Two more councils dump propaganda sheets

Bernie Russell Media
Council propaganda sheets: all over now?
Two more councils have shut down their ‘newspapers’ in what we must hope is the beginning of a national trend.
These so-called newspapers are little more than glorified pr sheets. While they clam to give local people essential information, most of them have more spin than Shane Warne. And, even worse, they suck in advertising from hard-pressed local media.
Let’s hope other councils follow suit.
http://www.editorsweblog.org/newspaper/2009/08/uk_doncaster_and_cornwall_say_goodbye_to.php

Two more councils have shut down their ‘newspapers’ in what we must hope is the beginning of a national trend.

These so-called newspapers are little more than glorified pr sheets. While they claim to give local people essential information, most of them have more spin than Shane Warne. And, even worse, they suck in advertising from hard-pressed local media.

Let’s hope other councils follow suit.

The snake that ate the cat

Bernie Russell Media
The snake that ate the cat
I’m widening the remit of this blog to include examples of high-quality journalism that students might not come across in the course of their studies (i.e., things that aren’t in the Guardian…)
OK, OK…I’m really doing this because of a brilliant Rod Liddle piece in this week’s Spectator which really deserves noising abroad.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/features/5258993/lets-hear-it-for-the-python-that-had-the-civic-good-sense-to-eat-wilbur-the-cat.thtml
It’s about a snake that ate a cat.
There is a wider point, though. Brief summary:
Cat from house A wanders into garden of house B.
Snake from house B eats cat from House A.
Owners of late cat demand new law restricting pet snakes, backed (well, it wouldn’t be a show without Punch) by the RSPCA.
Jaw jaw is better than law law
And there’s the point. There’s a mindset in the UK that assumes the government can fix everything (despite all evidence to the contrary). So every time something goes wrong, the chorus goes up: there ought to be a law agin it.
No there oughtn’t. As the late, great and underrated Calvin Coolidge put it:
‘The people cannot look to legislation generally for success…’
It’s not as pithy as some his utterances. But it is true.

I’m widening the remit of this blog to include examples of high-quality journalism that students might not come across in the course of their studies (i.e., things that aren’t in the Guardian…)

OK, OK…I’m really doing this because of a brilliant Rod Liddle piece in this week’s Spectator which deserves noising abroad.

It’s about a snake that ate a cat.

There is a wider point, though. Brief summary:

  • Cat from house A wanders into garden of house B.
  • Snake from house B eats cat from House A.
  • Owners of late cat demand new law restricting pet snakes, backed (well, it wouldn’t be a show without Punch) by the RSPCA.

Jaw jaw is better than law law
And there’s the point. There’s a mindset in the UK that assumes the government can fix everything (despite all evidence to the contrary). So every time something goes wrong, the chorus goes up: there ought to be a law agin it.

No, there oughtn’t. As the late, great and underrated Calvin Coolidge put it:

‘The people cannot look to legislation generally for success…”

It’s not as pithy as some of his utterances. But it is true.

Cuba: the bottom line

Bernie Russell Media, Politics
Cuba: the bottom line
In yet another triumph of socialist planning, Cuba is about to run out of toilet paper.
Climex, the state-run organization that makes all the toilet paper for the Workers’ Paradise, says it won’t be able to make any more until at least December.
Bum deal
A Climex spokesperson said: “The corporation has taken all the steps so that at the end of the year there will be an important importation of toilet paper,”.
Good news
Look on the bright side, though: at least now, Cubans have found a use for Granma, the party newspaper.

In yet another triumph of socialist planning, Cuba has announced that it’s about to run out of toilet paper.

Climex, the state-run organization that makes all the toilet paper for the Workers’ Paradise, says it won’t be able to make any more until at least December.

Bum deal
A Climex spokesperson said: “The corporation has taken all the steps so that at the end of the year there will be an important importation of toilet paper”.

Good news
Look on the bright side, though: at least now, Cubans have found a use for Granma, the party newspaper.

Not so sweet

Bernie Russell Media
Not so sweet
Baron Sugar of Clapton is suing journalist Daily Mail journalist Quentin Letts because he said Sugar is a ‘telly peer’ with a smallish sort of brain.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/matthew_parris/article6740649.ece
Letts said in an interview on LBC that Sugar has ‘been appointed because he’s been on the telly’ and added that ‘when you hear Sugar talking about government he hasn’t got a clue about the way that things are done’. He also said Sugar didn’t ‘much of a brain inside him’.
Sounds about right to me. Brown must have felt it would do him no harm to have someone on prime-time TV in his pack, and he must also have  been fairly confident that the Beeb would go along with his wheeze.
As for the charge of political ignorance – consider what the Baron said when asked if he would be taking the Labour whip: ‘I don’t know what that means.’
And the brain thing? OK, that may be unfair (though calling yourself ‘Baron Sugar of Clapton’ does seem to give something of a clue about cerebral capacity).
But a law suit? I had no idea the Baron was such a sensitive soul. It’s…er..not how he comes across on telly.
Small earthquake…not many dead
On the face of it, though, is it such a big deal? We know New Labour isn’t fond of Letts because he’s rude about MPs, especially their MPs. And I doubt Brown and co will be displeased that the Baron’s first act of significance is to sue a Mail correspondent. It’s probaby another reason why they picked him up. So isn’t this just another Nulab shot at its critics?
Easy target
It’s more than that. What is serious is that the Baron is suing Letts himself. This is clearly intimidatory: as this letter in the Spectator points out ‘When journalists have been sued by public figures in the past — particularly by Members of Parliament — the convention has been to sue the newspaper or broadcaster that provided them with a platform, not to pursue the journalist personally’.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/the-week/5244778/letters.thtml
Letts is self-employed. Even if he doesn’t fight the case, he’s being asked to pay the Baron’s costs so far. Every freelance  – and there are lots out there at the moment –  is in the same boat. Or the same creek. With no legal paddle.
Unless the Baron withdraws his suit, this could be very dangerous.

Baron Sugar of Clapton is suing Daily Mail journalist Quentin Letts because he said Sugar is a TV peer with a smallish sort of brain. This isn’t just a dummy-spitting spat – it’s an attack on press freedom. Continue reading →

Real time on the web

Bernie Russell Media
Spanish practices
I know this blog is supposed to be for academic/journalistic/online/job/.ac.uk stuff. But this is related. A bit.
It concerns the indecent speed with which the web logs triumph and disaster.
Consider this from Wikipedia:
Xabier “Xabi” Alonso Olano (born 25 November 1981 in Tolosa, Spain) is a Spanish footballer who plays for Spanish club Real Madrid and the Spanish national team.
This was the entry on August 5 at 17:36. He’d only just left Liverpool. I hadn’t even hit the message boards to join in the goodbyes.
They couldn’t have waited? Couldn’t have shown a little restraint? A little sensitivity?
That’s the web for you. Hard as nails.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xabi_Alonso#2004.E2.80.9305:_Champions_League_victory

I know this blog is supposed to be for academic/journalistic/online/job/.ac.uk stuff. But this is related. A bit.

It concerns the indecent speed with which the web logs triumph and disaster.

Consider this from Wikipedia:

Xabier “Xabi” Alonso Olano (born 25 November 1981 in Tolosa, Spain) is a Spanish footballer who plays for Spanish club Real Madrid and the Spanish national team.

This was the entry on August 5 at 17:36. He’d only just left Liverpool. I hadn’t even hit the message boards to join in the goodbyes.

They couldn’t have waited? Couldn’t have shown a little restraint? A little sensitivity?

That’s the web for you. Hard as nails.

Unfair cop

Bernie Russell Media
Unfair cop
The CPS may charge a police officer with manslaughter over the death of Ian Tomlinson during the G20 protests.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article6738549.ece
The Guardian describes this as a victory for citizen journalism.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/aug/04/ian-tomlinson-death-g20
The Guardian is being modest. In fact, it’s a victory for a grand coalition of traditional robust and bloody-minded journalism, digital technology and the free market. It’s this coalition that has proved too much for the police, and may bring justice to Ian Tomlinson’s family
Let’s deal with the journalism first:
The clip that blew the police story out of the water became significant when it appeared on the Guardian web site.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission wanted to seize the video, but couldn’t. So they asked the Guardian to take it down. The Guardian refused. An ISP would have dumped the clip in a heartbeat. Even a blogger might have quailed.
Once they’d seen the film, the police came out with the risible notion that the assailant was a member of the public dressed up as a policeman. But the officer gave himself up after seeing the film on national TV.
Now the citizen bit:
The citizens involved were witnesses, not journalists. In fact, as the Guardian report makes clear, the man who shot the film they used wasn’t even a demonstrator – he was a hedge fund manager. He was a witness. He filmed an assault. And then he passed the film on to the journalists, who knew exactly what to do with it.
And the free market bit:
It’s worth remarking that all this hung on the fact that Joe and Josephine Public can now get their hands on devices that can almost match state technology, at least at street level. And that this is because of the free market. It wouldn’t happen in the kind of society dreamt of by the G20 demonstrators. We’d all be too busy knitting our own muesli.
Watching the detectives
The average UK state official has powers that would bring a KGB general to his knees weeping tears of envy. We’re the most spied-on people in the history of spying. We’re living in the Golden Age of sneaks and spies, and it’s time we spied back.
Ian Tomlinson. RIP.

The CPS may charge a police officer with manslaughter over the death of Ian Tomlinson during the G20 protests.

The Guardian describes this as a victory for citizen journalism.

The Guardian is being modest. In fact, it’s a victory for a grand coalition of traditional robust and bloody-minded journalism, digital technology and the free market. It’s this coalition that has proved too much for the police, and may bring justice to Ian Tomlinson’s family. Continue reading →

Map the mind

Bernie Russell Teaching
Map the mind
This post from Joss Winn  on using mind maps got me thinking about whether we should start using them in the LSJ?
What is…
A mind map is a diagram where ideas, tasks, resources, etc. are arranged round and connected to a central key word. Because the map is non-linear, it’s more flexible, and easier to restructure and scale than any kind of hierarchical scheme. This makes them ideal for note-taking, project-planing, brainstorming, etc.
More better info…
http://www.imindmap.com/articles/improveMemory.aspx
Do they work?
I think so. They mimic the brain much more closely than standard note-taking methods, and there is the obvious point that they start in the middle, rather than in the top left. There’s research showing that they shouldn’t be imposed on people who have note-taking techniques they find effective, but we wouldn’t do that anyway.
Online
Mind maps work really well online. Try Mindmeister, which allows subscribers to share and work on mind maps together. It’s free, but even the paid versions don’t cost much. There’s an academic version for $15 per annum.
http://www.mindmeister.com/
On the desktop
I use FreeMind. It’s simple, it’s free, and it integrates with Mindmeister. You can also share FreeMind maps as PDFs, web pages, graphics, etc.
http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
On the page
Of course, you can also do mind maps with pencil and paper, or with marker pens and flipcharts. It’s an effective note-taking technique and a useful tool for planning meetings.
Next?
I’d suggest we think about incorporating mind-mapping into our level one journalism skills unit?
http://chemistryfm.dev.lincoln.ac.uk/2009/08/03/course-mindmap/comment-page-1/#comment-230

This post from Joss Winn  on using mind maps got me thinking about whether we should start using them in the LSJ? Continue reading →