'Front Lines and Deadlines'

Finished Front Lines and Deadlines, a book compiled by John Owen and Heather Purdey, two instructors on the City University International Journalism MA. Eye opening and sobering in terms of the risks and challenges facing reporters around the globe, but a fascinating read. 14 chapters, each one by a different, accomplished journalist.
Great for those interested in being a foreign correspondent. 

Notes on the (world wide) network

Seocond online journalism lecture at City University yesterday. The message: "Respect to you" if you entered this program expecting to work for a newspaper (excepting local weeklies). Translation: good luck, idiot. I hope nobody read my application closely.

Online Dating Fraud hits 200k in UK

Article for msnbc.com about research suggesting tens-of-thousands of online romance scams go unreported in Britain.

More fromTottenham Riot Recovery Meeting

Additional material from Wednesday evening’s Tottenham Traders Partnership meeting:

It was much less contentious than many of the community's recent gatherings, said TTP chair Moaz Nanjurwany. He opened the meeting by acknowledging the difficulty of “what we’ve been through in the last few weeks.”

Tottenham Traders and Politicos Talk Recovery

Tottenham officials promised effective aide before listening to local business owners demand greater post-riot relief at a Tottenham Traders Partnership meeting last night.

Few proprietors said they received initial funds from insurers or government agencies, while several of the nearly 90 people in attendance claimed they continue waiting for assistance of any kind. Foremost on many minds were pending council tax fees.

Project #1: Tottenham Riot Recovery

Businesses in Tottenham are still waiting for economic relief promised by local and citywide government agencies, seven weeks after the London riots began there. Earlier in September I spoke to Tottenham pub owner Niche Mufwankolo, who said, despite assurances that help is on the way, he has yet to receive the first £1. 

"People think that we are back to normal, but we are not back," he said. "We are sinking."

During a brief conversation yesterday afternoon he said the situation had not changed. This project's goal is to find out if recovery assistance is being delayed, and if so, why.

I've written previously about the neighborhood's reaction to the riot's for msnbc.com.

More to follow.

Saying No to Nodaphobia

Until today I suffered from nodaphopia – fear of networks. If I used facebook or twitter or sat in a church or ate a family meal before, it was only because I hadn’t thought carefully about what any of those things really are.

I’m a student in the International Journalism MA program at City University. Today marked the start of our third week, but the first of online curriculum. Within two hours, the lecturer, Paul Bradshaw, and a producer for Sky News, Neal Mann, convinced me that the internet and social media will drive all future news reporting and almost everything else.

Reasons why this development seems bad: 1) I always liked privacy. 2) The amount of information and connectivity made available by technology is overwhelming.

I interned a summer at one of the last US newspapers to literally cut and paste stories with X-Acto knives and glue for layout. It took forever, and I loved it.

Now I can’t help but feel we’re headed into some Sleeper-esque world, where, as an Italian classmate suggested, journalists will only make love on their backs because they must constantly watch twitter feeds on their futuristic ceiling screens.

From there, it’s a short step to microchips in the brain. But as much as I may want to throw Nikes in the internet’s machinery or clog its fiber optic tubes with rubber cement, there’s no point.

Like any technology, this vast network of people and collection of programs should probably be viewed as tools—ones that can help journalists do their jobs better.

That’s what I will try to do this year: use these tools to find, investigate, and report stories.

I’ll chronicle that effort and the course of the journalism MA in this blog, alongside some self promoting.