Ian Reeves' Best of 2008

Ian Reeves, director of learning and teaching at the Centre for Journalism, University of Kent, and ex-editor of Press Gazette, picks his best of 2008.

Best old/trad media: The PM Programme. Purely for Eddie Mair's mastery of news broadcasting. Irreverent yet just the right side of naffness. Exhibit A: his 'cold call' to the LibDems after they'd been done by OfCom for using automated phone calls to canvas suppport Knows when an interview should be allowed to run at length. Exhibit B: Interview with a former Land Girl. And just as CBS news anchor Dan Rather inspired collections of Ratherisms, Mair provides some equally collectible homely phrases of his own. Exhibit C: Mair to BBC executive after Brand/Ross debacle: "Is Mark Thompson's job safe? Or is he hanging his coat on a shoogily hook?"

Best new media: iPM. Showing that old media can embrace the new in winning ways. Saturday's edition of the R4 news show - tagline Share What You Know - genuinely uses listener input from the blog site to create the running order of the programme. Web 2.0 in action. Plus there's some very good use of mapping technology online.
Honorable Mention: You Suck At Photoshop. Hilariously bitter 'tutorials' for the imaging software programme. The bonus is you pick up the odd useful technique in the process.

Story of the year: Collapse of greed-is-good capitalism. To be continued.

Prediction for 2009: The number of decent hard-working journalists forced to go into PR because their jobs disappear will reach tipping point. They will realise that collectively they are smart enough and now numerous enough to subvert the entire PR system from the inside out without their new paymasters realising. What starts as a trickle of 'leaks' suddenly becomes a tsunami as details of corporate and political skullduggery flood into the public domain, keeping the public informed as never before and forcing bosses to become more accountable, honest, caring and responsible forces for good.
I'd best go and have a lie down now.

Tomorrow: It's Ian's successor at Press Gazette, Dominic Ponsford. Dominic not only names his newspaper of the year but shows he knows the plural of dominatrix. Don't miss it or you'll deserve a whipping.

Best of the rest so far: Paul Linford, Adrian Monck , Grey Cardigan , Jean Morgan, Steve Busfield, Neil Fowler.