One or two of you may have had an email with a link to this site. The link then redirects to a porn site. This has now been fixed – a little injection hacking I think. But I’m sorry if the anyone was upset by the content.
A big thanks to Klaus Wirz for giving me the heads-up.
Here is what made it past the ‘mark all as read’ of the weekend:
It might be an iceberg but it's a minor in a court case so we ignore it.(picture from Ludovic Hirlimann on Flickr )
I’ve spent the day in the pleasent company of Journalists at the Middlesborough Gazette (some where from Newscastle) and I’m wondering what happened whilst I was training.
Did Hold the Front Page turn in the wayback machine.
Checking my email some of my work colleagues had been kicking around the HTFP story about an increase in applications to journalism degrees, despite the problems in the industry.
The story was one of my interesting links yesterday and I commented
I’m surprised by this or maybe students have got their head around what the industry can’t (and one or two of the comments on this piece make reinforce that idea) that newspapers/TV/Radio and journalism are not the same thing
The idea being that journalism was an intresting and valid thing to study. And, given the right course, would give you skills to do journalism rather than work for a newspaper or TV station.
So imagine my surprise when I read the following quote on another HTFP story today
Eastern Daily Press editor Paul Durrant told students that he “wasn’t bothered” about them having a degree.
Speaking at the second annual student council meeting, he added: “I’m bothered about NCTJ qualifications – I’m bothered about vocational training. I’m looking for maturity, passion and confidence.
“In terms of currency in the industry, I need to know someone’s got 100wpm shorthand, that they know what a Section 39 is.”
This was said at a meeting organised by the NCTJ where students could ‘meet the council’
I am genuinely amazed at the singular blindness a statement like this suggests to the broader problems in the industry.
Durrant may be bothered by these things. That’s his right as an editor. You could also argue they are important – I’m genuinely agnostic about this kind of thing now. But what else can he offer to anyone who takes him at his word?
As a senior journalist in the newspaper industry what security can he offer in return to a future journalist who is ‘bothered’ about staying in the industry?
Sometimes I wonder if the NCTJ has been running a secret training course – Pre-Entry newspaper editor, becoming captain of the titanic in 20 weeks.
Here is what I’ve been reading today
I’m holed up in the Middlesbrough Central Travelodge and getting some kind of insight in to what living in halls must be like. To say the room is basic is,well, to give it more credit then it deserves. But hey, at least I have great stuff like this to look at.
Oooh look a mic on a stills cam
From a practical stand point it would be a bit like constantly shooting as if you are behind Tina Turners head. But I bet you never thought you’d see the day that a still’s camera had a mic on it.
The picture is from a very informative article over at B&H on getting the best sound from your Canon 5D
Hat tip to the Mediastorm blog for the link
I do like a nice mashup and they are not just the preserve of techies as an ever increasing range of tools means the humble journo can mash with the best of them.
In that spirit I wanted to share a great post by Tony Hurst where he explains how you can ‘Data scrape’ Wikipedia with Google Spreadsheets to get a map like the one above.
[W]e have scraped some data from a wikipedia page into a Google spreadsheet using the =importHTML formula, published a handful of rows from the table as CSV, consumed the CSV in a Yahoo pipe and created a geocoded KML feed from it, and then displayed it in a YahooGoogle map.
As Tony says ‘Kewel :-)’
It may sound arcane but don’t be put off by the seemingly techy. Tony provides a reallu usable tutorial and the key thing is to experiment with data that’s relevent to you.
Go on, release the inner geek and have a play
Today I have mostly been reading
Here is what I cast my eye over at the weekend: