Over 40 years since Tom Wolfe writes Radical Chic. Vice Magazine does a fashion shoot in the midst of a student riot. Hmmmm … maybe they could read it … here’s a

Brian Cathcart, professor of journalism at Kingston University, expresses exactly why the phone hacking scandal at the News of the World Matter so much.

Editors who routinely invoke the public interest when it suits them have in this case systematically abused the public interest. One leading player in the story has been in Downing Street for nine months; another dominates our media landscape; a third is our most powerful police force. If their conduct is not a matter of public interest, what is?

Absolutely. The point being that subterfuge – a deceit in order to reach your goal – is only ever acceptable by a journalist if it is overwhelmingly in the public interest. According to the steady flow of revelations coming from the high court, the hacking of mobile phones by the News of the World, and likely other newspapers, hasn’t ever been in the public interest. Not even once. Prince William’s doctor’s appointment is not in the public interest.

That’s why phone hacking is so morally and professionally wrong.

One very welcome thing about the contemp…

One very welcome thing about the contemporary music scene is how often the music of my teens is mined for inspiration. Hardly a week goes by without some track from the mid-eighties being brought out from the back of the classics cupboard and being brushed down, spruced up and subtly altered to give it a second airing.

New Order – Blue Monday (vs Eric Prydz)
Sister Sledge – Thinking of You (Dmitri from Paris remix)
Star Slinger – Cocteau Twins rework (taken from Heaven or Las Vegas)

I thought Jemima Kiss wrote a delightful piece of counterfactual journalism in yesterday’s Media Guardian: What might have happened if Viacom had bought MySpace

Got to see Black Swan last night. Here’s my review in seven words:

The Wrestler for Girls – nearly as good

The nicest movie posters I have seen in a long, long time. Created by Portobello’s La Boca design agency. We liked the second on the right so much we bought it.

Wachowski brothers to direct Cloud Atlas, so says the Den of Geek. The first rumours surfaced almost exactly a year ago. Here were my suggestions for a cast list.

Jack Straw’s contribution to the debate over the so-called “grooming” of white girls by young men of Pakistani extraction this weekend has certainly got people talking up here. But not in a good way. The issue is proving to be as volatile as a cat held over a torrent of troubled water. Iman Qureshi, over at Liberal Conspiracy, articulates what’s wrong with the level of current debate especially why it tends to smear all Pakistani men, despite the absence of any meaningful statistical evidence to suggest that race is an issue in these crimes.

The delineation of “British Asians”, or “British Muslims” or “Pakistanis” that is being employed; these are not homogenous groups, and they do not come from the same cultures, traditions, or beliefs.

But perhaps the most worrying fact is that the real issue—that both society and justice are routinely failing young girls who are sexually exploited—is being overshadowed by a misleading and pointless debate over race.

This is a far broader problem better addressed by correcting the social welfare system, the legal system, the sexualisation of children and the lens through which we view teenage girls – and of course more responsible and informed discussions on these issues.

Blondie’s Heart of Glass as it could have sounded.

January is always a favourite time for listening to music. With so many end-of-year lists to go through, so many pieces that you’ve missed, and a bit of time to listen to them. Two such lists have stood out for me this year. Said the Gramaphone, perhaps the most eloquent blog in the world at the moment, offers a wonderfully diverse 50 best songs of 2010. I’ve discovered several treasures that passed me by last year. While the beautifully entitled Disco Naïveté offers an equally splendid list of songs, as well as a top album, EP and video list. Viva January!

The net seems to be tightening on Andy Coulson, at least according to political punters on the social betting site Smarkets. Back in October, when the New York Times did its bit to unmask widespread phone hacking at the News of the World, the clever money was that Coulson would stay: 79% of Smarkets users thought (correctly) that he would outlast 2010. Significantly, perhaps, the odds on Smarkets are set by members of the site and not by a professional bookmaker. Today, the same site has spun the tables on Cameron’s head of communications, and is offering a 74% probability that Coulson will “leave his position” in 2011. Surely now more a case of when, not if.

Are the humanities about to disappear from our universities? The question is absurd. It would be like asking whether alcohol is about to disappear from pubs, or egoism from Hollywood. Just as there cannot be a pub without alcohol, so there cannot be a university without the humanities. If history, philosophy and so on vanish from academic life, what they leave in their wake may be a technical training facility or corporate research institute. But it will not be a university in the classical sense of the term, and it would be deceptive to call it one.

Terry Eagleton on the death of universities over on Comment is Free

Here’s hoping that the first regional office of the Department of Coffee and Social Affairs will be opening up north [via haddock].

Top of my Christmas wish list. This post…

Top of my Christmas wish list. This poster for an Arcade Fire concert by the excellent designers Invisible Creature [via grain edit].

“It’s jolly nearly 50 years, which is a terribly long time. I started off in journalism in 1958. I still wake up wanting to know what happened next. It’s the curiosity that keeps you going. There’s never a morning I don’t get up intrigued by turning on the radio or padding downstairs to pick up the papers.”

Oh man. Anthony Howard is dead. The former editor of the New Statesman died yesterday of a ruptured aneurysm. The papers full of his quotes, but the one above epitomises the attitude I try to foster in my students. It’s all about curiosity.

Guardian, home news

Full list of public figures identified in the News of the World phone hacking scandal. From Guardian data blog