Is Monday morning a bit too early for sex? This sexpose happened last summer, but a recap on Girl with a one-track mind's blog has stirred it all up again. To summarise: "Abby Lee" on Girl with a one-track mind blogs explicitly about her sex life and scores book deal. Sunday Times finds out who she really is and outs her. Girl not happy.
On New Year's Day, Girl published an email from the Sunday Times on her blog, in which acting news editor of the Sunday Times Nicholas Hellen informs Girl that the paper is about to out her and invites her for a photoshoot. Unfortunately, Hellen's email, while very professional, is extremely abrupt and makes no attempt to soften the, erm, blow that Girl - and therefore all the subjects of her considerable sexual exploits - are about to be made public.
Hellen also rather undiplomatically stated that the paper has also identified Girl's mother and plans to out her too, which it duly did in the piece last August.
Needless to say, none of that went down too well but it's the publication of the email itself that has caused most of the outrage among Girl's fans. "Some people are not worth even being called scum," commented one fan.
Someone else said:
"You'd have thought that a 'news editor' should have been going for more important, public interest stories, nailing government untruths, corrupt business leaders and the like."
Retaliation came in the form of emailing Hellen. Another fan told Girl he emailed Hellen:
"Abby Lee has published your disgusting letter to her on her website, and I am very pleased that she has done so. There is already one link on a very prominent blog and I look forward to seeing others, so that the vile way that you have treated her this year gets the notice it deserves.
The one consolation to come from all this is that your enthusiastic embrace of prurience still hasn't halted the richly-deserved decline in the paper's circulation."
Ouch.
Nicholas Hellen's Google results can't please him too much either: at the time of writing, eight of the first ten links relate to Girl's blog rant on him, including a post by goatBlog that refers to Hellen as - how did he put it? - an utter something or rather.
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, as they say. Still, it can't be doing her book sales much harm.
• ITN to produce mobile video news bulletin for Orange
Orange has struck a deal with ITN to deliver a new video news bulletin service for its home broadband and mobile customers.
The service, to be delivered by ITN's multi-media division ITN On, will be provided to Orange's website, which it claims attracts five million visitors per month, as well as its Orange World mobile service.
The service will include video bulletins, text and pictures of UK, world, business, sports and entertainment news. Orange has around 15m mobile customers and two million home broadband customers.
[Mark Sweney]
• Five extends mobile sponsorship
Five is extending its sponsored TV package for advertisers to include mobiles. That means branded packages on mobiles around interactive services like text competition entries and voting, brochure requests and lead generation for marketing. Siren will be producing these services in-house for Five.
• NYTImes relaunches travel site
The New York Times has relaunched its overhauled travel section today. The new site has bigger pictures, more interaction and higher profile links to book flights and holidays with Expedia through the site. There are also more than 1,000 destination guides, reviews and itineraries and various content from Frommer's travel guides. The archive of travel articles back to 1981 is free to access. The release says the new site is designed to be stickier, and therefore build higher value for advertisers.
