Self-help without the cheese ?

I deleted a post from my in-box in anger yesterday.

It was someone elses blog and I was annoyed because I thought it was self- help and cheesy.

But as I wracked my tired brains for fresh ideas I was struck by a vivid image from this blog. It was a horse-riding analogy and exhorted us to have gentle hands and a strong seat in the saddle.

Indeed. There is no point in tugging on an idea and forcing it to work, you have to relax and let it happen naturally. (Can any disco fans name the lyric ‘Don’t push it don’t force it let it happen naturally. It will surely happen if it was meant to be ?)

But there it was again, SELF HELP, sticking it’s nose in un-invited. Did I say I wanted to write about self-help ?

Well let’s look at it then as it refuses to go away. Is there anything intrinsically wrong with Self Help ? It certainly seems to play well in blogs and on Twitter. So much that is written is advice on how to realise our potential/ dreams/ earning power and I will click on that, I know I do.

I just don’t like the cheese, the guy with the teeth telling me I can make a million by telling other saps like me how to make a million and so on down the hall of mirrors. He can keep his snake oil to himself. But there is a market for self-help that appeals to the cynics who want their help with a dose of ‘keep it real.’

Now I haven’t read it, but I think my friend Scott Solder has written such a book. It is called You Need This Book To Get What You Want and it’s already sold out on Amazon.

This may well be how we Brits like our help, shared out  in a slightly self-deprecating way.

We want help, we are happy to listen but we don’t want the cheese.

If Twitter is punk, BBC news is Abba.

Are we so in love with being our own authors that we’re over-looking good  content ?

This is a question that has started to bug me. It all began when one of my posts  http://wp.me/pHqcg-J got a much higher hit rate than usual. It was called Who needs journalists when we’ve got Twitter ? In it I argued that if the news was big enough then it would come to you and more besides, including interesting bits of fresh news that mainstream news-gatherers didn’t have.

This still holds true but I am concerned that we are so  busy trying to ‘stick it to the man’  that brilliant sites aren’t getting their due.

It’s like punk hitting the music scene and demolishing the monsters of rock. Suddenly everyone is doing it for themselves and it’s fresh and democratic and wild. But along the way, back in the 70s, music of lasting worth was overlooked, like, and don’t laugh, Abba.

I think BBC news is the Abba of news websites. Just because we are all in the garage bashing out our own stuff doesn’t mean the well staffed, well resourced, unbiased monster of news isn’t getting it right and delivering fine content.

So let’s welcome the BBC’s new social media editor @AlexGubbay who starts his job today.

Let’s hear it for radio.

I woke up this morning to a piece on the radio about the surprisingly healthy state of British theatre. It seems our desire to be told stories has helped recession- proof the industry.

As I was pondering the whole idea of story-telling and why we seem to need it I had to stop and give my attention to the radio again. Fi Glover was interviewing Mark Radcliffe, one of my favourite broadcasters. I love his contempt for all that is fake, fashionable and ‘glamorous’.

Next I came downstairs to make breakfast and was stopped short again by a totally random interview with Elton John. Danny Baker was doing a great job. They talked about his school days and working in a record shop and I was gripped by the story about how Elton came to write for the Scissor Sisters, even his views on Simon Cowell were interesting !

Then it struck me, and I hope you are with me by now. Radio really is the perfect medium for story-telling.

Radio is my first love and was my first career but I think we all forget it sometimes. It rarely comes up in serious discussion about revolution in the media and was often overlooked when I worked at the BBC.

So let’s hear it for radio and in particular, the way it touches the part of us that needs a  story.