At 11.30pm GMT, Twitter went down under the sheer weight of tweets about the – at the moment still unconfirmed – death of Michael Jackson. Iran’s revolt didn’t do it, even Bruce Forsyth’s £100 bottle of champagne didn’t do it – much as the Guardian newsroom will find that hard to believe. Truly a sign [...]
Entries from June 2009
June 25, 2009
Football fittings and fixtures
I’ve let my regular contributions to Spurs fansite TopSpurs drift a bit – a combination of the volume of work and not really having much more to add to what the other writers have observed about the club’s underwhelming end to the season. I try to spare the n0n-Spurs among you the benefit of my [...]
June 24, 2009
NightJack – some more thoughts
Suppose a serving police officer wrote an anonymous blog which gave his views of the job from his perspective as a member of the British National Party. And suppose an enterprising journalist examined the details in that blog and managed to unmask the identity of the officer concerned. Suppose a little further that the officer [...]
June 23, 2009
Brought to book on the Frontline
I marked off another first this week when I delivered the ‘How to pitch, write and market a book’ course for journalism.co.uk at London’s Frontline Club. I’ve done a fair bit of in-house training for subs, and taught subbing and production to teenagers and twentysomethings, but this was the first time I’d run something drawn [...]
June 19, 2009
That was the week that was
Suzanne Breen’s court victory in her battle to protect her sources, and – it’s no exaggeration to say, her life – was welcome news in a week which showed that, for all the talk of crisis, there is still much to engage, stimulate and celebrate about the media. Suzanne’s was the latest victory in the [...]
June 16, 2009
Tip top
It was a pleasant surprise to find an extracted quote from an interview I gave to essentialwriters.com being used as the site’s ‘Tip of the week’. I’m flattered, especially as it’s a site I find very useful. All of which segues nicely into a last plug for the course I am delivering next Monday for [...]
June 15, 2009
Norman Giller’s dreaming
A plug for someone else’s work this time, as I draw your attention to The Lane of Dreams, the latest book from the hand of the legendary Norman Giller. With Tottenham Hotspur planning to replace White Hart Lane with a new stadium, Norman has used his own wealth of knowledge, plus his eye for a [...]
June 12, 2009
A London tradition revived
Although the circumstances are sad, news this morning of the revival of a long-neglected London tradition underlines one of the many things which I love about my city.
For the first time in 80 years, the name of an “ordinary hero” has been added to the wall in Postmen’s Park, near The Barbican. Printworker Leigh Pitt, [...]
June 10, 2009
What’s going on?
Some infrequent posting lately because I’ve had my head down finishing a few projects off. What I’m up to currently includes;
• Continuing my editing stint at Vision Sports Publishing and admiring their new book on Centre Court.
• Finishing marking for the London College of Communications unit in Production Convergence I’ve helped teach, and pitching a [...]
June 9, 2009
Debating subbing at NUJ freelance branch
On Monday night I spoke about the future of production journalism at the NUJ’s London Freelance branch, a meeting which drew over 50 people. Rather than throw in the kind of provocative controversialism which often features in this debate, I tried to give some food for thought. Rather than pretend I knew all the answers, [...]
