Category Archives: Blog

Books on WikiLeaks

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The Guardian has published a book on WikiLeaks today, with The New York Times and Der Speigel also presenting their version of events in book format – perhaps they’re all just trying to get in before Julian Assange publishes his chronicle?

I will update this post with order details and other books as they become available. If you come across any that are not listed, please do let me know.

The Guardian:
Wikileaks, by David Leigh & Luke Harding, £6.99

Inside Wikileaks, by Daniel Domscheit-Berg, £7.99

WikiLeaks Versus the World [Hardback], by Julian Assange, £16.00

The New York Times:
Open Secrets: Wikileaks, War and American Diplomacy [ebook], by Alexander Star (ed) Bill Keller (intro), £4.30

Der Spiegel:
WikiLeaks: Public Enemy No. 1, by Marcel Rosenbach and Holger Stark [not found link to translated version yet]

Bloggers:
The Age of Wikileaks: From Collateral Murder to Cablegate (and Beyond), By Greg Mitchell, £7.61

Media and Climate Change at Annual MeCCSA Conference 2011 #meccsa2011

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The MeCCSA Climate Change, Environment and Sustainability Network is hosting a panel at the 2011 Annual MeCCSA Conference, 12-14th January at Salford.

Our panel Media and Climate Change is scheduled for Friday 14th January at 13:30 – 15:00 in Studio 3, with the following lineup:

Chair: Muhammad Shabir Khan

  • Mass media role for climate change communication and global environmental sustainability
    Ronju Ahammed, Sustainable Environment & Climate Change Programme, Bangladesh
  • Mediated Climate Change: Scepticism on the Web and on Television Around Copenhagen
    Neil Gavin, University of Liverpool and Tom Marshall, University of Aberystwyth
  • Towards a (Re)Materialisation of the Spectacular (Celebrity) Objects of Climate Change
    Mike Goodman, King‘s College, London
  • Cosmopolitanism and Justice in British Newspaper Coverage of COP15 Copenhagen 2009 and COP16 Cancun 2010
    Unn Laksa, University of Liverpool

There is also another panel that might be of interest, on Wednesday 12th January at 15:45 – 17:15 in Studio 3, entitled Mediating animals: exploring commodification and affect. Continue reading →

Journalism of the Web, not just on it

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Jim Brady discussing rationale behind TBD.com, explains difference between journalism OF the web vs journalism ON the web.:

The concept of TBD was to produce a local news operation that wasn’t just on the Web, but OF the Web. What that meant, in my view, was avoiding the trap of producing traditional journalistic forms and just throwing them up on the Web. To truly be OF the Web, you have to produce journalism in ways that works in that medium. Sometimes, that still means producing a traditional all-text narrative. But, more than that, it means truly engaging with your audience, which we did via very aggressive conversation and newsgathering done via social media, via live chats and by building a network of more than 200 local blogs and linking to them and selling advertising for many of them. Being of the Web means linking to other sites, so that you can become the first stop for readers interested in a topic and expose them to multiple voices in a region. It means not viewing mobile at something you have to do to check a box, but truly making an effort to produce a mobile site that thinks about that kind of information someone would want when disconnected from a laptop or desktop. It means not viewing the Web as just another platform. I hate the term “platform agnostic.” I think it’s totally backwards. Some content works on multiple platforms; most of it does not. So we tried to blend these elements — all of which had been done separately in other places — into a unique local blend. And the audience response and traffic suggests TBD is on to something. And many of the calls I’ve gotten about consulting are asking for guidance on how we built TBD, which suggests others see it as a viable model as well.

Centre for Korean-American Peace threatens nuclear war

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Tania Branigan emailed this gem from Beijing to the Guardian about
North Korea’s attack on South Korea. Note the place where the guy works ;)

“We repeatedly warned South Korea to stop its dangerous war games. If the South continues its dangerous behaviour, Seoul will be the next target. It will be a sea of fire. Nuclear war could start at any point,” said Kim Myong-chol, executive director of the Centre for Korean-American Peace. He said it was fair to describe him as speaking on behalf of the North’s government.

Courtesy of David Curran.

Why Twitter matters for media organisations

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Alan Rusbridger claims saying that Twitter has got nothing to do with the news business is about as misguided as you could be and explains why Twitter matters for media organisations:

1. It’s an amazing form of distribution
2. It’s where things happen first
3. As a search engine, it rivals Google
4. It’s a formidable aggregation tool
5. It’s a great reporting tool
6. It’s a fantastic form of marketing
7. It’s a series of common conversations. Or it can be
8. It’s more diverse
9. It changes the tone of writing
10. It’s a level playing field
11. It has different news values
12. It has a long attention span
13. It creates communities
14. It changes notions of authority
15. It is an agent of change

Well worth a read for how he explains each point in turn, and then concludes that:

Increasingly, social media will challenge conventional politics and, for instance, the laws relating to expression and speech. [...] we can be sure that the motivating idea behind these forms of open media isn’t going away and that, if we are blind to their capabilities, we will be making a very serious mistake, both in terms of our journalism and the economics of our business.

Nick Clegg’s dishonest defence of his fees U-turn

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George Eaton on Nick Clegg’s dishonest defence of his fees U-turn:

Clegg’s suggestion that “things were even worse than we thought” is dishonest. In the period between the election and the coalition taking power, the state of the public finances improved, rather than worsened. Just ten days after Clegg became Deputy Prime Minister, the deficit was revised downwards from £163.4bn to £156bn, having previously stood at £178bn.

And then the clincher:

As the sixth-largest economy in the world, Britain can easily afford to fund free higher education through general taxation. In public expenditure terms, the UK currently spends just 0.7 per cent of its GDP on higher education, a lower level than France (1.2 per cent), Germany (0.9 per cent), Canada (1.5 per cent), Poland (0.9 per cent) and Sweden (1.4 per cent). Even the United States, where students make a considerable private contribution, spends 1 per cent of its GDP on higher education – 0.3 per cent more than the UK does.

We will march: Staff and students from Bournemouth protest against education funding cuts

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We Will March – Fund Our FutureStaff and students from Bournemouth University, Arts University College Bournemouth and Bournemouth and Poole College will take to the streets of London today (Wednesday, 10 November) to protest against cuts to education funding and higher student fees.

The National Union of Students (NUS) and the University and College Union (UCU) are jointly organising the mass demonstration in the wake of huge cuts to colleges and universities and the government’s plans to raise tuition fees and charge students more interest on that debt.

Bournemouth University UCU branch secretary, John Brissenden:

The planned cuts to further and higher education will have a devastating impact on learning in Bournemouth. It is essential that staff and students take a stand against these regressive plans that will put the future of local education provision at risk and that we speak out against saddling future generations with thousands in debt.

Bournemouth University students’ union president, Toby Horner:

Students and lecturers here at Bournemouth University are making the journey to London in order to defend education against the disastrous cuts that are being imposed on our community. Together we will let politicians know that we will not tolerate their failure to fund our future or force students to pick up the bill for others’ mistakes.

More information on the demo can be found at www.demo2010.org

Protestors will assemble at Horse Guards Avenue from 11:30 and the march will begin at 12:30 through Central London and past the Houses of Parliament.

A rally and speeches will take place on Millbank outside the Tate Britain from 13:15.

Note: above text from UCU Bournemouth University branch press release.

DEMO2010

Amazing Datajournalism Tool: Build Your Own International Human Development Index

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Be sure to check out this amazing new website from the UN that allows you to build your own International Human Development Index by dynamically changing the criteria used. Incredibly the website also allows you to upload your own data sets for inclusion in the index, or download the official ones in spreadsheet format for analysis or custom mashups.

The UN recently released its Human Development Report 2010 (20th Anniversary Edition), entitled The Real Wealth of Nations: Pathways to Human Development. Drawing on a phenomenal range of statistics, the index is intended to to stimulate global, regional and national policy discussions on issues that are relevant to human development.

Courtesy of Vox Publica.

OS architects dream of a pure rebirth, enter the iPhone

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Jean-Louis Gassée on Apple’s Next Macintosh OS:

The main cause of OS cancer is backwards compatibility, the need to stay compatible with existing application software. OS designers are caught between yesterday and tomorrow. Customers want the benefit of the future, new features, hardware and software, but without having to jettison their investment in the past, in their applications.

OS architects dream of a pure rebirth, a pristine architecture born of their hard won knowledge without having to accommodate the sins of their fathers. But, in the morning — and in the market — the dream vanishes and backwards compatibility wins.

Enter the iPhone.

Courtesy of John Gruber.

We need more world news, not less

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Martin Moore:

You could say this was just a reflection of cost-cutting across the news industry. Foreign coverage is expensive, even in these days of cheap flights, mobile smartphones and instant publishing. But, if you talk to foreign correspondents, it seems that newspapers have lost confidence in the role it plays. Is foreign news something people expect to see but do not really read?

[...]

The golden age of foreign correspondents may have gone (if it ever existed), but the need for someone to report on, filter and make sense of the world is greater than it has ever been. Mainstream news organisations are still in a strong position to do this.The findings of this report indicate, though, that many are shying away from the challenge. If the decline continues, and news organisations withdraw still further from original foreign reporting, we will all lose out.

For a more international perspective, you could do worse than checking out Al Jazeera English.

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