Secret news

Bernie Russell Media

The High Court has ruled that electors can see documents relating to an £850m waste management contract between Nottingham Council and Veolia Environmental Services, reports the UK Freedom of Information blog.

The case relates to an FoI request from local campaigner Shlomo Dowen.

Friends of the Earth, who backed Mr Dowen, described the ruling as “a tremendous victory for freedom of information”, and said: “The judgment sets an important precedent for local authorities with immediate impacts for other councils around the country.”

Get good at googling

Bernie Russell Media
Get good at googling
I’d guess you can  google already. Can’t we all?
But how good a googler are you?
You can boost your skills with this Google guide (from Joss Winn via Twitter).
Design tips
There’s some useful material on web design and development, with some very down-to-earth pointers, e.g.:
be brief
spell well
design logically
make your site accessible.
http://www.googleguide.com/
http://joss.dev.lincoln.ac.uk/
Well worth a bookmark.

I’d guess you can  google already. Can’t we all?

But how good a googler are you?

You can boost your skills with the Google guide (from Joss Winn via Twitter).

Design tips
There’s some useful material on web design and development, with some very down-to-earth pointers, e.g.:

  • be brief
  • spell well
  • design logically
  • make your site accessible.

Ctrl+D
It’s well worth a bookmark. I’ll also add it to the resources pages.

My iPhone doesn’t trust my server

Bernie Russell Media

Just got the WordPress iPhone app, but it won’t let me register my uni blog because of an “untrustworthy server certificate”.

Sigh..

I get this message all the time when I log on to my blog ( and on to Blackboard). It’s irritating, but you can just override it.

Can’t seem to do this on the iPhone, though.

Any ideas?

Can pay, but probably won’t

Bernie Russell Media
Can pay, but probably won’t
Rupert Murdoch’s plan to get readers to pay for online news looks doomed – a survey from Press Gazette says that “just 5% of readers will pay for online news”.
http://bit.ly/LAsqx
The article says that readers will pay for niche information (FT, WSJ and a couple of others), but not for general news. It’s too easy to get it from other sources.
What to do?
I’ve got a suggestion: Murdoch should push for a scheme that forces everyone to pay for his TV stations whether they watch them or not, then divert a huge chunk of their cash to his web sites, whether they visit them or not.
Nah. That’s a stupid idea. I mean, how could anyone get away with something like that?
😉

Rupert Murdoch’s plan to get readers to pay for online news looks doomed – a survey from Press Gazette says that “just 5% of readers will pay for online news”. Continue reading →

Tories at the Beeb? Dream on…

Bernie Russell Media
More Tories at the Beeb? Dream on…
Shadow culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, wants the BBC News to recruit more Conservatives to counter its ‘innate liberal bias’.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=44372&c=1
There is absolutely no chance of that happening. None at all. It’s a fantasy. Forget it.
Proof?
Here’s one among many.
Today’s R4 programme, ‘Costing the Earth’ was about the creation of an energy ‘Supergrid’ linking renewable resources across Europe.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006r4wn
Presenter Tom Heap spoke to two politicians: Liberal Democrat Energy spokesman Simon Hughes and his Tory equivalent Greg Clark.
Shhhhhhhhh…
Hughes was heard in almost reverential silence as he called for EU involvement in creating the grid, said big business wouldn’t do the job, and criticised the Tories for their energy policy. He was not interrupted once – his views went completely unchallenged.
Hissssssss…
Greg Clark said he didn’t want a ‘grand projet’, and played down the role of the EU, saying any project would involve non-EU members (Norway), as well as African countries.
Heaps of questions
Heaps challenged him straight away, asking if his views were influenced by Tory Euro-scepticism, and asking if Tory plans meant we “would be at the mercy of big business’.
The remainder of the programme was devoted to showing that plans to involve Africa were ‘more controversial’, and would mean exploiting the continent’s poor.
Ask me another
No problem with that. It’s sound journalism. But why wasn’t Hughes asked if Liberal Europhilia influenced their views? Why wasn’t he asked if his policies means we would be at the mercy of the Brussels bureaucracy?
You know why. I know why.

Shadow culture secretary Jeremy Hunt wants the BBC to recruit more Conservatives to counter its ‘innate liberal bias’.

There is absolutely no chance of that happening. None at all. It’s a fantasy. Forget it. But even assuming the BBC did recruit some token Tories (it won’t), that wouldn’t help. Continue reading →

Never take a mean photo

Bernie Russell Media
Never take a mean photo
French photographer Willy Ronis died earlier this month, the last of the Cartier-Bresson generation.
I’m not enough of an expert to know where Ronis stands in the photographers’ pantheon, but for me, he was the best, the most painterly, and the most honest.
There’s an excellent slideshow of his work on the Hotshoe blog.
I only knew some of his pictures, and shamefully little about the man. What struck me most as I read the obits was his philosophy, as exemplified in these quotes from a 2005 interview:
“I never took a mean photo. I never wanted to make people look ridiculous. I always had a lot of respect for the people I photographed.”
So perhaps that’s one lesson (among the many) photographers and photojournalists could learn from Willy Ronis:
Never take a mean photo.
http://hotshoeblog.wordpress.com/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/6207054/Willy-Ronis.html

French photographer Willy Ronis, the last of the Cartier-Bresson generation, died earlier this month. Continue reading →

Good news and bad news on climate change

Bernie Russell Economics
Good news and bad news on climate change
Good news: the International Energy Agency (IEA) says carbon dioxide emissions will drop by 2.6 per cent in 2009 – the biggest drop in 40 years.
Bad news: it’s happening because factories are shutting down as the recession bites.
So there’s the choice: green or broke.
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2009/09/climate-good-news-at-last.html

Good news: the International Energy Agency (IEA) says carbon dioxide emissions will drop by 2.6 per cent in 2009 – the biggest drop in 40 years.

Bad news: it’s happening because factories are shutting down as the recession bites.

So there’s the choice: go green or go broke.

Techno journalists set the skills and work agenda

Bernie Russell Media
Techno journalists set the skills and work agenda
Technology journalist Charles Arthur sings the praises of…er…technology journalists in this Guardian piece, arguing that where they boldly go today, the world will drag itself along tomorrow.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/sep/21/technology-journalists-pioneers
He has a point (though I’m not sure it applies to the profession as a whole…).
Much of what he says is relevant to journalism schools as well as journalists: see, for example,  his thoughts on the skills journalists will need:
Understanding HTML and CSS is useful; being able to tweak embed codes is increasingly important; and quite probably in the next few years being able to write programs (or manipulate spreadsheets) to extract meaning from chunks of data could become necessary – if, for example, David Cameron is elected and implements his plan to get councils to output their data in “a standardised and open format”, as already happens with Tory shadow cabinet expenses.
Data interpretation. Next big thing? I’d say so.

Technology journalist Charles Arthur sings the praises of…er…technology journalists in this Guardian piece, arguing that where they boldly go today, the world will drag itself along tomorrow. Continue reading →

Chatham House Rule rules

Bernie Russell Journalism, Teaching
Chatham House Rule rules
And now…a note from Pedants’ Corner:
The LSJ may invite a speaker to talk to students under what we referred to in our discussion of said invitation as Chatham House rules.
In fact, as I tried, but failed to point out, there’s only one rule.
It says:
“When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed”.
So the meeting will be held under the Chatham House Rule.
Nuff said?

And now…a note from Pedants’ Corner:

The LSJ may invite a speaker to talk to students under what we referred to in our discussion of said invitation as Chatham House Rules.

In fact, as I tried, but failed to point out at the time, there’s only one rule.

It says:

“When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed”.

So the meeting will be held under the Chatham House Rule.

Nuff said?