So don't know if I mentioned this before but I work for a magazine called Press Gazette. To be honest I probably kept that fact quiet as I quite liked the idea of doing this anonymously.
Anyway, I've now found out the magazine is facing closure. It's due to a number of reasons - partly because we're owned by Rupert Murdoch's son in law Matthew Freud and Piers Morgan who are two of the most loathed men in the British media.
Add to that falling circulation, an awards ceremony that no one wants to back and the general crisis facing old media, and you have a situation where things are not looking too rosy for me and my PG crew.
There is a heroic, last-ditch plan being attempted by my editor that is truly of Indiana Jones proportions. If it works, I'm sure he'll win editor of the year at every award ceremony going but still my main concern is how I'm going to pay my bills next month.
So all that means I'm now on the job hunt which in turns requires that I "start" getting this blog back into gear. Must keep active, must keep active.
Stumbled across this amazing video filmed by a young African-American girl which looks at the whole issue of the way in which black women percieve themselves and how such views are formed at an early age.
It's heart breaking to watch the footage of young black kids identifying black dolls as bad and white dolls as good. Check it out
Back on the wagon again. Spent the evening celeb spotting with ITN's multimedia team for a feature I'm working on. more to follow, but blimey, how gorgeous are Jamie Redknapp and Naomi Cambell in real life?!
laying low today - i've been knocked out by a nasty flu bug going around. funny how these things always come when you're at your busiest. had an interview with al jazeera's rageh omaar lined up but isn't looking to optimistic as i'm a total wreck at the mo.
on a happier note saw my boyfriend for the first time in over a week. i'd forgotten how absolutley gorgeous and delicious he is, even after three and a half years!
Just heard about the bombings on a bus in Mamaris, Turkey last night. Apparently at least 26 people have been injured.
I was there just a couple of months ago and it is such a beautiful country filled with wonderful friendly people. I hope this unfortunate event doesn't put people of engaging in intelligent travel to this fascinating country.
Anyone how have any tips on how to create a separate list of links to other blogs outside of vox?
there are so many that i'm coming across that i'd like to name feature on this page.
like this one featuring tales by a wonderful franco-american girl living in Paris and working in fashion.
yikes this blog is already getting a bit random isn't it. We'll i did warn you :-)
excuse me for the hiatus. just catching a breath after attending the media guardian television festival in edinburgh. hard fucking work. and now i'm faced with writing it all up today. joy of joys.
i partied hard and put myself a round shamelessly like a crackwhore in desperate search of a fix. should pay off too - i picked up some trump cards that will be exciting to play with. following the yellow brick road to job satisfaction.
had a blast the past on sunday with a message from old mikey h, an old uni pal of mine. last ime i saw him was when he came out to milan last year. was supposed to be drying out but that didn't quite work out. any how bygones and all that, checked out his blog and it reminded me what a legend he is.
reading his work is like being handed an ice-cold glass of freshley squeezed lime juice on on a hot summers day. pleased to read that he's just de-junked himself. so wish him nothing but peace of soul and calmness of mind.
I’ve been trying to get a story run in my magazine for months now on the growing importance of Afghanistan for the Western media but, be it the World Cup, Lebanon on the “alleged terror crisis”, I just can’t seem to get in on to my pages.
On Sunday Corporal Budd became the 11th British soldier to be killed in combat with the Taleban in Helmand province since early June.
The rate at which soldiers are being killed in Afghanistan far outstrips that of Iraq but yet stories only dribble onto our news pages and very few organisations are covering it in a conscientious way.
As the article below points out, Channel 4 were planning to do a week long special on the country and gallant attempts have been made by the Sunday Time’s Christina Lamb got into serious hot water while reporting with British armed forces and the BBC’s Alastair Leithead.
Yet all in all Afghanistan seems to be just another example of how the news agenda can often fail to reflect the real issues of the day.
The General who led the British forces during the first invasion of Iraq has criticized the British media for its lack of reporting from Afghanistan, which he said enabled the serious military errors to go unreported.
Major General Patrick Cordingley who commanded the 7th Armored Brigade, the Desert Rats during the Gulf War and who reported from Afghanistan for the Today Programme made his comments at a debate at The Frontline Club in London in late July.
Cordingley said: “I think they’ve [the media] missed a trick at the moment because we are at a very critical point and I suspect that we now have retrenched.
The danger is that with the number of troops that we have on the ground we will end up protecting ourselves while working out what the hell to do next.
Now if the media were concentrating on this thing and wishing to beat the government over the head they’ve missed a trick as we will have retrenched and sorted something out by the time the ball goes back on to Afghanistan again.
I think in that respect the government have been quite lucky.”
He cited the example of when, in July, the British army’s bombed a school in Nawzad, in the Helmand province near an area where the Taliban had been mortaring British forces.
Air-strikes were called in and three 500 pound bombs were dropped on a school and locals reported that civilians were killed, although the army denied this.
He said: “You can see where I’m coming from – the John Humphreys of this world would be making hay of this at the moment if the Palestinian problem hadn’t flared up.”
Cordingley said that compared to the Americans the British military had been “very lucky” because if the situation had not happened in the Middle East the media would be talking about the rights and wrongs of bombing a school.
He said that the media had “very much taken their eye of Afghanistan” and added that despite being a regular BBC commentator on Afghanistan “nobody has rung me up ever since the Israelis started dropping bombs and things into Beirut.”
Earlier this month [I] spoke to Alex Thomson who said that the Channel 4 News was facing a real quandary over Afghanistan.
At the time the programme had over £200,000 invested in setting up a week of live programming due to take place from Kabul but in the face of the escalating tension in Lebanon, faced being postponed.
He said that the media’s interest in the country depended on what happened to our soldiers in Afghanistan.
Thomson said: “To be brutally frank the answer to that will be decided by body bags. Look at how Afghanistan has gone up the agenda when they killed six [British soldiers] in just over three weeks. That will tell you all you need to know about what it means to the media.
There’ll be a spike on and around the 31st when the handover happens but broadly speaking, if the British can keep themselves from being killed, it will more or less fall off the agenda news wise.”
However the Independent’s defence and diplomatic correspondent, Kim Sengupta said that the media’s focus for the “war on terror” will increasingly be Afghanistan not Iraq.
He said: “Iraq is becoming almost a forgotten war. For example not long ago you could fly with the MOD direct from RAF Brize Norton to Basra in the TriStars. But my [last] journey took about 28 hours. One of the reasons is that the TriStars, which used to take the troops to Basra have all been switched to Afghanistan.”
Listening to the Today progamme as I get dressed this morning and an interview with the Finnish foreign minister Erkki Tuomioja, whose country holds the European Union presidency, draws my attention to a reoccurring issue that has been bothering me for the whole of the current crisis between Lebanon and Israel.
The British media from Newsnight to the Telegraph has been very critical of the role that the French have played. Last week the BBC produced a rather patronising report on the first French soldiers to arrive in Lebanon, who happened to be engineers, and on Today this morning the questioner leadingly questions Tuomioja on how many further troops the French would send to Lebanon.
Yet I'm still to see an article which questions the lack of British troops being sent out there.
I so can't wait for this album to drop. Tasty was delicious but the few hooks I've heard on the radio from this album are unbelievable.
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