Entries from December 2009

Friday, December 11th, 2009

Evidence that Twitter is really for journalists

The sad news that venerable journalism industry magazine Editor & Publisher is to close apparently reached fourth place in Twitter’s trending topics list yesterday. Which seems to confirm my theory that it’s journalists who are all over Twitter like flies on a dead dog. According to the E&P web site: The name “Editor & Publisher” […]

Friday, December 11th, 2009

Signs of the times #1: Lobster goes online only

Just discovered via Taking Out The Trash – venerable “journal of parapolitics” Lobster has moved to online only distribution. I subscribed to Lobster for several years back in the 1990s. I often found it hard going (there’s only so much I can ever want to know about the Bilderberg Group). But the whole microwaves and […]

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

Website building: Drupal vs WordPress

Posting has been light on Freelance Unbound this week, mainly because I’ve been drowning in PHP in an attempt to code a web site. So far, the process is: Tweak the code Break the site Undo Tweak again Refresh Repeat until something works I’m enjoying it, in a strange kind of way. Though I’m finding […]

Monday, December 7th, 2009

J-students: create your own e-magazine calling card

Electronic newspapers and magazines are being touted by the media industry as a way of clinging on to readers and revenue. Adobe spent a couple of days at last month’s MediaPro 09 publishing expo in London heavily pushing its Air publishing tool, which allows clients to publish a digital facsimile of their newspaper or magazine (complete […]

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009

Journalism job ads: not for actual jobs any more #2

After last week’s unmissable, $30 a month opportunity to write for a potential audience of 24 million, how about this ad for a “Home based internet researcher”? For some reason, though the deadline hadn’t passed when I first grabbed the ad, the ad was dropped from Journalism.co.uk before the stated closing date. Maybe 63336 Limited has […]

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009

Online journalism headline typo of the week

Spotted on Yahoo News: Beyoné leads the way at the Grammys Ouch…

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009

How Bristol local radio turned into Spotify

Tuesday’s trip to Bristol to meet fellow blogger and digital evangelist Bristol Editor, and hang out with my old animation buddies from UWE, was enlivened by a drama playing out on local radio station Original 106.5FM. The station was apparently hijacked by “shock newspaper columnist” Mike Ford – a supposedly controversial contributer to the Bristol Evening […]

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

"Dinosaur rages against approaching asteroid"

I loved this comment on Tim Luckhurst’s recent journalism-is-so-up-itself-it-believes-it’s-the-cornerstone-of-democracy opinion piece on the Guardian web site. “Dinosaur rages against approaching asteroid. Blog at 11.” There’s almost nothing else to say. But what the hell. One problem with the Luckhurst analysis is that he recognises the economic drivers that created the modern newspaper, but then tries […]

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

C4's Keme Nzerem: is it a good time to become a journalist?

[vimeo width=”500″ height=”280″]http://vimeo.com/7937150[/vimeo] Channel 4 news reporter and More 4 news presenter Keme Nzerem speaks to UCA Farnham journalism students on why now is a good time to enter journalism. Really. The video was shot by first year UCA TV journalism students and edited (quickly but with consummate professionalism) by TV lecturer Sean Walsh. Much […]