adrian monck

Month: December 2007

  • Off topic: A Ghost Story

    This being the season for ghost stories, I thought I would pass on probably the shortest ghost story I know (and I’ve cut it short). It is from the pen of the masterly M.R. James. A classic tale, it even gets its own scholarly article – “The Rules of Folklore” in the Ghost Stories of…

  • Rumblings at Al Jazeera English

    From the Friends of Al Jazeera blog: Well it looks like my husband and I (and our children) will be leaving Doha sooner than planned. Al Jazeera International (or Al Jazeera English as we were forced to call it after objections from the Arabic news channel) was launched 13 months ago. Since then two things…

  • What The Papers Say

    Apologies. This is one of those vanity posts where I tell you what a jolly time I had. But hell, it is Christmas. At the What The Papers Say awards lunch today, I found myself sandwiched between two journos called Peter Allen. What are the chances of that? Allen one is the excellent former ITN…

  • TV news in 2008…

    In 2007, Mark Thompson Peter Horrocks apparently walked into a meeting of top BBC talent and declared – not untruthfully – “There is no market for newsreaders.” Unfortunately “even a dead cat bounces” (as finance types say) and the market promptly leapt back into action and Natasha Kaplinsky and Dermot Murnaghan both left the BBC…