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What a Journalist Isn't

I'm sick and tired of the abuse journalists are getting at the moment. They don't deserve it, at least real journalists don't - ...

14 November 2011

Reasons To Be Cheerful #1

I really must take this opportunity to place on record how proud I am of my postgraduate trainees at Leeds Trinity University College this year. They've been on placement since October 10th.

Most of them are doing two or three contrasting placements with different newsrooms.     Now the assessments from host editors are starting to filter back in I'm blown away to discover that no fewer than 11 out of 13 trainees for whom I have an assessment back have been graded 'A' by their supervisors. That's 85% of the class.

That has to be just about the best result ever. Grade A indicates the editor's opinion to be "I would give this trainee a job if one were available".

10 November 2011

Rehashing Hacking; Enough

OK, let's get the obvious out of the way first.

Phone hacking is wrong. It's in the same league as spying on neighbours through uncurtained windows. Anyone who could even consider deleting the voicemails of a murdered schoolgirl is a bad person.

We know now that regrettable things happened in the noughties involving a number of hard-bitten, amoral reporters and a loophole in mobile phone security; a trick which, until it was fixed, was ludicrously easy to exploit. We know because The Guardian exposed it, and that's entirely legitimate.

The story behind the story, of course, is that The Guardian hates Murdoch. It's tribal.

06 November 2011

Journalism Training: New Model Needed

We've all heard the story of the traveller, lost in a strange land, who stops a peasant to ask for directions to the nearest town anyone's heard of.

"Ah, if you want to get to there, I wouldn't start from here" comes the idiot-savant's reply

The exact locations, and the accents used, depend on the national stereotypes shared by the teller and the audience, but the sentiment, I believe, applies right now to journalism training in the UK.

02 November 2011

Radio Reinvented

I've not written about Commercial Radio for a while, despite having spent more than two decades in the industry trying to knock spots off the BBC.

So whilst others continue the debate on local radio cutbacks and DQF, I'd like to turn my attention across the divide - and express cautious optimism about developments in the independent sector.

In particular, a quiet revolution on DAB.