it is like a pond. If you drop a stone in the middle, the waves will radiate outwards. The middle is made up the relatively small group of reporters, most of them English. The vast majority of F1 websites have no access at all to the F1 paddock and they are simply part of the ripples on the F1 pond, taking the story from the centre and spreading it. I should flag up at

Pavlovian Formula 1 and Hollywood Monsters

Posted on by

9am on a Sunday and the bass-line of The Chain wakes every F1 fan up and drags them into the spare room to watch the Malaysian Grand Prix (thanks to Scooby Doo commandeering the main TV in the house), and had a wonderful thought. The cgi-based graphics running during the BBC theme are far in advanced of those in the Hollywood delight (ahem) of Sylvester Stallone’s Driven.