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What don’t journalists need to know?
Do journalists need to know programming code? In all the blogospheric excitement, it’s easy to imagine that young journalists are empty vessels into which statistics, programme code, audio-visual editing, camera-work, law, and – most important – fake sincerity can be poured before being squeezed into the 24/7 roster moulds that managing editors have waiting for…
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Rupert Murdoch’s obituary
When (or perhaps if) Rupert Murdoch goes to the great MySpace in the sky, the obituary writers will be able to save themselves some time if they dig out Kingsley Martin’s assessment of British newspaper tycoon Lord Northcliffe. Northcliffe: was his own most appreciative reader; he instinctively appealed in the most profitable way to the…
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Dept. of Life imitating Art
Guardianista Tim Dowling has a novel out about a nearly-40 journo (life issues etc. etc.) who discovers an online community dedicated to ridiculing him. It’s being serialized here. Well, guess what? Nearly-40 BBC reporter Ben Ando is living Dowling’s novel nightmare. His voiceover on five‘s version of the FBI Files has attracted a mocking student…
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Let’s give up on British English online
The first four years of my working life were spent with a US TV network. My language began unraveling (US), or unravelling (UK). My estuary drawl was peppered with the argot so memorably deployed by Alicia Silverstone in Clueless.* British friends laughed – at me, rather than with me. Then a spell at ITN made…