Its the end of the semester here and my teaching gig is coming to a close. Its been very interesting and a lot of fun and its also been a learning experience. 115 students in the course, and 22 in the tutorial that I teach, and then 7 in the other course that I teach… [...]
Have you ever noticed how the media is sometimes used as a weapon of mass destruction? Example: News Headline: Jews are Ruining the Economy! Result: Krystallnacht and 6 million Dead Jews. Rupert Murdoch wields News Limited as his private editorial rapier, slashing, trimming, opining and burning. Burning institutions, politicians, industrialists, bankers, entrepreneurs. [...]
Flashback – 1999 – Sydney, Federal Courtroom 23B I carried a box with 5,382 page phone bill to court with me every day. I was ATA Telstra for what I like to term, “inaccurate billing practices”. The Judge upon sitting down would look over his courtroom and espy me and the box in front [...]
Or – How to increase Record Sales…… A few years ago (1994), a well known Australian journalist told me the secret of Journalism. “Tom, if you want to get published, just have something contrary to say about someone famous or a hot political subject and every journo in the land will want to ‘quote [...]
I was reading an article today and it struck one of my chords. You know the one deep down that makes you sit up say, “Hey, that's right.” The article talked about the negligible value of news as a “pay now to read” item. Think about it. Apart from the rubbernecking value – [...]
Every time something happens we react. That is the nature of what animals, and humans do after all. We see rain, we take shelter. We are hot, we try to get cool and go for a swim. Totally human nature. Of course, as humans, we have this capacity to plan as well. Companies and governments [...]
Every so often I come across someone unique. Someone who cares enough about their community or country enough to actually get off their lazy backside and do something. Sheep usually don’t do very much. They graze and follow each other. As a New Zealander, I used to get a lot of ribbing from [...]
Have you ever thought about who is watching what you do? In the UK the freedom of journalists has recently been significantly curtailed (along with everyone else) – see this story in the Guardian – to the extent that the paper is now offering advice on how people in the UK who are citizen journos [...]
Trust Over the last week we have experienced not just a massive hit on our financial wealth. More than that we have seen an even greater fracturing of trust. It appears that it is not money that makes the world go round, but trust. Even with the most phenomenal injection of liquidity into the market [...]
Some call them muckrakers, others call them investigative reporters…. Nieman Reports have an issue that is devoted to the subject… got some interesting insights there… Here is some of the essay by Stuart Watson on TV…. Appointment TV is dead; video is more vibrant than ever. Over-the-air broadcasting is shrinking; journalism is not. What does [...]