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Financial Times six-page feature on Ireland, ‘How bankers brought Ireland to its knees’. Progressive Economy has some further comment.
Is anyone else confused by the coverage this story is getting? O’Cuiv refuses to rule out cuts to the old age pension, why is this shocking? He deserves praise for having the bottle to be honest, in my opinion. The other option for him would have been to… well, lie.
The Sunday Times has a piece on the journalism jobs market and what young people will need to do to start a career. It’s UK-centred but the situation is similar here…
Today, you’ll need luck, flair, an alternative source of income, endless patience, an optimistic disposition, sharp elbows and a place to stay in London. But the essential quality for success now is surely tenacity. Look around the thinning newsrooms of the national titles. Look at the number of applicants for journalism courses, at the queue of graduates — qualified in everything except the only thing that matters, experience — who are desperate for unpaid work on newspapers and magazines. Look at the 1,200 people who applied in September for one reporter’s position on the new Sunday Times website. You’d shoot a horse with those odds.
It’s not really “experience” that matters, I’d argue, it’s what time spent in a newsroom teaches you. Having “interned for three weeks on the newsdesk in The Sunday Times” on your CV is pretty useless. However, many of the abilities you begin to hone during those few weeks are valuable. Learning to recognise a a story, what the best angle is to take on it, who will comment and how to put it together comes with practice. Students could get some practice covering national stories (not to mention make some contacts) if they started a news blog. Many – not all – of the skills learned during work experience are also developed while running a news site. So where are all the student-run news blogs? Are the lecturers not encouraging that type of thing? Am I the only one seeing a massive niche?
On that matter, are there any media lecturers working in Irish institutes who are blogging? Not to my knowledge.
Sidenote: ‘News cafes’ seem to be working well in the Czech Republic. I’d love to try something like that. Maybe rent a corner of Buswells… gerrup to a bitta mischief.
Moving on. Constanin Grudgiev; ‘EU on the Brink‘.
Adrian Russell of De Paper has loads of pictures of the new Aviva stadium up on De Blog.
The documents relating to the fruit-bat blow-job story. UCC’s lack of comment is allowing their reputation to be damaged in the international media.
Digital Rights Ireland on the flaws in the data protection directive. On that note, search engine for Facebook updates? See here. Google collects data on all non-passworded Wifi networks with their streetview car? Yep, but it was an honest mistake, they claim. Also, Eoin O’Dell has spotted a nice cartoon on privacy in the digital age.
Did Joe.ie and comedy troupe, ‘The Hardy Bucks’, get Munster beaten by Leinster?
What wrong, if any, did Flannery et al commit? Did Flannery somehow impugn the name of Munster by allowing comedy skits to be filmed in and around their training area? Why did Joe.ie decide to spike their own video? The whole story remains untold.
WORLD
Video below. Salman Khan on teaching through Youtube. Via Stephen Kinsella.
Michael Yon is in Bangkok now. He’s updating his Facebook page with minute-by-minute reports. Loads of pictures. Recommended ‘Like’. The New York Times report from Bangkok is also worth a read. Though maybe a little too ‘first-person’.
Krugman; ‘MisIMFormation‘.
Splintered Sunrise on the new coalition in the UK. That blog is beastly.
OTHER
The trailer for His & Hers is out. Looks deadly. Film about Irish women’s relationships with the men in their lives. Summary on Movies.ie is good…
From kitchens, living rooms, and hallways across the Irish midlands, His & Hers delightfully combines observation and charm to tell a 90-year-old love story through the voices of 70 women. This intimate gender and cultural snapshot explores a woman’s relationships with the men in her life-father, boyfriend, husband, son. Following sequentially from little girl to old woman, each character portrait is woven with the others into one perfectly crafted cinematic quilt.
His & Hers is an enchanting and affectionate appreciation for woman in all her versatility. Award-winning short film director Ken Wardrop (Undressing My Mother, The Herd) has applied his signature style, marking an accomplished feature debut.
Out June 18th. Other clips on their site.
‘So where are all the student-run news blogs? Are the lecturers not encouraging that type of thing? Am I the only one seeing a massive niche?’
If you haven’t read it already, there’s an excellent article on Mashable about a student social media-based news service, in competition with a more traditional newsroom production.
http://mashable.com/2010/03/23/future-newsroom/
I’m in DIT on the MA – Int Journ and there’s a single paper, but with no substantial social media presence. It’s a big failing alright. Seems like it could be very useful, esp in such a dispersed (non)campus as DIT.