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Originally uploaded by Stuart Pinfold.
Last week, I got the chance to have a sneak preview of New Broadcasting House, which will be the home of the BBC from 2012.
New Broadcasting House is on the site of the old one on Portland Place where the Corporation’s radio arm has been based since 1932. Following the sales of Television Centre and Bush House and the move of some departments up to Salford, almost all of the BBC’s London operations will be based in this building.
One of the interesting things about the new building is the attempt of architects to make it more accessible to the people who pay for it – ie you and me. This is partly due to the BBC Trust’s commitment to increasing openness. But I understand that Westminster City Council also imposed a planning requirement for public access in return for the building increasing its footprint. Read the rest of this entry »
Like this:
Originally uploaded by littlesaint_uk.
Two years ago – almost to the day – I arrived in Melbourne with my boyfriend and a one-year visa. The purpose of my visit was to work for a few months in order to raise money for the rest of our round the world trip.
Unfortunately, I arrived in Melbourne at totally the wrong time. Someone had told us to arrive early in the Southern Hemisphere summer because all the backpacker jobs would be snapped up before February.
We were totally misinformed. For three months my boyfriend and I struggled to find office work. Our arrival had coincided with the pre-Christmas lull, which was much more pronounced in 2008 because of jitters about the economy. We finally got something in February (ironically). My boyfriend found a data entry job, while I got a relatively well paid dish-washing job. Read the rest of this entry »
Uploaded by Nadaone2.
It’s a fortnight since I learned that my future in journalism would not involve a monthly pay cheque and the coziness of a contract.
So far, it’s not been as scary as I thought. In my first week I had two shifts. In the second week that doubled and regrettably I have had to turn down shifts because of clashes.
This is certainly a good start and the fact I will earn at least enough to replace my staff earnings relieves some of my initial anxiety about freelancing. However, the challenge will be to match this next month – October’s spending review has been good for me in the sense that it has provided me with more work (probably only in the short term though).
In the past few weeks I have learned a lot about freelancing and a few things about myself: Read the rest of this entry »
Originally uploaded by Aztec West.
A few weeks ago I wrote a guest post for Wannabe Hacks about my work on New Start magazine and my background in the trade press.
Well, little did I know it at the time, but my stint at New Start (and possibly in the trade sector) was coming to an end. Over the weekend, I learned that the company that publishes New Start was winding up with the October issue the last one. As a result, along with a handful of other staff members, I am out of a job.
The reason for New Start’s demise as a print title and its future as an online service for Manchester-based think tank Cles is set out in this article. Essentially, it is linked to the spending cuts which have had an impact on some of the company’s more lucrative activities. Read the rest of this entry »
Uploaded by Vermin Inc.
Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about the future. Although to be fair, I haven’t done much of the thinking myself – there are many people better placed than me to do that. For me, it’s been more of an exercise of observing and listening.
The two areas that have been the focus of this recent bout of crystal ball gazing are news and regeneration. In December and January I attended the Future of News group, a monthly discussion about where the news industry in this country is heading.
Uploaded by Peter-snottycat.
This week, the BBC started the recruitment process for the departments moving up to Salford.
This is something that many northern media folk are excited about. For so long people working in this industry (including yours truly) have had to move to London to fulfil their ambitions.
The BBC’s Media City development will hopefully encourage other media employers to cluster around the quays area and create something similar to London’s silicon roundabout. But it’s not just about jobs. Read the rest of this entry »
Alex Wood of the Berlin Project
Originally uploaded by berlinproject.
Last week I blogged about the launch of a journalism cooperative by the team behind The Berlin Project. There’s been a lot of talk about new business models for journalism, but the idea of cooperatives has barely been mentioned. So it’s refreshing to see someone breaking new ground in that respect.
Another model deserving more attention is social enterprise. At News:Rewired earlier this month, Philip John, one of the brains behind hyperlocal site The Lichfield Blog, outlined his plans to turn it into a social enterprise. In an excellent post on the JournalLocal site, John suggests that to save journalism, local media could go down the social enterprise route and fund its work through grants and subsidies.
The Homeless World Cup 2008 in Melbourne
Originally uploaded by littlesaint_uk.
This time last week, Tom Gockelen-Kozlowski was standing outside an office in Kings Cross handing out his cards to staff as they arrived at work.
The 22-year old graduate hoped his initiative would impress bosses at the Guardian enough to hire him as a journalist. Well it certainly impressed some Guardian journalists – one actually asked him to blog about his experiences
A week later and Tom has had a blogpost in the Guardian’s money section and has been discussed by a number of other bloggers and on Twitter. He may not have a job yet, but he is certainly being talked about. And unlike one of the Guardian’s previous rookie bloggers, the infamous Max Gogarty (now what ever happened to him?), the reaction to Tom’s post has been largely positive.
For anyone involved in newsgathering, hearing from leading journalists the nature of the news we will see on our televisions in the future was an opportunity not be missed.
The Media Society event Will We Have News For You? brought together five journalists from public and commercial broadcasters to discuss the future of regional news. The panelists involved in the discussion at BBC Television Centre, were:
Nick Pollard (Former Head of Sky News in the Chair)
Mary Hockaday (Head Multi-media Newsroom, The BBC)
Jonathan Munro (Deputy Editor and Director of Newsgathering, ITV News)
Jonathan Levy (Editor General Election Sky News )
Stephen Cole (Presenter Al Jazeera English)
Until today, I was a member of a Facebook group called “the BNP are nasty racists and shouldn’t be here” (For non-British readers, the BNP is the UK’s ultra-right wing party). The group was set up a couple of years back to protest against a BNP presence on Facebook and it eventually gained hundreds of members. While casually flicking through my notifications today, I noticed that it had changed its name to “the BNP are nice and should be on here“.
I clicked on the link to find out which joker had changed the name of the group. My boyfriend suspected that Facebook had asked moderators to change its name for some reason. But when I saw the group, I realised that not only had its name changed, but also its description, thus altering its philosophy completely. It now was a pro-BNP group. Worst of all, I was still a member! I promptly left the group (along with many other members) and posted a warning to my Facebook friends via my status update.
