Tag Archives: ash cloud

Journalisted Weekly: Obama, Ryan Giggs, G8, & ash

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Journalisted is an independent, not-for-profit website built to make it easier for you, the public, to find out more about journalists and what they write about.

It is run by the Media Standards Trust, a registered charity set up to foster high standards in news on behalf of the public, and funded by donations from charitable foundations.

Each week Journalisted produces a summary of the most covered news stories, most active journalists and those topics falling off the news agenda, using its database of UK journalists and news sources.

For the week ending Sunday 29 May

  • Obama’s European tour captures the headlines
  • Debate over privacy injunctions spreads across tabloids and broadsheets
  • Alleged sexual harassment by French government minister covered little

Covered lots

  • President Obama’s UK and Ireland visits ahead of the G8, including Guinness sampling, a Buckingham Palace banquet, and historic addresses to Parliament and Westminster Hall, 340 articles
  • Footballer Ryan Giggs is named by MP John Hemming for having taken out an injunction, igniting further debate over privacy law and the internet, 176 articles
  • The G8 Summit in Paris, including talks over Middle East aid, Russia as mediator in the Libya conflict, and internet regulation, 154 articles
  • Iceland’s most active volcano erupts, causing more than 500 flights over Scotland to be cancelled in fear of another ash cloud, 129 articles
  • Serbian fugitive Ratko Mladic, arrested and awaiting trial at the Hague for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, 126 articles

Covered little

Political ups and downs (top ten by number of articles)

Celebrity vs serious

Arab spring

Who wrote a lot about…’The G8 Summit’

Patrick Wintour – 12 articles (The Guardian), Tim Bradshaw – 11 articles (Financial Times), Kim Willsher – 7 articles (The Guardian), Sam Coates – 6 articles (The Times), Andrew Porter – 5 articles (The Telegraph), Tom Chivers – 4 articles (The Telegraph)

Long form journalism

More from the Media Standards Trust

Visit the Media Standards Trust’s new site Churnalism.com – a public service for distinguishing journalism from churnalism

Churnalism.com ‘explore’ page is available for browsing press release sources alongside news outlets

The Media Standards Trust’s unofficial database of PCC complaints is available for browsing at www.complaints.pccwatch.co.uk

For the latest instalment of Tobias Grubbe, journalisted’s 18th century jobbing journalist, go to journalisted.com/tobias-grubbe

How Norwegian newspaper site is helping stranded travellers get home

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As briefly noted on this blog earlier, Norwegian newspaper Verdens Gang (known as VG), has put together a ‘Hitchhiker’s Central’ page on its site, for travellers stranded by the volcano ash cloud to arrange emergency overland transport.

Media journalist Kristine Lowe reports on her blog how she was able to use the service to help get Journalism.co.uk trainer Colin Meek home from an online course he was teaching in Oslo.

“What VG.no could offer in this situation was scale. With its close to 3 million unique users a week it offered people a brilliant connection point that few other sites could,” says Kristine. “It’s a great service to its readers and, I’m sure, a great click winner too.”

How Kristine set up Colin’s journey home:

[W]hen I found a friend who was willing to drive from Oslo to Dover and back to get him home, I was able to fill up the car in both directions, thereby covering the costs of the trip, by submitting a message to Hitchhiker’s Central. I did call around a few other travellers advertising for lift to London before submitting an ad myself, and several of those I talked to had already found lift from Oslo to London which suggests my experience was not unique.

Within minutes of placing an “ad” (a free message) on Hitchhiker’s central, the receptionist at a Rica hotel in Oslo called me to ask if I had room for a British businessman staying at the hotel (…) The last passenger on the trip to Dover (they arrived this morning) was a Norwegian student desperate to get back to the UK for his exams at Cardiff University. On the way back to Oslo, the car will bring a salesman, a singer and a conductor – all Norwegians who were stranded in London.

Without this arrangement via VG.no, overland costs were adding up to around £1000, Colin tells me. A Eurostar one-way fare was going to be around £250 and the one-way ferry crossing from Oslo to Copenhagen would have been 1950NoK (£215) minimum. “It would have taken me about three days – at least – with no guarantee that some of the legs would be available.”

So, VG.no’s collaborative site has been helpful, both in terms of cost and time for Colin. But, he adds, the 18-hour car journey was something of a personal challenge – he’s getting on the sleeper train back home to Scotland.