What’s the most fun YOU can fit into 140 characters?

Click to enlarge

Yonks ago, when I was Head of Features for the Birmingham Post and Evening Mail, one of my jobs was to provide a daily ‘gash page’ (a page used to fill space in the first edition, then ditched as the day’s news came in).

I used to go into the library (truly a wondrous place to behold in those pre-digital days) sort through mountains of black-and-white wire pictures that came in from the Press Association and AP, pick half a dozen that made me smile, and write a pithy caption for each. Job done.

(more…)

How to take your first flight with Twitter. It’s nothing to get in a flap about

‘That’s how many press releases arrive at a daily newspaper on an average day …’ I used to announce as I tipped a small skipful of paper on the table.

People from community organisations who came on my media-made-simple courses were always amazed that a journalist could create prioritised order from such a mountain of chaos so quickly.

Now I know how they felt. I’ve got feeds, blogs, links, tags, plugins, widgets and bookmarks coming out of my ears. And that was before the Twittervasion.
(more…)

Want to invent the future? Easy, join the Lunaticks

Matthew Boulton

One of the most valued volumes on my bookshelf is The Lunar Men, by Jenny Uglow.

It’s the incredible story of (as the book’s subtitle puts it without understatement) ‘the friends who invented the future’.

Their number included such iconic characters as James Watt, Joseph Priestly, Josiah Wedgewood and Erasmus Darwin. Collectively, this free-thinking group of 18th Century entrepreneurs, engineers, churchmen, doctors, potters, teachers and reformers were known as the Lunar Society. And they met at the home of Matthew Boulton in Birmingham on the night of the full moon to eat, drink and – most importantly – debate and inspire each other’s thinking. No idea too barmy. No challenge too great. They combined their spectrum of interest and experience, and changed the world.

(more…)

All good things come to those who share

As we all know, sharing is the key to making friends online and, for those putting together a WordPress site, there are a good number of widgets out there to make it click-simple.

Share this, in my view, is the best I’ve come across – if for no other reason because it offers so many customising options. I see a new version is due out in the next couple of weeks with some really cool new features.

(more…)

Time for journalists to do their training at university (and save money for hard-pressed editors)?

When I started as a reporter on the free Loughborough and Coalville Trader, there was one big difference between me and my former schoolmates on the paid-for Loughborough Echo: They got trained and I didn’t.

Whatever early training I had, I paid for … secretarial night school, learning Harold Evans’ Newsman’s English backwards, and regular visits to the Marriage Guidance Council in Rugby (where NCTJ courses were held in those days, you understand).

For this reason, I’ve always done my best as an editor to make training a priority for my teams. Some may disagree.

(more…)