“There’s been enough talk about the cancer spreading through modern journalist,” writes Westbrook, who has instead decided to look ahead and consider the shape of the journalist of the future.

As starting points, he suggests the future journalist will incorporate skills if the following characters:

• The jack of all trades
• The web designer
• The collaborator
• The specialist
• The flexible adapter
• The entrepreneur
• The storyteller

As Westbrook says in the post, this is by no means a definitive list – read on and leave him a comment with your thoughts.

Full post at this link…

• #FollowJourn – @adamwestbrook/multimedia journalist
• OJR: Journalism’s problem isn’t the internet or advertising, it’s attitude
• #fong: New business bootcamps for journalists from Adam Westbrook
• Adam Westbrook: Northwestern University’s journalism students and the ‘Innocence Project’
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – avoiding common video storytelling mistakes

It was human error, rather than calculated plagiarism, that led to the incident that Megan McArdle flagged up on her Atlantic.com blog last week. She had spotted two strikingly similar article extracts:

‘Doctors fear return of Steve Jobs’s pancreatic cancer‘ by David Rose, TimesOnline, January 15, 2009 (note: the article has now been amended)

In 2003 Mr Jobs learned that he had a malignant tumour in his pancreas – a large gland behind the stomach that supplies the body with insulin and digestive enzymes. The most common type of pancreatic cancer – adenocarcinoma – carries a life expectancy of about a year. Mr Jobs was lucky; he had an extremely rare form called an islet cell neuroendocrine tumour that can be treated surgically, without radiation or chemotherapy. (go to McArdle’s blog for more….)

Compared with:

‘Why Does Steve Jobs Look So Thin?‘ by Philip Elmer-DeWitt, Fortune magazine, June 13 2008

“In 2003 Jobs learned that he had a malignant tumor in his pancreas – a large gland behind the stomach that supplies the body with insulin and digestive enzymes. The most common type of pancreatic cancer – adenocarcinoma – carries a life expectancy of about a year. Jobs was lucky; he had an extremely rare form called an islet cell neuroendocrine tumor that can be treated surgically, without radiation or chemotherapy.”(go to McArdle’s blog for more….)

McArdle said she read Rose’s piece and thought… ‘wait a minute, I’ve read this somewhere before’. But how did it come about?

It seems the root of the problem wasn’t David Rose, as an email from another journalist at the paper, Mike Harvey, to Megan McArdle revealed, in which he explained how he [Harvey] had added the additional comments ‘at the last moment before publication’.

“It was done in a real hurry and I meant to put the proper attribution in but failed to do so before I pinged the email off. It was a mistake made in haste and my thanks to you for pointing it out,” he wrote.

“As a blogger and technology writer I know the importance of sourcing and linking to sources and rightly feel aggrieved when it does not happen,” he added.

Journalism.co.uk has been informed by David Rose and Mike Harvey that this email is genuine. The article has now been changed – Journalism.co.uk has a screen-grab showing the original with the paragraph intact.

Harvey since told Journalism.co.uk that he was trying to correct an omission in the original piece before it went online. The additional information specified the specific type of cancer that Steve Jobs had (note: something which has also caused controversy on McArdle’s blog).

The Times’ managing editor, David Chappell, is now dealing with the issue; he had no further comment for Journalism.co.uk but confirmed David Rose’s information.

• Silicon Alley Insider: CNBC bans ‘Fake Steve Jobs’ for challenging reporter
• How much is too much? Defining the grey areas in attribution and linking
• News Innovation: The Telegraph’s experiments with e-commerce
• Bloomberg runs false obituary for Apple’s Steve Jobs
• Media Release: David Fordham named Newspaper Society president

BBC development producer Matthew Cashmore (about to leave his job for a new role at Lonely Planet) is chronicling his trip to Russia with two of this friends, using JTR video – they broadcast live from wherever they are every day at 19:00 BST from their mobile phones.

The player on the site allows followers to watch their progress, live or from previous uploads, and users can also follow their blog and podcasts.

The trip is described as ’3 blokes, 3 bikes, 3 weeks’ and is in aid of the Everyman charity, which supports research into male cancer.

• Guardian study finds just 22.6% of journalists are female
• Twitter to send users emails about RTs and favourites
• #VOJ10: How to report polls – from IPSOS MORI founder
• Follow #localmedia hearing online – live
• Friday 3pm GMT: Twinterview with Channel 4 News’ Krishnan Guru-Murthy

The death of Apple founder and CEO Steve Jobs was prematurely announced yesterday afternoon by Bloomberg.

A pre-prepared stock obituary was accidentally posted to Bloomberg’s corporate client wire service, even through the story was marked ‘Hold for release – Do not use’.

It was quickly spotted by a user, and sent to Gawker.com, where the obituary can still be read in full.

Bloomberg was quick to retract the story, and yesterday published a message on its wire saying: “An incomplete story referencing Apple Inc. was inadvertently published by Bloomberg News at 4:27 p.m.New York time today.”

At Telegraph.co.uk Matthew Moore reports: “The stock obituary was published ‘momentarily’ after a routine update by a reporter, and was ‘immediately deleted’, Bloomberg said.”

According to Moore, ‘Jobs has been reluctant to publicly discuss his health, but recently denied claims that his cancer [from which he has previously suffered] had returned’.

• Editor&Publisher: WaPo and Bloomberg partner for global news wire
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• Bloomberg View will be ‘consistent with the values of the founder’
• Obituary awards go online