I didn’t manage to get this cutting into the blog until today, but this item from the June 17 edition of London financial free paper City A.M. is a stark warning about the perils of doing without a sub-editor. I like City A.M. – for a freebie it’s a well-put-together paper for the financial/business world […]
From the Twitter feed: do journ educators misunderstand level of students’ web skills?advanced online journalism module set up at Sunderland-only 4 signed up From my observations – yes, I think we do. As I’ve noted before, journalism (and other) students live their lives on Facebook, but when it comes to actually using the web more, […]
The first in a no doubt ongoing series, (which also happens to combine my hobby and my day job). A bout of insomnia had me watching Channel 4 at an ungodly hour this morning. I managed to catch the second half of Psyche and Eros – an animated retelling of the ancient Greek myth (god […]
Because marking student worked is tiring, my goodness yes. Yesterday’s all-day marking bonanza was certainly interesting (it was my first time, but they were gentle with me). There were some shockers. Some of the spelling and grammar was pretty weak, and there was at least one example of a student writing submitted assessment work using SMS-speak […]
Nice headline from my local Surrey & Hants News this week – which is apparently “Surrey’s oldest newspaper”, and which seems to be run by a team of five that includes no editorial staff. So – does he think it’s facing the wrong way? Maybe he doesn’t like the view towards West Sussex…
There’s more to sub-editing than shuffling commas around and checking spelling (vital, obviously, though these things are). And it’s something that it seems the subs at the otherwise admirable Financial Times seem to have forgotten yesterday. Bear with me – digression first. I find these days there’s a tendency for people to use proverbs, idioms […]
Apparently desk editors at the Independent are to take on subbing duties at the paper, according to a Guardian story from April 1. That’s the sort of thing that should be an April Fool’s Day joke – but I found out it wasn’t when I was unlucky enough to buy a copy of the Indie on Easter Saturday […]
Yes – a spectacular air crash in a north London suburb (Mill Hill, where I grew up) killed 28 people and demolished a local house. It should be all over the internet, right? It’s not. I wondered why. The story: a friend of mine asked me to research an air crash in London in the […]
Despite the fact the the internet is essentially destroying [if creatively] my profession, I love it. Mainly because in the space of a few days it can create links between me and a journalist in Leeds via a publication I’d never heard of and a blog that he’d never heard of. So thanks to Simon […]
I posted here about the government report that finds young people leave school or college without being able to write in real English rather than SMS speak. As an old sub, of course, I find poor spelling and grammar are like nails down a blackboard to my delicate sensibilities. But maybe – just maybe – I’m wrong. […]