Richard Littlejohn’s Daily Mail column on Student Protester prompts 500 Complaints to PCC #Media #Journalism #News

Journalisted: keeping track of what the paper’s are writing about

I’ve long been impressed by Journalisted, a website that helps you keep tabs on the best (and worst) of Fleet Street. Not only does it email you once a day with links to your favourite journalists latest article, in effect like a newspaper personalised to your tastes, it has also begun to track and analyse the national press as a whole. The weekly analysis is invaluable. It offers a league table to coverage on politicians (David Cameron is top with 560 articles last week, Osbourne 153 and Turncoat Clegg 138) it also compares coverage between different types stories. For example:

Nutritionist Gillian McKeith on TV show ‘I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here’, 67 articles vs. Britons Paul and Rachel Chandler freed after being held for 13 months by Somali pirates, 50 articles.

X Factor contestant Wagner Carrilho, 44 articles vs. flooding in Cornwall, 42 article

We are often told that the UK press is too trivial. It is. But this sort of data shows that there is plenty of life left in the Fourth Estate. But compared to the actual coverage David Cameron still outranks Wagner Carrilho by a factor of 10.

Via Journalism.co.uk

From Dominic Ponsford’s editor’s blog over at Press Gazette:

In short the US newspaper industry is really screwed, as is the French one (for completely different reasons), but that doesn’t mean that the UK one necessarily is. Each market has its own unique problems, and solutions, and the internet is not the cause of all our woes.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the worldwide websays that journalists of the future need to become adept with databases and datasets. Couldn’t agree more.

“Journalists need to be data-savvy. It used to be that you would get stories by chatting to people in bars, and it still might be that you’ll do it that way some times.But now it’s also going to be about poring over data and equipping yourself with the tools to analyse it and picking out what’s interesting. And keeping it in perspective, helping people out by really seeing where it all fits together, and what’s going on in the country.”

Why Twitter matters for media organisations, by Alan Rusbridger, Guardian editor (in 15 tweet-like points)

The Joy Division colouring book

A limited edition A4 colouring book. Being sold as a ‘Buy It Now’ on eBay, priced at £15.99. The perfect Christmas present for the Factory obsessive in your life (me, me, me!)

Some countries treat journalism like you treat a pen

Just thought I’d highlight these arresting images from Reporters San Frontiers [Reporters without Borders]. A very graphic and effective way to highlight the plight of many journalists working in countries with repressive regimes. There are further ads in this series. See here and here and here.

The France-based organisation does, of course, publish the Press Freedom Index. Here’s a link to the 2010 version. Incidentally, the UK is ranked at just 19th in the world, a modest improvement on the previous year.

Index on Censorship: Fitwatch closure threatens free speech

Val Swain, a Fitwatch activist, writes a strident defense of the closed site over on Index on Censorship. As pointed out, the site was closed before it got taken to court. The decision to take the website down was taken entirely by the police.

The effect on freedom of expression may not be immediately apparent. While Fitwatch may dig its heels in, others will start to worry about the wisdom of publishing contentious information. And while dozens may rally round to resist police censorship, dozens more may become that little bit more cautious about what they post. Nobody wants to have their website taken down, or be accused of criminal activity. If we value freedom of expression, we should not tolerate the police deciding what websites we should, or shouldn’t be allowed to read.

The 12 Timeless Rules for Making a Good …

The 12 Timeless Rules for Making a Good Publication. Great advice from the archive of The Atlantic magazine (Boston’s former Atlantic Monthly). Via kottke

Every sentence of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, retold for the brothers.

Fitwatch shut down by police

Of great concern is the status of Fitwatch (background wiki page), a civil disobedience website that has been shut down by police. I couldn’t possibly concur that it is an anti-police website, as has been widely reported, but I have tracked down the article that has been judged to have been so seditious that it must be withdrawn from the internet. Thankfully Indymedia, among others, has linked to the text. I won’t repost it here, but I am happy to link to it so you can judge for youreself. I think that it’s certainly angry in its tone a, but it’s hardly the work of Maximilien Robespierre. I cannot see why our democracy cannot allow such ideas to circulate freely .

Goodness I am bored with the royal wedding already. Oh for the glory days of the Independent, when it refused to do royal stories at all. Challenged with the the wedding of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson it stuck to its principle, but handled the story in an obique way. I can’t remember the story exactly, or find a link, so I will have to paraphrase, but it wrote that traffic in London had been disrupted by road closures due to “an event” at Westminster Abbey. Damning the couple with feint coverage.

Coalition declares war on arts courses. 100% cuts to one in ten universities. Eight of the biggest losers are northern universities. Leeds Met and Leeds University among the biggest losers. Moreover, London School of Economics to lose all its funding. The OU budget to be cut from £149m to £40m. Blimey.

Cabe has just announced its shortlist fo…

Cabe has just announced its shortlist for its Areas of Outstanding Urban Beauty photography contest. Entries for Leeds and Bradford made the final 10 of the shortlist.

But my favourite was this picture of a desolate carpark in Bristol by Christopher Hoare with its view of a ferris wheel spinning all melancholy in the night. It’s a beautiful image, the wheel like a cocktail umbrella or a parosel rising above some cold horizon.

Good news. Uncle Vince has referred NewsCorp £12bn bid to take full control of BSkyB to Ofcon.

Some quite brilliant analysis by PR Week of the data coming out of Whitehall department regarding entertainment budgets. Who is entertaining whom? The Daily Mail is the most lunched paper by the coalition government.

Sex Pistols in Huddersfield. Last ever UK gig in support of striking firemen. A Christmas day’s party for the Firemen’s children. Kids in Never Mind the Bollocks T-shirts. Johnny Rotten starting a food fight. Only in Huddersfield. (thanks Wilf)