The new slim domestic

Journalism education?

Through a (Media) Lens darkly – Newspeak review part 2
“Not only is journalistic ‘objectivity’ impossible, the attempt to achieve it is morally abhorrent.” Newspeak in the 21st Century, p.239. This deserves some attention and discussion, it’s tempting to just go “Yep,”, but if I sleep on it, I might be more considered in my response. The rest of the book drifts off into a …weird and existential Buddhism, it loses me at that point. I just needed to put this in as a place-holder. I’m into the last chapter and will come back to this post later. The first part of the review is

Another semi-canibalistic hoax? Lima fat gangs
I kid you not, this story appeared this week on the CBS news website. Perhaps they’ve got a nine-year-old kid sitting in the chief reporter’s chair. Anyway, as of today they had not taken this story down. LIMA, Peru, Nov. 21, 2009 A Peruvian Black Market in Human Fat? Medical Experts Dispute Lima Police Claims That Gang Murdered Victims, Drained Fat From Bodies to Sell to Cosmetic Makers Yep, the lead says it all really, but still CBS decided it was worth running this garbage as if it could some how be credible. It has all the hallmarks of an urban myth and is the same sort of hoax as

Graduates take a social media tour – the immediate future of journalism?
Two graduating students from AUT’s journalism programme are traveling up and down (mostly up) New Zealand filing stories, video, photos and blogs for the New Zealand Herald website. Andrew Hughes and Olivia Wix on tour Olivia Wix and Andrew Hughes were selected to undertake the three week summer tour with a focus on the job market for young people and graduating students. This is an interesting experiment for the nzherald.co.nz that involves Andrew and Olivia in doing their own VJ work, tweeting and posting updates to

Newspeak in the 21st century – Media Lens and angry analysis
I’m currently reading a great book on the British media by the two guys behind Media Lens, David Edwards and David Cromwell. Newspeak in the 21st Century is an angry, but analytical, and very damning report about the state of the British media and the soft-left, liberal veneer that coats the ugly conservative heart of

Philosophers and journalists – unlikely bedfellows?
[Thanks Jess for the link] An interesting, if a little obtuse piece in The Chronicle of Higher Education this week about the fractious relationship between philosophy and journalism. I was struck most immediately by this paragraph, which IMHO sums up the situation reasonably well: Still, broadly speaking, we need philosophers who understand how epistemology and the establishment of truth claims function in the real world outside seminars and journals—the role of recognized authorities, of decision, of conscious intersubjective setting of standards. And we need journalists who scrutinize and question not just government officials, PR release