Rant Press Poison Jon Venables.

This is the type of article which proves press poison, propaganda and use of PR. Melanie Reid, Times Online has used the Jon Venables incident to say people should consider he may have had a terrible childhood. There are plenty of people who had a terrible childhood and chose not to pass that pain on to others. Publishing excuses for extremely bad behaviour and choices in the name of political correctness, bites me.

I've commented on the article online, but it could be a good feature, those who were abused etc as children, but have turned their lives around or made something of themselves and focused that pain and hurt into positive action rather than crime.

Detaching from the public emotion around this, and let's face it there's plenty, the crime happened in 1993 and still provokes extreme anger from the public. Again, detaching from the emotion the reason why this story is newsworthy is because Jon Venables is perceived as a threat to the public. IE bad news sells, because of our natural instinct to focus on anything or one who is a potential threat to our own survival. As the justice system will not release details of Jon Venables new identity or how he has reoffended there is fear in the mystery. The govt/justice system would do themselves a favour if they released the details of the offence and take some of the heat out of the situation, but lots of agendas and the reality is it's useful to the press.

Political correctness - good intentions gone mad. By giving Jon Venables an excuse for his actions (his poor childhood), we stop him from growing. Taking responsibility for our own actions whatever age we are brings maturity and growth as a person. PCorrectness DOESN'T work - after the best care and interventions - he's STILL reoffended.

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Julia O'Shaughnessy Even now the political correctness is calling out to stop Jon Venables from taking responsibility for his OWN actions.

We were told Jon Venables had the BEST of interventions, rehabilitation and opportunities within the system to change. The reality is he has CHOSEN NOT to change. The Justice system has protected Jon &...

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We have not yet faced the real Jon Venables problem | Melanie Reid - Times Online

www.timesonline.co.uk

Even as the infamous name of Jon Venables flashed on the screens, you could feel the moral panic start. Seventeen years may have passed since the Bulger killing, but we still haven’t separated logic from emotion in our response to it.

FOJ NEWS High Street Booksellers Struggling

Independent Booksellers are closing down at 2 p/week because of booksites. Major book chains such as Waterstones are also having problems.

The Writers Club in Norwich say there will be a dip in sales for high street booksellers for the next 5-10 years while booksellers adapt to price wars and e-readers such as kindle, but after that there should be an increase again.

Report from BBC News 04/03/10

Possible local feature?

Journalism 101 Newsroom

"It is better to print a boring, truthful story than an exciting lie". 

So with this in mind I sent off an article and photographs to the Western Morning News and The Advertiser in Newton Abbot. Neither have picked up the story. 

But here it is with one photo:

ARTICLE: 

[START]: Shocked Newton Abbot residents woke to find metre deep holes in a walkway joining their area to Milber Trading Estate. Although Police cordoned off the danger, local workers are concerned to see a fire hydrant and six drain covers still missing. 

Matthew Sharland, a local office worker said: “This is ridiculous, the covers were taken in the middle of the night, they are right on a walkway and we’re lucky no-one has fallen down and killed themselves”.

This incident is the second theft of metal drain covers in just over two weeks. The first being from behind a pub in North Hill, Plymouth, fifty miles away.

Drain smuggling in Devon hit the news three years ago when local Church Bells were also stolen from a restoration shop in Tavistock. The following year four inscribed plaques and 500 Devon road signs joined the increasing list of metal-related crime in Devon.

Rising metal prices (£640 a tonne) have encouraged thieves worldwide to join in what has been inaccurately described as a ‘victimless crime’.  With 60% of recovered metal being exported legally from the United Kingdom, according to Police Review, it is one of the fastest growing crimes.

Anyone with information about the two thefts should call police on 08452 777444 or call Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555111. [STOP]

How did I do it: 

I'm always talking to friends and contacts about what's going on and encouraging them to pass me articles. An old health and safety contact text me and said had I heard about what had happened. It wasn't until I started looking into why the drain covers would be taken that I realised it was the second time in two weeks drain covers had been stolen. Newton Abbot is fifty miles away from the other incident in Plymouth. So I emailed the story to the Western Morning News first as they cover the geographical area and the Advertiser which covers Newton Abbot wouldn't be interested in the fact there was another theft in Plymouth. I didn't hear anything from WMN, I emailed the same email to the newsdesk instead of just the Editor, heard nothing. So I emailed the story and photo's to The Advertiser, but as yet have also heard nothing. Possibly they've already covered it, possibly they will re-investigate it themselves and write the story, possibly it's just not interesting enough. 

I was happy with myself, as I received the information about 3pm and I'd got photo's and the article researched and written by 1am, ready for the morning paper should it be necessary. In terms of the industry, the amount of time it took to get photo's etc. I can see why a lot of journalists are office bound. In the time it took to complete this article I could have researched and written possibly ten articles received from PR/wire services. 

Multi-Media - hyperlocal news & podcasts 17/12/09

Well, at last. There are two podcasts, by me, on the website. After going through several pod hosting sites. I found podbean.com. They allow a larger file to be published AND supply an embed code which works with weebly.com. The link comes up with a 'Listen to podcast here' statement. I have to say I prefer the one Rich found, which is houndbite, looks more professional and 'funky'. So, to be able to use houndbite I've decided to keep all my podcasts to six minutes maximum so they fit in the same format. 

It does mean that some sessions will miss out on some of the information, but as long as the main points are there I feel it's fair to people who require an audio format. 

I looked on the Express & Echo website, which is a news/lifestyle website. http://www.thisisexeter.co.uk and noticed that they only have an abridged version of their stories, don't include all their stories and are mostly in text or video based formats. 

One element I was also interested to note was 'Anna's Campaign' - it has a picture, a link to a page on facebook and a video of her Mum talking about how she lost Anna, her 21 year old daughter. Anna was the passenger in a car involved in a drink driving accident. It's actually quite an emotionally horrific video, with photo's of Anna as a child, as an adult included. The point being that the campaign has brought together an annual campaign (drink driving) with a local human interest story (Anna's death) and combined it in a multi-media format on the local papers website. 

I've included a photo of the banner. I've included it here as an example of the hyper-local trend which is appearing on websites at the moment. Newspapers are hitting a bad time, as we all hear and many of the podcasts I see on Mediashift by Gorkana talk about the concept of hyperlocal that newspapers and news in general will obviously have a national context, but that it will also become more and more localised to smaller communities. For example in Exeter, that may mean areas like Exwick, Countess Wear, Pinhoe, Middlemoor, Heavitree would have their own news/websites etc. 

The local government has already started this trend by setting up PACT and My Neighbourhood groups which meet in the schools of the localised areas to discuss the problems in a relatively small area. The meetings attract members from the Council, Education, Police and local residents. 

Multi-Media Did it work on the website?? 2

Aargh, I've now recorded the 8 CV Must Have's Audio three times. First it was 22 minutes long, so then remembered it should be no more than 15 minutes long. I then recorded it and it's 9mins 48 seconds. I thought plenty of time spare. HOWEVER, after trying to load it three times. I looked at the site help and realised the file cannot be bigger than 8mb. Mine is 9mb. So, I'll have to re-record it and try to cut it down to 6minutes and see if that is less. The reason I can't just cut it up as I would normally, is that I'm not at college and I don't have the software to be able to do so. *Sigh* Take three!

Multi-Media Did it work on the website??

Hurray, houndbite works perfectly on the weebly website, as it has for Rich. So it is just that houndbite is not compatible with blogger. 

For now, I'm not worried. I'm just happy I can upload the audio's for the CV Tips etc. 

Multi-Media Did it work?? NO

A big fat NO. It closed down all of my 'safari' windows on the mac and chucked me out of blogger, houndbite and everything else I had open. Great. Oh well, I'm going to move on, come back to it later and see if it works on the website. :(