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Singing the news…
One early journalistic platform that has thankfully gone uncopied for centuries is the news ballad. Ending stories with a hey-nonny-nonny instead of a sign-off is not about to win over key demographics, nor do I think a Reuters-by-rhyme service is in the offing, but in the sixteenth century the popular medium for news was song.…
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Northern Ireland: now just a police state
Belfast’s own Peter Barron blogs on the end of British army operations in Northern Ireland after 38 years. Having taken a call from the IRA announcing they were going to blow up Whitehall Place, walked through streets paved with broken glass after having had my windows blown out in the Bishopsgate bomb, and having spent…