If you wondered about the US government and the news media, and the possibility - the hint, flicker, barest glimmer - of some kind of bailout, then listen to the last few humourless minutes of Barack Obama’s speech to the White House press corps (it’s from 2’50” in on the clip below). Is he merely playing to the gallery? Or is he providing the intellectual justification for future action? Or am I simply indulging my journalistic passion for over-interpretation?

As a class escapee, I’ve always been interested in social mobility. What drives it? Well, here’s an interesting analysis from the January 2009 edition of the American Journal of Sociology: Microclass Mobility: Social Reproduction in Four Countries (subscription). It should interest journalists and their social-mobility-minded offspring.

Some great pictures of City’s new J-School. (Well, I like them…)