Weekend Round-Up: Digital Hierarchy, Media and COVID-19


Welcome to The Addition, where I cover the crossover between culture, media and sport. This is a weekend round-up of the stories I've covered over the last few days.

If you have a premium subscription, thank you! If not, please consider upgrading to a premium subscription. It means you get even more content AND the satisfaction of supporting the growth of independent media!

Did the Media Pass the COVID-19 Lockdown Test?

On March 23, 2020, then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson looked down the barrel of a camera and uttered the words:

From this evening I must give the British people a very simple instruction - you must stay at home.

The UK’s first full COVID-19 lockdown had begun.

Five years on, many of us have tried to move on from the misery of that period. I know I certainly have. But we are getting to a point where we can, perhaps, analyse what happened. Don’t worry, I am not going to offer medical or scientific comment. I don’t even particularly want to relitigate whether or not lockdowns and vaccines were right or wrong. (For what it’s worth, I was quickly worried we had no exit plan from the former and was hugely supportive of the latter. I'm also not convinced we are fully discussing the consequences of lockdown, whatever your view on whether or not it was necessary.)

The key question for The Addition is whether or not the media rose to the moment. Even with the benefit of a few years of hindsight, I’m not sure it did.


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Podcast: Preserving our Digital Heritage – With Chris Sutcliffe

We think we have access to everything, but is that true? From movies to games, digital content is being lost from the public record. This includes the winding down of certain hardware formats such as Blu-ray, meaning certain things can no longer be accessed. Chris Sutcliffe of Media Voices returns to the show to discuss digital archives in the era of streaming.

If you're interested in British politics, check out the House of Comments podcast I co-present with Emma Burnell. If you sign up for a paid subscription via Patreon you get bonus episodes and BOTH of our paid newsletters.

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The Addition

Charlotte Henry is a journalist and broadcaster who creates and runs The Addition newsletter and podcast; an award-winning publication looking at the crossover between media and technology.

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