Journalism.co.uk Editors' Blog » Davos

Goodbye City University: @amonck reflects on four years as journalism head

Adrian Monck — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 10:06:18 +0000

As reported in May, Adrian Monck is to leave his position as head of journalism at City University, London after four years, to lead the communications team for the World Economic Forum, which holds the annual meeting for global leaders in Davos, Switzerland. Today, he bids farewell to City in this blog post, originally published here.

Although I’ll be haunting College Building for the next week or so, today is my leaving drinks (or ‘glad you’re gone’ party as we used to call them).

I’ll be keeping up a link with the place as a prof, and I’ll be trying to bash out a PhD. And I’ll also be giving a modest sum for the highest scoring MA project, which will be a prize in memory of Richard Wild. The first £250 will be handed out this autumn, so any City students reading: heads down for the finishing line!

Since I came to City in 2005, we’ve launched an MA in Journalism with new pathways in science and investigation, a Masters in Political Campaigning and Reporting, an MA in Creative Writing Non-Fiction, and a BA in Journalism. We’ve gained some fantastic new staff to go alongside the existing terrific team, including the Guardian’s David Leigh, Channel 4’s David Lloyd, ITN’s Penny Marshall and visiting fellows like Heather Brooke and tech guru Robin Hamman. We have a distinguished scholar as head of research, Professor Howard Tumber, and we’ve just appointed Britain’s first professor of financial reporting, a chair in honour of Marjorie Deane (expect more on financial journalism soon).

We brought the Centre for Investigative Journalism to City, and its successful summer schools and hopefully there’ll be new initiatives to announce in that area soon.

We’ve established a digital core to our curriculum – there should be a partnership with Nokia coming up in the autumn.

And this year we finally moved into multi-million pound facilities (on Flickr) worthy of the talents of the people who teach and study here. And we have a Graduate School of Journalism to go alongside the best anywhere has to offer.

Best of all, I’ve witnessed the annual progression of an extraordinary group of people who’ve joined us from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, and from Lancashire to Lagos – our students. Their qualities are what make so many people want to give up time to teach here. Their enthusiasms and passions are among the rewards.

It’s not all been plain sailing, as anyone who’s brushed up against me will doubtless agree. But I hope it’s been worth it. City is now, more than ever, a global school for journalism, bringing in people from around the world to share experiences and gain new insights. Its future is already being mapped out in areas like political and humanitarian campaigning, and in deepening specialist knowledge amongst those competing to enter what is still an extraordinarily privileged world.

And the privilege of journalism? It’s the privilege of speech. Maybe it’s narcissistic, maybe it’s worth dying for.

But despite our disagreements (and let’s be honest, academics have to be able to start arguments with themselves) it’s what unites me with colleagues in education, in the news business, and with new friends and acquaintances in the ever-widening world beyond.

So, with whatever voice you choose, keep speaking up.

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Full Disclosure: Reuters journalist David Schlesinger on Twitter and standards

John Thompson — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 11:53:01 +0000

After Reuters scoops itself by Twittering from Davos, Schlesinger asks himself “Am I destroying Reuters standards by encouraging tweeting or blogging?” Full blog post…

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Guest bloggers for FT’s Davos coverage

Laura Oliver — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 16:17:56 +0000

The Financial Times has signed up a host of guest bloggers for it’s coverage of this week’s World Economics Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, which starts tomorrow.

Sir Martin Sorrell, Kofi Annan and British foreign secretary David Miliband will all be posting alongside FT editors and correspondents – you can read Sorrell’s first post at this link.

The site has set-up an ‘in depth’ microsite to host its coverage, which will also feature video reports and can be followed on Twitter @FTDavos.

Elsewhere YouTube got its users to pose video questions to the forum via its Davos channel – the most voted submission was from Pablo Camacho, a student and independent writer from Bogotá, Colombia, who will now attend the event on behalf of the site as a citizen reporter.

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YouTube round-up: BBC Russian and Davos videos

Laura Oliver — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 12:28:15 +0000

The BBC has made good on its October promise to launch six new video channels on YouTube in Urdu, Spanish, Russian, Persian, Portuguese and Arabic and has rolled out its Russian stream.

The BBC Russian YouTube channel will feature footage from BBC Russian correspondents and Russian-language reports on major news events.

The other multi-language channels will be launched between now and early 2009, a press release from the corporation said.

YouTube is getting in on the act again ahead of the World Economic Forum at Davos next month by asking users to send their video answers to the following questions:

Are you confident that global growth will be restored in 2009?
Will the environment lose out to the economy in 2009?
Will the Obama administration improve the state of the world in 2009?
Should company executives have a code of ethics similar to doctors and lawyers?

The best clips, which can be uploaded to the site’s Davos channel, will be broadcast at the forum during sessions; while the user who creates the best video, as voted for by other YouTubers, will have the opportunity to attend the event, all expenses paid, as a citizen reporter for YouTube.

In a repeat of last year’s event, a YouTube booth for attendees of the forum to upload their video responses to the debates will also be available, according to a press release.

This seems to be just one strand of the forum’s multimedia activities. It’s also represented on Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, Flickr and questions for press conferences can be submitted via Qik and Mogalus.

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BBC moblog reports from international mobile conference

Oliver Luft — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 10:34:53 +0000

The BBC has been experimenting with filing video reports from mobile phones as part of its coverage of Mobile World Congress 2008, in Barcelona this week.

Technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones explained the approach in a video post the BBC’s dot.life technology blog before the event:

Then while in Barcelona he moblogged several interviews, including one with Isabella Rossellini about making movies available for viewing on mobile phones, using the footage to augment a text story by embedding a flash player in the head of the story for a nice piece of additional story telling.

The MoJo approach is finding increasing favour with large news organisations. Reuters put mobiles in the hands of delegates at last month’s World Economic Forum in Davos.

How long will it take to trickle down into the regional press though? My guess would be 18-24 months before we see the first serious use.

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