Weekly New/Digital Media homework Week 20

WEEK 20
1. Local newspaper editor slaps down bigots to welcome Syrian refugees Roy Greenslade Roy Greenslade

• Craig Borland’s Buteman editorial exemplifies value of community leadership
• After Argyll and Bute council announced that the island’s only town, Rothesay, would soon be playing host to Syrian refugees, there was a “patina of unease” amid the “palpable sense of anticipation and excitement" among local people.
• And when “a few unsavoury comments” appeared on The Buteman’s website, Borland responded quickly by publishing a superb editorial to slap down the critics. It bears repetition:

  “There have, predictably but depressingly, been grumbles about how we should look after our own first, how we should be spending our taxes and so on. But mostly these are just not-very-thinly-veiled ways of people saying ‘I don’t want them in my back yard’.

  Well, I do. I want Bute to be a place where people who come here with little more than the clothes they are standing in can feel safe and at home.

  I want Bute to be a place known not for narrow-minded bigotry, but for its warmth, and humanity, and willingness to help people with nothing in whatever way it can.

  The families coming to Bute have been through things we can’t begin to imagine. Surely as human beings we have a duty to help. But more than that, we have an opportunity to show them, and the world, that Bute is a wonderful place to call your home.”

• McKenna also quotes Borland as saying: “There is space in our schools and there is spare social housing, and many, many people want to help our new neighbours to settle here. I would love it if some of them wanted to stay in our community and put down roots here.”

2. Facing complex challenges, Twitter should focus on its strengths

• CEO Jack Dorsey’s turnaround effort has seen the social networking firm’s shares fall 41% since October. 
• Twitter’s chief executive, Jack Dorsey, dug deep at an emergency morale-boosting session at the company’s San Francisco headquarters on Thursday, urging staff to post tweets expressing their commitment to the embattled social networking firm
• “There is no other platform as powerful or as inspiring,” read one from an ad exec.
• The company’s share price is in freefall, dropping more than 41% since Dorsey was named permanent CEO in October. 
• Twitter has had seven product heads in six years, the service is failing to attract new users, and investors are frightened
• 320 million users every month, 79% of whom are outside the US. But investors are concerned that audience is no longer growing rapidly