Michael de Waal-Montgomery

Life Goes On... Unless You're A Pomegranate In The Death Dome

2012-10-23T06:33:00.000+01:00

Yesterday I ate a bloody delicious pomegranate. It's one of my favourite fruits, if not my favourite

Yesterday was a pretty good day for a number of reasons. I actually had class, which seems to be something or a rarity here in Guangzhou due to only having three days of class a week (two of those days only have one class for an hour and twenty minutes). So getting out the dorm and into the classroom helps break the day up.

The class itself started with listening to an interview with Kirsty Young, presenter of the BBC's Dessert Island Discs series which has been running for something like 60-80 years. I must admit that I had never heard of it before though. I would assume a lot of older people know it.

Then after the 15 minute interview we were put into pairs and assigned to work on some story ideas from various press handouts and material that our teacher Matt had acquired whilst covering the Olympics in London earlier this year.

Cloud and I, the guy I sit next to, got a brochure of the new Shard skyscraper in London. It's an impressive building that will be opening to the public in February 2013. It seems that if you're passing through London it will be hard to miss. The project was a joint effort between Qatar and the UK.

In the afternoon I got a decent session in the gym, though it was packed and hard to get on some equipment. Luckily I found a free bar and started with some 90kg deadlifts, followed by pull-ups and cable curls. It was my first day back in the gym so I took it fairly easy and didn't want to burn out. Being so busy it was also harder to get everything done that I would have liked to.

After the sun went down I went for a nice long walk out on the university running track. It was pretty dark with no real lights in that area but many people were out either walking or running, sometimes talking in groups. I had Radiohead on in my earphones and just enjoyed the walk round and round. Haven't listened to a whole lot of Radiohead in the past so some of the songs I was hearing for the first time. I think I'm beginning to understand why they're such a famous band. They really are good if you give them a chance.

I got a call from Billy around 8:30 p.m. saying he was coming back to uni and wanted to go get a fruit drink with me, so I met him at the main gate at 8:45 p.m. We both had mango juice with crushed ice and John asked me to bring him back a papaya juice. On the way back I stopped in at the Muslim restaurant to grab a beef and onion sandwich thing they go. It's really good and only RMB 5.

Other than this, I read a little tech news throughout the day and played a game called Death Dome on my Nexus 7 which John had given me the day before. It's good fun. You're in an arena with a monster and have to defeat them through a serious of dodges, blocks and well-timed attacks. You also generate an overdrive attack after a while which does some serious damage. The graphics are awesome.

But as with most mobile and tablet games, I rarely play them and get bored quickly. Games don't have the power over me that they once did (read: Everquest 2). It's just a good way of killing some time, and time is something I have an awful lot of here.

Oh yeah, one last thing. My roommate Billy's ex-girlfriend is leaving Wednesday to Huzhou (or somewhere like that). I think he'd spent the day with her Monday which is why he hadn't come back to the university since last week. I don't quite understand their relationship but obviously they're still friends. She's going there to start a new life, he said. Leave behind sad memories from Guangzhou. He was a bit down and is going to miss her.

He'll be alright though. Life goes on. Life goes on...

My Nexus 7, Google Currents, And Funny Twitter Attacks On Friends

2012-10-21T14:44:00.000+01:00

Google's Nexus 7 tablet on which I read most of my news these days

Today has been a terribly boring day. It's Sunday so most people aren't at uni. I had little to do except read my news feed on the Nexus 7 and walk around like a zombie.

I went for a run in the afternoon before dinner. The running track and field was quite busy, mostly with teams of Chinese boys playing football. I saw a couple Western guys kicking balls around as well. In fact, I know them from the gym. And by know, I mean recognise. I think they're Russian or something.

I had a great coffee this morning (getting towards the end of the first pack of Espresso that I bought from IKEA a few weeks back). It's lasted a decent amount of time and is so much better than drinking the instant Nescafe stuff.

After my run I got showered and went to the canteen for dinner, and was actually considering going to the gym later in the evening depending on how much energy I had. In the end I didn't bother.

I made a mildly amusing offensive comment in reply to a status update on Cameron's Twitter feed. He didn't like it one bit and so I deleted it. I should have at the very least screenshot it for future reference. Maybe I could've wrapped it up in a box and given a print-out of it to him for his next birthday. But that would result in me getting socked in the jaw, so perhaps not.

I spent far too long trying to get my damn blog feed to show more than a few of the most recent items on my Google Currents app on the Nexus 7. In the end I actually signed up for Google's producer page of their Currents area and submitted my blog into their directory so that anyone running the app on their smartphone or tablet can now find my feed.

Really I was doing the whole Currents thing because I was going to read back over some old posts, what with nothing to do all day. But having read every day this week, I wasn't in much of a reading mood by the time I'd got it sorted.

Around 8 p.m. I went for a second dinner at the Muslim restaurant. Soup noodles again. In fact, I had Muslim soup noodles for lunch as well. They've got a lot of different kinds and all are good. My favourite is a beef and vegetable tomato-base one.

I have an assignment over this weekend to find a technology news story which will be written up in Wednesday's class. I emailed a guy called Jon Russel who is the Asia Editor of The Next Web, and he initially emailed me back asking for further details, but since haven't heard from him. This was on Friday. Looking grim. He was going to be a great quote for my story.

I read on Friday that Google had opened up paid app downloads from their Google Play store in India. It is apparently their fourth largest download market. China is still blocked however. I thought this made for a good weekend tech story as China is no doubt Google's biggest market with something like 90% of handset selling here running Android, or some fork of it. (The whole Android fragmentation question is quite complicated, but it has to do with why I use the word "fork")

I was thinking recently of writing something on my use of the Nexus 7 after reading that people who use 7-inch tablets were found to spend 20% longer on websites. This points to heavier media consumption by users on these devices. And it's funny because Steve Jobs was always against the 7-inch form factor.

Of course, I'm sure he would have changed his mind if he was still around today. He didn't live long enough to see the huge success devices like the Kindle Fire have had. And now, of course, Apple are on the verge of announcing their iPad Mini.

German Culture Shock And Chinese Pizzas

2012-10-18T03:44:00.000+01:00

"My part is to cover the topic of culture shock and how it might affect managers on foreign assignments in Germany"

Morning

I was up at 8 a.m. today because I had morning class at 8:30 a.m. in which we started writing the first of our news stories covering the Canton Fair. Our class went to the opening day on Monday and did some interviewing of people at the event.

I made a decent start on the news story which is about the iPad being used by Chinese companies (namely Made-In-China) to log business details of visitors. It's not that exciting really, but since my target audience for the piece is the USA it should be relevant.

Once back from class I did some work I had to do before meeting up with my Organisational Behaviour presentation group in the afternoon. My part is to cover the topic of culture shock and how it might affect managers on foreign assignments in Germany, plus methods for minimising or avoiding it.

The presentation is due on October 29th (or thereabouts) and each group only needs to speak for seven minutes, so it's not much more than a minute and half per person. It only took me 15 minutes to prepare the material.

At 11:30 I go for lunch as usual and eat in the downstairs canteen: meatballs, rice noodles and shredded chicken. I have a fresh coffee after getting back to my dorm. I also had one after class earlier in the morning. Never too much coffee.

Afternoon

I meet up with the presentation group in the International College (where UCLAN runs its course) and we each add our parts to the PowerPoint. This takes no more than 20 minutes. We agree to meet up again on Tuesday to briefly do a practice run. That also gives them the opportunity to ask me about any words or pronunciation they are unsure of since I'm the only foreigner in the class.

Earlier this week John had asked me if I wanted to go watch an English movie at the cinema on Thursday. I'd agreed and so today at just after 4 p.m. we left the uni and caught the 424 bus to a shopping complex only five minutes away.

We stopped by a 7-Eleven style shop to pick up some cheap sushi in the refrigerated section and brought it into the cinema. We bumped into Xavier, Billy, Kevin and Roger who were going to a Karaoke club from what I understood (often called KTV in China).

They mentioned that one of the shops in the mall was selling the iPhone 5 but that there was no working display model, so you couldn't play with it. I checked it out all the same and held a dummy model just to get an idea of its size and feel. Really great from my first impressions.

We watched the 5:20 p.m. showing of Taken 2 which only ran for an hour and a half but was well worth seeing. Liam Neeson does what he does best: kill lots of bad guys. As he says, "I'm going to make sure they'll never bother us again for the rest of our lives."

Evening

After the film is over at around 7 p.m. we catch the 424 back to uni and I finish off my Canton Fair assignment that is due in Matt's office by 12 p.m. tomorrow. Matt is my journalism teacher. I then print it off at a nearby print shop and me and John head out to get some fresh fruit juice.

We see that a new pizza place has opened up on the way to the fruit juice stall and I decide to try a 7-inch bacon, sweetcorn, onion, and black olive pizza for RMB 16. It's not bad at all. I briefly help the owner with some simple translation of his menu and he gives us some free juice. I don't have a clue what some of the pizzas on the menu are: Rainbow pizza is one of them.

P.S. It's a nightmare posting to this blog because the VPN is so damn slow in the evening!

Eat Pork And Die!

2012-10-16T23:30:00.000+01:00

There is no pork served in a Muslim cafe I regularly eat at here in Guangzhou

Morning

This morning I got up around 10 a.m., had a shower, made a coffee (I bought some fresh ground Espresso coffee from IKEA a few weeks ago for 29 RMB per packet, and Amy brought me back a plunger from Hong Kong the weekend just gone by), and put on a wash.

This is mostly how my mornings go when I don't have an early class, which is every day except Thursdays.

I got a call from Billy around 11:30 a.m. to see if I had eaten yet and wanted to go for lunch in the student canteen. Again, this is pretty common. I generally eat with the same people each day (Billy, John, sometimes joined by Mark, Roger and Kevin from the room next door). They are all good guys, though I am closest with Billy and John (the former of whom is a roommate and the latter is a nice guy who lives next door, very studious and well-meaning - I will perhaps write at length about them in a separate post).

I head to the canteen and catch Billy and John on their way there. Because my canteen card had run out of credit this morning I was unable to eat on the ground floor because there is no cash payment option. So while they choose their food I head upstairs to the first floor and order some dumpling soup which I pay for with cash. There's a good ten or so dumplings in it (called "jiaozi" in China), along with a little pickled vegetables, coriander and dry beans (not sure which type).

Downstairs, I find Billy and John at a table and join them. They are each eating their usual favourites: Billy likes meat and John likes vegetables. The food on the ground floor of the canteen doesn't change much day to day so I often notice the same or very similar items on their trays. I guess they don't mind because they always seem to come back for more. And each day they eat a mountain of steamed white rice with their meal, both at lunch and dinner. I don't know how they don't get utterly sick of it but that is just Chinese people for you. They live and die by steamed white rice.

Afternoon

Like my morning, my entire afternoon is free because on Tuesdays I don't have a single class. With no plans in mind, I can tell from a mile off that this is going to be a fairly boring afternoon. The guys in the dorm are on their favourite online games (World of Warcraft, League of Legends, etc.) and I can't face burying my head in my news feed yet again. Reading news is all I seem to do out here day in day out! My Nexus 7 tablet has been great for it, but at the same time it becomes repetitive and I lose interest. There's only so many tech news stories on the iPhone 5 or whatever else is making headlines in that particular week that I can stomach! (though I must admit my threshold is pretty high)

Yesterday I had paid for my MacBook to have Windows 7 installed on it for 50 RMB at a computer shop on the university campus. However, a copy of Call of Duty 3: Modern warfare that I bought for 10 RMB from a street vendor yesterday won't install. The guy at the computer shop says it's because he put on the English version of Windows 7 whilst I would need the Chinese version to be compatible with the game. Anyway, I can probably just download the Chinese system package for Windows 7, it's just a matter of getting round to it.

Around 2:30 p.m. I head to the library with Billy because he has some homework to do. John is asleep (he takes afternoon naps like many Chinese) when we leave but will join us once he wakes up. We first go to top-up our canteen cards (I put 100 RMB on mine which should last a a few weeks) and then make our way to the library. It's only a five minute walk. We decide to check out the underground level where there is a cafe and I end up ordering a 15 RMB sandwich so we can stay a while. However, once we get a text from John saying he has arrived and is already studying at a table upstairs, we get the bill and leave to meet him.

After an hour or two in the library it is 5 p.m. and time for dinner. Even though I now have money in my canteen card, I decide to get some more dumpling soup from the first floor. It's good stuff. This time Billy and john eat upstairs as well. I speak a little with an English teacher called Frank who is sat next to me at the table. I have seen him around campus and he is always by himself. He tells me he's been in Guangzhou for two years, but has also lived elsewhere in China (like Beijing). He says he prefers it in the Mainland to Hong Kong, though finds it hard to explain exactly why: something to do with the speed of life and more time off. Hong Kong is too fast-paced, he says. It just wears you out.

Evening

By the time I get back from canteen it is already the start of the evening. At 7 p.m. I head back out to the library for another study session with John. Well, he is studying and I am just trying to make a mindmap of some material from the business module I'm taking (Organisational Behaviour) with an app on my Nexus 7 tablet. I do it for a while but progress is slow and quickly get bored. After around an hour and a half we leave.

We take a walk to the restaurant street and by the time we get to the Muslim restaurant it's already about 9 p.m. I order some soup noodles because the dumplings I had for dinner weren't really all that filling. Apparently it's healthier to eat more often and less at each sitting, so sometimes I'll have a relatively light dinner and then another small meal later in the evening. In fact, I do this quite often.

I speak to the guy who works in the Muslim restaurant and who I've already known for some time because I eat there regularly. Today I learn his name is Hu Dai. He's friendly, 25 years old. Tells us some crazy shit about how in China he could kill someone and be protected by the law if they break his religious customs in his family's Muslim restaurant. All seems a bit mad and I'm sure it's completely untrue: if he killed someone he would go to jail. Doesn't matter that they were eating pork, smoking and drinking beer in his Muslim establishment. Anyway, he's a nice guy in spite of this crazy stuff he was going on about.

It's Not Us, It's Them

2012-10-15T13:14:00.001+01:00

Relations between Hong Kong and China were strained earlier this year when proposals for national education to be introduced into Hong Kong schools was met with strong opposition.

August saw riots and protests as tens of thousands took to the streets to voice their stance against the proposals which they claimed were attempts by Beijing to "brainwash" the younger generation.

Nolan Wong, a Mainland journalism student in Guangzhou, said: "I feel that tensions between Hong Kong and the Mainland is more to do with them not liking us. They see themselves as separate. These divisions are even more pronounced the further North you go as you leave Guangdong province."

However, Mr Wong said he understands why Hong Kong-ers are suspicious of the Chinese government and agreed that it would be better if such heavy censorship of the Internet wasn't exercised.

When asked what he would do to better relations between Hong Kong and the Mainland if he was in power, Carl Ji, also a journalism student in Guangzhou, said: "I would force all women to wear miniskirts."

Mr Ji failed to elaborate how precisely this would help to improve the image of the Chinese Communist Party abroad.

Hong Kong media is known for its open criticism and distrust of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), though some political and media commentators claim this has softened in recent years.

C. Y. Leung is the current Chief Executive of Hong Kong.

What I Saw In Tai Po This Morning

2012-06-12T10:03:00.000+01:00

This morning I was out and about at around 8 AM. I was walking across the bridge in Tai Po and this guy in front of me dropped his umbrella. He looked middle aged but his clothes (a pair of shorts and a t-shirt) were quite worn. At first I couldn't tell if he was perhaps homeless, but I didn't thinks so; perhaps a manual worker or labourer which would have explained why he was a bit scruffy.

He seemed to be in his forties, with a little bit of grey coming through his hair, which was longish, down to the top of his neck. At this point I was still several meters behind him and it was as I approached closer (we were walking in the same direction so I could only see him from behind) that I thought something was strange. He seemed drunk perhaps, or wobbly on his feet; weak. Was he homeless? When had he last eaten? Surely he couldn't be suffering from heat stroke. It was 8 in the morning!

By now I am almost upon him. He is walking slowly and I am about to pass him by. Then when I am only a few meters away he drops his umbrella. I see him bend over to pick it up but the way he does it is strange. He cannot bend all the way down. He is not bending his knees but leaning over as if he is about to fall. His movements are slow and odd. His right hand, however, is outstretched, clearly grasping for the umbrella that now lies on the pavement. His fingers are coming up short by a good six inches. Why doesn't he bend his knees and reach down like anybody else would?

Next he loses his balance and falls flat on his face. He faceplants the pavement. I walk by because what am I to do? I don't speak Chinese. I keep looking back though. I see he has a nasty cut over his right eye and blood is beginning to stream down his face. I can tell by his expression that he is numb to the pain. He looks around as if he doesn't know where he is, now sitting on his backside on the ground, dazed. I don't know what's wrong with him. I think again that he is perhaps drunk, but at the same time it doesn't quite fit the picture.

As I walk on a Chinese lady in her forties comes up to help him. She talks to him in Chinese but I cannot hear what his reply is. I don't keep looking back for fear of attracting too much attention to the situation. As I pass over the bridge, I don't really understand what has happened, except that a seemingly drunk or disorientated man in his forties dropped his umbrella and faceplanted the pavement as a result of trying to pick it up. Strange. Very strange. But clearly these things happen in Tai Po!

How was your morning?

Returning To Blogger... Yet Again!

2012-06-12T09:36:00.001+01:00

Hmmm... it's quite weird. I've returned to Blogger already after only four days at WordPress. I even talked about why I moved to WordPress (again!) in a post on June 8. That was only four days ago! Can you believe my loyalty to Google's Blogger is this stubborn? Why? What's so great about Blogger anyway?

Honestly, I think it comes down to two things: ease of use and design. Although I don't like Blogger's dynamic views for blogs that aim to make money (whether that be through AdSense or affiliate marketing, because they are highly uncustomisable), I do like them (for the most part) for personal blogs like this one. They work pretty well as a personal space.

Why do I say this? Well, as far as I understand, they run on HTML 5 which means they look pretty good and load quickly. I must admit though, I don't especially like seeing the little orange and white cog wheel that appears on the screen each time you visit the blog. It's just there while the page loads. It's obvious that Google has put some serious thought into their dynamic view templates and have in turn created something that is not just a static page. They are wholly unique to Blogger blogs.

Anyway, currently I've set my theme to Timeslide which shows a mixture of images, texts and headings. For now it's my favourite. I've also customised the theme to keep it clean and simple, blacks on whites with high contrast. The images look crisp and vibrant against this style.

I just want to clarify: I moved to WordPress because I was worried that my blog wasn't showing up when I searched my name in Google. Then just now I realised I could easily change the entire URL from montymiketimes.blogspot.com to michaeldewaalmontgomery.blogspot.com. That solves that problem. Also, I don't think Blogger's SEO as a platform is so terrible that it won't show up in Google searches!

I may also pay US$10/year to get a private domain name (through a Google partner right from the settings menu). Perhaps michaeldewaalmontgomery.com. Obviously no one is going to have that! It always turns my blog into something of a portfolio as it becomes one of the first things a prospective employer will find when they Google my name. Gotta think ahead!

The Smartphone Nation

2012-06-12T08:59:00.002+01:00

Hong Kong is a smartphone nation. I've never been anywhere else in the world where smartphones are such a common sight. And I'm not talking about cheap models either. I swear almost every third person I pass here is wielding a Samsung Galaxy Note. That or an iPhone 4(S). Though actually it has been my observation that Android is dominant out here.

I'm not sure how people really afford these HK$5000+ phones out here, what with the minimum wage only at HK$28 per hour. Granted there's a lot of people who earn more than that (and in some cases a LOT more than that), but I imagine it's still the majority of the population that are on meagre salaries. I suppose they are just willing to pay for high-end technology and gadgets, especially when it comes to smartphones.

In spite of the cost of some of these handheld machines, Hong Kong remains among the cheapest places in the world for electronics. Apple goods, for example, from my calculations are close to 25% cheaper than in the UK. That is a HUGE saving. Perhaps it has something to do with Apple having one of their major factories just a few miles away in Shenzhen (on the Chinese mainland). Yet that clearly hasn't had the same affect on the price of Apple in the mainland where it remains much the same as some other parts of the world (such as the UK): in other words, expensive.

Hong Kong is also great for buying smartphone and tablet accessories such as cases and covers. There is a always a wide selection at street markets, usually for a very reasonably price once you haggle a little. There are even some indoors markets in Tai Po that I have bought from that don't require you to haggle because the prices are so low anyway. We're talking about £5 for a really decent case.

I've seen labourers on building sites with Galaxy Notes. I can't imagine there are many lower paid jobs around than that. They'll definitely be the kind of workers on HK$28/hour. That's like £2.50. And yes, they probably have cheap lifestyles. Let's not forget that it's possible to live on the cheap in Hong Kong too. Their rent is probably very low and the places they live in will be very basic.

But anyway, I don't know where I was going with this; it was just my sharing of an observation. I would have thought I'd see as many gadgets on London but no, it seems like Hong Kong is really ahead in terms of consumer spending on smartphones (and just about everything else too!). Don't you know the national passtime is shopping. I'm not kidding, either. It's a well known fact!

On a slight side note, Samsung is massively popular out here and I know already that the new Galaxy S3 is going to have huge sales here, but personally I still think the HTC One X is the better of the two. Why? The display. Put the two side by side and see for yourself. There's a big difference. I already saw one guy with the S3 today and I wondered why he didn't go for the One X.

As with everything else, advertising is important. Although HTC have had a big ad run for the One X, Samsung had probably consistently spent more on it and done it better, leaving them with a large user base and very good image. People here definitely like Samsung and it shows. I see more Samsung phones than any other brand, including Apple's iPhone.

But I hope HTC can pull back some ground in this smartphone nation because their build quality is incredible, even if they have had their share of faults in the past (battery life hasn't always been the best from what I've heard). So let's see more One X and less S3! I guess everyone wants what everyone else has, and out here that's Samsung. When it comes to the Note, however, I understand. The sheer size of the screen is unmatched. I think it's the reason for the birth of the term "phablet". Get it? A phone tablet.

Good night from this smartphone nation. Sorry, that was an awful rant!

Blogging On The Go

2012-06-08T11:30:00.000+01:00

How much time do you spend away from the computer each day? Do you keep a personal blog? What about if you're commuting and have little to do for an hour except maybe play some mobile games or go on Facebook?

With smartphones now so widely used, you'd expect more people to write to their blogs whilst away from the computer. In reality, however, I just don't believe this happens. Why?

Although smartphones are amazing devices capable of all manner of things, things that we couldn't imagine 10 years ago, they are still not ideal for doing lots of writing on. Virtual keyboards are getting more accurate all the time, but for most people it's still not worth the effort it takes to knock out a post on one of them.

Then there's the matter of editing. Usually bloggers, or any writers, will go through a (sometimes lengthy) process of editing their work before hitting that publish button. Trying to do that process as productively as possible is asking a lot from a smartphone. Building links, copying images, fine tuning the writing; it all takes a lot longer than on the computer.

Perhaps people's attitude to the blogging process should be considered. Are we spoiled as bloggers today? Has it ever been easier to share our lives with friends, family and strangers alike?

I've heard that maintaining a simple blog used to be a lot more difficult years ago. People used to have to edit the HTML themselves. It was about more than just inputting text back then. Now, though, everything is easier. Too easy, perhaps. It's easy to be ungrateful.

If you have a high end smartphone today, the technology you can hold in your hand is powerful. Give that to a blogger 10 years ago and I bet they would think writing on the virtual keyboards of today a joy, especially once they got their typing speed up.

This is all a bit of personal reflection for me really. I've owned a new HTC One X for a few weeks now and once or twice I've thought about trying to knock out a blog post from it. Usually, however, my attitude is that it would just be too hard and not worth the effort.

But I'm someone who really likes sharing my thoughts from time to time and that's what attracted me to blogging in the first place. Even though you might not realise it, writing down your thoughts is a useful exercise. It can make you a more fluent writer and also show you where your weaknesses are. That's why today I reconsidered my attitude to mobile blogging.

So today when I was out and about and felt a bit bored waiting around, I got out my phone, loaded up the Google Play Store and downloaded the free WordPress app. It's from here that I've been sharing these thoughts, and it's not been as painful as I had previously imagined.

Blogging from a smartphone is definitely slower than a computer, but it's mobility is a real advantage. It lives in your pocket! How much more convenient can you get? It also enables you to write when you're in the mood rather than waiting till you get home hours later and no longer want to.

I think being open to the idea of blogging from your smartphone could make you far more productive as a blogger. How many blogs have you started or do you know of that died because the person stopped finding the inspiration for a new post? It was probably a lot to do with their inability to write when the inspiration came.

So, I'm looking forward to potentially knocking out some more posts from my phone in the future. If it works as a blogging system, it would be a great step forward for my productivity as a blogger, and it would allow me to share my thoughts more often when I have a spare 20 minutes.

The future of technology is going to be all about mobility. Are you going to be a part of it? The truth is, much of the future we envisioned is already here. Just open your eyes and look around. If you can adapt to the advantages of mobility as a blogger, I think you've got a far better chance of surviving than others who do not.

The computer is no longer your only point of access to the "new post" button of your preferred blogging platform.

Personal Update #2: Staying Connected

2012-06-08T11:00:00.000+01:00

Having been back in Hong Kong for a month now, I'm much less in contact with close friends and family. I'd like to be able to pick up the phone at any time of day and make a call or send a text, but with the time difference and people's lifestyles it's not always possible.

WhatsApp is great for keeping in touch text-

message style and I've been using it for a few friends. However, there are still some people I'd like to see using the service *cough*Cameron*cough* that for some reason still aren't.

I should be using Skype a lot more than I have been: yesterday was the first time in three weeks that I spoke to my mum. Again, the time difference can make it difficult but there's always a couple windows of opportunity every day. First thing in the morning and then later in the afternoon/evening. I'm always between six and seven hours ahead of friends and family back in Europe.

Yesterday I bought a pay as you go data sim card. For HK$18/month, I get 50MB of data usage. That is enough for checking emails, WhatsApp and other minor tasks. It's just great so that I can stay connected when I'm not around a Wi-Fi network. The ability to reply to an email immediately if need be is great.

I just miss the giffgaff £10/month unlimited data pay as you go sim card!

The HTC One X I bought a few weeks ago for HK$5200 (£435 was the exchange rate my bank gave me) has proven to be an excellent phone and is still considered the best in the world, along with the Samsung Galaxy S3 which only came out last week here in Hong Kong.

I now use my phone for more than the computer, though there are still some things I absolutely need the computer for: blogging, for example.

A couple days ago I watched a YouTube video tutorial on how to root the HTC One X (unlock the bootloader) and then install custom ROMs. This has been an awesome experience and has allowed me to get rid of HTC's Sense UI and swap it for an independent developer's.

The developer's name is JDROiD (that's what he goes by online) and he created an Ice Cream Sandwich stock ROM similar to CyanogenMod 9 but that keeps the best aspects of Sense such as the rapid shoot camera.

At the end of last year Samsung released the Galaxy Nexus. It ran the stock Android 4.0 ICS experience in the way that Google created it. This was so great because usually every handset manufacturer customises the UI with their own design. Otherwise, they worry, what separates them from others?

The thing is, a lot of the stuff they change is for the worse. The design is never superior to Goole's original and the extra apps they throw on (known as bloatware) are often crappy. What's the long and short of it? More and more people just want the original Android experience as created by Google. And that includes me, which is why I rooted my One X and installed JDROiD's eXoDiZeD ROM. I'm never going back to stock Sense.

It's rumoured that later this year Google are going to be releasing five Pure Google (Nexus) devices, all from different manufacturers. They will all be running the as-yet unreleased Anrdroid 5.0 Jelly Bean (awesome name, right?). I'm looking forward to seeing these new phones and the latest version of Android (which I will of course be running as a ROM on my One X once developers catch up).

EDIT: I said the following before coming back to Blogger (again!)

I had to mention this eventually. Yes, I've moved to Wordpress for my personal blog. You can still find all my old posts over at The Monty Mike Times.

I moved because when I searched Google for my name (as employers in the future will) my blog wasn't being returned in the results. I needed that to change.

So now I have named this blog using my full name and with Wordpress being awesome at SEO (search engine optimisation) it should appear in search results before long.

I actually also prefer WordPress's Twenty Eleven theme (the one I'm using here at the time of writing this post) over anything that Blogger offers. Even Blogger's Dynamic View templates turned out to be a bit of a let down for me due to the extreme lack of customisation that you can do with them. Nearly every blog using the Dynamic View templates look alike. That's not good in a world where you need to stand out!

I've been in the gym most weekdays, though didn't go yesterday and the day before due to being too tired. I'm still doing a two-day split with upper body one day and lower body (legs) the next. I try to fit in a bit of stomach work on each day.

The gym here isn't that cheap. I'm paying about the same as I would be in the UK (around £25 per month) but it's in a convenient location and I'm using it quite a bit. If only I could have another year at the university's gym in Preston for £150!

Please follow this blog by clicking on the follow button at the top if you are a friend or family member and I will use it to keep you updated. This is especially useful if we're not in touch often, or only have contact by the occasional email.

Angry Birds Hong Kong-style

2012-05-18T02:51:00.000+01:00

Image source

Let me tell you my friends, Hong Kongers are Angry Birds crazy. Maybe it's generally an Asian thing, and I know the company has had huge success worldwide, but I'm amazed at the extent to which Hong Kong seems to have adopted these feathery little balls of war.

Yesterday I was walking through Tai Po and saw two Angry Birds cakes selling for HK$98 each in the Maxims bakery chain. True, they would be great for kids' birthday parties, but the fact that this isn't just a one-off promotion but a permanent product (I was here last year and saw them already then) shows just how popular the brand is now.

Rovio, the creators of Angry Birds, have plans for an IPO in the Hong Kong Stock Exchange next year (2013), and in March of this year they held a special event on the 100th floor of Hong Kong's tallest skyscraper to mark the launch of Angry Birds Space. Does Rovio go to that kind of extremes in the Western world? I guess it shows how much I know.

One of the reasons the brand has been so stupidly successful in Asia - and Hong Kong specifically - must surely be down to the widespread use of smartphones. If you walked around Hong Kong for a day, I think you would be blown away by the sheer number of top-end smartphones you'd see. That's before even getting on to the tablet-craze that is also evident here. I've known five-year-olds to have their own iPads. And it's not as uncommon as you might think.

Rovio's success here must therefore be linked to the large amount of consumer-spending on technology each year. Everyone seems to have the latest gadgets. The fact that they're more affordable than in Europe also doubtless plays a part. I imagine app sales are sky-high too, both in Apple's iOS App Store and Android's newly-named Google Play store (previously the Android Market).

What's fascinating is this thought: is Angry Birds becoming a symbol for the divide between rich and poor kids here in Hong Kong. How can a poor child afford a smartphone - or even a computer - on which to play the game? What kind of pressure is being put on parents to buy their child(ren) an expensive gadget so that they can have something to talk about and have in common with their friends?

With the minimum wage in Hong Kong now at HK$28 per hour as of 2011 (the first time a minimum wage has ever been introduced here), there's no way some children will ever be holding that latest smartphone and flicking these feathery little balls of war across their 4.7-inch HD screens. It's a game for those who can afford the hardware, not just the cheap and cheerful apps.

Continued Online Monetization Efforts

2012-05-01T11:45:00.001+01:00

Google AdSense Toolbar. Image source

Lately I've got back to thinking about monetizing content online. Over at The BLCU Blog I've added some Amazon Associate product links to the sidebar in the hope of generating some affiliate sales. I have included Rosetta Stone's Chinese course (which is admittedly very expensive and will probably not generate any purchases, but it's nonetheless a quality resource and is always worth the chance that it does lead to a sale), a Chinese learner's textbook, an Oxford Chinese dictionary for beginners, as well as Amazon's Kindle Touch (simply because it's a high-selling product that is particularly useful to anyone that is going travelling).

I read an update over on Blogger Buzz (which is Google's official Blogger blog) that introduced a great new feature: affiliate product suggestions within the post-editor that are related to the content you are writing. That is incredibly useful and I was excited to get my hands on it, but unfortunately it's only been rolled out to US blogs for now. I'm not sure when they plan to offer it to the rest of the blogging world, but I hope it's sometime soon. It could certainly help me generate sales on The BLCU Blog and is a big step for monetization of online content on the Blogger platform (and I would say on all blogging platforms). It offers Google's Blogger users a real advantage over other free platforms, none of which allow you to monetize your blog if it's hosted on their free servers.

I read about a guy early last year (unfortunately I no longer have the link) that was already generating $1000 per month through his Blogger blog, in spite of many professional bloggers swearing allegiance to Wordpress and scoffing at Google's free platform as looking "cheap" and being "crap at SEO". I was always surprised to hear this last comment considering Google is the king of SEO, but unfortunately they're not entirely wrong. Blogger has come a long way since then, though, especially with it's introduction of Dynamic Views which I used for a time before reverting back to the traditional templates. Unfortunately they're just not as customizable and don't do a great job of AdSense integration either which is important for many people who look to generate revenue online.

Last month (I believe), Google announced their new AdSense Publisher Toolbar which I've since installed on Chrome (my web browser) and find very useful. With a single click I can now see my AdSense income for the day, month and all time, rather than having to access it through the website (see picture at the top of this post).

To date, then, I've made £55 through blogging: £30 with Google AdSense and £25 through affiliate sales of VPN software subscriptions aimed at people going to study Chinese at BLCU and thus needing to bypass Internet restrictions put in place by the Chinese government. I take something like 10% of purchases, as is often the case with affiliate marketing plans. I can't complain, but I'd always hoped to make a lot more. My BLCU blog already ranks in 5th or 6th place for the search term 'BLCU' in Google, which is very good and so should be generating a fair bit of monthly traffic. I hope in the future it continues to refer even more visitors. It works well as a portfolio piece too as it shows my skills, at least to some extent, in working with websites and digital content. It should also demonstrate clearly a basic understanding of SEO and social media integration (for example, for a long time I've run a dedicated Twitter account and Facebook page for The BLCU Blog which has helped a lot in generating attention from the online community in these places).

I had considered creating a basic e-book for The BLCU Blog but never committed to investing the time into doing so. It would be a fairly lengthy process and I would have to learn about it along the way, not to mention setting up a PayPal seller button on the blog and other small related issues that come with selling an e-book. No doubt it would be a good learning experience, but I'm just not up for it right now.

Well, thanks for reading this rant on my monetization efforts online. I think I've run out of steam for now. Until next time.

The London-Preston Express

2012-04-30T22:33:00.001+01:00

Image source

Coming back on the train from London today, there was a guy seated behind me who had been on Britain's Got Talent from what I gathered. He was constantly getting phone calls off his mates about his performance and spent a while talking to two other passengers about his experience. He had just done it over the weekend in London but was from Preston of all places. He got off at the same time as me. He was giving people his Twitter details so they could follow his progress.

Then he was also telling people how earlier today he'd asked a guy sitting in a coffee shop at the train station for directions and it turned out to be none other than Johnny Vegas. He said he was really nice in person and he got a photo together with him on his phone. He wasn't telling me this, I just overheard it all. And that's not to say I was being nosy; he told it several times to different people.

Then towards the end of the trip a girl was ranting to the passenger next to her about life in Edinburgh. The music, the night life, the club scene, penniless artists, poverty, that kind of thing. But she became pretty annoying after a while, swearing quite a bit, fairly loud and speaking at about a hundred miles per second. The guy must've been desperately thinking of an excuse to get away, especially considering that they were both on until the final stop (Edinburgh), two and a half hours after I got off at Preston! It was going to be a long ride for him! In the beginning he was sounding interested and asking questions, but then his responses became more predictable, nodding his head and making noises now and then to show he was following but saying less and less.

Relieved after the better part of three hours on the train from London Euston, I stepped onto the platform at Preston and headed back to my accommodation. The weather was much milder here than I expected, pretty similar to down south. It was a pleasant surprise.

Tomorrow Shaun is coming through from Manchester where he's staying in a hotel with his dad tonight after watching the Manchester derby in a business box at the stadium. I've got to sort out some assignments I already handed in as apparently I was meant to submit them as one piece rather than in separate files. So tomorrow morning I'll take care of that and then probably head to the gym after lunch.

Now I'm pretty tired, so bowing out here. Just a short one.

Journalism Portfolio: Self-Generated News Story

2012-04-25T14:17:00.003+01:00

I had to come up with a self-generated local news story as part of my first year assessments in International Journalism.

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Foreign spending by the Chinese community is helping some local businesses to survive during these tough economic times, that’s according to business owners interviewed in Preston today.

Mr Qasim Mohammad, owner of Mail Boxes Etc., 131 Friargate, Preston said: “We like our Chinese customers. There would definitely be less footfall through the door without them.”

However, according to Mr Mohammad there are now fewer Chinese in Preston than before. He added: “We used to employ two Chinese staff just to deal with all the Chinese customers!”

Shop owner Mrs Tang, of Kwong Fatt Oriental Supermarket, Market Street, Preston said: “The local people have no money, they are not spending! We rely on our Chinese customers. Without them we could not survive.”

Mrs Tang estimated that the local Chinese accounted for at least 90% of her clientele. She believed that the booming economy in China was partly to thank for her business’s success.

As British consumers limit their spending due to a lack of jobs and sluggish economy that saw a 0.2% fall in GDP in the first quarter of 2012, foreign capital is welcomed now more than ever by local high street businesses.

Mr Kin Wah Pang, 19, a student from Hong Kong studying at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston, said: “I spent nearly £1000 on designer clothing during the January sales this year. It’s much cheaper than buying the same brands in China and the quality is higher too.”

In the first quarter of 2012 China’s economy expanded by 8.1%, making it one of the fastest growing economies in the world today.

Journalism Portfolio: Court Reporting

2012-04-25T13:19:00.001+01:00

Court reporting was one of the assessments during the first year of my International Journalism degree. It required us to attend the Preston Magistrates Court for a morning, take notes on the cases and then choose one to write up. I wrote a brief blog post describing the court visit that day.

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A driver who has been charged with the assault of another driver appeared before Preston Magistrates Court today.

Yasin Aslama-Lanjir, 24, of 16 Alice Square, Preston, pleaded not guilty to charges of assault dating back to September 12, 2011.

Mr John Abbott, prosecuting, claimed that at 3:35 p.m. on September 12, 2011 Mr Lee Dreeland was driving his gold Peugeot down Church Street, Preston, when he pulled over into a bus stop.

A white Mercedes, allegedly belonging to Aslama-Lanjri, came to a stop on the opposite side of the road. Two two males got out of the Mercedes, one White and one Asian, and approached the near side of Mr Dreeland’s Peugeot.

The prosecution went on to claim that the two men proceeded to smash one of the windows and that the Asian male then took the driver’s keys whilst the White male began beating him.

Aslama-Lanjri’s defence denies his being present at the incident and claims he took no part in it. He insisted to the court: “I was not even there”. He does not, however, deny owning a white Mercedes like the one which was described at the scene of the assault.

The case has been adjourned to April 30, 2012 and the defendant has been remanded on conditional bail until that date. The trial continues.

Journalism Portfolio: Character Profile

2012-04-24T21:10:00.000+01:00

One of my first year assessments in International Journalism was to write a profile piece that could be used in the local newspaper. We had complete freedom to choose who we interviewed for the piece.

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China’s economy is booming and as of February last year it overtook Japan to become the world’s second-largest economy. Many predict that it will steal the top spot from the USA by 2020. I spoke to Mr Xiaojun Yuan, a Chinese teacher working at the University of Central Lancashire here in Preston, to find out what he thinks about the situation and how he finds life here.

I wanted to know what brought him to Preston and whether he likes it. “I came here to teach Chinese,” he tells me, as if stating it merely for the record, before continuing, “And what I like most about Preston is the environment, the green grass, the fact that it’s very clean. The air, the sky, it’s all so clean. But,” he pauses for a moment and his face holds the same thoughtful expression as before, “I don’t like the weather. The weather is cold,” he stresses this last word as if it is something highly unpleasant that could do him real harm. “Lots of rain,” he pauses, “But you know, now in my hometown in China the weather is very good. April is the best month.” He relates this with some pride and a broad smile spreads across his face.

I move the conversation along to the topic of what attracts Chinese people such as himself to leave their home in search of work abroad. What appeals to them about life in a place like Preston? He says: “Now many wealthy Chinese are going abroad to North America and Europe because they think there is more potential to develop their business, or offer a better education for their child and the opportunity for them to learn English.” At this point I consider his use of the singular child rather than children and reflect on China’s one-child policy. “There is also a third factor,” he continues, looking quite serious. “There are many poor people in China and there is a very real fear that the fortunes of the wealthy may one day be taken away.” I realise he is talking about a revolution. When I suggest the word he immediately recognises it and tries to repeat it, clearly struggling with the tricky pronunciation. He nods his head fervently. “Yes, revolution.”

I ask him what he finds most difficult about living in Preston and adjusting to the British culture. “The most difficult thing is food,” he tells me with a small laugh. “Chinese food is very good and there are many different kinds.” Having been to China myself, I wholeheartedly agree with him. The vastness of the Chinese cuisine is something that most people who have never been to the country will struggle to appreciate. “Another difficulty is loneliness. It’s very difficult to find friends because of my poor English, so often I don’t know how to spend my free time.” He also laughs at this but I can tell it is a more serious problem than missing his home cuisine. I think of the sense of alienation I sometimes felt when travelling alone through parts of South Asia and my heart goes out to him.

I’m curious about how he sees the differences between British and Chinese students. With years of teaching experience in both countries, he would seem very qualified to answer. I get the impression he is trying to be diplomatic, but then just comes straight out with what is on his mind: “Most Chinese students are very hardworking. Students here are generally not as hardworking, they often arrive late to class and love going to the pub. But they are clever.”

Finally, I want to know his thoughts on what our two cultures can learn from each other. “I think Chinese people often do not dare to express themselves. They are usually shy, lacking confidence.” Then he pauses for a time before continuing, “But Chinese people cherish the relationship with their parents. Even once they’ve got married, they often visit them and make time for them. I’ve heard that this is not always the case among Western people and that’s a shame. Family is very important.”

Journalism Portfolio: News Environments Essay

2012-04-24T20:08:00.000+01:00

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Critically discuss the effects of media liberalisation and deregulation in a country of your choice.

In this essay I am going to critically discuss the effects of media liberalisation and deregulation in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Having spent over two years of my life living in both the mainland and Hong Kong, I hope to offer some interesting insights from my own experience as well as what I have learnt from background reading on the subject.

First I will look at the question of what media liberalisation means in the broadest terms before turning to media deregulation and how the two differ from one another. Then I will briefly look at China’s media in a historical context so as to provide a foundation for what is to follow and help put into perspective the ways in which the country’s media has experienced liberalisation and deregulation in recent years. I will also discuss exactly what the effects of these processes have been, sighting relevant examples where possible. Finally, I will consider the extent to which China’s media has really been liberalised and deregulated and what we can expect to see in the years and decades to come.

There is little doubt China has undergone a profound opening-up of its economy and society over the past 50 years, whether that be Mao Zedong’s 1958 proclamation of the ‘Great Leap Forward’ which saw the introduction of a new paradigm of agricultural and industrial production, or the economic reforms of 1978 implemented under Hua Gafeng (Donald, Keane & Hong, 2002, pp. 4-183). But in spite of this and the claims made in 2007 by Cai Wu, former head of the State Council Information Office (SCIO), that “the country will have a more open attitude toward the world and ensure better services for the media” (Jiao, 2007), has the Chinese media actually been reformed, liberalised and deregulated to the extent that one might expect?

Before we can consider these questions, it is necessary to look at precisely what is meant by the term ‘liberalisation’ and how it fits into current media theory. The concept of liberalisation has roots in social and economic policy. It can be broadly defined as “the removal of controls” with the goal of stimulating economic growth and encouraging a healthy economy (Choudary, 2008, p. 131). To give a relevant example, China liberalised many of its sectors in the 1990s (notably the financial and banking sectors), opening them up to foreign investment before joining the World Trade Organization in (WTO) in 2001 (Brandt & Rawski, 2008, p. 657). One of the condition’s for China’s entry into the WTO was that it “allow foreign investors to hold up to 49 percent of certain telecommunications companies, including Internet firms” (Head, 2001, p. 414). This move had a direct effect on China’s media sector and many experts believe it was “a sign marking an accelerated process of opening the domestic media market to international competition” (Zhan & Dimmick, 2005, p. 36).

This, then, was a pivotal moment in China’s recent history with regards to its policy towards the media sector and loosening of economic controls that directly affected it. The need for a ‘healthier’ market resulted in a liberalisation that is often characteristic of how media sectors are made more open by governments seeking to implement more competitive economic policies that, as we have seen already, are required to encourage growth and keep the markets healthy. Lyons (2005) points out that “the admittance into the World Trade Organisation was a benefit that outweighed the past reluctance towards foreign investment”. One obvious result of this is the compromise of allowing foreign investment in media companies that then also helps to promote pluralism of ideas and voices, even if not immediately obvious at first. This is an example of one effect that liberalisation has had in China and how it has come about since the 1978 reforms.

However, there is also another side to be considered. Whilst in theory media liberalisation in China encourages plurality of views, it could also be argued that in reality this is not the case. The concept of ‘cultural despotism’ whereby production and distribution of media content is controlled by the state, in this case the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), has long been associated with the media situation in the country (Shaozhi, 1993) and remains much unchanged to this day, even in spite of the technological advancements brought about with the arrival of the new millennium. The idea can be explained more fully in these terms: “limits on people’s capacity to explain non-orthodox views in the media, or to register complaints against the paramount leadership of the CCP, illustrate the path dependency of China’s leaders, their allegiance to a Leninist media model, and their deep misgivings about democratic pluralism” (Donald, Keane & Hong, 2002, p. 12).

This, then, would seem to suggest that any benefits potentially gained from liberalisation of the media on the surface are apparently lost due to deep-rooted political and social values imposed on the masses by the CCP. Opening up media companies to foreign investment, whilst healthy for the markets and industry from an economic standpoint, may not translate into democratic-pluralism as we have come to expect it in the West in terms of views, voices and opinions freely expressed in the press. Monopolization of the vertical-chains of production and distribution by the state ensure that ultimately they are still in control of what is disseminated on a large scale.

I will now turn briefly to the concept of ‘deregulation’ which is often used to mean the same thing as liberalisation. At any rate, it is perhaps wise to think of deregulation and liberalisation as still being forms of regulation imposed by governments because they believe there is something to gain from lifting restrictions, whether it be economic, social or otherwise. Some media commentators believe that “the new ‘deregulation’ is regulation in disguise” (Silverstone, 1994,p. 90), hinting cynically that changes in government policy towards the media are sometimes more in name than contributing to any real improvements, especially when the removal of restrictions only result in more power being given to already-bloated corporations and media conglomerates that may very well abuse it.

In the context of the media, deregulation can be described as “the process of diminishing intervention by the state into media organizations; the government delegates greater authority over programming, personnel, and business decisions to lower levels in the broadcast and print administrative hierarchy” (Shirk, 2011). I now wish to briefly examine China’s media in a historical context before moving onto specific examples of how the effects of liberalisation and deregulation have been played out in the country using specific case studies and examples.

With the end of China’s Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) there was a desire to set right certain wrongs of the past in terms of journalistic practice and a longing for a return to the ideals of ‘seeking truth from facts’. Although the media and press would still be controlled by the state, it was to be “promoted as instruments of economic and cultural construction, with a new stress placed on business information and entertainment” (Zhao, 1998, p. 34). With the arrival of the 1980s, more independence in journalism was advocated by the likes of the People’s Daily Liu Binyan (Shirk, 2011, p. 80). Media ventures attracted more and more investors and between 2001-2004 the market for print advertising grew by well over 100 percent. Intellectual property rights also saw a dramatic improvement in the late-1990s and all of these conditions, along with government cooperation and a rapid expansion of the economy around the same time, meant that there was now a greater push and incentive than ever before in favour of reform and deregulation of the media market. Journalism, particularly in the form of reports on business and financial stories, thrived in this new environment that was so “conducive to the expansion of capital markets” (ibid).

China enjoyed a period of relatively relaxed media regulation under Deng Xiaoping during the 1980s, though the Tiananmen Square incident in 1989 undid this trend and put to rest hopes for further deregulation until nearly 10 years later and well into the late-1990s under Jiang Zemin. More recently, with the rise of the Internet and the measures of mass-censorship that are being undertaken by the Hu Jintao government, regulations have once again been tightened, certainly for the online media but also for the media industry in general (Southerland, 2007). This has lead to the organisation Reporters Without Borders claiming in their 2009 annual Press Freedom Index that the Chinese government holds “the sorry distinction of leading the world in repression of the Internet” and in 2010 ranked it 168 out of 178 countries (UNHCR, 2009).

In spite of this, there is an increasing move to the commercialization of China’s press and this is a trend that has been going on for the past few decades, with ever more deregulation being offered in profitable media markets such as entertainment, sports and finance (Bennett, 2011). This has been a liberalising process for the media as the state is less able to control financially independent outlets than was the case in the past, resulting in more media autonomy and increased market competition that is directly linked to quality journalism. Similar independence has been found in the talk radio format which has seen the transition from a single government radio station operating in regions such as the Shanghai Municipal some years ago to the well over 100 stations that exist today. This has also seen the lessening of predictable pro-state propaganda material in the medium and a wider choice between views for listeners tuning in.

The move away from heavy subsidising of state media has meant that revenue has had to be found through commercial means, i.e. advertising (Zhao, 1998). As such, this has resulted in a more diversified media due to the fact that advertisers are essentially customers that must be sold an attractive package and may be potentially put of if they regard the station as merely a ‘mouthpiece’ of the party-state. In some ways, therefore, this deregulation has meant that broadcast stations, for example, must offer more programmes that people want to see in order to attract larger audiences that can be packaged and sold on to advertisers. It is clear that “behind this policy lay an economic imperative: to transform the state media from a loss-making drain on government finances into a globally competitive industry. To attract advertisers and consumers, even Beijing's most hidebound apparatchiks realised the media must be allowed to offer better fare than official propaganda and deathly dull speeches” (Economist, 2005). Competition is encouraged between media outlets even though ultimately the state defines what type of content is allowed; there are financial rewards/bonuses for journalists that are sympathetic to the government’s ideals or views (Esarey, 2005, p. 37–83). So even within this apparent deregulation of media subsidising in favour of creating more competition in the market there is still guaranteed bias to the CCP’s ideology and worldview due to incentives offered to journalists ‘under the table’ so to speak, even if the picture painted by official government policy seems to suggest a far more open and fair system of income and revenue-generation almost entirely through advertising.

In spite of China’s appalling record of jailing journalists (42 in 2004) and the ‘Internet-policing’ that it carries out, since Deng Xiaoping came to power and over the last few decades, as has already been mentioned, it could be argued that there has been an overall climate of more open media content that has accompanied the social and economic reforms. Talking on the subject of newspaper reporting at a visit to the People’s Daily offices in 2008, President Hu Jintao stressed the need for accuracy and objectivity with no room for “tardiness, deception, incompleteness or distortion” (Moore, 2008). Unfortunately, powerful institutions in China such as the Central Propaganda Department and the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television, still seek to curb liberalisation of the media wherever possible, and Beijing continues to limit any reports that may paint a negative picture of government policies, etc. (An & An, 2008).

Sometimes it seems that the Chinese government is its own worst enemy when it comes to understanding how to successfully implement media liberalising and deregulating policies. As one commentator put it, “reform often proceeds in fits and starts in China” (Economist, 2005); there is progress for a time and then there is tremendous back-tracking over old problems. The move to give the state-run Xinhua News Agency power to censor the news of foreign agencies is typical of extreme policy decisions that seem counter-productive to the demand for growth of a deregulated media market. As of 2007, Xinhua “retains the right to censor materials disseminated by any foreign news agency in China” (Glasser, 2006, p. 104).

From all this, then, one could argue that the real deregulation of the Chinese media is yet to come. Journalists operating in China are still far more restricted than their Western cousins and must still abide by rules that aren’t always clearly laid out in government policy. Historical events such as the Tiananmen Square incident in 1989 as well as technological advancements have all brought with them more problems than solutions for an open media in China. There is a relaxing of regulations for a while, what you may call a period of liberalisation, but then there is a tightening once again that makes it very hard to know precisely where the media stand in the country. Even if in the past there were deregulatory policies put into place, as we have seen from the withdrawal of subsidies from the broadcast sector, there are more often than not grey areas where there remain more uncertainties and it is unclear precisely what is going on behind closed doors. Journalists still live in threat of imprisonment and, even worse, in threat of physical harm whilst others take payments from officials to toe the line. Shirk (2011) commented that “gradual media deregulation created broad grey areas where opportunities for freer coverage existed beside potential risks - even traps”. Much media content is still examined on a case by case basis, what one commentator called ‘playing on the white line of the ping-pong table” (Hughes, 2002).

In China it is very hard to decide on exactly what the effects of liberalisation and deregulation of the media sector have been except from in the broadest possible terms and with a historical context to help analyse a larger window of time than may be usually needed. This may be characteristic of other developing countries too. The famous Chinese scholar of news believed that “newspapers should put the interests of the people above everything else and be run accordingly... When a communist society is attained, even the party will be eliminated. Yet the people are permanent, they live forever!” (cited in Zhao, 1998, p. 38).

To bring this essay to a conclusion, it is apparent that there has been a gradual opening up of the media since the Cultural Revolution. Many leaders have come and gone, television and the Internet have dominated the media scene but newspapers also continue to flourish in third-world countries such as China. Attempts on behalf of the CCP continue to be met with ever more resistance and slowly but surely more deregulation will have to be implemented if social unrest is to be avoided. If not, we may see similar events to those of 1989 in the years to come. There needs to be a continued push towards more openly legal regulation and further strengthening of economic incentives for media business and owners to operate in China. This must be achieved by relaxing laws and allowing a greater degree of freedom and liberalisation, both in terms of content as well as a move away from state-monopolisation to oligopoly of the print and distribution chains involved in the production of media (as has been mentioned with reference to ‘cultural despotism’). These effects have been realised to a certain extent so far but by no means enough. Journalists are still forced into self-censorship because of uncertainties that remain in the state of the media and attempts at deregulation that have left ‘grey areas’.

Examples such as the English language China Daily’s open criticism of government actions after detaining petitioners in a mental institution in 2008 (Qian, 2008) is seen as a sign of progress towards less government control of the media and even toleration for criticism in certain situations (AFP, 2008) resulting in more editorial freedom for some newspapers in the country and capital.

The extent of liberalisation, however, is still certainly limited to slight relaxations of otherwise strict regulations such as the change since 1994 that has meant the Ministry of Radio, Film, and Television has stopped pre-screening news programmes before they are aired. Citizens have taken advantage of the sharp growth of the Internet to explore the possibilities of citizen journalism, even if those efforts are erased by the so-called ‘Great Firewall of China’, also known as the ‘Kung Fu Net’ among bloggers in China (Scotton & Hachten, 2010, p. 31) and this looks like a trend set to continue for the foreseeable future. One would have to argue that when and where deregulation is implemented it has a positive effect on the Chinese society and its people, allowing more freedom of expression in the media, but the effect has similarly been one of retaliation on part of the government when that liberalisation has more powerful effects than they had anticipated and certain content is seen as a threat to the one-party system.

It is my hope that in this essay I have succeeded in my attempt to critically discuss some of the effects of media liberalisation and deregulation in the People’s Republic of China and that I have illustrated ideas clearly with the use of examples and in historical contexts where helpful.

Bibliography

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Journalism Portfolio: News Writing

2012-04-24T19:52:00.000+01:00

These are the four articles I chose from my first year portfolio of work in International Journalism to submit for assessment. The module is Introduction to Journalism Practice, which aims to teach you the basics of how to write and construct a news story.

Image source

Article 1

Two men who encouraged the August riots through their Facebook accounts should serve some prison time, that’s according to people interviewed in Preston today.

Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan, 22, and Jordan Blackshaw, 21, had their appeals rejected following a four-year sentence for their roles in inciting the riots that swept much of England earlier this year.

Shop manager John, 36, of Preston, felt strongly that those involved in the riots should serve prison time. He said: " It's ridiculous what happened in those riots. Four years is about right if they just incited. If they actually participated - ten years."

However, some of those polled voiced concerns that the sentences may have been too harsh.

Carlie Firth, 23, of Preston, agreed that what they had done was wrong and that they should be punished, but added: "The sentence is quite random in that a lot more serious offences go on in the world - four years is quite a long time."

Mrs James, 36, of Preston, said: “I do think it's right [that they serve prison time]. I think maybe the sentence was a little bit steep, but [the judge] has made an example of them. This is not acceptable - you can't encourage a lot of people to start a riot.”

Shop worker Oliver Mashiter, 19, of Clitheroe, believed that the two men will likely only serve two years of the four-year sentence, but added: "I don't think it's right that they've been sent down for so long.”

Article 2

Police have found a stolen car containing an estimated two million pounds of illegal drugs after it crashed into a wall in Preston the early hours of this morning.

The car, which was reported stolen from the Avenham area at 1:33 am, was found on the A6 London Road some 20 yards south of the Shawes Arms pub.

It is understood that a police car was tailing the stolen vehicle shortly before it sped off at 70 mph in a 50 mph zone. The police car had put on its sirens after receiving an unrelated 999-call, triggering the driver in front to panic.

The 999-call was later found to have been a malicious false alarm reporting a break in at the Quatone Computer company’s headquarters on Church Road, Bamber Bridge.

The driver was pronounced dead upon arrival at the Preston Royal Hospital and the only passenger in the vehicle received serious head and chest injuries. His condition has been described as critical.

The drugs found at the scene have been confirmed as cocaine and ecstasy. It marks the biggest ever drugs haul in Preston’s history.

Chief Constable of the Lancashire Police Mrs Susan Taylor expressed regret at the death of the driver but believed the lives of many other young people may have been saved in the process.

She said: “The fact is that these ecstasy tablets may well have found their way into local pubs and clubs.”

The dead driver is described as a 30 year old white male with short brown hair, approximately six feet tall wearing a black t-shirt, denim jacket, jeans and trainers.

The passenger is also a white male of a stocky build and shaved head, around five feet six tall wearing a black sweater, jeans and trainers. He has ‘Tracy’ tattooed across the knuckles of one hand.

The identities of the two men remain unknown.

Article 3

Sir Michael Wilson, Chairman of Preston North End Football Club, and three others have died after the plane they were travelling on crashed into a field near Freckleton earlier this morning.

The six-seater plane came down one mile south of the village at around 9:30am, just off the A516 and only 20 yards from the Freckleton Junior School. Part of the plane collided with the school’s roof shortly before exploding into flames in a nearby field.

Ian Baker, age 7, of Church Street, Freckleton, was walking across the school playground at the time of the incident. He was hit by a piece of flying debris and suffered facial cuts for which he is now being treated at the Preston Royal Hospital. He is expected to be released later today. No one else on the ground was injured.

Mrs Desmond, headmistress of Freckleton Junior School, explained that usually there would have been a year four PE class in one of the fields by the site of the crash, but today it had been cancelled due to a special assembly for the school’s 25th anniversary.

She said: “I’ve never been so frightened in my life... It’s a miracle none of the children were killed.”

The plane was privately owned by Marplan Engineering, a Preston-based company, of which Sir Michael was the managing director.

Speaking on behalf of Marplan Engineering, James Hughes said: “Today we are a company in mourning. Words cannot express how we are all feeling. We are in deep, deep shock. We feel as though the heart has been ripped out of our company.”

The company lost three of its most senior executives in the crash, as well as a pilot who had worked for them for 10 years.

The plane is understood to have taken-off from Leeds Bradford Airport and was making its way to Blackpool Airport with a landing scheduled for 9:45am, only 15 minutes after the crash was reported.

Article 4

At least fifteen celebrities, including a number of footballers, have fallen seriously ill after attending a charity fundraising dinner in Preston on Sunday night.

Wayne Rooney, Rio Ferdinand and Ryan Giggs are just three of the celebrities who have been admitted to hospital with salmonella poisoning.

The event, organised by Cancer Research UK, was held at the Monarch Hotel in Fishergate on Sunday evening and included the auctioning of signed shirts and footballs.

The first symptoms were reported on Monday evening when five of the guests were taken to the Alexandra Hospital in Manchester. Ten more were admitted overnight. All are confirmed to have eaten chicken at the meal.

A senior press officer for the Monarch Hotels group said: “We are deeply sorry that this event has occurred. We are doing everything we can to establish what has caused this... We wish to emphasis that a substantial amount of money was raised for Cancer Research.”

The hotel is currently cooperating fully with the Health Department in their investigation and samples of the meal have been submitted.

All three footballers are expected to make a full recovery though details of the other celebrities remain unknown. Currently no other guests at the hotel have been affected.

Little is known about the meal itself, except that guests were served soup, followed by chicken with vegetables and strawberry tarts for dessert.

At present, the hotel is not accepting responsibility until a full investigation into the cause of the poisoning has been carried out.

The hotel’s press officer added: “Our priority remains in our commitment to our customers and to the community and we hope to continue to be involved in these forms of fundraising events.”

The "Antisocial" Media? Nah.

2012-04-24T13:57:00.000+01:00

Image source

There's a pretty interesting debate going on these days between two sides with very different views on the topic of whether or not social media is in fact making us less social. I imagine everyone, or nearly every (at least in my generation), probably has some sort of view on this, but I wonder just how often that view is formed before really taking the time to consider the topic properly. After all, the claim that we are becoming less social is pretty damning.

I read an article over on GigaOM last night which was arguing that the idea that social media is having this effect of essentially making us lonelier is utter nonsense. Let's take a look at some of the points it made, firstly with the argument that one side is putting forward for this "antisocial" side to "social" media.

"In a world consumed by ever more novel modes of socializing, we have less and less actual society. We live in an accelerating contradiction: the more connected we become, the lonelier we are. We were promised a global village; instead we inhabit the drab cul-de-sacs and endless freeways of a vast suburb of information."

Then this was the riposte put forward, which I thought hit the nail on the head:

"Worrying about kids who choose to live online is as misplaced as worrying about seniors who choose to live offline. It’s the result of looking at an emergent digital lifestyle through a generational prism, one that assumes conversations are only meaningful when they look like the conversations we grew up having."

Of course, the article really warrants a full read if you have the time (and it's not like it's that long), but it got me thinking about my own opinions on the topic. I must admit, in the past I could have probably shown sympathies to both sides of the argument, but now I think I would tend to disagree far more with those claiming that social media is producing loneliness. Consider this, for example:

"I’m sure there are people who become more alone or more lonely as they use the Internet, just as there are lonely people who watch a lot of late-night television. But that doesn’t mean television causes loneliness."

To me, that's about as accurate as any statement I've ever read on the topic. The Internet may reinforce behavioural patterns that are already present in an individual, but they they are not really producing them. Apparently, research has even pointed to those who spend more time on social media being more social in real life as well. Isn't that a great conclusion? It just flies right in the face of all those who are trying to paint a negative picture about the Internet culture among not just youths but people of all ages today.

So now that I consider this topic, I think that if anything social media has put me far more in touch with friends far and wide. I don't believe it's replacing real life conversation but rather that it is becoming a normal part of communication as we move further into the 21st century. Anyway, all very interesting stuff to read if you have the time.

What do you think?

Android's Downfall?

2012-04-23T22:21:00.000+01:00

Image source

Nearly time for bed. Yeah, I try to go to bed at a decent time these days and get up earlier in the morning. It beats lying in till 11 because you didn't go to bed until after 2 in the morning. You just feel a lot better being awake as the day starts and commuters begin filling the roads.

Besides, the morning is probably my favourite time of the day. Everything is fresh and it seems like you have the energy to set your mind to anything. Wait, let me rephrase that: you have the energy to set your mind to anything… once coffee has been consumed. Yes, coffee. That is the key factor and the starting point of any self-respecting man for the day ahead.

I tend to sit in bed and read through the day's news on my iPad before going to sleep. Depending on how many stories interest me, it's an activity that can take up the better part of an hour. And by news I'm probably referring mostly to tech news which is what I find among the most interesting stuff to read about.

I know, I know, I'm a journalism student and should be reading about politics or world affairs, but the truth is I rarely READ about that stuff. The way I consume that kind of news is through the BBC iPlayer news broadcasts or BBC World Service radio (which I listen to a lot less often than the TV broadcasts). It's not to say I'm completely disinterested in world affairs, I just don't give the time that it takes to read news to those issues. My news reading is more or less exclusively to tech.

Android

So flicking through the Flipboard app's tech section which is filled with a lot of the top stories from various sources across the internet, I read an interesting article (or a couple of interesting articles) regarding the possible demise of Android. Yes, Google's Android. Their mobile operating system which they are apparently being sued for by Oracle who now own Java.

Basically, Google essentially copy and pasted coding from Java (which is open-source from what I understand) to use in Android when they were initially developing it. But now Oracle are trying to claim that Google have "stolen" from them. The fact that it was open-source to begin with kind of complicates the matter and as such we don't really know where the case is going to go.

But if it does go to Oracle, Google would have to start paying licenses for the use of its Java coding. That would mean Android was no longer cheap for Google to produce as the costs would be extended to every handset that the system runs on.

The whole Google v. Oracle case has made a lot of people in the tech industry, a lot of commentators I mean, question exactly what kind of future Android has in the long term. Are developers going to turn their focus onto Windows Phone now that it is beginning to have some success? Pretty much no review has managed to fault the Windows mobile system which is quite an achievement.

Then there was also the news that Microsoft beat analysts' expectations with its Q1 earnings for 2012. Are developers going to invest a lot in Android apps, keeping in mind that many see Android as an alternative to Apple's iOS, or are they going to start building for Windows Phone in the future as a "safer bet"? Right now, no one really knows what's going to happen over the long-term. It's food for thought if you're interested in the tech industry or like your gadgets.

Saturday 14 April, 2012

2012-04-14T20:01:00.000+01:00

Today I got back to my university accommodation in Preston. This was the view from my window as the sun was setting at around 7:45 p.m. The weather has been nice, though I've been in since getting back from the airport.

This afternoon I did a second draft of one of my portfolio tasks for my Mandarin Chinese elective module. I still have two more second drafts to do, but they usually don't take more than a few minutes each as it's just a case of going through the teacher's comments and making corrections.

Inside this package are my sister's glasses that I have to post on Monday. She had left them in France.

My train tickets to and from Manchester Airport, dating back to March 30 when I left to France.

A mixture of walnuts and dried mango. I buy the two bags separately from Aldi and then put them together in a tub which I keep on my desk as a healthy snack.

My rather colourful array of vitamins, mostly bought from Aldi. I take them pretty much every day, especially on days when I'm in the gym.

Gardening a la Francais

2012-04-13T19:29:00.001+01:00

My garden helper.

Some of the wire we were using to make the garden more secure from outside intrusion.

Putting wire against the fence like this will allow Honeysuckle to grow up it.

The wire above the fence is taller than a man and so now it's harder for anybody to come over.

French Restaurant Lunch

2012-04-13T14:43:00.000+01:00

Salmon souffle, starter.

Julienne fish, main.

Pork filet mignon, main.

Cheese selection, post-main.

Apple tart, dessert.

Friday 13 April, 2012

2012-04-13T00:11:00.000+01:00

Sunset on Lake Geneva. Image source

Bonjour, today is my second last night in France. Tomorrow is my last day. I need to do some work in the garden and show my Mum how to use the Western Digital Live TV box that we bought today. It allows you to play movies on your external hard drive through it onto the TV. We watched The Lincoln Lawyer in HD tonight and the quality was awesome. So sharp and clean. The film was pretty good too.

I must've had about five coffees today. We went to an Indian restaurant for a set lunch and then into Geneva to do one or two things. The food was good. I had vegetarian pakoras for starters, a minced lamb curry for main that came with rice and a nan, as well as something called Halva for desert. It's like semolina with coconut through it. Really nice actually. An orangey colour.

The surround sound system is now working through the Blue-Ray player after buying an optical cable for it and the quality is wonderful. I was playing some music through it from my hard drive earlier, including Some Guys Have All The Luck by Rod Steward and Swallow It by Brandon Flowers, just to name two.

It's pretty good that here in France they get some free HD channels. There's a great one called Arte HD, though it tends to be in French or German so I don't understand the speaking. Apparently sometimes there is some English stuff on there too. They do some real nice documentaries and since it's all in HD the detail is amazing. Tonight they were filming in Iceland, a lot of nature and volcano shots. Just nice to look at, even if I don't understand what they're saying.

Tonight we were going to watch either Alice In Wonderland with Johnny Depp or a film called Kick-Ass, which is meant to be great and got 7.9 on IMDB (anyone that knows the IMDB rating system will know that's a pretty high score). In the end, however, we decided on The Lincoln Lawyer. I'd still love to watch Alice In Wonderland on the HDTV though seeing as I have it in HD, the same for Kick-Ass and a number of others. Tomorrow I might try to cram in at least two films before I'm back to watching stuff on my MacBook (which does have a retina display but is obviously completely different from a 46-inch screen!).

Tomorrow, being the last day, we're going out for lunch again to a French place in Divonne that we went to on one of the first days I came. It's really great food and very generous too. I actually really like the place. The weather's been on and off with rain, the sun breaking through for periods every now and again. It wasn't too cold, though, so at least the temperature hasn't been an issue. I'm not sure how it's meant to be tomorrow, but hopefully nice if we're going to get any work done in the garden.

A New TV And Going HD

2012-04-11T21:25:00.001+01:00

A painting of Darth Vader from Star Wars. Image source

Today has been a fairly hectic day in some ways in that we bought a new Samsung HDTV in the morning and then spent a few hours this afternoon getting it all set up. One of my Mum's neighbour's sons came round to help out and say hi. I'd met him before a few years ago when I was living in France and going to an A Level college in Geneva. It must have been 2008. His name is Rene and he works in the film industry essentially, though mainly on theatre from what I understand. Nonetheless, he has a good understanding of TVs and film.

The new TV looks great in the lounge though we have been unable to connect our external hard drives to it due to the fact that they're all formatted to Mac and clearly the Samsung TV isn't reading that. If only everything was in NTFS it would make a lot of things easier for Mac users. So anyway, we decided there were a couple options: Apple TV or Western Digital's TV box into which you plug your hard drive directly and it then plays through onto the TV screen. However, it then occurred to my Mum to try inserting one of her USB pens into the TV and it was successful in reading it. What that means is that she can just buy a 16GB pen and then copy over a HD film each night that she wants to watch, deleting the previous one in the process. That way she doesn't have to fork out like €100 for an Apple TV station of WD TV box. It seems the most logical solution so tomorrow I imagine she'll go out and pick one up. Unfortunately it means no HD film on the big new screen tonight.

She also bought a Sony surround sound set that just went on offer at half price today and came with a Blue-Ray player. Pretty awesome and a good bargain. Sony is always a good brand you can trust when it comes to entertainment systems.

Rene had with him his three external hard drives and so I managed to get quite a few HD films off him, though they take up an enormous amount of space. The average HD film is anywhere between 4-10GB. Huge. The original three Star Wars films that I got off him are 15GB each. At this rate I'm going to have to invest in a 1TB external drive. The quality of the HD films is in a different league to the standard definition ones and it might be worth buying some extra space so that I can collect more of them. It's mainly noticeable when you play it on a large screen, but I can even tell the difference with the finer details on my MacBook. I think I'm going to be taking advantage of my fast 15MB university connection when I get back to Preston.

Apart from all this TV and film related stuff, we went to the Chinese buffet across the road for lunch and I talked a little with the owners in Mandarin. They are from Shanghai and both their parents are in France as well. I'm not sure if their son, who also works there and must be in his late twenties, was born in France or China. At first I thought they were Cantonese but actually they speak Mandarin.

So that's been the day essentially. Tomorrow we need to go into Geneva and so we might eat something there. There is more work to do in the garden before I leave and I should really have done more on my Chinese assignments for my university Mandarin module but the revising of a second draft doesn't take that long. Perhaps I'll get round to a couple of them tomorrow, or worse case scenario I just deal with them when I'm back in Preston. The trouble is, term is basically done in two weeks and so the time is going to shoot by. I need to stay on top of everything. One assessment I still need to do is a self-generated local news story, though I don't expect it will really be that tough. The way we've been told to do it is to find a national story that captures our interest and then localize it.

Pad Thai, HDTVs and Coffee

2012-04-10T21:59:00.000+01:00

The first flexible OLED displays are expected in Q3 of 2012 by Samsung. Image source

Let's see, what have I been doing today? We went into Geneva at around lunch time, though on the way there stopped at a shopping mall on the motorway in order to change the a pair of black leather shoes I had bought a few days ago for one size down. I didn't have any leather shoes and thought it was time I had a pair. I chose black over brown since it works with more styles of dress.

At the mall we had lunch on the top floor which has a food court offering various kinds of cuisines. Apparently the Asian stall was good so we went there and ordered two Pad Thais. The queue was fairly long and it took a while to get the food, so I headed over to a free table and waited. The noodles were pretty nice in and of themselves, but having travelled round Asia I can say for sure they were a fairly poor imitation of Pad Thai. Nonetheless, they were big bowls and we were both more than full by the end.

So, having eating we headed out. My mum stopped at a shop and suggested getting me a poloshirt, but I declined since it was something like £50 and in my books that's ridiculous for a poloshirt, no matter how nice. The dog was waiting in the car where we'd left him and so we started towards Geneva.

We always park near the United Nations building and from there take a bus through to the centre. It only takes 10 minutes or so. We walked through the Manor and had a look at the new iPad in the Apple section. The screen is indeed a big improvement over the iPad 2 and I can now notice the pixels on text, for example, when I read on mine. That's the trouble with seeing into the future, you become discontent with current technology! Of course, I'm only really joking. It's not a big deal. I'm just enjoying finally owning an iPad.

My mum ended up buying Apple's magic mouse. I explained that you could use multitouch and swiping gestures to control movements in screen, like flicking up or down a page or jumping back and forward between pages that you have viewed. I haven't actually looked into what else you can do with it. Perhaps pinch and zoom? Not sure. Anyway, it's expensive but definitely very cool and the design is gorgeous. I'm sure she's glad to finally have a wireless mouse. No more wires! It's a revolution!

After leaving the Manor, we took a stroll to the Nespresso store which is very near to the lakefront, but on the other side of the bridge (I'm sure that won't make sense to anyone that doesn't know Geneva!). There was a new limited edition capsule available and so we both tried it. That's the great thing about visiting the store: if you buy something, you get a free coffee. It turned out to be a pretty weak coffee (a rating of 6 out of a possible 10 on the Nespresso scale) and I personally didn't like it much. We could have changed the tube she bought, but then she decided to just give it to her neighbour as a gift since she prefers the slightly weaker coffees in terms of the 1-10 scale. So everyone's happy.

Alas, we got back home around 5 p.m. and I was actually surprisingly tired so I lied down for something like an hour. We put a vegetarian lasagne in the over for dinner and in the evening mum decided she was going to buy a new television so for the past few hours we've been researching HDTVs. Stuff like the difference between LCD, LED and Plasma technology, as well as the differences between the major brands such as Sony, Samsung and LG. I think she's leaning towards Sony now. Which magazine's website has been great for research.

About an hour ago, at 8:45 p.m. we popped to the local mall which is only a couple minutes' drive away to check their TVs, just to get an idea. They were basically al LCD which seems to be the cheapest technology and not, perhaps, the best. I think LED may the best choice. There's a lot to consider and I'm not going to go into it here.

On the way back I grabbed a McFlurry at the Macdonald's there and so all is well with the world. Tomorrow the plan is to go back into Geneva and have a look at HDTVs properly, with the possibility of buying one at the same time, though it would be wise to compare the prices in France as Switzerland may not work out to be the cheapest place to buy a new TV. We'll have to see.

I had a decaf Nespresso coffee a couple hours ago at around 8 p.m. so here's to hoping it doesn't keep me up during the night as the previous two times seemed to do. Strange considering it's decaf. Strange and annoying. If I can't trust decaf coffee not to keep me up at night, what in the world can I trust? By thunder, Jock!

The Art Of Readability

2012-04-10T00:17:00.000+01:00

A digital design renaissance? Image source

Update: Since originally posting this, I have already gone back to the normal style of blog posts without the large quotes to break up the post. Nonetheless, I've left this untouched so you can at least see what I was talking about.

I've been enjoying working on my blog today and I feel as though I've learned something. For a long time I just felt there was something missing from the whole experience and now I think I've nailed it on the head. I know what was missing all this time. Aesthetics. Art. Beauty.

"I'm starting to incorporate readability and great art into my blog posts"

When Google rolled out their new UI and Dynamic Views at the end of last year, it changed the Blogger scene, but it still didn't complete the experience for me. However, I think I've just got a lot closer to completing it, and here's why: I'm starting to incorporate readability and great art into my blog posts. Take a look at the previous three or four as an example (I intend to work back through old ones over time, but the main focus should remain on the new).

"Breaking an article up with quote sections can help give the reader a better understanding of what is coming"

Notice what's different? Understand what I mean by readability? By breaking an article up with quote sections that summarise a thought, it can help give the reader a better understanding of what is coming up or of what is being discussed, without having to read through the bulk of the text. If they were super lazy (as I often am) they could just read those quotes. It also helps them skip to parts they think might deal with a topic they are interested in without the need for subheadings which can be a bit predictable and, well, unoriginal. Using quotes incorporates a more artistic approach.

"How often do you get drawn into an article simply by the image?"

Then there is the choice of art. Let me ask you, how often do you get drawn into an article simply by the image at the top? Does it not make a tremendous difference? What about the general aesthetics and appeal of the page? Isn't that what magazines nail? The answer to all of these is probably yes, though perhaps in varying degrees. It's worth thinking about though.

"Using the iPad has left some magic dust in my brain"

My experience with using the iPad these past days has probably left some magic dust in my brain. Apps such as Flipboard, the news aggregator that takes all your favourite feeds and sources and displays them as if they're part of some beautiful digital magazine, seem to be rubbing off on me. By which I mean I must be unconsciously gaining a better understanding of what it means to make information more readable. And that's no little thing.

'A computer cannot just be the sum of its parts or the function it serves, it must also be something beautiful"

What I think we're seeing with these next-generation tablets and the post-PC era is a move to a more beautiful way of consuming information. I think Steve Jobs got it right: a computer cannot just be the sum of its parts or the function it serves, it must also be something beautiful in this new digital age, this great dawn of technology which we are now coming into more fully. Of course, those were not his exact words but they point to an emotional experience between technology and humans. The Internet is moving that way and so are the platforms that exist on it.

Like the robot in the art I have chosen for the top of this post, our heads are starting to explode with beautiful colours and visions in what was previously a monochrome world. Of course, the world has never really been monochrome, but it's possible that many of our minds were, at least when it came to an understanding of design and beauty and how to bring such abstract ideals more fully into our everyday lives. And in my case, into our blogs!

Animal Suffering

2012-04-09T17:56:00.001+01:00

Image source

Flicking through my news feed today, I noticed an article published in Scientific America titled Carnivores Make Low Estimates of Animal Minds. The article briefly discusses a study into meat-eating. Here is a short extract that looks at how the participants behaved:

"Before eating [meat], everyone wrote an essay describing the full life cycle of a butchered animal and then rated the mental faculties of a cow or a sheep. Participants who knew that they would have to eat meat later in the study made much more conservative assessments of the animal mind, on average, denying it could think and feel enough to suffer."

I believe that eating meat is a decision each person has the right to make for themselves and it is not our place to impose our views on others. I also do not think it is healthy to attach guilt to the idea of eating meat. That will not solve the problem. Each person has their own free will and it is important that we respect that. It is not true to say one choice is 'better' than another, even though it may appear that there is a very clear line of right and wrong for some people (i.e. for vegetarians, who may refrain from eating meat in order to prevent their share of animal suffering, it may seem obvious that it is 'better' not to butcher animals).

What is 'wrong', however, is the conditions in which some of these animals are slaughtered. They are appalling conditions that do not at all care for their well-being. That is absolutely not right and I am afraid we must each shoulder a small amount of responsibility for this. But do not think that by saying this I am trying to instill guilt or fear, or attacking anyone in any way. That is the furthest thing from my intentions. You can deal with this responsibility from a positive mindset, and here's how: you replace a wrong with a right.

It is often not possible for an individual to change things in this world on the same level that the problem exists. You cannot always fight fire with fire. But what you can do is create positive actions. Do not underestimate the effects of your positive actions and decisions on the lives of others. Take a moment before your meal to give thanks to the animal that gave its life. Show kindness to animals whenever the chance arises; that may mean adopting an abused or badly treated dog from a shelter rather than buying one from a pet shop which perpetuates the 'puppy mill' industry. If you pass by cows or horses in a field, appreciate that they are real creatures capable of joy and suffering.

You might not be able to take on the big corporations and end wide-scale animal suffering, but you can try to do right and be respectful in your own life. That is at least a step in the right dimension. It can start with simply being grateful.

A Trip To Court

2012-03-19T15:25:00.001+00:00

An artist's sketch of a defendant appearing before a court. Image source

Morning

The alarm was set for 8:30 am but I kept pressing the snooze option every ten minutes until I finally got out of bed (reluctantly) at 9 am. I had to be up and dressed quickly so that I had time to speak with Amy for a few minutes before heading out to court at 9:30 am. My journalism class was to meet there at 9:40 am, outside the Magistrates building. I confirmed with a classmate the location of the law courts as I was leaving my building and made my way there, only just arriving in time. In the end we hung around outside until about 10 am waiting for everyone else to arrive.

Our group was present and there were also a few people from another group. A lecturer whom until then I had only known in passing was in charge of the visit. We all worked our way through security and then when it came to the lecturer's turn, he pulled out his keys and attached to them was a massive swiss army knife. The guards told him he could not take it in and at the same time he could not leave it with them to collect later. I walked upstairs without wanting to be nosy, so don't know what transpired or where he left it. Perhaps next time before going to court he'll remember to remove it!

The cases we heard were all fairly boring and mostly adjourned to later dates or transfered to Crown Court. Only a couple cases were heard in full, one a shoplifter and the other a drunk and disorderly. Both were given six month conditional discharges and let go without further fines due to both already owing the court money from previous offences and being otherwise in debt (and on benefits).

Then halfway through a guy walked in wearing a business suit and clutching a briefcase, bald and in his late forties from the looks of things, and we were all shocked to hear the prosecution against him: possession of seven indecent pictures of children in sexual acts, found on his personal computer. Yet he pleaded not guilty and his case was transfered to the Crown Court for trial.

Afternoon

I had another pasta salad for lunch and then found some tartes au citron from Tesco's finest range on discount. I only had them once before and they were awesome, so didn't think twice about buying them again. I haven't seen them on discount for ages, they must always sell fast. I had half of one after my lunch along with a coffee.

I've been downloading (or trying to download) Modern Warfare 3 since last night, but the building's internet cut just as I was on the last few minutes after waiting two hours and over 7GB. So frustrating. Then this morning I left it downloading as I went to court and came back to find the computer asleep and so the download once again cancelled. So I decided to download an app from the Mac App Store called Caffeine which keeps the computer from going to sleep when running. I left this on and started the download for the fourth time before going to afternoon lecture starting at 2 pm. It was the rescheduled one I mentioned in yesterday's post.

Before heading to lecture, however, I went to Boots to book an eye test. They had a free spot for 3:40 pm so I took it knowing I'd be free again by that time. I have a voucher that gives me the eye test for only £5 instead of the usual £20. Then in France I will buy a pair of glasses when I'm visiting my mum.

Well, I better get going as it's nearly 3:30 pm and I still need to walk to Boots. My plan for tonight is to perhaps write up one the court cases (probably the first one we heard which I found most interesting: assault, involving a smashed car window and two men) and also finally play some Modern Warfare 3 which I paid £27.99 for on the Mac App Store and yet to finish downloading! Looking forward to it.

Skyrim And Sunshine

2012-03-18T21:42:00.000+00:00

A painting of the Skyrim world. Image source

Morning

Got up at around 11:30 am. Had an all-day breakfast sandwich that I'd bought on discount from Tesco Express yesterday.

Afternoon

Played Skyrim until Amy called sometime after 1 pm. Took some cardboard I had been keeping in my room to a recycling bin nearby, but forgot to bring a bag full of old newspapers that I had also intended to recycle (brought it later instead). Walked to Tesco Express to check for discounted food and picked up two southern fried chicken pasta salads. No sandwiches this time, or at least I didn't buy any - there were a few on offer.

Shortly after getting back I decided to go for a walk to Avenham Park. I have never been so check the directions on Google Maps. It's not too far away so I take the better part of an hour and pass through it on a long walk. The weather was gorgeous all day, the nicest it's been in ages - perhaps one of the best days of the year so far. I stop at Aldi on the way back to pick up some cornflakes, milk and ground coffee. After the walk I have a coffee and one of the pasta salads I bought earlier. Then I play some more Skyrim.

Mike and Mohammad call on Skype and I speak to them for a while. Mohammad has been learning English for the past few months and is as good as Mike now, though his accent is in fact better. The two are in Tianjin applying for jobs as trainers on a cruise company that goes all round the world. It is clear that Mike has put on muscle and Mohammad is as big as ever, perhaps even bigger. The two are in very good spirits and tell me they have been staying in Tianjin for a week or two now, having recently quit their jobs at the BLCU gym where I met them. They seem to be confident about landing this new job. They're staying at the company's accommodation, from what I understood, and taking English classes for 10 hours a day. They are also training each day and preparing for the interviews that will start next week. Mike has an iPhone 4 which he tells me he bought in Hong Kong when they were visiting last year for only HK$3000. Mohammad tries to explain that he had an iPhone 4 as well but gave it to his brother and now is using an old crappy phone - or something along those lines. He was trying his best to explain in English.

The call with Mike and Mohammad cuts off for a second time and they do not come back online. They warned me that their connection was not the best but I imagine that it was also late and they decided to turn in for the day. It must have been around 2 am for them.

I continue to play Skyrim for the rest of the afternoon.

Evening

I spend practically all of the evening on Skyrim because I am enjoying it so much and only take a break from it at about 9 pm. I have a cheese and tomato sandwich I'd picked up from Tesco Express yesterday and one of the remaining beers me and Cam had bought from Aldi when he visited.

Thoughts

It's been an enjoyable and relaxing day, helped by the walk I took and the hour spent in the sunlight seems to have done me some good. I'm sure I'll return to the park for another walk when the weather is good again.

I didn't go to the gym today so it's been my second day off. I will be back in tomorrow though for a legs session (squats).

Tomorrow morning I am to be up at 8:30 am or so to get ready for a morning of court reporting. My class is to visit Preston Magistrates Court as part of our assessments and write a short report of proceedings. Should be interesting. Then at 1 pm we have a rescheduled class, so I won't be free until 2 pm at the earliest.

The Modern Man

2012-02-05T23:25:00.000+00:00

Image source

It's amazing how hard it is for the modern man, at least in my generation, to sit in a quiet room and be content in his own company.

I came across a quote the other day by Blaise Pascal that said something like man's suffering stems from his inability to sit quietly in a room. His mind is so accustomed to thinking ahead to what is next. He can't sit still and so creates all this extra work and stress for himself because he is so discontent with a quiet empty room. There is very little, if any, space in his life for such a concept. Because it is not working towards something tangible, something that he can hear or touch, something with a definite result, it doesn't make sense to him.

This is surely very sad. It's sad that we have been so conditioned to be producers at the expense of so much else, even when that production process is not driven by creativity but instead worry and even apathy.

I suggest you take some time today to sit quietly and see how many minutes, how many seconds, go by before you become impatient and restless. You might be amazed at your inability to sit still and remember that there in the background is the steady rhythm of your breath, the beating of your heart, that hasn't ceased since the day you were born but that you long ago (perhaps) ceased to be grateful for.

Murakami, Carver, Chekhov and Dostoevsky

2011-12-22T11:32:00.002+00:00

An artist's impression of the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami. Image source

It started with Haruki Murakami. In 2007, in a Waterstone's bookshop in London (or York, I forget), I was browsing for something new to read. This was when I still bought physical books - in fact only a few years earlier I'd went through a phase of buying more than I could read, usually off Amazon but occasionally in high street shops as well.

In my first year of A Levels I was stupid enough to buy one of Aristotle's works. I must have thought it would be interesting because I was studying philosophy and around the same time had been enjoying some of the work of Nietzsche, who, as Walter Kaufmann said, is "one of the few philosophers since Plato whom large numbers of intelligent people read for pleasure." But I was wrong to assume that Aristotle would be just as enjoyable to read, at least to a 17 year old philosophy student. I probably read a handful of pages and never picked it up again.

But I digress. My point was that I used to buy physical books on a regular basis and often too many to read. It is a particularly painful reflection when you realise how books immediately depreciate in value once they leave the store. Secondhand books aren't worth anything. Just take a trip to your local secondhand book dealer to be reminded of this fact, if there is even such a dealer where you live, that is: I don't imagine it's a very affluent line of business.

Back to Murakami. Browsing through this Waterstone's shop, I came across his novella South of the Border, West of the Sun and was immediately drawn to it. There was something about the description of the book, by way of the blurb as well as other author's comments, that struck me as being quite unusual. Then there was also the comment by one of the big newspapers claiming Murakami to be one of the best writers of his generation.

I bought the book and read much of it on the train to London. Now I remember, it wasn't in London that I bought it but before heading to London by train. Being a small book, it didn't take long to finish. I then, over the coming months and years, went on to read much of Murakami's catalogue, including almost all of his short story collections, of which there are a few - all good.

Enjoying Murakami's work, I discovered that his influences included Raymond Carver and Anton Chekhov. And so I found two new authors whom I hadn't heard about but was willing to try. Carver, I soon realised, was probably the best and most influential short story writer of all time after Chekhov, who was his personal influence. Carver brought short story writing back into fashion in the US after years of the genre being very much ignored. He died famous for his short stories, though it looked like he was working on a longer piece before he passed from some form of smoking-related cancer. He was a very heavy smoker.

As well as Carver, whose work I have read a lot of, I found Chekhov to be great too, and reading him opened my eyes to Russian literature. I never really knew it had had such a prolific history of writers, though of course when you think about it this should come as no surprise: who doesn't know Tolstoy or Dostoevsky? Some of the most influential writers in history were Russian and when you read some of the Russian literature it's not hard to see why.

This year I started Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky. There is something about these old, thick, classics that is very intimidating. And yet, I was in complete amazement at how modern Crime and Punishment reads and feels. Also, it's not dry and the language is not in the least bit dated as you might imagine. It really is a pleasure to read. And the topics someone like Dostoevsky deals with are universal questions about the human condition: morals, death, life, all these things. They are still as relevant today as they were 150 years ago.

So from the Japanese Murakami of 2007, I have ended up reading the Russian giants Dostoevsky and Chekhov from the 19th century, and numerous authors in between. And it all started in a bookshop in 2007 when I was still open to taking a chance on completely new authors and seeing where it went. Lucky I did.

Journalism Portfolio: The Business Of Journalism Essay

2011-12-21T07:54:00.001+00:00

Journalist protests. Image source

This is clearly a difficult time for journalism. Many are now questioning what the future holds for it as an industry. As old business models begin to crumble, and professional journalists are losing their jobs en masse, there is perhaps no better time to discuss the topics that lie at the very heart of what journalism is today, and what it ultimately stands for.

Should journalism be paid for? Is it even realistic to believe that consumers are willing to go on paying for news when so much has changed over the past half century? I will attempt to analyse the arguments both for and against the question of charging for journalism while considering factors that remain much outside the control of large media firms as they currently exist.

James Murdoch famously argued in his 2009 speech at the Edinburgh TV Festival that "the only reliable, durable, and perpetual guarantor of independence is profit." Clearly, in this view, journalism is a business just like any other and is therefore unsustainable without profit. Journalists need to earn a living just like any other profession and words are the tools of their trade that they work with and create to strive towards this end.

This has been echoed by the traditional theory of the firm in economics theory: "It is assumed that a commercial firm's every decision is taken in order to maximise profits." (Doyle, 2002) Even though this theory has been criticised as being too crude and simplistic - some firms being driven primarily by alternative motives as defined by their mission statement - it is still relevant in explaining why a business owner or executive would apply the same philosophy to journalism or a media corporation.

The opposing argument is an old one. That is, the idea that journalism should be defended "as a tool for the public use and enjoyment of all citizens and not for the private gain or profit… of businesses" (Keane, 1991). This is, then, quite in contrast to the beliefs held by Murdoch and other businessmen who would have the work of journalists bought and sold in the same way as any other good or service.

But things have been slowly changing in the media landscape, particularly since the early 1990s. Computers went from something developed by the military during the Second World War to much later entering the public domain as highly expensive technology reserved for the rich and powerful.

The second half of the 20th century, during decades such as the 80s and 90s, saw more and more people now able to afford personal computers in their homes. Companies such as Microsoft and Apple lead the way, but it wasn't really until the 90s and well into the millennia that these machines so completely began to transform the lives of the average man and woman across the globe. And, of course, with computers came the Internet.

The birth of the Internet has lead to what Chris Anderson referred to in an article he wrote for the Wall Street Journal as "the biggest store in history… [where] everything is 100 percent off" (Anderson, 2009). This new technology has undoubtedly caused huge problems for the traditional business model of newspaper journalism, known as "dual-product", in which revenue is generated from both the cover price charged to the consumer as well as advertising space bought by companies wishing to attract the attention of bigger audiences.

Whereas, in the past, the work of journalists has traditionally been profitable because of healthy sales in the newspaper industry, today that is no longer the case: "Total daily newspaper circulation has fallen by 30 percent in 20 years, from 62.3 million in 1990 to 43.4 million in 2010" (Kaye and Quinn, 2010). This is the result of the Internet boom which has created a wealth of free news and a culture that thrives on it, as well as citizen journalism online in the form of websites and blogs. People are no longer willing to pay for news as they once were and so professional journalists are paying the price in the form of job losses and redundancies.

In 2011, The New York Times, arguably one of the most successful newspapers and sources of journalism in the world today and historically, introduced a partial paywall to its website whereby visitors could access up to 10 pages per month without paying, but anything over that threshold would be charged for. It was no longer financially viable to go on giving its online content away for free.

Just two years earlier, in 2009, the same newspaper was forced to cut 100 newsroom jobs. This is representative of the difficulties faced within the journalism industry today. All the signs seem to point to the fact that professional journalism cannot survive without charging consumers for content they read and access, and yet this very act is at the same time leading to its downfall.

It would seem, then, that James Murdoch was both right and wrong in his 2009 speech at Edinburgh: profit is needed for journalism to continue under the traditional business model, but at the same time it will require a radically new approach in the way it charges consumers to ensure its survival over the long-term. Content must be repackaged into more attractive platforms and consumers must be persuaded that it is worth their hard-earned cash. So what is the argument for journalism as a tool that is not for "private gain or profit", as supported by Keane?

Alan Rusbridger, editor-in-chief at the Guardian newspaper, is a champion of free content. He argues: "If you universally make people pay for your content it follows that you are no longer open to the rest of the world, except at a cost. That might be the right direction in business terms, while simultaneously reducing access and influence in editorial terms. It removes you from the way people the world over now connect with each other. You cannot control distribution or create scarcity without becoming isolated from this new networked world." (Rusbridger, 2010)

Rusbridger's argument is as much a philosophical one as it is a practical one. It highlights the problem of bringing an old business model into a new environment, of bringing something that must be paid for into a world where 99 percent of things are free. It equally begs the question of how paid-for content can evolve in order that it may survive in this strange new "land of the free".

What the late Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, called "the post-PC era" has brought with it the emergence of a new type of personal computer: the tablet, most notably the iPad. It is this new digital platform that may come to the rescue of traditional journalism in the paid-for sense. Owners of these next-generation devices are far more willing to pay for news and other media content that can be downloaded in the form of apps and digital subscriptions than ever before.

Ryan Chittum, of Colombia Journalism Review, wrote in a recent article: "A stunning 1.8 million iPhone users downloaded New York Time’s free app last week, eighty-five times the rate of a week earlier... and the iPad app’s downloads were up seven times, to 189,000." This shows the promise that tablet computers hold for the traditional journalism industry if they can successfully take advantage of the new platform and everything that it has to offer.

It would seem that technology and the Internet, which initially threatened to bring about the downfall of paid content, is now the very thing which could be offering an answer to the problem and providing a way to ensure that journalists still get paid for the work they do. But in reality we are still very much in a period of transition and the future is hard to predict.

Digital and online advertising is improving all the time and has become a large source of revenue for lots of freelance writers around the world, with an estimated 1.7 million bloggers in the USA alone making a profit: 452,000 of them using their blogs as their primary income (Penn & Zalesne, 2009). This allows journalists and writers to share their content and work for free whilst making an indirect income from it. In these cases, there is no direct charge to the reader.

Whatever becomes of the traditional business models of journalism, the philosophical and moral question still remains of whether or not journalism should be paid for or free for the benefit of all. This is a very difficult question to answer, but if we have learnt anything from recent years it's that information thrives in a free culture, such as that created by the Internet. You could even argue that "information wants to be free", as Stewart Brand famously did nearly three decades ago.

Brand said: "Information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other." (Brand, 1984)

The two sides of this debate will go on for many years to come and a conclusive answer may never be arrived at. Ultimately it comes down to personal opinion and personal values with regards to the nature of information. Movements such as Wikileaks, started in 2006 by the activist Julian Assange, clearly believe that every individual has the right to information and that keeping it in closed circles or elite groups is irresponsible and even dangerous. The same ling of thought could argue that it is in the public's interest to know what is going on in the world, and that this information be made available not at a price, but for free.

As a journalism student, it is my belief that information should fundamentally be free. I believe "free" is the currency of the new age, where technology dominates and the Internet keeps the world open and connected. I would agree with the principles and philosophy of Keane and Rusbridger over the simple business values of someone like Murdoch for whom journalism is just another good to be traded.

However, the challenges remain no matter what your beliefs and opinions on the topics are: charging for traditional journalism today is getting harder and harder and yet by not charging customers to read the news and content journalists work hard to create it is almost impossible to keep the industry healthy and stop the high unemployment rates among professional journalists from increasing.

I hope in this essay I have highlighted some of the difficulties that are associated with the business of journalism as well as some of the arguments for why it might be better to keep information free, as is being championed by the likes of Rusbridger and the thriving Internet culture of today. It is now the challenge for journalists of the future to find out exactly where they fit in this puzzle and how best to contribute their work in such an atmosphere, while remaining profitable themselves.

A substantial amount of original thinking and innovation will be required for journalism and media businesses to survive, but ultimately I have faith that a mutually beneficial solution will be arrived at for both producer and consumer.

Bibliography

Anderson, C. (2009). The Economics of Giving It Away. Available: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123335678420235003.html. Last accessed 30th Nov 2011.
Brand, S. (1984). Information Wants to be Free. Available: http://www.rogerclarke.com/II/IWtbF.html. Last accessed 1st December 2011.
Chittum, R. (2011). Audit Notes: Paying for Newspapers Edition.Available: http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/audit_notes_paying_for_newspap.php. Last accessed 1st December 2011.
Doyle, G (2002). Understanding Media Economics. London: SAGE Publications Ltd. p.5.
Kaye, J and Quinn, S (2010). Funding Journalism in the Digital Age. New York: Peter Lang Publishing. p.1.
Keane, J. (1991). The Media and Democracy. Oxford and Cambridge, Ma.
Murdoch, J. (2009). The Absence of Trust. Available: http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Media/documents/2009/08/28/JamesMurdochMacTaggartLecture.pdf. Last accessed
Penn, M & Zalesne, E. (2009). America's Newest Profession: Bloggers For Hire. Available: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124026415808636575.html. Last accessed 3rd Dec 2011.
Rusbridger, A. (2010). The Hugh Cudlipp lecture: Does journalism exist?. Available: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jan/25/cudlipp-lecture-alan-rusbridger. Last accessed 30th Nov 2011.

Being thankful for "free" journalism

2011-12-19T08:27:00.000+00:00

Image source

I think it's wonderful that a newspaper of such high-quality journalism as the Guardian keeps its website open and free. Unlike most other big newspapers today, such as The Times in the UK and The New York Times in the US, who have all gone behind "paywalls", the Guardian has refused to follow suit. It's one thing to say you will never charge for online content and quite another to stick to your word in these hard economic times, especially when the debate over paywalls and charging for digital content rages on.

I wonder if the Guardian doesn't look at newspapers such as The Times and others who now charge readers to access their websites and really think twice about whether they've made the right decision. With the arrival of tablet computers and smartphones, it seems that there is newfound money in the marketplace for online content. The ability to develop apps that can be accessed on iPads and other portable devices may well be the saving grace for traditional journalism as it transitions over to the online platform.

But the Guardian and its editor-in-chief, Alan Rusbridger, believe that free content is the way to go and where the future is headed. They are worried that by charging for content and journalism you are cutting yourself off from the connected world and making yourself available only to those who can afford to pay. This remains their belief and stance in spite of the fact that they are really struggling, as are all newspapers, to survive and make any kind of a profit from their online presence.

Al Jazeera is another incredible source of quality journalism that remains open and free. Based in the Arab world, I doubt it will ever erect a paywall on its website either. So we are very lucky really: lucky that there are still the likes of Al Jazeera and the Guardian providing us with breaking news from an independent angle; the work of highly skilled professional journalists that are capable of outstanding investigative reporting and story-finding.

But all this has made me think: have I changed my attitude towards paying for high quality journalism such as that delivered by the Guardian and Al Jazeera, among others? If the Guardian went behind a full or partial paywall tomorrow, would I be pulling out my debit card and buying a subscription? I honestly think now that I very well may be. Not only because I am a journalism student, but because I value excellent journalism and do so more and more with each year that passes.

It is because of the work of journalists that I am able to say I know and understand, at least to some degree, what is going on in the world, whether it's at home or ten thousand miles away. Every article that I read and consume in a matter of minutes has taken much longer to research and write. It has taken hard work and in the most extreme circumstances the journalists might have even put their life on the line to get that story out. It bears thinking about. We may be reading all this free content online but "free" certainly wasn't the currency it was produced with. Good journalism is inherently expensive.

So I write this after a few days of regular reading on the Guardian's website and after realising how wonderful it is that something which is so expensive to produce as quality journalism should remain available to everyone for free. It really is an amazing thing that we should all be thankful for.

Globalisation In The Media

2011-12-02T15:30:00.000+00:00

An arial shot of Russia during winter. Image source

Yesterday's lecture, delivered by Megan Knight (@meganknight on Twitter), was on the topic of globalisation and how it's affected the media industry, mainly with reference the news.

This isn't going to be a very long post, but I'll look at the main points discussed as best I can from my notes.

The lecture began with a reference to How To Write About Africa, a satirical essay and commentary on the themes of stereotypes in reporting by Binyavanga Wainaina.

When journalists report on Africa, they will often use similar vocabulary: it's considered a dark and dangerous place. Equally, coverage on China might focus on the military angle or the regimented school system to agree with our preconceived conceptions of the country.

Megan pointed out early on that in news reports,

"You always see Russia in winter. You never see Russia in summer…"

And this is something I think we can all agree on: the news we are given often looks and sounds the same, it reinforces the same stereotypes. So why is that?

Globalisation in terms of the media means that news and reports now all come in a "standard package". There is an accepted format for the way journalists do their work, and an idea that we are all more the same than we are different.

Then there is the question of money which also links into the theme of technology. It is now cheaper to station just one or two journalists in Africa (i.e. Nairobi, Johannesburg) and have them report on stories in a whole range of localities.

Because of the way technology has evolved, a story breaking in the Congo can now be covered from somewhere like Nairobi, even though it is completely "dislocated".

So we still see CNN, for example, "going live to our African correspondent" who is in fact hundreds of miles away from where the story is actually taking place and has himself been getting information from newspapers and wire services. But it looks better and more authentic than having someone discussing it from a studio in Atlanta.

The point is that it is largely for show and a cheap but effective solution to having dozens of foreign correspondents all over a continent such as Africa, or wherever it be that the story is breaking.

I also came across this question of "dislocation" when I looked at narrative in journalism and the reporting from Gaza and Haiti, and how conflict can be the easiest narrative for journalists to impose when the situation is unclear.

Charlie Brooker of the BBC did a brilliant video to demonstrate just how predictable the standard news report package is today. Of course, there are good reasons why this is the case, but it's insightful nonetheless.

Sorry I've made a bit of a hash of this post and it's been pretty disjointed, but it was just a way of throwing out some ideas that were touched on during the lecture yesterday.

Personal Update #1: A Productive Day

2011-12-01T23:56:00.000+00:00

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Of course, it inevitably creates the problem of vagueness and ambiguity: it's completely unclear from the title what I'm going to talk about in the post. The simple solution? A colon followed by a few words hinting at the theme of the update.

Call me a genius.

Anyway, I think I'll start doing these "personal update" posts just to make the distinction between posts that are and aren't related to my daily life.

Sometimes it will be hard to make the call as to how much a post is about my life and how much it is about other topics, but if the majority of the content seems to point to my personal life, it will have to be classed as a personal update.

If I only briefly touch on events of the day, perhaps passingly in my discussion of broader topics, it will not be posted as a personal update. So now we're clear on that I can move on.

The update

Today's actually turned out to be an amazingly productive day.

In the morning I had a lecture at 09:00 which resulted in the detailed and huge post on Social Media Tools For Journalists, totalling around 2,000 words. I tried to break it up with pictures and subheadings to make it more readable.

Then I had lunch and spoke with Amy before heading to my 2 hours of afternoon lectures starting at 13:00. I took notes all through these lectures too, given by Megan Knight, the senior lecturer for International Journalism.

The topic was globalisation in the media and though I took notes, I couldn't bring myself to do another journalism post today. It will have to wait for tomorrow, perhaps.

I did a shop at Aldi and had a dinner of onion and tomato omelette with brie, covered in 35 pence beef ravioli straight from the can. Talk about a student meal! What's that, you don't think brie is student food? It is at £1 from Aldi, my friend.

In the evening, I managed to write close to 1,000 more words for my essay on the question of whether journalism should be free or paid-for, taking the new word count to around 1,600. I even sorted out most of the bibliography with the help of a brilliant Harvard reference generator tool.

Later, I watched a BBC documentary on world population and shared what I learnt in a post too. So for all these reasons I'd argue it's been a productive day, at least in terms of writing and university work.

Tomorrow morning I have 3 hours of work in the journalism department and then my friend Shaun is coming to stay for a few days. As of tomorrow he is off work for Christmas and will be driving up from London.

On a sightly lower note, I cut my finger open on a damn yogurt lid. It's ridiculous that it should be so sharp! So now I'm wearing a crappy plaster that will probably come off before long. Typing is a bit of a pain with it on.

So the plan for this weekend is to finish my 2,000 word essay which I will post on here after the deadline has passed (December 16). I also have some other minor assignments to get out of the way before I leave to Hong Kong next Saturday.

Time is shooting by. Thanks for reading.

How Many People Can Live On Planet Earth?

2011-12-01T22:20:00.000+00:00

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Tonight I watched the 2009 BBC documentary How Many People Can Live On Planet Earth? Since then our population has already passed 7 billion, with the United Nations announcing it on October 31 of this year.

From the documentary I picked up some interesting facts and statistics that I'm going to share with you in this post. I think it's a subject we should all know a little bit about. As one expert interviewed said:

"When the titanic sank, the first-class cabins went to the bottom just as quickly as the steerage."

The message? We're all in this together.

Background

The human population is increasing by 2 people every second, 200,000 every day and 80 million every year. Currently more than 1 million people lack access to safe, clean drinking water.

David Attenborough mentioned in the documentary that he supports the Optimum Population Trust, which set out as its goals the following:

"The education of the public in issues relating to human population worldwide and its impact on environmental sustainability.

Research to determine optimum and ecologically sustainable human population levels and to publicise the results of such research.

Environmental protection by promoting policies in the United Kingdom and any other parts of the world that will lead or contribute to the achievement of stable human population levels which allow environmental sustainability."

Is it really possible to answer the question of how many people can live on the planet? This is the question the documentary wants to look into. It starts with the premise that the three basic human needs are water, food and energy.

So far, we have been able to monitor the human population because over the last 60 years almost every single birth and death has been recorded by the UN.

Growth

They estimate that by 2050 the world's population will hit 9 billion, meaning an additional 2 billion people. Apparently that's the entire population of today's Europe, Africa and North and South America combined.

The figures are staggering when put into perspective. But how do they arrive at this number?

Well, there are around 1 billion teenagers alive today, most of whom will have grandchildren. That's as simple as the calculation needs to be.

By 2050, the UN estimates 10 million more people in the UK and 100 million more in the USA. India will overtake China to become the world's most populated country at nearly 1.7 billion (figures for China sit at an estimated 1.4 billion).

On the other side of the scale, Japan's population is set to decrease, along with Russia, Germany and much of Eastern Europe.

Afghanistan's population will double, as will most of Sub Saharan Africa's. Meanwhile, Niger's will more than triple.

History and resources

Historically, it took until around the year 1800 for the Earth's population to hit 1 billion strong. Compare that with the 6 billion added in the past two centuries and you can immediately see that our rate of growth is unsustainable.

70% of the planet's surface is water, but only 2.5% is fresh water and just 1% is available for human consumption: the rest is locked up in mountain glaciers and the polar ice caps.

"At some time in the future, wars are going to be over water and not oil. But people don't understand: instead of conserving it we just waste it." - An emergency water truck driver in Mexico City

An interesting fact is that the Earth could only sustain 2.5 billion people if they all lived the lifestyle enjoyed by those in the UK, and a mere 1.5 billion if compared with those in the USA who consume 4 times more than their fair share of the world's resources.

Case studies

Famously, in 1979 China introduced its controversial one-child policy. Official figures now estimate that if they hadn't taken this extreme measure, the country would have an additional 400 million people by today.

In the 1970s, India's government made punishment for many minor crimes sterilisation. In the year 1977 alone, over 8 million men were sterilised. This eventually lead to the overthrowing of the government at the time.

These are just some of the facts and statistics that I jotted down whilst watching the documentary: there were plenty others I missed out. So what was Attenborough's conclusion?

He said that he hoped the very traits which set us apart from animals will ensure a solution is found: those trains being intelligence and the ability study and plan ahead, among others.

Although this documentary is by now a couple of years old, I still recommend it to anyone interested in the topic.

Thanks for reading.

Social Media Tools For Journalists

2011-12-01T15:36:00.000+00:00

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If I don't sit down and write this straight after the lecture I'll probably forget a lot of what I was going to put into this post, in spite of having taken down some notes during the one hour session.

I think this is a particularly interesting and relevant topic for me to write about because it cuts straight to the heart of what journalism is really about today: being able to source and find potential stories in the connected world.

Background

Our lecturer, Clare Cook (@cecook on Twitter), pointed out at the beginning that next semester we, as journalism students, will be expected to go out and find out own stories to populate a portfolio of work.

I think it's fair to say that many people are going to struggle with this daunting task in the early stages. We forget that with every real news story there is background research and investigation on the part of the journalist.

Whereas in the past sourcing stories was very much about making telephone calls and following leads you heard about at the pub, in the office or out on the street, today it's much more about the ability to stay up to date with online sources and leads.

Twitter and other microblogging networks are incredibly powerful tools to the journalist who knows how to use them properly and sees them for what they have become today: living, breathing ecosystems of information, constantly being added to.

But before I head off in my own direction, let's look at some of the things that Clare talked about in the 9am lecture that I rolled out of bed, without even time for a coffee, to attend.

It will, of course, be a mixture of Clare's information and my own commentary. I'm not someone who just regurgitates facts and that's not what this blog is about.

Dot com boom

After the dot com boom, media managers began to realise that their readers often knew more than they did. With the whole connected world as their potential audiences, the expertise often lied outside of themselves.

The ability for readers to engage with and comment on published content on a website meant that suddenly articles could be publicly picked apart and criticised by this new audience. It could mean the success or death of online articles, as decided by readers.

Quality journalism quickly flourished in this new environment and the best stuff went viral as a result. It no longer mattered that something was published by a famous publication or newspaper, blog posts could now also enter the "viral stream" too and be read millions around the globe.

But that's nothing new. We all know the story and how it changed things for the better; how it gave newfound power to the common man who had passion or expertise, or both.

Sources

Recently, the whole question of how journalists source their information has come under tremendous questioning. In the wake of the phone hacking scandal and the Leveson Inquiry into press reform, we are now seeing a testing time for journalists.

How journalists source their information is key. Clearly illegal practices that have been submerged for a long time are now coming into the public eye and must end.

What, then, are the legitimate ways for the honest journalist to find story leads and breaking news online? How can they leverage the incredible force and power of the internet and all that comes with it: microblogging, social networks, directories, etc.?

Search engines

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Firstly, let's look at search engines and remember that Google might be the king, but it's not the only one.

To find information on the "blogosphere" (i.e. blogs), we can use Google's blog search, but there are also other places such as Technorati and Icerocket. These are all great ways of finding niche content, often written by amateur writers or the "citizen journalist".

Then there are engines such as Yippy that allow you to search specifically for meta data, the coding that hides behind the beautiful outer designs of today's websites.

Wolfram Alpha, invented by a British scientist a couple of years ago, works on a similar algorithm to Ask Jeeves, the engine that you put in a question and get out an answer, which most people will be familiar with.

It is also useful to remember some of the ways we can input a search into Google. For example, by typing "link:" and then a website after the colon, it will show you all the websites that link back to that particular one.

Similarly, by typing "filetype:" and then, for example, "pdf", you will be shown only results that are relevant to that format. This can save a lot of time for the researcher.

As we now have instant access to all this information, day or night, it illustrates just how news has changed. Traditional news worked on a 24-hours basis with newspapers and nightly broadcasts. Then the internet came along and websites and blogs took that time down to updates every few hours. Now microblogging brings news to us every second.

Twitter and microblogging

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Moving onto Twitter, journalists can take and should take advantage of the ability to create "lists". You can have lists that bring together feeds on a range of topics, totally customisable, such as politics, breaking news (@BreakingNews), and so on.

Twitter lists can even be created as sources for research (i.e. the student who uses them to get the latest information on a topic he or she is writing an essay on).

More recently, Twitter's developer team also announced its Twitter For Newsrooms resource aimed at professional journalists. As you would expect, it's completely free. This kind of stuff is evolving and emerging on the scene all the time.

So journalists must now learn to get to grips with the power of microblogging. It's gone from something that people didn't quite understand the usefulness of to something that has revolutionised the way we find news.

Twitter is a great place to discover what topics are currently trending in the online world. What is being talked about? Websites such as Tweet Scan and Twellow help provide those answers.

You may have watched the recent video that went viral around the internet called My Tram Experience. It was footage secretly filmed of a woman with a young child shouting racists abuse at fellow passengers on the subway.

British Police announced on their Twitter feed (sorry, I can't find the link) that they had arrested the woman from the clip as a direct result of it being brought to their attention by the online community.

This, then, is a perfect example of how Twitter is often the first point of reference for breaking news today, even among official bodies such as the police.

RSS, links and alerts

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Microblogging aside, how else can journalists stay up to date with the latest and greatest? Well, RSS feeds continue to be key.

RSS, or Really Simple Syndicate, is the easiest way of pulling information from various sources into one feed. Google Reader remains one of the best RSS services around.

To learn more about RSS in simple language, watch the YouTube video by Common Craft Video titled RSS In Plain English. It's really revolutionised the digital distribution of news and information and a tool that every journalist should be using.

Clare interviewed Paul Bradshow from the Online Journalism Blog last week and said he'd made the point that URLs (unique resource locators), or "links" as they're more widely known, have become to the internet what audio is to the radio.

Although I don't know if I'd go quite that far with the analogy - for one thing, radio wouldn't function without sound - I do understand what he's getting at. I guess from an extreme perspective you could argue that the internet would not function without URLs, but I'm not going to get into that.

Google Alerts is another good way to stay on top of news for a particular keyword and the free service is worth checking out if you don't already know about it.

Finding stories

In this new digital landscape, it's all about speed. Without speed and the ability to tap sources of breaking information, you can never be first to write about the latest scoop and stand a chance of going "viral".

Finding story ideas is also a huge part of a journalist's work, whether that be locally or nationally, or even internationally. Let's quickly look at some good places to start.

My Town Live gives you the latest on what's going on where you live (currently US only).

They Work For You lets you find out what your local MP is doing. For example, what they recently spoke about in Parliament or the White Paper they just finished writing.

Planning Finder helps you find information on local house planning.

What Do They Know? searches requests submitted under the Freedom of Information Act. You may find trends here that could help build the lead to a story.

Up My Street is another good resource for information on your local neighbourhood.

Fix My Street shares reports, views and discussions on local issues. Again, great for leads if you're working on a local story.

My Society can help you find special-interest groups in your area, putting you in touch with people who are passionate on a subject. Could be great for quotes or even expert opinions.

Social networks, multimedia and social bookmarking

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yoName and Wink are two ways of finding people's profiles on a range of social networks. Don't forget that although Facebook may be king, it's not the only one. Some parts of the world, such as China, prefer other networks.

It's also worth remembering that sometimes it will be a picture or video that spark a story. As such, keeping up with multimedia networks, such as Flickr and others, is highly important. Don't just think in terms of text.

Finally, and I'm coming to the end of this incredibly long post now, social bookmarking should also be remembered. Services such as Diigo and Delicious are important ways of building an online community around, and sharing information/links on, particular topics and keywords.

Scoop, I'm told, is a useful website for journalists to check out and I'll leave you with the BBC's College of Journalism guide to social media tools, not that you'll want to read any more about it after all this!

Apologies that it ended up being so long. I hope it can at least act as a useful point of reference for journalists and journalism students in the future.

Thanks to Clare Cook for delivering such a useful lecture this morning and inspiring me to write this post.

Abraham Lincoln: Saint or Sinner?

2011-11-30T23:35:00.000+00:00

I just watched the BBC documentary, Abraham Lincoln: Saint or Sinner?

As someone who knows and understands very little about the history of the United States of America, but is of course familiar with Lincoln as a figure, this documentary was both educational and intriguing.

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Premise

It sets out with the premise that Lincoln was perhaps not quite the character history has remembered him as. In America today he is hailed as "the great emancipator", freer of the slaves, and there is certainly some truth in that. But there was also another side.

From his humble beginnings as the son of a farmer, he was always interested in greater things, always reading books and learning. Of course, he lived in an America that couldn't be more different from that of the present day.

In understanding his story, it's important we place it in the correct context. He was a man of his time and certainly early in his political life harboured racist views, even though he was morally against slavery.

The documentary, and those interviewed for it, took pains to point out the difference between being anti-slavery on the one hand, and believing in social equality on the other.

American Civil War

The north-south divide in America at the time lead to the Civil War that raged between 1861 and 1865 and claimed the lives of 620,000 Americans. Whereas slavery was allowed in the southern states, it had been abolished in the northern ones.

But Lincoln's views on slavery were not what most people today might imagine. They stemmed partly from the economic and practical problems it created for the average free white man at the time.

In slave-states, it was almost impossible for a white man to find work that wealthy land-owners couldn't just have their slaves do for free instead. As such, many had to cross the borders into the northern states.

However, with the Civil War between north and south, Lincoln's views on the question of race were largely changed. One commentator said it was his ability to grow and change that made him so great.

These changes came as black slaves ran away from their owners and joined forces with the northern armies, lead by Lincoln. He was amazed by their courage, loyalty and bravery in the face of battle over the years that followed and by 1865 felt they'd earned the right to citizenship in the new post-war America.

Lincoln also wanted to give the new free black population the right to vote, however he was assassinated before many of these visions could be implemented constitutionally.

Martin Luther King

It was symbolic, then, that Martin Luther King spoke nearly 100 years later on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, in Washington in 1963, to call for Lincoln's vision to be completed. He famously said:

"In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a cheque. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.

This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness".

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of colour are concerned. Instead of honouring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad cheque, a cheque which has come back marked "insufficient funds".

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this cheque, a cheque that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice."

I would encourage anyone to watch the documentary and learn a bit about Lincoln as he really was: a man who had his flaws and his own personal agenda, but someone who ultimately stood up for, and made a conscious decision to do, the right thing.

Today that's what he has been remembered for, and always will be.

University Essays And The Lost Generation

2011-11-30T17:45:00.001+00:00

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University essays will be the death of me.

Why? Because I'm unbelievably lazy by nature and begrudge work with a vengeance. I've always been a great procrastinator and loath research.

In the end, of course, I will always have a piece of work finished and ready to hand in on time, but getting to that final product will be similar to watching a crab.

The crab

I am the crab that can only walk sideways, unable to see the straight path, constantly zigzagging over the relatively short distance that in reality lies between me and my goal.

I don't pretend to think I am in any way unique in these matters or alone in being a master of procrastination. I know there are many people my age, older and younger, who feel the same way.

I largely blame the internet. I blame anything but myself. Though ultimately I am not stupid enough to believe it. The problem finally lies with me (and you, if you're the same).

Take this blog, for example: the perfect platform for the procrastinating student who shivers at the thought of writing an essay plan, let alone the essay itself, but will happily waste hours of the day writing nonsense here.

The lost generation

That is what this generation of young people is coming to. This "lost generation" as they are calling us. The 16-24 year-olds who are not in employment, education or training - now estimated at nearly 1.2 million here in the UK.

Sitting on the dole with a first-class honours? Ok, I'm not sitting on the dole with a degree in hand but I know many are.

Take, for example, the chap who started the blog Dole House Blues. He's a 20-something year old journalism graduate with a first-class honours and NCTJ. And yet, even he is unable to find a job.

The essay

The question I have to address in my essay due on December 16 is whether or not James Murdoch was correct when he said, and I quote:

"The only reliable, durable, and perpetual guarantor of independence is profit."

I must argue either for or against this perspective with no more and no less than 2,000 words. Not a simple task. But perhaps students of today should be set to address the following statement instead:

"The only reliable, durable, and perpetual guarantor of employment is education." Discuss.

I think those could be some interesting essays, hmmm?

Does Our Writing Evolve?

2011-11-28T20:33:00.000+00:00

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I recently decided that the easiest way to sit down and write on a regular basis is to take out of the equation the problem of thinking what to write about.

By posing a question at the very start which you will attempt to address in the article, you can then focus your thoughts completely on that topic.

You don't have to answer the question, but you do have to engage with it and make an effort to stay relevant.

This also goes to prove that the more time you spend writing, the more lessons you generate from your own experience, as these are all thoughts I have arrived at independently.

You can listen to advice from any number of authors and watch documentaries on the lives of any number of famous writers, but ultimately you must write yourself.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't heed the advice of others, but you must remember that finally you are the one that must make it happen.

Evolution in writing

So, the topic for this piece is the question of whether our writing evolves?

I suppose, broadly, evolution means to change, usually for the better. It means to become stronger and more adapt at survival. It means to grow.

A writer who is just starting out, such as myself, writing in their free time, trying to commit to it on a regular basis, will soon come to the conviction that it certainly does evolve.

I used to sometimes say in posts earlier this year that blogging allows you to see how you are changing as a writer and, to a small extent, as a person. I still believe the first part, but it remains to be seen about the second.

Back to the old

I've spent some time over the past few days going back over old writing, mostly from my time in China, and breaking it up: creating more white space on the page, chopping paragraphs in half, adding sub headings and so on.

Most of my writing from earlier this year was unbearably long and often incredibly boring, even to myself. So many walls of thick text that even the bravest of readers would be intimidated.

I would also fail miserably at staying on topic, jumping from one idea to the next, and then back to the first, continuously.

On to the new

My writing, therefore, has evolved in that I now make an effort to stay more conscious of the topic I'm discussing and not stray into irrelevant details every other paragraph.

I now try to break paragraphs down into more digestible chunks, also helping to improve the "scanability" of the page.

As I mentioned in my recent post on George Orwell and Journalism, I observe his rule of not using a long word where a short one will do.

These are just a few of the ways in which my writing has evolved for the better since earlier this year. And it's only through making an effort to write consistently that it's been possible.

I still have so far to go and so many ways in which to improve, but as long as the process doesn't become a chore, doesn't become something akin to homework, then there is no hurry.

My writing will slowly continue to evolve and so will yours if you work at it and remember to enjoy it for what it is.

An ending quote

I'd like to finish with some advice from the author Christopher Hitchens that I came across today in a YouTube video:

"You should first ask yourself if you really have to write. In other words, not is it something you'd like to do or have heard to be rewarding or enjoyable. Has it ever occurred to you that you have no choice but to write?

There's always someone when I say this, in a room full of students, who looks at me suddenly as if, "how did you know that?" That's how I do know.

And if that's true then it's fine: it will work, you will get it done. You may not be highly successful at it, but at least you will know you're doing what you're supposed to be doing. It's a pleasure a lot of people don't have."

In other words, if you love writing you will do it in spite of the success or rewards it brings. It is just part of who you are and this made sense to me.

Can you think of something in your life that you feel this way about? If you can, go after it! Strive to bring it consciously into each and every day.

Pictures Never Lie: Narrative In Journalism, With Reference To Haiti and Gaza

2011-11-28T13:54:00.000+00:00

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The theme of our journalism class this morning was the idea that the same pictures and footage can be played with two contrasting narratives.

Both can be equally powerful in persuading the audience that they are seeing what they are being told they are seeing, despite the fact that the images should allow them to come to their own independent judgement.

Of course, every journalist working in broadcast must construct a narrative to go with the video footage. But the danger is when that narrative is, deliberately or accidentally, not an accurate portrayal of events.

Haiti

The journalist and commentator Charlie Brooker pointed out that a Sky News report on the situation in Haiti during the 2010 earthquakes was in fact a mis-representation of events.

The reporter made claim that crowds were fighting over cardboard boxes which were needed to use as temporary shelter. Because this was said over a scene lasting only a few seconds, it's easy to take her word for it.

However, upon closer inspection it becomes obvious that the crowds are not fighting at all, but having a bit of fun and clearly laughing as they hit each other with the cardboard boxes to flatten them.

This, then, was a perfect example of how narrative can change the interpretation of a scene we are all watching, and the fact that, in news at least, we often don't question what is reported.

Words are incredibly powerful, especially when coming from reporters and foreign correspondents who we believe to be well-informed on the subjects that they are discussing (at least in countries such as the UK).

News companies that spend a lot of money sending reporters and camera teams out to places like Haiti to cover a story want to make sure they get a good return on their investment.

Violence as a potential narrative

But looking for stories among all the chaos is not always easy and oftentimes journalists will therefore take the route of least resistance: violence. Violence is always a potential narrative, even when there's scarcely any of it actually going on.

According to my lecturer, this was certainly the case in Haiti, where some journalists made it look like a dangerous and violent place due to selective filming and reporting.

In the worst cases, journalists can even sit, for example, in London offices, narrating footage from the likes of Haiti or the Middle East without even being present themselves.

This surely raises important questions of context and personal experience, which should be used as an internal reference point by the reporter, that would clearly be lacking in these cases.

Eyeless in Gaza?

During the 2009 Israel-Palestine conflict and the invasion of Gaza, foreign media and reporters weren't even allowed into the city for fear of creating bad press for the Israeli government, as famously happened during the 2006 war in Lebanon.

In a war zone, there is always the potential for reporters to highlight human interest stories and the suffering of victims at the hands of one particular government, whether widely justified or not.

There is almost always bias in reporting, whether institutions like the BBC strive to to stay neutral or not.

Coming back to the Gaza situation in 2009, there was a complete vacuum of journalistic facts thanks to the blockade on foreign correspondents entering the city.

The only source of reporting from inside Gaza itself came from Arab journalists based there. This led to spin stories and a lot of unverifiable facts.

At the time, the death toll was reported to be 1,300 - half of which were children. Many images were not shown on UK television due to strict media rules on taste and decency (dead bodies, etc.), which arguably lead to a lack of context for the average viewer as to just how bad things were.

Hill of same

The one thing all foreign journalists reporting on Gaza at that time had in common was that none of them were inside the city, many coordinating with their London offices to get the latest information and updates for their broadcasts. Ironic.

So, where were these journalists? The only place they were allowed to be was on a hilltop some 1.5 miles southwest of Jerusalem with a very distant view on Gaza.

John Snow, veteran reporter for the BBC, said they could "see absolutely nothing of value", and the hill where they all congregated earned the nickname "the hill of same". It shouldn't be hard to guess why.

This created problems in terms of balancing Israel's account of Hamas because of the lack of reporters there to verify information. The destruction caused by Hamas rockets was widely circulated in Israeli propaganda.

The irony of it all was that there was certainly no lack of pictures or video footage but an undeniable vacuum of hard facts and convicting narrative. And there were very few personal stories or accounts in English for Western viewers.

The question of narrative

This, then, was a summary of the topics discussed in class today. I took notes because I wanted to write a post on it later as personal practice.

If you want to watch the Dispatches: Unseen Gaza documentary, it's well worth checking out, certainly for anyone interested in or studying journalism.

It helped me understand the power of narrative in news reporting and how important it is that the facts and analysis remains as close to the verifiable information as possible. All too often this standard falls short and reporters look for ways to fill the gaps.

Thanks for reading.

Why Did I Choose To Study Journalism?

2011-11-28T00:14:00.000+00:00

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Journalists Memorial, Arlington, Va

In yesterday's post, I talked about the differences between WordPress and Blogger and how I was considering starting a new journalism blog. Well, today that has all changed.

Instead of starting yet another blog, I'm going to do my journalism writing on this one instead. Why fix what isn't broken, eh? Besides, keeping things in one place is always simpler.

So, the topic for this post will be why I decided to study journalism in the first place.

Love for writing

Looking back over my life, writing is always one thing I've enjoyed. As I grew older, and through my teen years became more involved with the Internet culture, I became aware of blogging.

Although I didn't start blogging seriously until relatively recently, it was a natural result of my love for writing and the easiest way of getting it into the public domain.

I remember from quite a young age enjoying the freedom that came with writing stories and how it allowed me to create. Unlike art, it's a creative outlet that has stood the test of time for me. As you can see, I'm still doing it today.

College

It was actually during my AS Levels at college, when I was around 17 years old and pretty set on studying either philosophy or psychology at university, that I also felt attracted to the idea of an English literature or journalism degree.

Although I always did well in English at school with relatively little effort and usually enjoyed it, with the end of GCSEs and the start of A Levels that started to change.

English as a subject became a bit too dry for my liking. So much analysing of plays and text coupled with no focus on creative writing soon had me bored. And so I quickly decided against English at university.

Journalism was still on the table as a possible degree, but I never considered it seriously at that time. I enjoyed philosophy and psychology as subjects and had no real idea of what studying journalism would be like.

In the end, it didn't matter much because I dropped out of school at 17. In some ways it might have been for the best as looking back I don't know how much I would have really enjoyed either philosophy or psychology. On top of that, I was tired of education and probably not ready to commit to another 3 years of it.

Blogging, China and meeting Amy

A few years later, during my time in China, I started keeping a blog. After meeting Amy and realising that I needed to get a degree to stand any sort of chance at finding a decent job, I began thinking back to journalism.

Amy encouraged me to apply for a degree in the subject and I eventually got an offer from the University of Central Lancashire based on being a mature student. All the others turned me down. That was last year, in 2010.

As it happens, UCLan is the oldest journalism department in the UK, dating back to 1962. Naturally, it has the largest network of alumni journalists as well. Almost every journalism outfit in the UK now has generations of UCLan graduates working for it. And that's no exaggeration, from what I hear.

So, really I was lucky to get an offer from this university and such a good journalism department. I'm enjoying my studies and still continuing with blogging, a platform that has really allowed me to pursuit my love for writing long-term.

Fate or luck

In the end, studying journalism was partly a conscious decision and partly down to fate. If I'd made other decisions earlier in life, I certainly wouldn't be here today. I wouldn't have gone to China when I did and I wouldn't have met Amy. I wouldn't have long-term plans to be in Hong Kong and may well never have went to university.

Alternatively, I could have ended up a 22 year old with a degree in philosophy or psychology by now. I wonder what that other me would be like?

As things stand, I'm on track to graduate with a degree in journalism in 2014. That doesn't mean I'll end up working in the industry or even in the media, but at least I'm studying something I enjoy and that focuses on writing as a primary skill.

Of course, journalism also incorporates skills besides writing such as research and information-gathering, but they're all skills I enjoy learning and ultimately benefit my writing ability.

Conclusion?

Has this been much by way of an explanation as to why I chose to study journalism? Probably not, but it's just the tip of the iceberg.

Who can say why we make the decisions we do? Life is a pretty mysterious thing. All I know is that I've made the decisions that have brought me to where I am today and made me the person I am, and I take full responsibility for them.

I also, of course, humbly acknowledge the profound effect other people have had, and continue to have, on my life, helping and guiding me each step of the way.

Thanks for reading.

George Orwell And Journalism

2011-11-27T19:48:00.000+00:00

Image source

As a journalism student, George Orwell's name is often mentioned by lecturers. He is a model of political writing. After all, he did say it was his dream to turn political writing into an art. I'm sure many would agree he accomplished that.

It's easy to forget or simply not know that Orwell was a reporter and foreign correspondant. He took part in the Spanish Civil War, fighting on the side of the communists.

This later lead to his writing of Animal Farm, which was banned from publication in the UK until then end of the Second World War for fear of upsetting the Russians. He was, remember, portraying communism by the pigs' overthrowing of the farmer, only to then turn on each other and become totalitarian rulers themselves.

He spent time in Germany shortly before the surrender to Allied forces in 1945, reporting on what had become of the nation that very nearly controlled all of Europe. Memorable lines from his newsreels include the likening of red steel girders among the mountains of ruin and debris to sticks of rhubarb sprouting from the ground.

BBC documentary

Today I watched the BBC documentary George Orwell: A Life In Pictures. I learnt that there are in fact no surviving film or audio recordings of Orwell. A great shame considering he only died in 1950 at the age of 47, shortly after completing his most famous novel 1984.

It is always inspiring to watch documentaries on the lives of famous writers. Orwell's life was particularly incredible, but arguably sad and oftentimes bitterly harsh. For example, the death of his wife due to an overdose of anesthetic before an operation to remove cancerous tumors from her womb. He was abroad in France at the time.

As is famously documented in his book, Down And Out In Paris And London, he lived as a member of the working class for a substantial amount of time, earning a meagre income as a kitchen porter despite being educated at Eton. Then, in The Road To Wigan Pier, he recorded the hardships of Yorkshire miners and the appalling lives of the working class in Sheffield.

Writing rules

Although journalists of today might not necessarily envy his life, there is much we can learn from it. The rules he sets out for good writing in his essay Politics and the English Language are still as relevant today as they were 60 years ago.

I, for one, have tried to observe his rule of not using a long word where a short one will do. He also believed that political writing should be just as easily understood by the uneducated as the educated; by the "idiot" as the "intellectual". These are all sound pieces of advice, particularly coming from an age when there was great deal of pompousness in such writing.

So I'm thankful to Orwell for the lessons he left and to the BBC for their enlightening documentary on his life, despite the fact that there is no surviving video or audio footage of him. To anyone interested, it's definitely worth a watch.

Thanks for reading.

Wordpress vs Blogger: Journalism Blog?

2011-11-27T00:10:00.001+00:00

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I have a real love-hate relationship with Blogger.

To be honest, one of the reasons that's kept me here all this time is Google AdSense. Because Blogger is Google-owned, they allow you to display adverts on your blogs.

Wordpress, on the other hand, don't allow you to display adverts or monetize blogs that they host in any way - that means any Wordpress.com hosted blog, which sucks but I can understand why.

Undoubtedly, Wordpress is by far the superior blogging platform and that's what makes it all so annoying. If I wanted to show adverts on a Wordpress blog, I would have to buy a domain name and self-host. That would probably cost in the region of £60 per year.

Even my BLCU blog might not be able to pay for itself through the adverts it runs, meaning I'd be losing money. That's why I've always kept it here on Blogger where anything it makes is profit and potential future investment back into the blog. For example, a few days ago I registered blcublog.com for $10 per year through a Google partner which was paid for by Google AdSense revenue generated over the past month.

Journalism blog

The reason I've been thinking about the whole Wordpress vs Blogger debate again today is because I registered a free blog over on Wordpress.com that I'm considering using for my journalism writings. By journalism writings, I mean writing on the subject of journalism, rather than journalism per se.

I even got down a decent sized draft of an article as way of introduction to the new blog. Being a journalism student, I think it would be useful to have a place where I can just write about the subject and my experience of learning about it (here at university).

I do think that Wordpress is the more professional of the two platforms and one I really should be using and getting comfortable with as a journalism student in 2011. It is, for sure, more complicated and tailored to the serious writer. Heck, The New York Times use it for their main site. I bet you didn't know that, did you?

By creating a blog that is just about the subject of journalism, it would give me the opportunity to share what I'm learning with a niche audience (i.e. people who want to read about journalism), rather than putting it here among all the other waffle I write.

An audience is never going to grow around a general personal blog like this one. People go to blogs, usually, because they want to read about a particular topic. Having that focus would also encourage me to write higher quality pieces that require more time and research.

Then the question arises: do I actually have enough interest in journalism to blog about it? I thought this through earlier and it struck me: if I don't have enough interest to blog about it, what on earth am I doing studying it at university?

If anything, I should be making an effort to write about it as often as I can as a way of engaging and learning. Having a blog to maintain would be a good incentive to do more reading around the subject or else struggle for things to write about.

Unemployed Hack

Reading blogs such as unemployedhack.wordpress.com by an out-of-work journalist (who I believe used to work for the now-defunct News Of The World) has also stirred interest in me.

I've been keeping up with his posts over the last few months and find them very interesting, though I'm sure they will promptly stop as soon as he finds new employment. In fact, he has an interview tomorrow from what I read in his most recent post.

But anyway, I didn't want this post to go on too long. Really it was just to ramble some more about the matter of choosing between Blogger and Wordpress and the fact that I might start this new journalism blog over on Wordpress. We'll see what I manage to write tomorrow as, being a Sunday, I should have enough free time to commit to a decent opening post.

I think sticking AdSense on blogs is going to have to become less important to me in the future if I want to get myself using Wordpress as soon as possible and writing on topics for reasons other than their advertising potential. Thanks for reading.

Google+: Dead Or Alive?

2011-11-25T20:24:00.001+00:00

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Everyone on social media is talking about it and everyone is asking the same question: is Google+ dead?

I just read a BBC article on the subject which made some interesting points and might have you rethinking your quick judgement.

Whatever you believe, it's hard to deny that everyone is still on Facebook and very few are on Google+.

One notable exception is my friend Shaun, who closed down his Facebook account and migrated to Google+ permanently. A brave move.

But as John Abell, New York Bureau chief of Wired.com, points out:

"We're not talking about somebody who has borrowed $10,000 from his mommy. This is Google."

Too big to fail?

Bradley Horowitz, vice-president of product at Google+, said:

"The concept of Google+ dying, it's a misunderstanding of what we're doing. We have not even begun, let alone these reports of premature demise."

So, for now, I'll keep holding my breath and watch with interest over the coming months and years as this new social network finds it place on the internet.

I'm kind of inclined to believe it's here to stay.

Consistency

2011-11-24T21:10:00.000+00:00

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Consistency with anything is important. Well, anything that brings about a positive change over time. There's little use in being consistent with an anti-productive behaviour.

I stumbled across a video on my Facebook feed that someone I know had posted to their wall. It turned out to be one of seven videos that he's made so far.

The theme of his video is a 30 day challenge. The idea is that it takes 30 days to turn something into a habit and 90 days to turn it into a behaviour.

So this person, called Jon, is taking 30 days to get more comfortable with talking on camera before doing more serious talks as material for a new website he is developing called 21st Century Health.

I found his talks very inspirational and positive and felt like mentioning it here in a blog post.

I'm not yet ready to do video blogging as he is doing - it's actually a very awkward experience for people who are new to it - but I'm at least happy to put my thoughts into writing.

So check out his video and be inspired to try something new!

What could you commit to doing over 30 days that would bring about a positive new habit in your daily life and help you grow as a person?

It's something worth thinking about.

Why Bother With Chinese Writing?

2011-11-23T20:51:00.000+00:00

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I chose Mandarin Chinese for my elective module this year but I'm starting to wonder if I should've thought twice.

The number of characters we're expected to learn for the writing exam is unrealistic in my opinion. Do they realise how long it takes for foreigners to commit them to memory?

So far we're up to chapter 5 in the textbook and there must've been hundreds of characters in the vocab lists. Even coming from Beijing, I'm struggling.

The end of term written exam could be on any of the topics we've covered. I think they should at least tell us it's going to be one of two or three subjects rather than expect we'll have the time to commit everything to memory.

I guess I'm just annoyed right now because I haven't been studying Chinese enough and the exams are looming. The fact that I hardly remember any characters from Beijing when I invested SO much time in it also makes me wonder if it's worth going through it all again.

The moment you stop practicing Chinese reading and writing, it all just falls away. It's a lot of effort for very little.

Or at least that's how I feel right now. Bah.

Howl's Moving Castle

2011-11-23T20:21:00.000+00:00

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Tonight I re-watched Howl's Moving Castle... again. There's little doubt that it's one of the all-time great anime films and perhaps one of the few to be widely recognised outside of anime circles.

Have you seen or heard of it?

Of course, there's also Spirited Away which is just as brilliant and arguable even more well known.

Unfortunately, the copy on my external hard drive was partially corrupted and so my re-watch was interrupted a number of times, forcing me to skip segments here and there. Nonetheless, I enjoyed it very much.

In the same way that re-watching old Disney films can take some people back to their childhood, re-watching great anime, particularly from Studio Ghibli, has similar effect on me: I just want to curl up into a ball and get lost in the magic of the world.

Curious as to who did the voice acting for the main character, Howl, I checked IMDB to discover it was Christian Bale. I thought it sounded familiar, but I would never have guessed!

And such is how I've spent this Wednesday evening: in another world, quietly content, my eyes glued to the cartoon images of a wizard and his moving castle.

Javan Roast And Ground Coffee

2011-11-23T09:36:00.000+00:00

Photo is author's own

"This Specially Selected Javan Coffee thrives in the fertile, volcanic earth of the Ijen Plateau, on the beautiful Indonesian island of Java. The region is home to some of the world's oldest coffee plantations, which give this coffee it's rich full-bodied flavour with a subtle chocolate finish."

Having just finished my previous bag of fresh coffee yesterday, I was looking forward to trying this new offering from Aldi's Specially Selected range.

Unfortunately, it's the worst one yet. Even more of a shame because the packaging is just beautiful. Of course, packaging sells products.

The claims of any chocolate on the finish is drowned out by a bitter aftertaste.

The other two fresh coffees from this range, one Colombian and the other Ethiopian, were also nothing special.

At only £1.99, though, I'm not heartbroken.

If you want an excellent bag of fresh coffee from Aldi for about the same price, try the Metro range, particularly the Italian one. It's full of flavour and bite.

I'll see how this bag tastes tomorrow, but I suspect that bitter aftertaste won't be going away.

Lying To Yourself

2011-11-22T12:14:00.000+00:00

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"Until you stop lying to yourself, I'll never stop lying to you."

This is one line from a song by Example that I hear a lot in the gym here in Preston.

As with a lot of songs that you hear in the background, whether it be on the radio or at a bar, you can find yourself humming the tune or singing lines to yourself unconsciously.

I was doing that with this line today.

I'd always assumed the singer was admitting that he was lying, but I didn't understood why he should keep doing it until the other person "stopped lying to themselves". An earlier line in the song even says, "I'm happy to admit that I lied."

But when I was singing the line in my head this morning, I interpreted it in another way: that you can't change another person's opinion of you. If someone else is convinced you're lying, then you're lying.

So now the singer was telling this person that until they changed the conviction in their own mind, he would "never stop lying," no matter what the situation may be in reality.

I thought it was an interesting insight and example of how rarely we clearly see both sides of life around us.

Authentic Chinese Soup Noodles

2011-11-14T16:08:00.000+00:00

For some quick and easy authentic Chinese soup noodles like I made in the picture here...

You'll need...

From your local shop:

1 pack of instant noodles
1 large tomato
3 garlic cloves
1 egg
1-2 pickled gerkins
Vinegar (either Chinese or normal)

From a Chinese supermarket:

1-2 teaspoons of black bean (comes in a jar with chili seeds and oil)
1/2 packet of preserved green beans (comes in a vacuum pack)

Instructions

Depending on your taste, roughly chop three cloves of garlic and one large tomato.
Stir fry on a high heat in a teaspoon of oil (or less) and add 1-2 teaspoons of black bean. You can also chuck in some vinegar now, maybe just a tablespoon (I do it to taste, usually I like more).
After frying these ingredients for a couple minutes just to take the edge off the garlic, pour in some boiling water (enough to allow the instant noodles to cook in).
Put in the instant noodles and the flavouring sachet that comes with it. Also now crack in your egg and allow it to poach next to the noodles in the soup.
After the noodles have softened, one or two minutes later, pour it all into a bowl. Your egg should cook very quickly, keeping the yolk runny.
Slice one or two gherkins long ways or diagonally and throw them onto the noodles. Then empty half the packet of preserved green beans onto them as well.

That's it. Enjoy!

If you're hardcore like the Chinese, you'll eat raw cloves of garlic with mouthfuls of the noodles and soup!

P.S. Notice that I haven't used any soy sauce. It's generally not used in Chinese soup noodles.

Are Paywalls the Way Forward For Digital Journalism?

2011-10-23T01:05:00.000+01:00

thetimes.co.uk paywall

My god, today I've been a complete news fiend.

I managed to take care of some work and assignments, and even looked through some Chinese flashcards, but all in all that probably only took up an hour or two - if that.

Contrary to most days that I take in a lot of news, I didn't read much from the Guardian's website. I did, of course, browse it this morning, but there wasn't too much new content compared with last night when I was up till around midnight scanning articles.

Digital subscriptions and paywalls: A twist in the tale?

Instead, I read a few good articles on the Colombia Journalism Review's website. One of them, talking about the apparent success of the New York Times paywall business model, said:

"The [New York] Times’s paywall is defying all the doomsayers who said you couldn’t charge for news without killing web traffic and thus online advertising. One of the naysayers was the Times’s own Jim Roberts, an assistant managing editor, who reported the other day that “I’m here to tell you I was wrong”: Total visitors to nytimes.com are actually up 2 percent from a year ago when there was no paywall."

For a newspaper that has implemented the paywall business model - a model that is hugely debated in the industry - to be up 2% in its website's visitors compared with a year before when there was no paywall in place is, frankly, astonishing.

I don't think many could have claimed to see those stats coming. So what has been the driving force behind an increase in visitors to a paid-content newspaper website?

I imagine the tablet revolution has had a lot to do with it, though I would be foolish to claim that the NYT is not a source of great journalism, tablets aside. However, there has clearly been a huge increase in digital subscriptions that coincided with Apple's iOS 5 release - a release that saw the birth of the brand-new Newsstand app.

In another article at the CJR published two days ago, Ryan Chittum says:

"Poynter’s Jeff Sonderman reports that Newsstand, the long-awaited feature in Apple’s newly released operating system for iPhones and iPads is causing explosive growth in news app downloads. A stunning 1.8 million iPhone users downloaded NYT’s free app last week, eighty-five times the rate of a week earlier, Sonderman reports, and the iPad app’s downloads were up seven times, to 189,000."

Could these developments, then, be helping the NYT's success in terms of the recent increase in visitors? I don't know, but what I do know is that the tablet industry's ability to make digital newspapers and subscriptions more appealing to consumers has been dramatic:

"Digital newsstand development is booming, with numerous blueprints so far unpublicized. As those newsstands sprout, we’re moving to a new stage of paid content, one with profound implications for newspaper and magazine budgets for 2012 and beyond."

Digital journalism: Free vs. paid, open vs. closed (the paywall debate)

Alan Rusbridger, editor-in-chief of the Guardian

The Guardian's editor-in-chief, Alan Rusbridger, is quite clear that he doesn't believe closing newspaper sites off in the form of paywalls is the way forward. By taking this approach you are allowing 1% in at the exclusion of the other 99%, he argues.

A January 2010 Guardian article on the topic quotes him as saying that paywalls, like those adopted by Rupert Murdoch's Times newspaper, could lead the industry to a "sleepwalk into oblivion".

At a lecture given to the London College of Communication, Rusbridger said:

"If you erect a universal pay wall around your content then it follows you are turning away from a world of openly shared content. Again, there may be sound business reasons for doing this, but editorially it is about the most fundamental statement anyone could make about how newspapers see themselves in relation to the newly-shaped world."

He is probably today among the most well-known media figures in the UK - and arguably the world - to be taking such a strong stance against paywalls.

However, as we have seen with the success of the NYT and the recent growth in Rupert Murdoch's Times newspaper's digital subscribers, perhaps the future of paywalls are starting to look a little brighter than what many of us had previously thought possible.

This has been a very interesting twist for the industry of late, and journalists will be fascinated to see just where it heads.

Was Rusbridger wrong - or was there just something he hadn't considered? Are paywalls really going to be the demise of the digital news industry?

The Times newspaper has also reported increased levels of user engagement and interaction with the content on the website since the paywalls were implemented. Clearly if someone is willing to pay for the news from a particular newspaper, they are more likely to leave comments and engage, and therefore more valuable to the company.

This is also reflected in the audience value for advertisers who may now be willing to pay higher online rates for ad placements to get access to viewers that they believe are more engaged and likely to convert into sales.

Newspapers like the Financial Times can charge advertisers more precisely because they have a niche audience that is of great value. Could it be that paywalls are now starting to breed this elite group of readers who are more valuable than ever before?

We will all have to wait and see. As Ryan points out in the CJR article:

"The vast majority of downloaders, of course, aren’t going to decide to pay $15 a month for The New York Times just because Apple makes it easy now. But some sliver of them will. That just might boost the Times’s digital-subscription growth rate (and everybody else’s on Newsstand) this quarter."

Unemployedhack and Dole House Blues

2011-10-21T21:33:00.001+01:00

Two blogs: Unemployedhack and Dole House Blues

I've recently discovered two entertaining blogs by two out-of-work journalists who are both on the dole.

One (unemployedhack) wrote for the tabloids for years from what I understand whereas the other (Dole House Blues) has only just graduated in journalism with a first-class honours and NCTJ qualifications.

Unfortunately, as is the case with so many journalists up and down the country, all their experience and qualifications aren't helping them land jobs.

Unemployedhack

Unemployedhack writes in his About page:

"I’ve travelled the length of the country seeking employment and, following the rejection, have wasted afternoons watching magpies attack each other over food I have strategically placed to create such friction."

As you can tell, he's a funny writer. I've not read many of his posts but they seem to be taken in good humour and from an intelligent viewpoint. There's an acceptance that we're currently in a shady period that's easy to get pessimistic about and yet there isn't a defeatist mentality towards it.

The attitude of both of these blogs seems to be that it's possible to see the humour of it all and stay positive, even if it's only through venting frustrations in the form of humorous blogging.

"My own financial understanding has increased enormously alongside my maths skills. Today was no exception: I found seven pound coins in the pocket of a jacket I’d not worn for a while. Seven whole pound coins. I wondered what to do with it: a bottle of wine, perhaps? A trip into town to meet a friend? No, I topped up my gas meter. The dizzy excitement of this luxury soon passed."

Then at the end of the post he goes on to say that perhaps he would've been just as well spending those few pounds on the bottle of wine he'd been considering. The meagre payment to the gas meter still left him with £43.31 to pay off.

Dole House Blues

Dole House Blues posts much less regularly, with only three posts since starting the blog on September 30. It's still very much worth keeping an eye on for anyone studying or working in journalism.

He sums up the frustration of unemployment among journalists in his opening post:

"I got my journalism degree – a first. I got my NCTJ certificates – yes, even fucking shorthand 100 wpm. And I’ve got experience – published by a stack of newspapers, magazines and websites. Sometimes even for money. I’ve done work placements, internships and ran blogs. Tomorrow, I sign on the dole."

And today jokes, half seriously, about trying and failing to take a picture of the lady at the dole office on his camera phone for use later in his blog post, I presume:

"Pretend your were merely scratching your nose with your phone when you’re almost caught attempting to take a photo of her.

"Fill in her forms. Answer her questions. Thank her for her time. Hope she doesn’t think you’re a pervert for trying to take a photo of her."

This may sound strange and, admittedly, perverted outside of the context of his post, but if you go on to read the whole thing you will see that it's a misconception.

As I've already said, both blogs are well worth taking a look at.

I just hope it's not me, a few years down the line, that's the one writing about life as an unemployed journalist making his fortnightly trips to the dole office...

The futures award group presentation

I spent a large part of the afternoon working on a PowerPoint presentation for the Futures Award at UCLan. It's a compulsory module this semester that's all about improving students' employability.

This first presentation is done in a group. We're due to give it next Thursday (27 October) and then the week after we have to give individual presentations on a topic of our choice.

My topic is going to be living in China with some quote's from An Idiot Abroad's Karl Pilkington. For anyone who's not yet watched that show, it's definitely worth checking out.

A personal favourite line is:

"The way they write. The letters are weird. Their alphabet’s not like ours. Theirs is like, like someone testing out a biro. Everything’s - There’s no logic to anything that they do."

And, shortly after arriving in China:

"I don’t think I’ve ever felt this lost, even in Wales."

Anyone who's been to China will undoubtedly have a chuckle at this one:

"The fella behind me is coughing his guts up. I thought I was putting on a waterproof coat in case it rained. I need it just for on this bus."

The amount of coughing the Chinese men seem to do is unbelievable. It's from all the smoking, you see.

My futures award PowerPoint presentation

The topic of the group presentation is the Futures Award itself. Strange, right? Well, perhaps, but I don't really mind as it keeps it simple.

All the information we need can be found on the university website. It's just a case of rewording it and reinventing it in a new presentable package which is to be aimed at one hundred hypothetical first year students.

In fact, we're just presenting it to the rest of our class - about fifteen students in total.

There are three of us in the group. I've been designated to find out what modules are available and what the benefits are of doing the award. You can see from the screenshot above that I've tried to keep it light and colourful. The mini modules section have Mini-Me as their representative. Brilliant, isn't it?

Unfortunately, I spent a long time playing with the design and images at the expense of researching the content. I don't want to overload people with screens of text so I'll probably use flashcards during the presentation on which I can keep longer notes.

Although I still have a little work to do on this group presentation, on the whole I'm happy with it so far. I just wish it hadn't taken so long.

Clear blogging

I've made an effort, as you can perhaps tell, with this post. I haven't just offered a wall of text and a single photo at the top (as I've been guilty of doing lately, I'm afraid).

Instead, there has been more thoughtful inclusion of photos - or screenshots - from my own hand, as well as quotes from other blogs to add to my own thoughts.

I have also separated the various topics I wanted to discuss with relevant section headers that make it all easier to digest, or to simply skip parts you aren't interested in.

I will try to keep this style in future posts. It's worth it in the end and I hope it makes for a more enjoyable reading experience.

Thanks for reading and look out for more posts soon.

End of the Weekend

2011-10-16T22:58:00.002+01:00

Image source

Being a Sunday I had a lot of free time today and I'm happy that I managed to stay relatively focussed and get a fair bit of reading done.

I finished the last three chapters of the course reading for last week's journalism practice module and also got a little Chinese revision in too, though not a huge amount.

Around midday I went to the gym for no more than an hour and then had lunch while watching the BBC news. Later in the day I also did a bit of reading on the Guardian website. A couple of stories in the China section caught my eye, one about their economy slowing down and another about their failure to hit approaching carbon emission targets.

In British news, police have said Adam Werritty is to be investigated for fraud. In London and around the world anti-capitalist protests continue. I haven't been keeping up too much with world news though I did read an interesting interview with the ex-director-general of al-Jazeera news who resigned three weeks ago.

The two world stories I remember seeing on the BBC broadcast from today were the report on Bangkok's flooding and also the £72 million raised by Oxfam to support the drought victims in Somalia, if I remember correctly.

Tomorrow morning I have to be up at 08:00 for two hours of seminars from 09:00-11:00. I'm wondering if we're going to get any more of an insight into the presentations we're expected to give on November 7.

After that I'll be back in the gym and probably return the library books I took out earlier this week as I'm now done with them. Unfortunately the past two times I went I couldn't find the book for this week's business of journalism module reading.

I may get out my Kindle and read a few more pages of the CJR report on digital journalism in bed before falling asleep. If I keep consistent each day, thirty hours will add up eventually over the course of a week. It will also make exam time less stressful I hope. That's the real advantage.

A Quiet Day of Study

2011-10-16T00:01:00.000+01:00

This is not going to be a very focused post so apologies in advance.

Today being a Saturday I had no plans. I read up till chapter seven of Reporting For Journalists but past that I couldn't bring myself to do any more.

I turned my mind to Chinese a bit later in the evening and started populating Smartr with new flashcards from chapter two of Colloquial Chinese 2.

The free version of the software I was using was capped at one hundred flashcards and so I decided to pay £2.49 for the full version as I plan to keep using it as a study aid, particularly for Chinese.

Just adding all the new flashcards takes a long time and by the time I'd had enough of that it was getting late and I didn't want to start revising them. I'll do more of it tomorrow.

If I don't make an effort to stay on top of work every day it's going to quickly get on top of me. I calculated that if we're supposed to be doing three hours of self-study for every one hour of class each week, that adds up to thirty hours (plus the ten hours of classes), totalling forty hours per week. If you take university seriously, it's very much a full-time commitment.

I remember hearing that it's good to study with classical music because of the effects if has on the brain, so tried it out today and found it relaxing. It stops your thoughts from wandering too much as they concentrate on the sound instead. I'll experiment with it more tomorrow. A personal favourite is Pachelbel's Canon in D.

I kind of think now that even though I'm getting the news from BBC 24 on the iPlayer, I should still be reading articles as well. It's important in that it reinforces how good newspaper journalism is done.

Later in the year I will have to produce more and more articles from my own hand so understanding style and layout will benefit me a lot. Look what the best are doing and then try to do something similar.

The required reading for this coming week and next deal specifically with the writing side of journalism. It's easy to forget that there are many types of journalism now and writing is just one of them.

I was starting to think about what story I might analyse for the group presentation due on November 7. I installed Evernote from the Mac App Store with plans to use it to keep any research I do online all in one place, or just for articles I gather.

I also loaded up Mixtab again after quite a while of not using it. Having the Guardian feeds there is quite useful as it takes away the clutter of web pages and makes for a nicer reading environment as generally I find my attention span very short when trying to read online - there's too many distractions.

This afternoon I took my iPod Touch along to the university library and ran updates for all the apps. I also played around with the new notifications centre in iOS 5 and think it's a great addition, albeit much overdue.

Not having Wi-Fi in my room (it's a cable connection) means that I haven't been using the iPod Touch at all really since coming to university. It's been a big change as before I would have it at hand all day long and do much of my internet-use on it.

I still haven't upgraded to OSX Lion and don't know that I will. It's only £20 but from what reviews I've read it doesn't seem to have gone down all that well with a lot of users. If I wasn't counting every pound at the moment I would have probably gone for it.

Approaching midnight now so time to sleep. I was having a day of rest from the gym today but I'll be back in tomorrow morning or afternoon depending on when I get up. Apart from that, just more study lined up to get on top of these reading lists and Chinese characters that will otherwise become completely overwhelming.

Springsteen and Chinese Flashcards

2011-10-15T00:55:00.001+01:00

It's after midnight and I'm still sitting up watching Bruce Springsteen videos on YouTube and making Chinese flashcards.

I guess I now seem to be doing all my blog writing very late at night instead of during the day.

I've done a decent amount of journalism reading today for my course and was going to make a start on my presentation for the Futures Award which we do in groups but I forgot to write down which parts I'm presenting. I'll just need to wait for class on Thursday to find out and then it's due the following week.

I remember I'd only heard of Springsteen but never listened to him until I met Milan in London at the Shaolin Temple UK. He was a huge Springsteen fan and always wanted to see him perform live.

Milan used to only listen to Springsteen rarely because he held his music close to his heart. He wanted to keep it special and not over-listen to it as is always the temptation with songs or artists you like. That way you can be sure you'll never grow tired or fed up with them.

So now when I listen to Springsteen I often think of Milan and also think back to 2008 when I lived in France and started going regularly to the gym. Around that time I also listened to him a lot and have a particular memory of watching the Dancing in the Dark video on YouTube one night. It was then I realised it's a young Monica from Friends who gets up at the end and dances with him on stage.

His music has a special quality about it that can really give you goosebumps. It strikes a chord with a lot of people I think. He sings about things, often small things, that many can relate to or feel that they understand. He sings about life and its ups and downs but also about the people who leave strong impressions on our lives - people that we remember years later and often only then realise how much they were a part of our story, even if that part was only seemingly very small.

This is the kind of feelings I get from Springsteen's music and why I, like Milan, come back to it time and again and will do for perhaps many years ahead. Music is one of the few things that we can really come back to again and again and again.

So now, with the music turned off and a bit of writing put up on the blog for today, it's time to hit the sack. I'll leave you with this awesome live Springsteen performance of Fire. Enjoy.

Comment is Free, But Facts are Sacred

2011-10-14T00:28:00.000+01:00

CP Scott

Today I managed to get another few chapters out of the way from my journalism reading lists. They're all actually damn good books that initially deal with the roles of journalists, their ideal qualities and characters, and what their typical days might be like.

The one problem is that generally they were written a good ten years ago, in most cases, and so I imagine journalists' lives have changed quite dramatically in some respects since then. In one of the books that was originally written in the late 90s, the author is still talking about computers as 'terminals', not a term I would say is thrown around today. Whether it is in journalism outfits I can't comment. Perhaps I would be surprised.

It's nice to read of the high ideals that the best journalists hold and the strong importance they attach to keeping your story as true as possible. If you can't be sure about something, don't assume it. Assuming makes an ass of you and me, as they say and as my lecturer quoted just today.

I don't really have a lot to report on today. We've been assigned presentations which must be given on the week starting November 7 which requires us to look at how newspapers put different spins on the same story. The newspaper culture in the UK is particularly unusual as we are spoiled for choice in this country with nearly ten daily nationals to choose from. The US, on the other hand, now is generally considered to have only two real nationals - The New York Times and The Washington Post (some would also include USA Today, but perhaps not everyone).

UK readers have for a long time been spoiled for choice when it comes to newspapers. However, the general consensus seems to be that the numbers can't last. With the decline in newspaper circulation and readership there is bound to be 'blood on the streets' not too long from now. In other words, some nationals are going to go out of business. There's no longer the audience that there was years ago.

Newspapers are also in a period of transformation. Either they adapt to the times or they die. It's survival of the fittest and I feel people like Alan Rusbridger, Editor-in-chief of the Guardian, are leading the way in terms of where newspapers are headed. The Guardian, since 2007 I believe, considered their main business now to be online in the digital format.

If you've been keeping an eye on the media news in the UK this week you may also know that the Guardian have released their new iPad app. For £9.99 a month it's competitively priced but questions will still be raised about whether it's going to be a successful product.

Many people outside of the industry don't realise that newspapers still haven't really established a way to make their digital content profitable. As newspaper sales decline, the problem is now to adapt the traditional business model into a profitable online one. With people less and less willing to pay for news and online content, the solution doesn't seem to be any closer than it was a few years ago.

Rupert Murdoch said early on that he didn't see a way to make online content profitable and the situation remains much the same today. Advertising revenues from websites is often not enough it seems to offset the costs of running them, at least not for big newspaper corporations. I think the Guardian have said that their iPad addition is now just another platform on which they're not making any money.

This is a tough time for newspapers and will be for the foreseeable future. It's just getting harder and harder to charge for news and journalism. The problem is clearly not made any better by the state of the economy and consumers' low levels of disposable income. Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, has said this looks to be the worst financial crises the world has ever faced, implying it's potentially worse than the depression of the 1930s. But I won't bore you with old news.

So the evolution race is on for newspapers in the developed world. Interestingly, newspaper sales are increasing in the developing economies known as the 'BRIC' (Brazil, Russia, India, China - and sometimes South Africa). So the crises in the media is not global from what I've come to understand.

Coming back to Murdoch, today we've had the story which I believe was revealed by non-other than the Guardian - which seems to be developing quite a name for itself this year for investigative journalism of the highest standards - about The Wall Street Journal's shady business dealings in Europe in attempts to artificially boost its circulation figures.

So yet more controversy in the Murdoch empire. I've also read recently of calls for the Murdoch family's ties with News Corp (I believe) to be broken down in an attempt to clean its name and re-establish its image in the eyes of investors and the public. I really wonder how long the Murdoch's can hold onto their empire when they now seem to be taking hits from all sides and more and more controversy seems to be unfolding.

Ok, I'm going to leave it here. I don't really feel I can take this piece too much further for now and I don't have a lot of hard facts and statistics to back up what I'm saying so take it all with a pinch of salt. If you hadn't gathered by now, my personal blog (and personal blogs in general) are very much about the individual's own interpretations of what's going on around them and not, in most cases, accurate reflections of those things as is needed in hard professional journalism and reporting.

As editor of the Manchester Guardian (which later became the Guardian as we know it today), CP Scott, said in 1921: "Comment is free, but facts are sacred". The quote remains today as "the ultimate statement of values for a free press" (Guardian, 2002). There's lots of people out there spouting out their thoughts and opinions (including me), but getting the hard truth in an unbiased and uncoloured context is what the best journalism ultimately aims to achieve.

Thanks for reading this somewhat jumbled piece. Just trying to keep up some writing.

Reading, Reading, and More Reading

2011-10-12T21:47:00.000+01:00

Today I've really got my act together towards study. Recently I decided that it would be a wiser use of my time just now to read as much as possible relevant to my course rather than creating revision aids and highlighting photocopies from a small selection of material.

As I am still in my first month of my first semester here at UCLan, what I really lack is broad knowledge of the subject. The only way to get that broad knowledge for now is to read as much as possible.

I finished off the last chapter of Understanding Media Economics and so that book has been laid to rest for now. I then looked through my two module information packs, or MIPs as they call them, to see what the required reading for each week has been.

It turns out that I'd completely forgotten about the MIP for the Introduction to Journalism Practice module. As such, I haven't been keeping up to date on the required reading for that subject area whereas I have been for the Business of Journalism.

This afternoon I headed to the library and took out four books which I will need over the next few weeks. This evening I read chapter one of The Universal Journalist which was only a few pages long and also made a start on chapter one of The Newspaper Handbook which is about twenty pages. I'm now about half way through the latter.

The recommended reading for last week was ten chapters, nine from one book and one from another, of which I still have to start. This week was just two chapters but, again, ones that I haven't yet read.

As you can see, I'm a bit behind with the journalism practice module and it might take me this whole week to catch up. I'm committed to doing more study now though and spending less time on other things (including this blog!).

Today I also covered another twenty pages or so of the 150-page report by the Colombia Journalism Review that I mentioned in a previous post. I'm reading that on the Kindle which is great and I just wish I could put all my recommended reading on it. It would make life a lot easier as the books I'm loaning from the library currently can only be taken out on a short-term basis of seven days at a time.

Yesterday I had Chinese class at 6pm and actually forgot about it until half an hour later. My head was clearly in another place. I think it's because I'm so used to having classes during the day and the evenings off that I just didn't think about it.

I handed in my assignment for that class which I also posted to this blog and received only minor corrections. We were told that our final written exam will be to produce something similar under exam conditions (duh). The problem is that I wrote my entire homework using the Chinese input system on my laptop and so most of the characters I used are not ones I know how to write from memory.

Committing the new Chinese characters from each class has now also become something else I need to take seriously if I want to pass the written part of the exams next year. I've been using a flashcard app called Smartr from the Mac App Store to help me memorise them.

All this points to the fact that although I've not been slacking off as such over the past few weeks, I do need to step up my game a bit. I need to spend more time reading and there's certainly enough of it to keep me busy for a while.

I do want to keep a bit of personal writing going each day though which is why I've taken a break to do this post. I also added an assignment we were given to produce an article in the style of one that might appear in the Lancashire Evening Post. I'll be handing it in next week after running it through the 'copy clinic'.

Copy clinics are timetabled one-hour walk-in sessions where tutors are available to look at your work and give you constructive feedback. We are encouraged to attend them once every two weeks with our latest assignments before handing them in for official marking. Seems to me like we're getting a bit too much help but they must think it's important and who am I to argue. I'm certainly open to it.

I don't want to make this post any longer so I'll see you in the next one (or not!).

Is Sitting Killing Us?

2011-10-11T23:20:00.001+01:00

I can feel it in my bones. I can feel it in my joints. I can feel it in my circulation. My legs, particularly, become painful after prolonged sitting and yet I still continue to sit for much of the day, every day, and it doesn't look like that's going to change any time soon. My conclusion: sitting is a lot worse for your health than most people realise or want to think about.

There was an article I read earlier this year that coincided with a report on the research findings of prolonged sitting. I read it over on Zen Habits but to me it was no surprise and it sparked many other similar articles to appear all over the internet around the same time. Although I can't remember what exactly the findings were, they were basically reporting increased mortality rate and health complications among people who sat for too many hours in the day.

Oversleeping has also been linked to younger death. The body was not designed to be glued to a bed or a chair for hours and hours each day. Between sleeping and working, many of us hardly move in a 24 hour period. It's really terrible when you think about it. I definitely feel the side effects as I already mentioned so I know for sure when I need to do some exercise or move around. The problem is that most of the time I (and we) just ignore the warning signs. Painful joints and the feeling of bad circulation shouldn't be ignored.

Running at the gym on the treadmill for just ten minutes every day helps a bit but even that is not enough. Doing the weights is also good but by the end of the night I'm often still getting complaints from my legs and joints. What's really needed is a lifestyle change. The problem is that nowadays computers are our gateway to the rest of the world and tearing ourselves away from them can be very difficult.

Social networks have just made the problem of sitting too much even worse by giving us an even greater incentive to stay at the computer screen for that much longer. Obesity levels must have seen big increases since the rise of the internet too. It reminds me of the scene in Wall-E where all the people on the space cruiser are sitting all day long on their highly mobile loungers that carry them about with robots running after them, taking food and drink orders.

I used to wake up with excruciating pain and cramping in my legs and joints a few years ago when I went through an addiction period to the online game Everquest 2. I was hooked for a few months and by the end of it my body was really wrecked. At only 17 I would have been in trouble if I hadn't sorted myself out. Sometimes I wonder today it that period has had knock-on effects that remain with me today in that I can't imagine it's that common to now suffer from bad circulation in my legs and sore joints when I sit for a few hours or more. It's really unpleasant but maybe it's just the way it is for some of us. What worries me is that if I'm getting these problems now then what will it be like in 10, 20 or 30 years' time.

I'm tired and need to sleep now but it just highlights the point of how many of us go from being on the computer all evening (and much of the day) to going to bed for eight hours and then repeating it all over again.

Blogger is Bringing the Thunder!

2011-10-10T18:08:00.000+01:00

First things first: Blogger's new dynamic views. Wow. I'm blown away by their innovation. No other blogging platform comes close to what Google now offers it's users in terms of aesthetics and functionality for the casual blogger. I'm not sure what others think of it, but it's inspired me to tidy this blog up a bit and add images to old posts so that they look as appealing as possible in the new 'magazine' layout that I have set as default.

This new layout, which auto-loads old posts as you scroll down, really conveys to the viewer exactly how much content there is here. Even I was quite surprised to find myself scrolling down for so long before inevitably hitting the bottom. Compared with The BLCU Blog, it seems to go on and on. Clearly a case of quantity over quality!

When I think about it though, I have done quite a bit of writing over the past two years or so. Essentially I really started getting into it before leaving to China to start my studies in Mandarin, though there were always long periods of time when I didn't write anything and then had random bursts of energy over the space of a few days or weeks when there seemed to be no end in sight to how many words I was capable of producing.

Again, this has shown in recent weeks during which time I've hardly wrote anything. Sure, I posted up a few class assignments but apart from the recent entry on Social Media and Journalism I haven't really done much writing for a while here. Between the end of July and the end of August I barely wrote anything and then between the end of August and the end of September I had another blogging vacuum, though I did write a fair bit in France when I was visiting my Mum. I guess there was quite a lot to say at the time considering that we went to Bordeaux and all the rest of it.

Google's ability to re-energise Blogger with the new dynamic layouts has also re-energised me. At least a bit. The blog now looks more professional to my mind and much more like an online magazine, as you would expect from the template name. Yes, yes, I may be going a bit far to say that it looks exactly like a magazine, but it certainly is a big improvement on what it used to be. It's far more responsive, interactive and sleek. I love the way a window opens up when you click on a post and dims the background so as to create a much friendlier reading environment. It really puts you right into the post, allowing you to concentrate on the content with less distractions.

The Blogger Twitter feed linked to an article featured on Forbes titled 'The End of Blogs (and Maybe Websites) as We Know Them'. As you can guess by the title, the writer considered the new layouts offered by Google to its Blogger users as a "game-changer" and also said, "Almost instantly, I saw the future and it was an eye opener". The article then went onto look at how it's going to change online marketing with regards to blogs and potentially website in general.

What's quite unique about what Google have done here is that they have allowed users to take control of how the blog they are reading is displayed and, more importantly, how they interact with the content. With the click of a button they can now choose between any of the seven layouts. It's certainly a step ahead of the industry as it stands at the moment and I'll be very interested to see how other platforms such as Wordpress and Tumblr respond.

Whereas I'm sure Wordpress is fairly safe due its benefits over Blogger in other more technical areas, for the more casual blogger these new offerings from Google could be enough to persuade them to move from their current platform, be it Tumblr or whatever, to Blogger. I no longer follow the blogosphere enough to really know what the consequences to other platforms will be, but I imagine there will be some. As the Forbes article said, this is a game-changer.

I actually came into this post with another idea entirely in mind, but I guess I'll leave that for the next one now or else this will appear too disjointed. At least I've managed to stick to the theme of the new Blogger views which should make it easy to come up with a relevant title - something I often struggle with since my posts can be all over the place thematically.

I remember distinctly a few months ago when I was still in Hong Kong and thinking about getting back into blogging on a regular basis putting out a tweet along the lines of, "trying to find a reason to stay at Blogger". At the time I was considering my alternatives as far as blogging platforms go. There was Wordpress and then there was Tumblr. At the time those two seemed to be the most obvious competition to Blogger. Wordpress didn't make it into my final considerations because basically there's a lot more going on in terms of customisation and behind-the-scene management of the blog. Back then I was just looking for something minimalist and simple and Tumblr appealed to me hugely on that basis.

As you may recall, I tried Tumblr and enjoyed it for a while. It really took the distraction out of the blogging experience and allowed you to focus on the content. However, as a result of how simple and dumbed-down it was as a platform it limited you in other ways. I also eventually realised that people were using Tumblr more as something that bridged the gap between Twitter and more serious blogging platforms. The ability to 'repost' something or 'favourite' it and have it appear on your wall meant that it was much more of a social media platform than a straight-up blogging one in the way that Wordpress and Blogger are. It's a little hard to explain but there you have it. I felt it was mainly being used for fast and quick content that required little thought - a lot of photos, videos and quotes are the essence of what Tumblr is about. There's not a lot of hard writing over there. Not really.

I was quite adamant on keeping The BLCU Blog on Blogger though I did rename it from China In My Pocket which resulted in me essentially having to build it up again from scratch in terms of online presence and page-rank. It's been worth it though and today it's doing quite well with regular visitors and a few £'s a month in revenue, totaling about £10 to date from advertising. The whole affiliate marketing attempt never went very far.

In the end it came down to keeping things simple and that meant keeping all my blogs in one place, under one platform for ease of use. Blogger ended up being that platform. Around that time Google also announced their changes to Blogger in Draft which introduced a complete make-over of the user interface that just blew me away and a sneak-peak at their new dynamic view templates. It was enough to keep me happy and confident that they were innovating as a platform and not just being left behind by the likes of Wordpress and Tumblr. Dare I say it, they may now be leading the way in some respects.

As such, when Google made their new templates available to everyone last week it marked the the beginning of a new era for blogging. It was Blogger brought into 2011 after many years of floating in murkier waters. It seemed for a long time that Blogger had become a project Google kept in a back room out of sight. But that's all changed now and they've shown that they mean serious business and intend to stay in the blogging industry as a key player. For a company that has brought so much to the internet as we know it, I'm looking forward to see just where they take Blogger from here and how they continue to innovate.

This has been my perspective on the changes here at Blogger and where I sit as a long-time user of the their product. I'm sure it's also shown just why it's been such a welcomed update in my eyes and the eyes of many others in the online community.

What do you think? Do you like what Blogger are doing? Thanks for reading.

Social Media and Journalism

2011-10-08T00:14:00.000+01:00

Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward in 1973

I haven't really done much writing to this blog since coming to uni here at UCLan. I guess in some ways I'm now busier than I have been for most of this year, certainly since finishing the year-long Mandarin course in Beijing.

Today I worked from 09:00-12:00 in the university's journalism department as a programme assistant for the Digital Editors' Network that they run. It's actually pretty much a man called Francois Nel who leads it. He's a nice guy with a lot of experience in the field and also lectures part time at the moment.

Most of the morning was spent doing updates to their Facebook page in the way of creating events to keep people up to date with what's going on. The week after next there is two days of conferences going on with some high-profile people speaking on the panels, including the northern editor of the Guardian newspaper and the head of the UK Society of Editors.

Although only three hours a week, the experience is great for me as it's already deeply involved in the industry of journalism and what's going on currently with the likes of phone hacking (aka 'hackgate', a play on the Watergate scandal that was largely exposed by the investigative journalism of Carl Bernstein, working for The Washington Post at the time, who recently gave an interesting interview in the Guardian and joined in one of their debates which is worth watching) and press regulation. So I've been quite lucky in being offered the opportunity to get involved and I'm grateful for that. As we all know, life is so much about the people you meet and the contacts you build up that often count for as much as anything else.

Now with social networking on the internet it's even more vital and it certainly makes things easier. You can get in touch with so many different people from the comfort of your computer, in many cases without ever meeting them in person.

I haven't been following the developments too much, but I know Facebook has been trying their damnedest to stay on top of the stuff Google+ is bringing to the show. More and more it's becoming about sharing your life, as much or as little as you want of it, with the people that you want to share it with. Unlike what Facebook was pushing at the beginning, people don't want to be open and share everything with everyone. Privacy has become absolutely key to social networks' survival. It's a fine line they must tread today.

I've also realised - and I've probably known this for some time now - that the real difference between Facebook and Twitter is most obvious in the split that seems to be apparent in our personal/professional lives. Twitter strikes me now as much more of a platform that we use to push our causes, our expertise, share news, or network with others in our field, whereas Facebook is still very much for our private lives. I know it's vague and that in reality the lines aren't so defined, but that's my general impression at the moment.

I guess related to this whole subject of how online media is changing our lives and the journalism industry is a book I was recommended by one of my lecturers, Clare Cooke, available free from the Colombia Journalism School, titled The Story So Far: What We Know About the Business of Digital Journalism. Conveniently, being a pdf document I just popped it straight onto my Kindle which I haven't been using much recently, so maybe that will be reason enough to do some reading on it again.

So that's going to be a book I will have a look at, though at the moment I've still got a few chapters left of the Understanding Media Economics book which is a core text for my first semester as an International Journalism student. I'm also working through my photocopied version with a highlighter and red pen to filter the useful information for future reference. It's a slow process and most days I just get a few pages done, but it's a start. I can see that the Stabilo Boss highlighter was one of my best buys this year.

Early Journalism Readings

2011-09-21T23:16:00.000+01:00

Over the past couple days I've been reading a few chapters from some of the core books for my first semester as an International Journalism student at the University of Central Lancashire.

By 'books' I am in fact referring essentially to two books so far: Understanding Media Economics by Gillian Doyle (2002) and Global Communications: Theories, Stakeholders and Trends by Thomas McPhail (2010). There is also a third book which I will be reading this semester called Media Management In The Age of Giants by Dennis Herrick (2003). This latter one along with the first one I mentioned are in fact the two core texts for The Business of Journalism module I will be taking in the first semester.

I am not expected to read the books cover to cover but have been given specific chapters in the Module Information Pack which are considered essential reading. I decided to take an advanced look at them while I have a lot of free time this week.

Media Economics

As you can imagine, anything dealing with economic theory is pretty dry, but in fact it's interesting in some ways. For one thing, it's very logical and not difficult to follow if your mind works in that way. The book looks at how economics are at work within the media industry, both on a macro- and microeconomic scale.

I've had to familiarise myself with certain new language and terms that I hadn't really come across before having never studied economics. It's been a rewarding experience though in that each page further into the book makes a little bit more sense and is easier to digest. I'll admit it wasn't easy reading at first, though the ideas always made sense once I'd sat back and thought about them for a moment. As I already mentioned, often times it was the language that created the biggest barrier in terms of understanding the content which in and of itself was generally quite straight forward and logical.

I learnt that economics is essentially based on the principle of scarcity. That is, how to make the most out of our limited resources. Of course I could quote from the book directly but that takes the challenge out of writing this myself somewhat. By not just turning to the book I am forcing myself to engage with my own understanding of the text and convey it in a sense that is meaningful to whomever is reading this.

So, we are all economists in the broad sense of the word in that we all have to make decisions based on unlimited desires and limited resources. We have to be economical in our use of these resources, whether it be financial or otherwise.

What's interesting about economics within the media industry is that this very principle that economics theory is based on - scarcity - doesn't really apply to it. That's because with intellectual property and their physical forms, in the consumption of them they are not in fact used up or expended. They can be consumed almost indefinitely. No matter how many times a newspaper article is read or a TV news bulletin is watched, the act of consumption will not reduce its potential to be then consumed by another person.

To make it simple, a loaf of bread can only be consumed once and in the process of doing so it is then unavailable to the next person. Clearly this is not the case in media.

This really only scratches the surface of the ideas that are discussed within the first chapter of Understanding Media Economics by Gillian Doyle (2002) and the only part I'm going to share with you here. To get into other areas would take a lot more time and probably bore you to death, but I assure you it's interesting in a dry academic sense. Maybe not for everyone, though.

CNN (Cable News Network)

The other book I mentioned at the start of this post was Global Communication: Theories, Stakeholders and Trends by Thomas McPhail (2010). As it turned out, the required reading from this book was a chapter on CNN and its history. At first I thought I was going to be bored out of my mind but actually it was very interesting.

I learnt that CNN was the first news corporation, based in Atlanta, to see a niche market for 24-hour news back in 1981 and exploit it. It didn't take long for them to become the world-leader in breaking world news and it took until 1994 for the BBC to launch their own 24-hour news channel. Europe also answered with their EuroNews service. More recently, FOX News and MSNBC created their own competing 24-hour news channels.

I also learnt as I read more of the chapter that it's largely thanks to CNN that the world really became aware of the whole Tiananmen Square incident in China during 1989 (the year I was born). It was perfectly coincidental that the Chinese government had issued CNN with a permit to broadcast news live out of Beijing to cover the Russian President's visit when the students began standing up to the tanks and then history knows the rest.

The Chinese government tried to get CNN out of the scene as soon as it all kicked off but they refused to leave until they were issued an official letter terminating their 7 day contract to broadcast live. Needless to say it arrived within minutes and their live transmission was over. At the time, President Bush (Senior) admitted that he was watching the whole thing unfold through the CNN feed.

For years CNN were given special treatment by government around the world to broadcast live even in war times because they were seen as independent and unbiased in their reporting. They even interviewed Saddam Hussein during the Persian Gulf War and were allowed behind the front lines. Their belief was that everyone had the right to be heard - whether you agreed with what they were saying was another thing altogether.

For years CNN was the only US news corporation allowed in Cuba and I think it remains much unchanged to this day.

Although these days CNN are losing ratings, it was interesting for me to learn about their humble beginnings and the impact they eventually had on the global news industry. I had no idea they'd been the sole reporters on such historical moments in the past 30 years as Tiananmen Square and the Persian Gulf War to name two.

So these are a few of the topics I've been reading about over the past couple of days. I'm sure it's not been very interesting to most people, but as a journalism student it's been quite interesting to me. Of course, if you read the books and chapters for yourselves I'm sure you'd find it a lot more interesting than my attempt at summarising some of it here.

Well, that's it for now. Thanks for reading.

Bad Apples

2011-09-05T19:10:00.000+01:00

Rather than go straight back into playing Shadow Era for the rest of the evening, I'll do an entry here. I just got back from helping my Mum in the garden for a couple hours and have had a shower. It's already after 19:30 and will soon be time to eat dinner.

As I think I mentioned in a previous post, my Mum's garden has a few big apple trees in it and they're now in season. As such, every day you find new ones littered all over the grass. Most of them are good enough to be juiced but some are mouldy and need to be collected up and binned.

We spent a while picking up the bad apples and took a few loads of them round to the front of the house to be emptied into the outside wheelie bin. After that was all taken care of we broke some wooden crates down into pieces and stored them in the garage to be used as splinters for the fireplace during winter.

At the very end I also had to move a big stone slab to a better position a few yards away. It required a lot of effort and was quite a slow process of shifting it along once I got it up onto its side. Now that it's all done I'm quite tired out. Shows I haven't been doing much exercise for a long time.

There is still wood to be cut and moved in the garden tomorrow, but that will all be done with a small chainsaw. Tomorrow is also my last day here in France and there is a wine fair at the local Carrefour supermarket where you can taste wines before you buy. It's there that my Mum usually buys most of her wine for the year as it costs a lot less buying in bulk. Also, a lot of the wine available at the event is not easily found on supermarket shelves.

We went to a nearby village called Divonne which is around a 15 minute drive away and had lunch at a small restaurant there. There was outside seating and we managed to get a table in the sun though later moved to one that was more in the shade.

They offered a 3-course meal for €11 of cured ham on salad for starter, followed by either a sausage or steak with mash, and a dessert of like a custard wafer with icing. It wasn't anything special and in fact the Thai restaurant's buffet is better value for the same price. It was nice to get out of the house though. My Mum said it had been better when she'd been previously. I still enjoyed it, don't get me wrong.

I didn't really have a breakfast apart from apple juice made from the apples in the garden and then a coffee from the Nespresso machine. I think I was up before 10:00 and then we left the house to have lunch at around 13:00. I'm not usually hungry in the morning anyway. I am getting more hungry now though and I think dinner is about ready to eat.

We're having the same stuff my Mum slow-cooked yesterday and I mentioned in my post. It's like a French stew made with wine and beef but she accidentally bought pork shoulder by mistake. It tastes great though. Time to go I think, my stomach is calling!

Shadow Era TCG

2011-09-04T17:19:00.001+01:00

Today it's been raining non-stop and I've been playing Shadow Era almost non-stop. It seems that I didn't do too good a job of my deck construction though as I was losing match after match to the point that I was getting fed up with it. So in the end I decided to reset my account and start over.

The first time round I'd bought some expensive armour and weapon cards (one of each) but the high cost to use them during battles meant that they weren't actually proving that helpful. There were other attacking cards that would have been better for my deck at this early stage. At least that's what I think now.

After the reset, I bought a single attack card but one that I hope will be more useful to my deck for now. I don't currently have enough remaining gold to really get anything else half-decent so for now I'm biding my time.

I also wasn't sure whether to change from Human Warrior to another class such as Human Mage or Human Priest. The former strikes me as somewhat of a super class in the game and that's why I was considering taking it as a starter deck the second time round.

In the end I stuck with Human Warrior as I felt that I'd already come to know those cards to a certain extent from the last couple days of playing the game. There are still a select few cards within the deck that I don't fully understand how to use and so I had a look on the Shadow Era website. Particularly, I was unsure about the Warrior Training card and after checking the website am still not totally sure I understand it.

I think one of the downsides to the game is the amount of time it takes to acquire gold which can then be spent on new cards. As such, developing and building your deck is a slow process.

I would say one game lasts an average of 20 minutes or so and for winning you get 25 gold. For losing you don't get any and you also receive much less experience which is needed to level up. With some of the better cards costing over 400 gold, it can take a lot of wins before you have enough to even buy one new card.

You must always keep a minimum of 30 cards in the deck. With my first deck I was selling off extra cards in order to afford newer and better ones, but this ended up being a double-edged sword and not a tactic I'm going to use again in a hurry. This time I will probably keep most of my cards and just add new ones when I can afford them from my winnings.

After being tanked by most people I played today I'm not in the mood to keep playing right now. It's just demoralising. Every class seemed to kick my ass, including fellow Human Warriors. I don't want to waste time reading online guides about tactics and so on but at the same time I want to improve my play.

Game designers are very clever and it's widely known today that there's a lot of psychology that goes into making games. You are always rewarded just enough so that you come back to it time and again. The learning curve is not too easy and not too hard.

Online games especially are terrible for people with addictive personalities. I would consider myself to have a slightly addictive personality in regards to gaming. That showed with Everquest 2 and it shows a bit with Shadow Era too. When I get hooked, everything else goes out the window. It can actually have a lot of serious consequences.

So taking some time out of it to do a bit of writing is a good idea. Also, in the next couple hours we're going out for dinner so I won't be in front of the computer for too much longer.

I woke up around 10:00 this morning and we had a late breakfast of bacon, scrambled eggs and baked beans. At the end I had a coffee from the Nespresso machine. Then we didn't really have a lunch but at around 15:00 we had a small bowl of some French-style stewed pork in red wine sauce with potatoes and mushrooms. It was meant to be beef shoulder but my Mum accidentally picked up pork instead. It was really nice though.

I just had another coffee half an hour ago and at the same time my Mum hid some dog biscuits around the house for our Dachshund Rouffie. He was wagging his tail as he went in search of them with an amazing conviction and sense of purpose. He looked all over the place and found a few but I can still see at least one remaining.

Apparently my Mum hides treats for him on a regular basis as it gives him a challenge and keeps him busy. I think it's a great idea and the way he was looking for them earlier it seemed that he really likes the hunt. I was actually quite impressed as he methodically went around the house searching in places he'd found them before and poking his head onto couches to check if there was one sitting on top.

We opened a bottle of 2001 Montepulciano d'Abruzzo Barberino from Italy. It wasn't an expensive bottle at the time but now that it has 10 years to it it's not something that could be picked up that cheaply in supermarkets. At first the finish was very short and it actually tasted pretty bland and thin, but now that's it's been airing for an hour it's improved quite a bit. The finish is longer and the flavours more developed. Not a 'big' wine as you might expect from an Italian red but subtle and enjoyable.

So now it might be time to get back on Shadow Era and see if I can't win a few games, though I don't think it will be long before we're heading out.

The Never Ending Blog

2011-09-03T21:51:00.000+01:00

Could you sit down and write a blog entry every day? My record has shown that I can't and I bet most people couldn't either. For one thing, what do we really have to say on a day to day basis that inspires us to sit down and write?

More often than not I don't actually want to write about the events of the day. Probably because I find recounting events and facts a bit boring, especially if there's no proper reflection on it. Oops, need to go for dinner quickly. We're having burgers and salad.

And I'm back. Funny how time doesn't exist on a page of text. But alright, let's continue.

Unfortunately I've discovered a game called Shadow Era which is available for free on the Mac App Store and it seems that I'm addicted. I've even stopped writing this multiple times to check if the internet connection is working so I can go on challenge mode and play other players online.

The internet connection here at my Mum's house is really terrible. Come the evening, it constantly times out and it's impossible to stay online for more than a few minutes before getting kicked off. No matter how often you reset the router, it doesn't seem to make a difference.

So now that the internet is down, I'm not playing Shadow Era for the first time in hours. It's really addictive once you get going and since I have no other plans at the moment it's even harder to pull myself away from it.

The basics of the game are this: You have a deck of 30 cards as a minimum, though you can have more, of which one card is a 'hero'. The goal is to keep your hero alive and kill your opponents. This is done by strategically playing the other cards in your deck.

There are different types of cards you can play. Some are attack cards, others cast bonus abilities, others cast negative effects on opponent cards, then you have weapons and so on. There's quite a lot to it but at the same time it's simple enough once you play a few games.

Each card costs a certain number of points to play. In order to get points, you must choose some cards to sacrifice. Each card you sacrifice gives you one point which can then be spent on cards to summon into battle. So it's about being clever with which cards you use and which ones you sacrifice.

Anyway, it's a fun game that has consumed most of my day. Part of the reason it probably attracts me so much is because I've always enjoyed online RPGs and this being a TCG in the vein of D&D, it feels like a distilled MMO put into cards.

Although I've never played it, I think it might be similar to Magic The Gathering card game. Being all on the computer, there's no need to buy physical cards and spend money on it as you would have had to do in the past.

This morning I gathered some apples which had fallen from the trees in the garden and we juiced them. A bit later we also heated up leftover croissants and pan-au-chocolates from yesterday and had them with coffee from the Nespresso machine.

At lunch we ate spaghetti in pesto sauce and then as you know for dinner we just had burgers. Two each was too much though and now I'm feeling bloated. Not to mention that I don't need to eat as much when I'm sitting all day in the house.

The trouble with writing to a blog which I'm guessing puts a lot of people off as well is the amount of time it can take. Granted I'm writing more than most people might, but still it's time consuming. If I have something more interesting to do blogging often goes out the window. I think the internet has a lot to blame for that - it offers too many distractions.

Nonetheless, having CleanWriter (as I talked about in yesterday's entry) and the MacBook Pro makes it a more enjoyable process. It makes more of a difference than I imagine most reading this would appreciate.

As you may have noticed, I changed the appearance of this blog last night. It's all in courier font now, including the title itself. A bit boring you might think, but it keeps it simple and distraction-free. That seems to be my theme at the moment in writing. Plain and simple text. Honestly, I'm often too lazy to take photos and upload them, though I'm sure it's more interesting in the end. I just can't be bothered.

By the way, if you're still reading you officially have NO LIFE. Only joking. Well, half joking. Ahem.

Do you find it in the least bit interesting to read such nonsensical and random streams of thought? The funny thing is that I don't read any blogs myself. Actually it's a bit of a problem that I hardly read at all these days. Apart from when I'm reading a novel, that is, which I haven't done for a few months now.

As someone who is about to be starting a degree in Journalism, I should probably be reading the news a lot more. I sometimes try to but generally don't get very far. I'll have to make a much more active effort when I'm at uni. I usually prefer just putting on the TV to get the latest news updates or else finding streams on the BBC or Aljazeera websites.

Since learning more about Rupert Murdoch with the recent controversies, it's kind of put me off The Times in the UK and The Wall Street Journal in the US as news sources. In the past I would sometimes pick up an issue of the former and found it to be good reporting, but now even with Sky News I just see Murdoch's face. Unfortunately I've heard too much bad stuff about the guy to brush it off. I feel as though the reporting in newspapers or news channels he owns is somehow full of biases and half-truths.

At the same time, I'm sure no news sources is completely accurate or free of bias, but still it seems possible to find the lesser of two evils. I've been pretty impressed by what I've seen of Aljazeera news for independent and honest reporting and for that reason I would probably choose to watch it before other news channels these days.

I imagine this whole thing with Murdoch will have had deeper consequences for him than initially thought. By all the controversy around him coming forth, people like me who previously had hardly heard of the guy now already associate his name with someone who is not to be trusted or somehow involved in lessening the quality of news and reporting.

I haven't even followed the story since a few months back when he and his son James were first summoned before the House Select Committee. It's probably been the biggest story in the journalism for years.

The irony is, I can write all this crap but I'm probably going to struggle to write decent essays at uni. I've been out of education for years now (BLCU doesn't really count in terms of essay writing and research like I'll be expected to do at UCLAN).

My stomach actually hurts, definitely over-ate. Plus I'm pretty thirsty and every time I reach over to drink from the water bottle by my desk I'm just adding more to my stomach that is already stretched.

So, here's a question for you: have you ever read so much utter dribble in your life? Well, sorry for wasting the last however many minutes of your life it's taken you to read this far. I should be passing out medals by now.

"[Name] died bravely in action reading The Monty Mike Times on September 3, 2011."

I can see it now. A bronze statue in honour of everyone that has died at their desks trying to finish reading this entry. Sorry, it just never ends. Kinda like The Never Ending Story but in fact that film did have an ending, something I never quite understood when I was young. It didn't make sense for a film to have such a title.

But there we have it. So think of this blog as a tribute to The Never Ending Story. Perhaps I should rename it The Never Ending Blog? Would that be more suitable than The Monty Mike Times?

You'e got to hand it to me for sitting down and writing such a long entry tonight. Not only does it prove that I have ABSOLUTELY NO LIFE, it also shows that I'm going to be a journalist of legend. When all the others are done with their stories I'm going to be adding more and more to mine, right until the point that they just have to publish an entirely separate newspaper for my columns. I'll go down in history.

I will also have zero readers. And on that note I'll let you die in peace. Goodbye.

CleanWriter

2011-09-03T00:14:00.000+01:00

In an attempt to get back into writing, I've been searching through the Mac App Store for minimalist full-screen writing apps. In the end I made my choice based on the price. CleanWriter, which I am writing in now and enjoying very much, cost only 69p and offers a great writing environment for the casual or serious writer.

Being a full-screen text editor, it removes all distractions. When my gaze wanders over the screen, it sees only the white of the page. In fact, it's not even white, it's more like the beige of a real paper page. The options tab allows you to change this to a pure white or even black. For me, the real-paper effect is most relaxing and what it's set to as default.

Talking hardware for a second now, writing on the MacBook Pro is also a huge improvement over my old Toshiba laptop. The keys are a pleasure to type on with perfect spacing between each one. Of course, this is to be expected from an Apple product and it's certainly reflected in the price you pay. As something I was given by my Mum though, I'm one of the lucky ones in that I'm not footing the bill and still able to enjoy the great experience it offers.

To be honest, I'm stunned that I haven't looked into full-screen minimalist writing applications before. It has really struck me as something that is almost vital to the writing process. I'm really impressed by the whole concept and the fact that more people aren't using it. I'm sure there's probably still many professional writers out there who are doing it all in Word. It seems a shame as an app like CleanWriter takes writing to a whole new level. Completely distraction-free. A place to be entirely alone with your thoughts.

For the first time in a while I'm able to just sit and write. I'm not checking my email client or jumping into Facebook. I'm just looking at a white (or should I say beige) screen covered in characters and the single cursor blinking at the end of my most recent sentence. I don't think after seeing writing done like this I could go back to writing in a standard windowed text editor. I'm even thinking that all my university essays are going to be done in this. It's that great.

So to keep this from being completely about CleanWriter, something else that's been playing on my mind is whether or not I'm content with Blogger as a platform. The only reason I have The BLCU Blog on there is because Google allows me to advertise on it with Adsense. Platforms such as Wordpress and Tumblr don't allow for advertising or monetizing of any form on their free domains. I suppose this makes sense but the fact that Google DO allow it has been reason enough to keep me there.

Without a doubt, Wordpress is the best platform of the three, but unless I take out a domain name and hosting I wouldn't be able to monetize a site with them. If I had a site that paid for itself in ad revenue or other form of income I wouldn't mind setting it up with a private domain, but until then I think staying with free ones is the best bet.

I believe recently The BLCU Blog passed the £10 threshold and so it's slowly proving its worth. If I can eventually make £60 out of it I'll be pleased. That's the minimum amount required before Google will send payment. I'll feel like the work I put into it has paid off in a way more than just being of help to others. After all, money is what we live on and whether you admit it or not it's an important part of our lives. No money pretty much means no life. At least for most of us.

The thing that really attracted me to Tumblr in the beginning was a template they offered which came as close to this full screen minimalist writing (or should I say reading?) environment that I'd come across on a blogging platform. The background colour was also slightly off-white like CleanWriter and the text just a shade lighter than black. Like a dark grey and softer on the eyes.

So at the moment I'm seriously considering taking my personal blog back to Tumblr. I felt like it was a nicer place to just read. And yes I'm sure pretty much no one is reading this but there we have it. My sad little mind still considers these things important enough to write about it.

Sometimes I just feel like sitting down and writing though and this new app is really making the whole process amazingly fluid. I know what I write isn't interesting, but it gives me something to do and I guess in some ways it's better than wasting time on games or - wait for it - Facebook.

Rouffie, my Mum's dachshund, has been lying asleep on my bed this whole time. He looks pretty comfortable, having small muscle spasms in his sleep from time to time; kicking out a leg or twitching.

Today has been a Friday but that doesn't mean a whole to me right now as my days are all free. When I get to uni that should change, especially if I find a part-time job sooner rather than later. I would also like to take my course seriously which can then consume a lot of time.

Anyway, this has been my first piece of writing in CleanWriter and it's been a welcomed change from how I would usually write in that distractions have been at an all-time low. My eyes have found nowhere to wander. There is only a white screen, lots of words and a blinking cursor. All that is needed for writing.

I'm not sure if I will do some more writing on a different subject or else start getting ready for bed. I'm quite tired. In fact, I don't even know what time it is due to this full screen editor. Great, isn't it? Ok, I just checked and it's 00:35. Time to sleep.

Evening in Souillac

2011-08-28T20:59:00.000+01:00

So after my previous post this morning we headed off in the car in the direction of Rocamadour which is a famous pilgrim stop on the road to Santiago de Compostela in Portugal. Before arriving there though we stopped in Sarlat-la-Caneda which is world-famous for its foie gras (pate) and also a very beautiful village. The buildings are very traditional and the territory is very scenic.

For lunch me and Mum had a €14.50 four-course meal of local pate for starters, followed by duck breast in a truffle sauce, then a goats cheese with walnut salad and finally a choice of dessert of which I took the Creme Brulee (actually because Gloria wanted it as the set she ordered didn't come with a dessert) and Mum had the walnut tart. Gloria ordered a two-course set for €11 which included a vegetable salad for starter and a smoked salmon main which came with local-style potatoes.

Between us we ordered three different glasses of wine for €3 each. The first was a Monbazzilac which traditionally accompanies the foie gras, then a local red and white for the main. Although we thought Gloria was going to have some of the white, she ended up only drinking water and so me and Mum finished the wine between the two of us, followed by a coffee each at the end. In total the meal came to €55.

The restaurant itself was busy when we arrived though we chose it because apparently Mum had been to it years before when we were kids. It was a hot day and all the tables outside were shaded by umbrellas. Initially I thought because it was such a hot day that perhaps we should sit inside but actually it was nicer to sit outside under the shade and the more we sat there the more the tables inside looked comparatively dull and stuffy.

Most of the restaurants in the village were found in small alleys and side-streets. It was like a fairy tale setting, bringing to mind images from the 2008 film In Bruges. Unfortunately I don't have images to accompany this post at the moment but maybe I will come back and add them at some point.

Unfortunately mine and Gloria's camera batteries ran out of steam a few days ago and due to not having a UK-French adapter we haven't been able to charge them until tonight. Well, actually I've been able to charge my camera battery thanks to realising that I could take the cable from Mum's Canon charger and use it with my Casio one. Gloria has not been so lucky as her charger does not have a removable cable. It's a shame because she has the best camera out of us all - a new Canon Powershot S90 from last year.

So thanks to camera problems I haven't actually been taking any pictures yesterday or today. Although Gloria's been taking some with Mum's Canon, I haven't yet copied them onto my MacBook. I expect to have some new photos to put up tomorrow though as my camera is once again usable after a few hours of charging.

Looks like this is turning into a fairly long post. I must say it's a real pleasure to be writing on the MacBook Pro. So let's continue with what happened after lunch.

Just after leaving the restaurant, we immediately went back in to take a look at a cave entrance into the side of the mountain which was accessible from the restaurant's interior. The temperature was apparently always at 16°C, nearly perfect for storing wine. I think it was even included in the area's tourist guide.

Heading back to the car, Mum was taking a few photos of the buildings and streets. Me and Gloria stopped for a while to watch a portrait artist at work as he was sketching from a photo. He was charging €40 per portrait! Not an amount most people would pay, but even if he only got one or two buyers a day, he was making decent money. Being an area packed with tourists, I'm sure local businesses in the village were doing quite well.

So that was lunch over with and once back in the car we headed through the the pilgrim place I mentioned at the start. It was around an hour's drive and to begin with we weren't sure how to get down to the location we were looking for. We parked in the village and Mum asked an old man at an ice cream stand how to get to the pilgrim site. He gave us directions and so we got back in the car and drove a few minutes back in the direction we had come from. This time we turned off at a different fork in the road and found a large parking area where we needed to be.

Gloria got distracted by two cute donkeys on the side of the road and stood there talking gibberish to them for a while. Finally we made it to the cable car-like contraption which took us down through the mountain at a 45° angle and to the pilgrimage area. It turned out we could've just as easily walked down and saved €4 each on the tickets for a journey that took only 60 seconds - literally one minute. At least it allowed us a quick and easy return to the top when we headed back later on.

To be honest, one the way down I wondered why the only other people in the cable car were a big fat French couple who would have probably had a heart attack if they'd had walk the trail down by foot. Clearly this was what everyone else was doing and what we should've done too. The views would have probably been great as it's set into the side of the mountain.

Alighting the cable car, we took a right out of the exit set in the mountain side and approached the pilgrimage site. It was like a small keep or a castle built into the mountain face. Very beautiful and memorable. Again, like something from the film In Bruges. The whole place was filled with a religious air and deep in Christian tradition.

Walking through a tunnel, we emerged in sunlight in the small central square or cloister. To the right were steps leading up to a large two-part chapel. To the left a small prayer room. All the buildings were magnificent and built in stone, dating back to the middle-ages. Everything had been built by the Church and it was obvious.

On all sides towered spires and towers and it took only a few seconds to walk from one end of the square to another. This gives you an idea of how small an area it was, and yet there were crowds of tourists coming and going. Some entered whilst others made their way down a wide set of stairs to come out below this area and onto a longer street filled with tourist shops selling various souvenirs and Christian memorabilia.

Saint Amator (believed to have been the Biblical Zacheus of Jericho, the tax collector), who this place was in honour of, was apparently from Palestine. His body had been found in 1166 in a recess in the rock, perfectly preserved as is often the story with saints of the Christian tradition. I only got this story straight now as I'm writing this and didn't realise that the saint of this place I visited today was the very same man who was once the tax collector from the stories of the Bible. Interesting! I never knew he'd left the middle-east and made his way to France.

Eventually we left and drove the half hour or so to the B&B that we are now at and have been since late-afternoon. It is located in a small town called Souillac. It is in the room here that I have been at my MacBook writing this entry for the past hour or two, stopping sometimes and talking with Gloria and Mum. I haven't done such a long entry at this blog in a long time, certainly since June in Hong Kong.

My camera battery should be just about charged and Mum would like to go for a walk to see a nearby church. Actually we can see it from the window of the room, it's literally next door. Beneath us in the square outside we can hear the sound of people eating their evening meal from a restaurant there, cutlery clanking and conversation flowing. It's already nearly 22:00 but still people are sitting outside and enjoying the last minutes of the weekend.

I have mostly finished off the wine from last night which, although I haven't particularly enjoyed, tasted a little softer than yesterday. It smelled quite strongly of olives tonight which is unusual, or at least it's not a smell I have as of yet associated with red wines (or any wines for that matter).

For dinner we had a simple salad with olive oil and balsamic vinegar which we'd bought yesterday for dinner along with the same cured meats (chorizo for me) and leftover baguettes, as well as brie cheese which by now is smelling quite bad but still tastes great. We had to transfer it into a plastic container and dispose of the original paper and plastic wrapper it was in until now due to the bad smell. Gloria as of yet hasn't eaten anything and wasn't feeling too well this evening.

Apart from that, me and Gloria have been on our MacBooks and Mum reading her manga Les Gouttes de Dieu (or The Drops of God, in English) which she bought in Bordeaux. It's a Japanese manga series which has sold more than a million copies worldwide and been translated into many languages including English and French. She is reading the French versions. It's very educational for people interested in wine, as well as just being a good story.

So with that I will end this entry. It's certainly been a long one. Thanks for reading and see you next time, whenever that may be.