HuffPost College features voices from colleges and universities all around the country and offers a real-time snapshot of what’s going on in the lives of the nation’s 19 million college students – from coverage of the latest trends and sports happenings to more serious issues such as freedom of expression on campus and the rising cost of tuition.
HuffPo has also brought recent graduates in to help edit and run the microsite – a good opportunity for US student journalists to showcase their work and a ready-made specialist audience for the site to engage with.
The National Audit Office’s (NAO) report into the BBC’s expenditure on its recent building projects – the redevelopment of Broadcasting House in London and the construction of Pacific Quay in Glasgow and Salford Quay in Greater Manchester – will be published on Thursday.
The report, which was commissioned by the BBC Trust, will be available in full on the Trust’s website and the NAO site from Thursday, it has been confirmed to Journalism.co.uk, despite reports suggesting it would be released today.
BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones and Sunderland University journalism student Josh Halliday offer some great tips and suggestions of tools to use for reporting online. There’s a strong focus on tools to help make your job as a journalist easier – whether that’s saving battery power on your laptop or mobile when filing a report or how to send large image files back to the newsroom from the field.
Worth a read by budding journalists and seasoned professionals alike.
The publisher of the Reader’s Digest titles has reduced its debt by 75 per cent, the release says.
The publisher’s UK title filed for administration last week, but RDA said it did not expect the UK administration to have a material impact on its financial performance as the UK business has been operating with a negative free cash flow.
What? Moore is a presenter on BBC 2′s ‘Something for the Weekend’, and contributes to the technology section of Metro.co.uk. She is also the founder and editor of www.girlgeekchic.com – “a girl’s guide to technology”.
Just as we like to supply you with fresh and innovative tips every day, we’re recommending journalists to follow online too. They might be from any sector of the industry: please send suggestions (you can nominate yourself) to judith or laura at journalism.co.uk; or to @journalismnews.
Publishing and journalism aren’t the same, says Brogan. What AOL is trying to do and what it’s audience wants is different from ‘hard journalism’:
Journalists seek to create compelling information that is helpful and news-worthy.
Publishing seeks to push more product, deliver higher circulation value, and create more value for sponsors/advertisers/money-holders.
Publishers need content creators of some stripe to do what they do. Journalists don’t need publishers, but publishers pay, so that’s a decent place to connect with an audience and be paid.
Google’s head of public policy and government relations pushed the ‘don’t be evil’ line at last night’s Amnesty International social media event, with emphasis on user power and responsible company behaviour.
Also speaking were the Guardian’s digital media research editor, Kevin Anderson; Annabelle Sreberny, professor of global media and communication at SOAS; and author and blogger Andrew Keen: who spoke from the US via an iPhone held up to the mic by the event chair, BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones.
“[A] very important thing to understand about the way our business operates is that our users choose to use it,” Pointer later told Journalism.co.uk.
“We don’t have a contract with our users that ties them into our services. They haven’t invested a lot of money in our software packages.
“The way we keep our users is by continuing to provide good, leading edge innovative services: they’re free at the click of a mouse to choose an alternative to Google.”
Providing valuable services for users keeps the search giant – which owns YouTube as well as running a host of other products – on its toes, she said.
Improving the transparency of the recently launched social media application Google Buzz was one such reaction to user complaints, she added.
When the company realised improvements could be made, they were implemented, she said: “that’s something we did within hours and not days.”
While Pointer argued that no user information was ever revealed before an individual went through the Buzz set-up process, she said it had been necessary to make changes to the visibility of the user controls.
The addition of Buzz to the Google Dashboard allowed even greater user control over settings, she argued.
The Independent published a correction yesterday concerning its front page story from September 2009 ‘Toxic shame’, which contained claims of individuals who alleged they had been injured as a result of illegal dumping of waste in the Cote d’Ivoire by a Trafigura ship:
The article stated that claimants had been maimed and wrongly suggested that, due to the settlement, claims of more serious injuries including miscarriages would not be tested in the High Court case. In fact such claims had already been withdrawn earlier last year. A joint statement issued by both parties in that case said that independent experts have been “unable to identify a link between exposure to the chemicals… and deaths, miscarriages, still births, birth defects … or other serious and chronic injuries”. The story featured the photograph of a woman with a severely scarred face, a condition which Trafigura says, and we accept, cannot therefore have been caused by the waste. We are happy to set the record straight.
Trafigura and its lawyers Carter-Ruck were at the centre of last year’s super injunction debate after Carter-Ruck abandoned an attempt to prevent the Guardian from reporting a parliamentary question about the company.
In December the oil trader ended its legal dispute with BBC Newsnight. The programme agreed to: apologise for allegations made about waste dumping in Côte d’Ivoire on air and pay £25,000 to a charity of Trafigura’s choice, as well as legal costs.
Ahead of his Court of Appeal hearing today, Simon Singh sets out his reasons for why English and Welsh libel law should be reformed.
The first problem is clear. A libel case is so horrendously expensive that most writers, scientists and journalists cannot afford to defend their writing, even if they are convinced it is accurate and important. These costs can easily run to over £1 million and are wholly disproportionate to the damages involved, which might be less than £10,000.
Speaking about his own case and that of British cardiologist Dr Peter Wilmshurst, who is being sued for libel by an American corporation, Singh writes:
Dr Wilmshurst is not a scaremonger, but a doctor of the highest integrity who won the 2003 HealthWatch award for his courage in challenging misconduct in medical research. However, his reward this time has been a two-year legal battle that could bankrupt him.
When I asked why he bothered to fight on when it would be so much easier to back down and apologise, he replied: “If I fail to speak out then I am not doing my job as a doctor and I am breaking the Hippocratic Oath. I’d rather be sued for libel.”
It boils down to whether Singh’s article published in the Guardian in April 2008 about the effectiveness of chiropractic treatments for children, was comment (as Singh argues) or a statement of fact (as Eady first ruled), in the eyes of the law.
The Court of Appeal hearing – scheduled for 10:30am – “is a rare opportunity to clarify the right to ‘fair comment’, one of the few defences available in a libel action”, says the Libel Reform campaign, backed by the Sense About Science organisation, in a statement.
It said it will be “one of the most significant trials for free speech and science this year”, as Singh’s case goes before the Lord Chief Justice, the Master of the Rolls and Lord Justice Sedley.
Disclaimer: Journalism.co.uk has pledged its support to the ongoing Libel Reform campaign and petition.
