Given the turmoil in professional media at the moment, there’s been a fair amount of talk about entrepreneurial journalism recently (ie if no one else is going to pay you for being a journalist, maybe you’ll have to figure out a way of making it work as a business yourself). As it happens, I’ve been […]
It turns out that my friend and regular Freelance Unbound commenter Mel is at more-or-less the cutting edge of publishing. Apart from the time she spends as a welcome gadfly here, it turns out she is a secret novelist. In fact, I’ve just received her latest (well, first) outing through the post after ordering it […]
It seems Rupert Murdoch is actually going to start locking away his online newspaper content behind paywalls. From June he’s going to charge for access to the loss-making Times and Sunday Times. Will the gamble work? More informed commentators than I have argued strongly that it won’t (though that hasn’t stopped me doing the same). At […]
Caught yesterday in the Metro – a brief news report on a social networking survey by InSites (ugh) Consulting. As reported in Metro: 77% of UK internet users use social networking sites 42% of UK internet users use Twitter 50% of UK internet users use Facebook Let’s look at those numbers, shall we? First – […]
I’ve been rewriting some undergraduate course descriptions for online journalism and I’ve realised I have one big problem with them. I can’t think how to update the recommended student book lists. One problem is that whatever I choose has to have longevity. Every time a course is rewritten, it has to be validated by an […]
Here’s a nice exchange on this morning’s Today programme on Radio 4 between Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) chief executive Guy Parker and Climate Secretary Ed Miliband. The ASA has ruled that Government advertisements on climate change were exaggerated – specifically that they made definitive predictions about future weather effects that could not yet be proved. […]
Warning: intense WordPress stats geekery ahead We’re coming up to the annual WordPress geekery blowout that is my full year web stats report. Freelance Unbound’s half-yearly web stats geekery report came when the site was hosted on WordPress.com. This had its ups and downs. The upside was that it was simple to understand – WordPress […]
Here’s a nice dissection on the Forbes web site of a Toyota Prius accelerator fault hoax that has hit US news media. Apparently, James Sikes was driving a Toyota Prius in California when the accelerator jammed – the same fault that is said to have caused the death of a family in a Lexus and […]
The BBC has caught up on the whole unpaid internship debate. The Your Money segment on BBC News 24 on Saturday March 13 featured a new web site set up by disgruntled former intern Alex Try. Interns Anonymous is quite well done, actually – with video documentary material, surveys and resources for interns. It’s also a […]
I suspect that most journalists and journalism students assume that the toughest feature assignments are for the nationals – hard-hitting investigative exposes of political corruption, say – or for dirt-digging celebrity magazines. All that hanging around in the pouring rain at 3am to catch Ashley Cole in a compromising SMS incident, maybe, or pretending to […]