a blog about news

Read­ing the New Yorker the other day, I came across the fol­low­ing line (sub­scrip­tion required) from chef Heston Blu­menthal (renowned for using the lab tech­niques of food sci­ence for lux­ury cater­ing rather than mass pro­duc­tion). Blu­menthal was writ­ing about grow­ing up in the gast­ro­nomic wil­der­ness of 1970s Britain:

…a time when olive oil was avail­able in Bri­tain only at the chemist’s — for put­ting in your ears rather than in a pan.

The phrase soun­ded rather famil­iar… more…

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Given Nick Dav­ies’ story alleging mass mobile phone-hacking by journ­al­ists, it might per­haps be instruct­ive to look back at the journ­al­istic mor­als of another age.

Here, by way of example, is ‘Journ­al­ism and Mor­al­ity’ by Silas Bent, pub­lished in 1926 in The Atlantic (and quoted in Can You Trust The Media?). Note espe­cially — towards the end — the atti­tude of man­age­ment… more…

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Although I’ll be haunt­ing Col­lege Build­ing for the next week or so, today is my leav­ing drinks (or ‘glad you’re gone’ party as we used to call them).

I’ll be keep­ing up a link with the place as a prof, and I’ll be try­ing to bash out a PhD. And I’ll also be giv­ing a mod­est sum for the highest scor­ing MA pro­ject, which will be a prize in memory of Richard Wild. The first £250 will be handed out this autumn, so any City stu­dents read­ing: heads down for the fin­ish­ing line!

Since I came to City in 2005, we’ve launched an MA in Journ­al­ism with new path­ways in sci­ence and invest­ig­a­tion, a Mas­ters in Polit­ical Cam­paign­ing and Report­ing, an MA in Cre­at­ive Writ­ing Non-Fiction, and a BA in Journ­al­ism. We’ve gained some fant­astic new staff to go along­side the exist­ing ter­rific team, includ­ing the Guard­ian’s vet­eran invest­ig­ator David Leigh, Chan­nel 4 legend David Lloyd, ITN’s Penny Mar­shall and vis­it­ing fel­lows like Heather Brooke and tech guru Robin Ham­man.

We have a dis­tin­guished scholar as head of research, Pro­fessor Howard Tum­ber, and we’ve just appoin­ted Steve Schif­feres as Britain’s first pro­fessor of fin­an­cial report­ing, a chair in hon­our of Mar­jorie Dean (expect more too on fin­an­cial journ­al­ism soon).

We brought the Centre for Invest­ig­at­ive Journ­al­ism to City, and its suc­cess­ful sum­mer schools, and hope­fully there’ll be new ini­ti­at­ives to announce in that area soon.

We’ve estab­lished a digital core to our cur­riculum – there should be a part­ner­ship with Nokia com­ing up in the autumn.

And this year we finally moved into multi-million pound facil­it­ies (on Flickr) worthy of the tal­ents of the people who teach and study here. And we have a Gradu­ate School of Journ­al­ism to go along­side the finest any­where has to offer.

Best of all, I’ve wit­nessed the annual pro­gres­sion of an extraordin­ary group of people who’ve joined us from Afgh­anistan to Zim­b­abwe, and from Lan­cashire to Lagos – our stu­dents. Their qual­it­ies are what make so many people want to give up time to teach here. Their enthu­si­asms and pas­sions are among the rewards.

It’s not all been plain sail­ing, as any­one who’s brushed up against me will doubt­less agree. But I hope it’s been worth it. City is now, more than ever, a global school for journ­al­ism, bring­ing in people from around the world to share exper­i­ences and gain new insights. Its future is already being mapped out in areas like polit­ical and human­it­arian cam­paign­ing, and in deep­en­ing spe­cial­ist know­ledge amongst those com­pet­ing to enter what is still an extraordin­ar­ily priv­ileged world.

And the priv­ilege of journ­al­ism? It’s the priv­ilege of speech. Maybe it’s nar­ciss­istic, maybe it’s worth dying for.

But des­pite our dis­agree­ments (and let’s be hon­est, aca­dem­ics have to be able to start argu­ments with them­selves) it’s what unites me with col­leagues in edu­ca­tion, in the news busi­ness, and with new friends and acquaint­ances in the ever-widening world beyond.

So, with whatever voice you choose, keep speak­ing up.

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My hunch? Not quite there yet…

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