Six of the best minutes of television...

I've seen in a long time; the last six minutes of Ashes to Ashes last night....as Helen Rumbelow says in the Times: pulls off the seemingly impossible: and after 28 years makes Ultravox's Vienna sound meaningful.

Been in Crewe; thoughts on aid agencies to follow after this temporary diversion...

Grand Sam, Liverpool and on the Frontline.....

Apologies for radio silence, I have been up north with the boys in blue (talking to them about media rather than helping them with their inquiries I hasten to add...)
Today, I'm back in the pages of the Telegraph writing about Samantha Morton..... and recovering from the Liverpool half marathon last week (1hr 53 according to my stopwatch personal best know you were dying to ask) . But made me think while I was puffing my way around Sefton Parkto the tune of Christina Aguilera’s Fighter (what is it about running that any sophisticated music taste goes?) and it made me think: how does a place’s culture affect the race?
I’ve run races in London, Newcastle and Liverpool now. Newcastle – the Great North Run – is brash and tough, but with a soft centre; locals stand on the side of the road offering drinks and sweets, determined that no one from Middlesborough will not say that they don’t treat their runners right.
In London when I ran the Nike 10k it seemed full of overachieving young Londoners who were ticking off yet another life experience to put on the CV. But then find yourself in the dippy hippy enclave of Victoria Park for the Rainforest Alliance Run and you splash through the mud in a rather disorganised way to save the planet, no chance of an ecological sound T Shirt.
And then there’s Liverpool, which I’ve run two years now. It falls on the same day as Reading ends up rather like the Tranmere Rovers to Reading’s Everton. Last year it was all the things that I love about Liverpool and simultaneously make me want to bang my head on my desk: great atmosphere, great camaraderie and disorganisation - ie the water ran out, there were no free T shirts and residents whinged that they didn’t want runners passing in front of their houses.
This year they’d sorted the water, the T-Shirts and re-routed the 13.1 miles. Still at the start there was a delay. The Century FM DJ told the thousands assembled that they had to wait as someone had parked their car on the course.
Only in Liverpool.
Finally the Frontline Club in New York held this really interesting event - the News Carers last month that I have just discovered. The video should be downloaded in the next week or so. Glad to hear this is now being debated across the Atlantic as well.

Lecture online

My Nuffield Lecture is now available on the Nuffield website - listed under Working Papers. Or you can see it via my page on the Reuters Institute site....

In other news...

And the latest on user generated content by Neil Thurman and flagged up by Adrian Monck

Bernard Tabaire

A reminder about the fragile nature of press freedom around the world today. The Reuters Institute is reporting that one of last year's fellows Bernard Tabaire, whom I had the good fortune to sit and discuss my research with, has been charged with "defamation" back home in Uganda. There is also more information on John Kelly's blog and Henrik Ornebring's blog has Bernard's account in his own words.

Reuters et al....

The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism has my new biog up there - rather more serious than my blog one you may find. Are these two people related? I think we should be told.

Last week I read something in a newspaper that genuinely taught me something new. The Guardian ran a series on Susan Faludi's new book The Terror Dream on the aftermath of 9/11. In an interview with Decca Aitkenhead and then three extracts, Faludi talked about the ideas that had grown up after 9/11 - the heroic male image, the mom and apple-pie return, the treatment of the 9/11 widows.... intriguing, thought provoking and taught me several new things.

The power of the media to create myths (my own field the tsunami 'orphan' is a particular potent one, when all statistics show that in fact far more children and women died in the wave) is something that we fall victim to, whether serious or less so. I was particularly amused to read somewhere in a newspaper today (brain gone blank, cant remember where) about TV reporters fanning out the night the Queen Mum died in the hope of silent cinemas, clubs etc showing respect for the Nation's Matriarch. When they found the ungrateful populace drinking enjoying themselves as usual it was immediately recast as the Blitz spirit....

Facing up to Facebook




Having predicted doom and gloom for aid agencies who are turning to social networks (sort of), I was inundated with emails defending Facebook's relevance in 2008 and now comes a report from the Centre for Policy Studies (see disclosure below) that analyses how it will force politicians to be more open. Robert Colvile's theory (headline grabbing stat: the BNP's website has the same market share as all of the other major political parties combined) is that so far politicians in this country have failed to take advantage of the web, which will prove just as revolutionary to politics as TV and radio did in the 20th century.

His argument is that technology transformed politicians from masters of rhetoric (Gladstone, Pitt commanding the Houses of Parliament) to communicators able to project an intimate image on television (Wilson, Thatcher, Blair).

Web 2.0 and its successors means this will change again: politicians won't worry so much about facing down Paxo as being more responsive, more interactive - and more open, due to Google's ability to keep on record previous remarks/policies that may come back to haunt them (although the Sunday Times reports there are already companies working on cleaning up your internet profile; useful for those who may fear Facebook indiscretions could stymie them).

Aid agencies could certainly consider these lessons. How to target appeals in future; will the old style DEC still work? Probably for the tsunami style natural disasters, but not so much for the long term chronic ones.....how they will be put under pressure even more quickly if they fail to deliver (those guerilla aid workers were keen on blogging). And whether they, like politicians, will be put under pressure from activists - Facebook already has groups criticising Amnesty's abortion policy.



*Disclosure: I sit opposite Robert when I work in the Telegraph and he has been known to buy me cups of tea and vice versa.


Lent update: These are the things I now really want to buy currently and can't: a stopwatch that means I can change tracks on my iPod while running (I didn't even know such a thing existed until a week ago, but now am convinced it will change my life); the DVDs of Cold Feet after reading a James Nesbitt interview in the Observer; tracksuit bottoms with a mobile phone pocket in them (so I can call my brothers to jeer at the end of the Liverpool half marathon in two weeks); a copy of Fateful Choices, by Ten Decisions that Changed the World by Ian Kershaw. I feel this attempt to combat consumerist thoughts isnt really working.