Has the world gone mad....and when I say world I mean the British media? I'm not condoning the actions of Russel Brand or Jonathan Ross, what they did went beyond an innocent prank and simply wasn't funny, but this morning I've woken up the front page outrage aimed at the pair. What's more, Gordon Brown has jumped into the furor blasting the pair, and Sky News informed me that the issue was likely to come up during Prime Minister's Questions this afternoon. With two wars, an economic crisis, an entertaining yet globally relevant US election, Tory sleaze etc is the outrage caused by this practical joke really reflective of its severity? I can't help but think it's all gone a bit to far a la Princess Di (oh no he di'n't). Perhaps Elton John should dust off his songbook. While I'm on the point of the media: On Sky News this morning, after Noel Gallagher blamed the decline of Top of the Pops for youth crime, its newspaper critic responded - "I don't know if it's true but it's a good point!" A good point indeed, particularly if you step out of the realm of reality. As the old saying goes...why let the facts get ...

A couple of weeks ago I posted an article discussing how traditional PR is dead and today's Google Chrome announcement only furthers my belief that PRs must continue to looks at new and interesting ways of communicating to the media and consumers. Google has pulled off, in my opinion, a mini masterstroke by announcing its new browser through a cartoon. Why? Well for a start it's much more interesting than a press release. But, more importantly look at how the story is being reported, there are just as many blog posts and news articles discussing the cartoon as the product itself. The cartoon does nothing more than communicate the key messages and features of Google Chrome but by packaging it in an interesting and unique way, (all of) those messages are reaching the end-user. By discussing or even posting scans of the cartoon the media are doing the equivalent of reprinting a press release. I don't think we can all go start sending out cartoons to journalists, we can't lose sight that the Google brand and this particular announcement carries a fair amount of weight with the media. However, we shouldn't be afraid of exploring new ways of engaging journalists and consumers, especially ...

If you ever want to see what a slow news day looks like just look at page 23-26 of today's Metro: P.23 - 118118 Survey revealing people are "discomgoogolated" P.23 - New Samsung mobile phone that detects when people are smiling P.23 - Vauxhall reveals best place to watch a sunset P.25 - Hiscox Insurance reveals car engines turn women on P.26 - Grazia announces its "cool list" Great coup for the brands and the PRs involved but it does feel like the newsroom got to page 22 and ran out of stories. With Gustav, the Presidential election, the credit crunch etc - is there really not enough real news to fill the paper?

According to mad.co.uk, Guardian.co.uk has become the first UK newspaper site to notch up more than 20m unique users a month. The site saw a 12% increase month-on-month, a stark contrast to previous sector leader Mail Online, which experienced a record audience loss of 14.4%!