Freelance Unbound

…Farnham in the snow last night. Which would be nice if I wasn’t supposed to be going somewhere by train today.
I was a bit sniffy about the tannoy announcement by South West Trains yesterday afternoon that it would be running a reduced service because of the “severe weather warning”. At least wait for the severe weather to actually happen, I thought.
Be careful what you wish for…

Like many WordPress users, I’ve recently had a couple of scheduled posts fail to go live. It seems this is a WordPress 2.9 problem.
If anyone else has had the same issue, here’s what I did to solve it.

1. Upgrade to WP 2.9.1. It seems WordPress has been stung into action by the bad feedback it has received.
2. Fiddle with my PHP in cPanel on my hosting server. There’s a guide here about the code change you need to make. The file you are looking for can be found at wp-includes/cron.php

Given that this post has been successfully scheduled, one or other of these seems to have worked. (It was probably the upgrade. But I thought it was cool to edit the code as well. Luckily I didn’t break anything.)
And, yes, I had backed up my database – though see Soilman’s comments about the importance of not relying on plugins to do your work for you…

Yesterday’s “news” carried two items that should have been shocking in their inability to separate hysteria and PR puffery from proper reporting. If that wasn’t really what the modern media is all about.
The stories are from supposedly opposite corners of the media ring – one super serious, the other light-hearted. Each is crap in its own ghastly way.
1. Our children cannot talk – shock, horror!
A leading item on the Radio 4 Today programme (starts at 07:43) and flagged up on the BBC website was the story that many children find it hard to learn to talk.
It’s all very upsetting – and parents are understandably “anxious”. Clearly the Government should Do Something. Which is why several reports wheeled out Jean Gross, England’s first Communication Champion for Children, to declare that “skilled professionals” should be employed to help solve this enormous problem.
Here’s my enormous problem with the coverage.

• It’s based on a subjective opinion poll by YouGov, rather than, say, scientific research. Obviously parents are best-placed to know when and how often their children speak – but they’re not necessarily best-placed to know what’s “normal” in child development.
• It has no historical context. The implication is that children have more problems talking and understanding speech today than they did before – but there’s absolutely no evidence this is the case.
• It assumes there is a problem in the first place. You know, children are different. Some develop fast, some slower. There’s no investigation here into whether slow development of speech is inherently problematic. It could well be that in the normal distribution of speech development “one in six” children is slower. Given that social class seems to have nothing to do with it, it’s as plausible a hypothesis as any.
• It mistakes parental anxiety for science. Just because parents are worried about something doesn’t make it unsafe. The whole “MMR jab makes children autistic” nonsense was deeply unscientific and based on fear, not evidence, for example. Whipping this up as another cause for parental neurosis may not be the best way to nurture well-balanced children.
• It used no objective comment. Jean Gross may have been an educational psychologist, but her main role now and for some time has been in advocacy. That means it’s her job to find problems to solve – not to wonder if there really is a problem in the first place. A neutral point of view would have been useful here.

I’m not saying there is no problem, by the way. I’m just saying the media coverage needed to be far less superficial and unquestioning.
2. Choc horror at £100,000 box of treats
Here’s a fluffy human interest story from yesterday morning’s Metro.
Apparently Marjorie McLeod ordered what she thought was a £21.50 box of chocolates, only to find out that were worth a cool £5,000 each! But the generous folk at Cocoa Mountain in Durness, Scotland (buy their chocolates online here!), won’t make her stump up the cash – they value their customers too much!
Now, I like a bit of morning paper silliness as much as the next person (I remember particularly a nice pre-internet item about a man who could only get a good night’s sleep on a BA business class airline seat – so the airline gave him one).
But this is puffery beyond the call of journalism. I mean, has no one on Metro actually bought anything online? You go to the checkout and fill out your credit card details and look at how much your basket is worth. I think I’d notice if it had a six-figure total.
The “story” is fleshed out a bit on the Press and Journal site, which reveals that the price was a joke and Mrs McLeod “ordered them in a hurry and didn’t realise the price”.
It’s the first thing that I wondered, but the question wasn’t even asked in the Metro story. Sure – the whole thing sounds like a set-up. But at least pretend you’re a cynical hack and ask a few questions about what happened.
Better still – find a quirky human interest story that is (a) quirky, (b) interesting and (c) talks to the human it happened to.
More from the sordid and hopeless world of media when I can bear it.

Oops – no we’re not.
The 273 new vacancies advertised on Journalism.co.uk turn out to be mostly repeats of the same job.
Please – don’t do this to us just as we’ve got used to the idea there’s no future in media: we can’t take the disappointment.

The Online Journalism Blog seems to have gone into meltdown. Publisher Paul Bradshaw says it’s up, but that all content seems to have vanished. “Could be bad.”
It’s a timely reminder that online is not permanent. In fact, online content is particularly vulnerable to simply vanishing into the ether if you fail to pay your ISP, or there’s some technical snafu.
Luckily there are plenty of handy tools to use to back up your WordPress blog. I use the WordPress Database Backup plug-in, which emails a backup file to me every day. There’s also extensive documentation on the WordPress site about backups which is well worth reading…
[UPDATE: Paul Bradshaw notes that he had to turn off the OJB’s auto backup plugin – and others – after a software problem. Just goes to show that WordPress’s seemingly seamless implementation can hide problems.]

As you sit relaxing this Christmas – roasting chestnuts on an open fire, rocking around the Christmas tree and watching mommy kissing Santa Claus on YouTube – ponder the strange truth that Web 2.0 is not as new as you thought.
For the idea of user-generated content has been with us for several decades. According to the excellent Paleo-Future blog, “what we now call user-generated content was predicted in the 1981 book Tomorrow’s Home by Neil Ardley”.

The computer will be able to take the images you record and assemble and treat them in all kinds of ways to produce a whole range of special effects of your very own. And you will also be able to use the computer to produce unusual moving designs and patterns, rather like making video cartoons or electronic paintings that move. Then you can put your video shows together with your own electronic music, and create the most stunning experiences — perhaps even a totally new art form of the future!

There still won’t be any money in it though…

Posting will be light, as they say, on Freelance Unbound over the next week or so, as my media attention is distracted by the triple-pronged attack of tea, chocolate and wall-to-wall festive TV.
There will be some activity, but it’ll probably be mostly on the Stop.Frame animation blog, as I finally get to write up my time on the Bristol Animation Course, and upload a ton of shaky stop-motion clips.
But I know my legions of readers will be back in the new year for a full live report from the News:Rewired conference (assuming I can get the wi-fi sorted out), and tons more media and other geekery. See you then…

Here’s a fine example of a cool-sounding TV presenter “job” that many young journalists would scramble for.
The catch? It’s that attractive “Voluntary” salary. Which is code for “no money” – though they do offer food and travel expenses.
As well as devoting one day a fortnight to filming and presenting the show, any young presenters willing to work for food need to research panellists and topics in advance (read: do extra work. For nothing.)
And also be clued up on current affairs and have skills in live presentation to an audience.
Actually, this sounds like a nice, interesting work experience opportunity that could be quite valuable.
But despite what the ad says,  it’s not actually a job. Just to make that clear…

Here’s a fine example of journalistic excellence from that paragon of local journalism the Bloom Beacon. Makes you proud…

It’s student hand-in today for one of the online journalism modules I teach. And students who have not made an appearance for weeks – sometimes months – are suddenly sloshing content into their site as if there were no tomorrow. Which, technically, there isn’t I guess.
I don’t know why I thought it would be different – after all, I was a student once, and did pretty much the same thing.
But it’s a shame, for several reasons.

1. It’s rushed, so it’s not the greatest quality. There hasn’t been enough time for research, fact-checking, spell-checking (I won’t dignify it with the name “sub-editing”) and thought generally. The content usually hasn’t been planned either, so it lacks much sign of editorial coherence.
2. It doesn’t allow time for growth. One of the ways you improve as a writer is to write consistently, over time. And, consistently over time, you begin to find what works – and what doesn’t. Sling it all together at the last minute and you lose that chance for organic growth. Plus it’ll be another few months before the next hand-in, so you’ll probably forget whatever it was you did learn this time.
3. It doesn’t allow for any feedback. I have feedback notes for some students that I haven’t been able to give them because they’ve just disappeared for weeks on end, with no indication whether they will even hand in for assessment. Yes, I could have emailed them with some suggestions. But I’d prefer to give it in person – if only to make sure they actually see it.

I’m sure students will see this and think “what does he know?”. After all, I don’t have to face law exams, shorthand classes and after-hours work in the local supermarket to supplement my student loan. Let alone “nightlife” (I’m old).
And, after all, deadlines are at the core of journalism. We all write to the clock when it comes to publication.
But the alarm generally isn’t set to go off in three months’ time. Mostly your deadlines are rolling and daily or weekly. I do worry that many journalism students will be completely sideswiped by this if and when they end up in a publishing environment.
So, please – students of journalism. Try to write more regularly and start your assessment work earlier. It really does work…