I attended TEDx Manchester yesterday – a half-day of presentations and debate on technology, entertainment and design (the TED of the title). I’m still digesting much of what was put out, because there was an awful lot packed into the five-hour programme. Apparently, too, this was the biggest TED event in Europe to date – [...]
Newspaper sales – a way forward?
Published in September 23rd, 2009
I read an intriguing article in today’s Media Guardian about a London scheme for selling more newspapers. News International has started offering top-up publications alongside subscriptions for some of its own stable – the Times and Sunday Times. The free delivery scheme actually started last July but has now been expanded to include non-NI publications [...]
Screen jab: the reality of misery
Published in August 25th, 2009
I’m not a huge fan of reality TV. It is occasionally interesting in a curiosity sense and its forerunner, the docusoap, offered enlightening glimpses into other worlds and other peoples’ lives. But mostly reality TV seems to me about serving people up as entertainment and, increasingly over the last decade that has been about pushing [...]
Call yourself a writer? A meme
Published in August 9th, 2009
Journalist and blogger Linda Jones has tagged me in her meme about writing. I really rate Linda’s writing as well as her business acumen so I’m responding to the challenge (and it’s the perfect excuse to kickstart this sadly neglected blog, too). Which words do you use too much in your writing? I probably swear [...]
Expenses – MPs vs journalists
Published in May 12th, 2009
National treasure Stephen Fry has waded into the debate about MPs’ expenses, claiming that MPs are not really doing anything much wrong, and stating very bluntly that journalists are far worse when it comes to fiddling expenses. I have news for Stephen. The expenses culture for journalists ended a long time ago – at least [...]
JEEcamp 09 – some thoughts
Published in May 9th, 2009
I took part in the second JEEcamp in Birmingham yesterday. Last year, it was very much an experiment to see what might happen if you stuck 50 journalists in a room and let them unconference for a day about how to create a new journalism for the future. I’d been mapping plans for an online [...]
Blogging against disablism
Published in May 1st, 2009
Did you know that one in six people in the UK has a disability of some sort? No? Neither did I until quite recently. It’s a shocking statistic, not so much because of the figure of 17%, but because disability is so underreported that when it does make the press people’s life stories become stereotyped [...]
Press Gazette: I'm not mourning
Published in April 7th, 2009
When Wilmington announced yesterday that it was closing Press Gazette permanently, quite a few of my colleagues blogged about how sad they felt at its demise. Dave Lee, Alison Gow, Kristine Lowe and even Roy Greenslade all wrote at length about what PG had meant to them and why it would be missed. I’m going [...]
Local news, local action
Published in March 28th, 2009
Anyone who pays any attention to the news cannot have failed to hear of the swingeing cuts in staff being made at newspapers and magazines up and down the UK. Thousands of journalists jobs have disappeared over the last year. Some papers and magazines have been closed down. Over the last couple of weeks, people [...]
TwitterTitters – Ta-dah!
Published in March 4th, 2009
Or how we exploited social media to change the world… Less than a month ago, fellow journalist Linda Jones asked me to join her on a project to raise money for Comic Relief using the medium of Twitter. What a rollercoaster it has been! By harnessing Twitter, we somehow managed to create an entire book [...]
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