The Guardian published dear old Derek Brown’s obituary. You can read the whole of it here

Derek Brown was (and will always remain in the memory of those who knew him) a brilliant journalist. Brilliant in Northern Ireland at the depth of the Troubles: brilliant in Jerusalem and Delhi: a brilliant observer and writer about politics from Westminster and Brussels: and, back at the Guardian ranch, a brilliantly efficient, companionable figure on the news desk. Maybe, in a way, he was so brilliant at everything, that he kept being shuffled from job to job, rather than admired for what he was where he was. It wasn’t just his courage that made him so wonderful in Belfast: it was his judgment (even for a reporter in his 20s). It wasn’t just his daring in the heat of the Middle East that made him so terrific there: it was the way both sides respected him, because they knew he was his own man, the straightest of arrows.

I was saddened this afternoon to learn of the death of Derek Brown, the former Guardian correspondent. I worked with Derek when I was a humble uploader at the original Guardian website, Derek had been seconded from the foreign desk, a bit beached I think, but he was clearly the most experienced journalist they had there. He used to beguile us with tales of his time in India of Afghanistan or some other far-flung place, as we processed the following day’s paper onto the internet on the night shift. What was so nice about working with Derek was that he always took you seriously in that generous way of his. We once had a lovely debate in the Coach and Horses about the nature of anarchism. He flattered me by saying I had taught him something.

Hopefully there will be a proper obit published soon to link to. Although Simon Hoggart, who knew him so much more then me, wrote affectionately of Derek in his diary today.

As regulars will know, I’ve been looking at the i newspaper lately. I’ve liked it, but have accused it of being a bit lightweight and of marketing itself disingenuously. I stand by the latter, but now refute the former. I decided to look more closely at the news values, using a modest bit of content analysis using Harcup and O’Neill’s 10 point rule as a methodology. In spite of the paper’s frothy – as seen on TV – marketing campaign, the results surprised me.

I don’t know much about owning art, but I know I like it when i do.

David Cameron flies off to the Middle East. Today he proclaims freedom in Egypt. Tomorrow he sells Typhoon fighter jets to Oman and Quatar

Bashing Britain’s beleaguered poor because they’re on benefits has dominated the news agenda this week. Newsnight ran a particularly unbalanced piece with US professor Lawrence Mead (who has a voice that makes Stephen Hawkings sound animated) lecturing the downtrodden of Anfield about the need for them to find work. The only other voice to feature was that of Chris Grayling, minister of state for work and pensions, a man who regularly berates the poor for being “workshy” but who once claimed for a flat in Pimlico, close to the House of Commons, despite having a constituency home less than 17 miles away. He also owned two buy-to-let properties in Wimbledon from which he made a profit 100 grand.

The trouble with knocking the poor wretches at the bottom of society is that, with unemployment rising, it is extremely difficult for many people at them to find work, or be accepted back into work culture. Even if every single one of UK millions of unemployed decided to get work today – the vast majority would remain disappointed for a long time to come.

The official statistics are also rarely allowed to get in the way of a good story. But according to this excellent piece of analysis by Channel 4 News, the number of long-term unemployed (the supposed “four-generations of workshy families” who have never had a job) has fallen ten-fold in the last 10 years. The supposed benefits culture the right keep banging their drum about is something of an urban myth.

I am an admirer of the i newspaper…

I am an admirer of the i newspaper, the compact version of the Independent, not least because it is proving to be something of a “gateway” paper for some of the students of journalism at Leeds Met. It’s a lovely little package, full of good news, some interesting features and a passable sports section.

What I don’t like is the new television advert for the paper which features comedian Dom Joly boasting that the paper has “none of that celebrity nonsense”. What tosh. Not only does the advert feature Joly and Jemima Khan (two celebs) the paper features a regular page, Caught & Social, featuring nothing but, er, celebrity nonsense. Today’s page (left) features Sylvester Stallone, Lady Gaga, Mark Ronson and Rod Stewart. A page of nonsense that Hello! would be proud to print.

Billie Holiday: Strange Fruit, the first protest song

The finest arts feature I have read for some time is this backgrounder to Billie Holiday’s Strange Fruit, which the Guardian’s Dorian Lynskey cites as the first great protest song. The technique in the feature is exemplary, note how Lynskey projects the atmosphere of the song’s first ever performance, through the clever use of the present tense, to describe a night at the infamous Cafe Society, a speakeasy in New York, in 1939.

The song was based on a poem by Abel Meeropol in response to the lynching of two black men in Indiana in 1930. It is harrowing to say the least.

Billie Holiday – Strange Fruit [via hypem]
Nina Simone – Strange Fruit [via hypem]
Sub Sub – Southern Trees [YouTube]

“The delusions of dictators are never more poignant – or more dangerous – than when they are in their death throes. To watch Hosni Mubarak today in his late-night speech in Cairo, as he used every means of rhetorical deflection to delay his inevitable end, was to watch a man so deluded, so deaf to the demands of history, that he was incapable of hearing an entire people screaming in his ear”.

David Remnick, The New Yorker (via)

Christopher Hitchins, Slate:

“One of the cheering and reassuring things about dictatorship is the way that it consistently fails to understand … How gratifying it is that all such regimes go on making the same obvious mistakes. None of them ever seems to master a few simple survival techniques: Don’t let the supreme leader’s extended family go on shopping sprees; don’t publicly spoil some firstborn as if the people can’t wait for him, too, to be proclaimed from the balcony; don’t display your personal photograph all over the landscape; don’t claim more than, say, 75 percent of the vote in any “election” you put on. And don’t try to shut down social media: It will instantly alert even the most somnolent citizen to the fact that you are losing, or have lost, your grip.”

I’ve been enjoying Time Out’s 100 Best British Films of All Time. My favourite, Barry Lyndon, makes a respectable number 19.

“Barry Lyndon” is a story which does not depend upon surprise,’ Kubrick told Michel Ciment in one of his rare interviews, nailing the film’s re-found appeal. ‘What is important is not what is going to happen, but how it will happen. I think Thackeray trades off the advantage of surprise to gain a greater sense of inevitability and a better integration of what might otherwise seem melodramatic or contrived.’

Likewise, as time goes by, Kubrick’s own contrivances – the technical obsessions, the outwardly puppet-like performances, Ryan O’Neal’s seemingly endless wanderings, adventures and increasingly futile ambitions – have themselves fallen away to reveal something quite extraordinary: the shape of a life, a human’s rise and fall, rendered as an epic, mesmeric, suffusing slow dance of immersive cinema – and therefore, not only Kubrick’s most beautiful but also his most empathetic and understanding work

Help! Save the BBC World Service

Second week back of term + extra lectures to cover = less time for posting. When so much is happening.

Here’s a truncated summary of interesting stuff (specially for my Public Sphere students). May post more detail later, especially on Wael Ghonim, the Google exec who did much to spark the Egyptian revolution.

The Facebook Revolution, and why we shouldn’t be surprised | Wael Ghonim, a profile | Why we are all Khaled Said | How the Egyptian army runs the Egyptian economy and so won’t fire on its customers

Elmore Leonard’s 10 rules of writing

I like point 10 (via).

I was a guest on Radio Leeds this morning, talking about social media, mostly facebook. You can hear me babbling on here. It starts about five minutes in.

The revolution will not be televised – Gil Scott Heron

It seemed so apt

Gil Scott Heron – The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

The revolution will not be right back after a message
about a white tornado, white lightning, or white people.
You will not have to worry about a dove in your
bedroom, a tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl.
The revolution will not go better with Coke.
The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath.
The revolution will put you in the driver’s seat.