BBC journalist Nick Robinson has written up an interesting weblog post (a summary of which also appeared in the Media Guardian) about the ‘marital problems’ between politicians and the media. I haven’t thought about it long enough to write up my reactions and opinions on his views. His conclusion seems to be that ‘both sides’ [...]
The whole of London (and bits of the rest of the world, it seems) has been following the story of the whale that managed to find itself lost in our river Thames. Much has been made of the role of the public in reporting this story. It’s a good example because it happened in a [...]
I was watching TV this morning when the Bafta nominations were announced. The Constant Gardener received the most nominations, with ten, including Best Film. I managed to see The Constant Gardener a few weeks back, and it’s a truly great film, powerful both politically and emotionally. It feels like a British film without having to [...]
Ben Metcalfe has written up a review of the BBC iMP, the technology that they’re developing which will allow UK users to download BBC programmes via P2P. I haven’t seen or tested the iMP (although I was one of the 30,000 who asked to be part of the trial), so what follows are just thoughts [...]
I’ve already written up a quick reaction to ‘Podcastcon’, the podcasting conference that took place on Saturday, but this is a more in-depth review of the day. I’ve already praised the conference for being very interesting and well-organised, so this entry is taking a more critical approach. 9:30am – Welcome Neil Dixon introduces the conference [...]
I went along to the podcast con[ference] today, as previously plugged. In many ways, it was a really successful conference, being really well organised, in a decent venue, with some good speakers and an interesting range of delegates. I’m not going to bother blogging my reactions to any of the individual talks just yet, thoughts [...]
ITV and the BBC have announced plans to launch a free-to-air satellite tv service to rival Sky. What this means, in reality, is that ITV will join the BBC in switching off the Sky encryption and broadcasting its channels ‘in the clear’. So far, this doesn’t really change too much. You can already get BBC [...]
An article in the Independent’s MediaWeekly yesterday commented on how tourists played a vital role in reporting on the Asia tsunami [link now dead]. “Never before has there been a major international story where television news crews have been so emphatically trounced in their coverage by amateurs wielding their own cameras.” The article mostly focuses [...]
The UCL Union Council Meeting yesterday was a big, contentious one, with six motions tabled for discussion. The most important of these, as far as Rare FM was concerned, was a motion urging for ‘Vibrant Media Societies’, which resolved to fully-fund Rare FM’s RSL license, and to seek a sabbatical editor for Pi Magazine, which [...]
I’m enjoying the new Independent Media Weekly Monday supplement. It’s clearly in direct competition to the Guardian’s longer-running MediaGuardian supplement (also published on Mondays), which I’ve tended to buy now and again. The reason that the Independent’s offering is better is simple: more content, less ads. In today’s edition, there are only 3 pages of [...]