Category: Media

Google alternatives for NUJ Journalist magazine

Journalist cover June-July 2016I have written the cover article for the new issue of the NUJ’s Journalist magazine on organisations offering Google alternatives, covering the likes of DuckDuckGo, Firefox, Runbox, WordPress, OpenStreetMap, Mapbox and Ordnance Survey, as well as what I reckon Google does well. You can read it magazine’s digital version, on pages 18 and 19.

This was inspired by a meeting for journalists at Google’s non-permanent for tax purposes establishment at Central St Giles, detailed here on the NUJ’s London Freelance website.

Links for the Journalist piece are below.
Continue reading “Google alternatives for NUJ Journalist magazine”

New City Lit training on data journalism and digital publishing

City Lit in London has posted details of two one-day training courses I will be giving this summer. An introduction to data journalism on Saturday 16 July will be an updated version of the course I gave at City Lit in January. It will include how to deal with data, research techniques, FOI requests, processing data and how to graph and map it.

On Saturday 13 August I will be delivering a new course, an introduction to digital publishing, that will cover blogging, podcasts, online video, e-books, print-on-demand publishing and promoting what you produce. Each course costs £59 or £20 for concessions.

I also run customised courses on handling data, for in-house training by media and other organisations. There’s more information on the training I offer here, or please get in touch if you would like to discuss this.

Good news from government on FoI, too early to say on IP bill

Today saw announcements on two areas of major interest to journalists. One, the report of the Independent Commission on Freedom of Information, is good news. There were expectations that the commission was primed to weaken FoI; it hasn’t, and in fact it recommends ways to strengthen it, including speeding and shortening the appeals process.

The government’s response is also cheering, saying that charges for FoI will not be introduced, as “We believe that transparency can help save taxpayers’ money, by driving out waste and inefficiency”. Well, quite.

On the Investigatory Powers Bill, it’s too early to say. Some of the recommendations in the three parliamentary reports on the draft IP bill have been adopted, including better protection for journalists, but police have also gained further powers.

Continue reading “Good news from government on FoI, too early to say on IP bill”

Welcome our new robo-journalist overlords

My second email newsletter discusses robo-journalists, for some an object of job-based fear. However, based on trying out Automated Insight’s natural language generation system Wordsmith and following Kent Brockman I for one welcome our new robo-journalist overlords; although that’s because I reckon they will be human.

A preview: Continue reading “Welcome our new robo-journalist overlords”

New email newsletter: Predictably bad

I have just sent out the first edition of my new email newsletter, which I plan to publish each month or thereabouts. It covers what I’ve been working on – in this issue, my data journalism course at City Lit – articles I have written and those I have spotted elsewhere, and things I am looking for help on from my many friends in public relations.

Here’s a preview: Continue reading “New email newsletter: Predictably bad”