A nice little solution to a tincy wee problem. Fblink.com turns your ugly, hideous Facebook profile URL into something short and snappy like this: fblink.com/davelee.
Archive for November, 2007
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November 20th, 2007Linda Jones at the University of Lincoln
November 19th, 2007Another guest lecture tonight. This time it was the turn of Linda Jones, an ex-staffer turned freelancer. And she’s a moderator over on Journobiz.com, a site I owe pretty much all of my career to.
Linda enjoyed a good turn out. Monday evenings as the end of a semester draws near is a busy time for everyone — so to see so many faces was great.
So far this year we’ve had a whole range of great speakers. From famous investigative journalists such as Phillip Knightley to top columnists such as the Times’ Libby Purves.
Yet, in all of those lectures, I’ve never seen students take as many notes as they did tonight. Linda’s approach was to provide more a guest seminar rather than guest lecture — but it was a format that worked extremely well. After all, the students that came to see the talk didn’t want to be told about Linda’s career (I mean that in the nicest possible way), but would much prefer to learn how they themselves could make a success from freelancing. Linda’s talk gave everyone what they wanted.
The Q+A session was the most active we’ve had this year. And tips were flying all over the place. I was so impressed, in fact, that I bought her book. Which contains many great tips, if a little bit focused on Linda’s own specialisms (I wouldn’t, for example, regard mothersatwork.co.uk as a resource for improving your writing knowledge). But, casting that aside, the book is a great resource. Most handy, I think, is the blog checklist found at the back of the book. Each tip is as valid and useful as the next.
So yes, on behalf of everyone at the University of Lincoln, I’d like to thank Linda for a great talk this evening.
Everyone do the Can Can!
November 14th, 2007Here are some of th UK’s top journalists displaying a wonderful can can do attitude to their work.
Introducing, in no particular order, Mark Austin, Jon Snow, Natasha Kaplinsky, Trevor McDonald and Nick Robinson.
Take it away…
Make your own at JibJab.com.
links for 2007-11-10
November 10th, 2007-
A cleric I met said: “I run a school, trying to educate children, and the parents bring their children there and leave them. They don’t come and pick them up. Where are they, the parents?”
The coverage that never was
November 9th, 2007What a bizarre day for news. The top headline on the BBC today has been that a flood didn’t happen. A non-event. A no-show. Mother Nature clearly has a hangover — bold as brass the night before about what she was going to do, but she has opted to sleep in.
Good news for the people of East Anglia. Bad news for my little experiment into flood coverage here in the east.
But let’s see what they got up to anyway. The Mercury is inviting readers to send in photos and videos, but has nothing great to show yet.
The Times wins the award for most over-the-top comment from a member of the British public with this corker from Jane Crowe, 38: “It’s been a nightmare, They’ve not slept, they’ve hardly eaten. I think next time I would rather drown.
Süddeutsche Zeitung has done well — sticking this nice little media package (made by Reuters, it seems) into its article on the flood.
Back in the UK, the Guardian has gone to town. They have a map, a blog, a digital archive… all sorts. But I’m biased: Cheers for the link, James! Jokes aside, with the floods being such a non-event, the Guardian has done its bit to keep us all informed with out too much doom and gloom.
Predictably enough, the BBC has stacks of comments from the man-on-the-street. I really can’t stand those Have your Say pages. Is it just me, or do all the debates quickly descend into a all round slating of either the Government or, more often, the ‘youth of today’?
links for 2007-11-09
November 9th, 2007-
Found this inspirational entry after ‘Googling’ David Dunkley Gyimah after one of his students got in contact with me via Facebook.
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Owe someone a beer? Log it on Foamee and you’ll never forget. I owe Biz Stone a beer for bringing this to my attention. Although seeing as I can’t stand Twitter, I won’t be logging it. Sorry!
Flood coverage: Who will produce the best?
November 9th, 2007Let’s see how this pans out. Tonight, the East coast of England is bracing itself for what the Telegraph claims could be the “worst floods for 50 years”.
By 7am on Friday morning, high-tide, banks will probably be bursting all over the place.
Without wanting to sound too immoral, this sorta stuff is a local journalist’s dream. There’s nothing like a flood, or other similar natural disasters, to make your publication the centre of attention.
So I’m gonna see what they’re all doing.
Representing Great Yarmouth in Norfolk will be Archant’s Yarmouth Mercury. Who, I’m pleased to say, seem to be working through the night updating their website. A good start — they’ve hurled themselves directly into a role as a public service newspaper. A list of closed schools takes prominence on the front page.
The Lowestoft Journal, also Archant, is running pretty much the same operation here.
Nationally, The Times is doing its bit by offering a general overview of what’s going on, but little in they way of advice or public service. To be expected from a national, I suppose.
No multimedia from anyone yet. Maybe the tech-savvy Telegraph can impress me? Sadly not, but it’s early hours yet. At least the Telegraph gives us a nice little diagram to show what’s what.
We’re not the only country to be under ‘attack’ (probably the Daily Mail’s headline tomorrow) from the floods. Our friends in Denmark and Germany are also grudgingly awaiting the surge.
Süddeutsche Zeitung covers the story a little way down their home page, much like the London Times. Again, no multimedia here — but that could just be me missing it. I can’t read German.
In Denmark, the Jyllands-Posten (which you may remember as being the paper that printed those poxy cartoons that got the whole Middle-East going spare), has such a hideously designed home page I can barely bring myself to dig out any articles about the potential flood. It seems to be quiet at the moment, but there is some sort of election going on, so that’s taking up the main news agenda right now.
The BBC citizen journalism bandwagon is yet to hurl itself into life. Expect plenty of “Send us your pics!!!!” from them very soon.
I’ll check again tomorrow afternoon to see who has done what. I’d like to think some of the local presses could come out and surprise me, but I don’t think they will, sadly.
If you’ve seen any decent flood coverage, please comment.
links for 2007-11-06
November 6th, 2007-
Interesting piece on the use of social networking by students.
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Do rolling news channels have a future? Owen Gibson reflects on ten years of BBC News 24.
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Steve Herrmann, editor of BBC News online, talks about the first adverts appearing on bbc.com, complete with screenshots of the ugly things.
