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 […]
Though it’s sad to see a likely closure verdict handed down to the excellent BBC 6 Music station, I was at least relieved that BBC 4 survived Auntie’s cull. Because I’m a documentary kind of guy. Sad, highbrow and worthy, that’s me. So why, oh why, oh why, BBC, do you insist on dumbing down your […]
There’s been a recent flurry of condemnation in the J-blogs over the question of whether employers should charge interns for work experience (“No!” is the answer). Emily Fraser Voigt [Update: original blog post deleted] asks “isn’t it hard enough already for new graduates?” and adds: It seems to me like a callous way to exploit young […]
It’s time to turn my Typekit code off. Typekit offers an online library of fonts you can use in your blog or web site without relying on it being installed on your visitor’s computer. Though it’s been exciting to see Freelance Unbound with a headline font that isn’t either Georgia or Verdana (the web’s two […]
We’re coming up to about halfway on several student journalism units I’m teaching – and already the prospect of student assessments is looming threateningly over the class. So – a few words of advice to J-students faced with writing assessment deadlines. Relax One strange phenomenon I’ve noticed about student writing is that it’s much better […]
Woman in Black author Susan Hill spectacularly misses the point about e-books in this piece from the Spectator. On the way, she does make some insightful observations about the way that bookshops are facing up to the threat posed by internet sales and digital distribution. In fact, small, independent bookshops may be better placed to […]
Which, if you’re reading this on Freelance Unbound and not an RSS feed, you’ll see working in the headline above. That whole new typographic look is thanks to Typekit – a service that allows web users to access a font library online and so expand the typography available to web designers. Normally, the drawback with […]
Why on earth do you want to spend three years and £20,000 learning the ropes of what appears to be a dying industry? Well – dying in the sense of “very, very difficult to make a living in”. Yes, it’s student intake assessment today, and I get to play my part in deciding the fate of […]