Swallow your pride and link: Link economy in journalism

“Swallow your pride and link,” said Rick Waghorn of My Football Writer.
We all know the new generation of journalists have to operate on a multitude of multi-media platforms; which is why even us magazine journalists have been learning how to shoot videos, make podcasts, Twitter and maintain a blog.
Yet, in our Online and Mobile Media [...]

Archbishop uses YouTube to spread Advent message

There’s the McDonald’s new Christmas ad, the BBC Christmas schedule announcement, huge supermarket stocks of Quality Street, Mariah Carey and Slade piping through the shops - and I caught a glimpse of the Coca Cola advert on TV last night.
This all means Christmas is definitely on its way and I can’t wait.
According to the Archbishop of Canterbury, [...]

Vote Gok for Doctor Who?

Ever since David Tennant revealed he would be leaving the Tardis for good after four special shows next year, there has been much speculation as to Who will fill his shoes.
 
All the predictable candidates are being put forward; David Morrissey, James Nesbitt, Paterson Joseph and Russell Tovey are all popular. But I wasn’t expecting to see this [...]

Room 101: Top 10 pointless internet sites

Pointless? Photo by Ohm17.

In a previous post about Web 2.0 being rubbish, I thought I’d follow it up with a list of the most pointless and rubbish sites I could find the internet. Are these relevant to anyone?
1. Singing Horses
A choir of horses. Very surreal. Click on the horses to make the sing.

2. The world’s [...]

John Sergeant: Strictly done dancing

Forget about Ross and Brand. Something much more serious is happening at the BBC: it’s time to say goodbye to John. And over 2,000 people have complained about it.

I’ve always loved Strictly Come Dancing. This changed earlier this week when John hung up his dancing shoes.

“The trouble is that there is [...]

NUJ: Web 2.0 is rubbish (Dogbook and the evil baby)

We were all getting a little tired of the Web 2.0 buzzwords being drummed into us.
Social media. Change. Conversation. Democracy. Blogs. Networking.
So, it was a nice surprise for the Telegraph’s Communities Editor, Shane Richmond to give us a different point of view in this week’s Online and Mobile Media lecture.
Most interestingly, he mentioned the NUJ and [...]

0.06 seconds away from being a better journalist: Reporting trauma

It takes 0.06 seconds for our brain to send signals and release adrenaline when we experience a traumatic situation.
It takes a quarter of a second for us to be conscious of what is happening.
Journalists may be subject to this response against trauma and experience distressing emotions when reporting. But more than this, we can be good journalists if we [...]

I heart typography

Helvetica, Arial, Times New Roman: typefaces you use every day, but, like me, probably have never considered or fully acknowledged before. Earlier this week, we learnt about all things typography. We were also given some pretty snazzy links, which I thought I’d share.

Amaztype (which forms the image above) creates words using Amazon web services. You can choose [...]

5 steps to search engine optimisation (SEO)

Search engine optimisation is something I find fascinating – and also quite difficult to comprehend.
In our online media lecture this week, icrossing’s Antony Mayfield explained to us – better than anyone else has ever managed before – how Google works and how search engine optimisation operates.
Brilliant.
Yet, whilst I understood the pretty networking diagrams (or solar system replicas) [...]

PTC New Journalist Awards

Last week, five of us left the comfort of the Magazine Laboratory (aka. MagLab) to go to London for the PTC New Journalist Awards with our course tutor, Jane.
Whilst this not only gave us the opportunity to put on our gladrags, rub shoulders with journalistic types and have a fancy lunch, we also put our Twittering [...]