Tagged with: Writing
Posts (30)
A triumph of investigative theatre
Charles Miller
edits this blog. Twitter: @chblm
Journalists like to talk about stories and story-telling, but it's rare for someone who actually tells stories for a living to produce a hard-hitting piece of journalism. Mike Daisey's The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs is just that - a one-man stage show by an Apple aficionado recounting...
Bob Woodward: how to report a story
Charles Miller
edits this blog. Twitter: @chblm
Bob Woodward, with Carl Bernstein, broke the story of Watergate nearly four decades ago. He still works as a journalist for the Washington Post. Interviewed for the Post's website, he talked about basic journalistic skills: One of the questions which persists in journalism is where do we get o...
Six lessons from a career in investigative journalism �
Charles Miller
edits this blog. Twitter: @chblm
Phillip Knightley shares lessons from his career in investigative journalism and recounts how he achieved one of his biggest scoops: Investigative journalists are seen as dashing, devil-may-care reporters who made the leap from suburban courts to 'undercover' work exposing the wrongdoers in ou...
Annals of Journalism 7: A very promising little war
Charles Miller
edits this blog. Twitter: @chblm
Lord Copper, the newspaper magnate in Evelyn Waugh's 1938 novel Scoop, is determined to make the most of what he calls "a very promising little war" in the obscure East African country of Ishmaelia. Waugh (above, in 1961) ) has Lord Copper inadvertantly send his newpaper's country matters colu...
Protest numbers: How are they counted?
Simon Ford
How do you know how many people are at a march or rally? It can be an important judgment politically, as at Saturday's rally against the spending cuts. This BBC News article sheds some interesting light on the subject. It turns out there are a couple of methods for estimating the number of...
The 'churnalism' detector - and the sting that shows it's needed
Paul Brannan
Not so long ago, wire copy was the bedrock of many a publication but newspapers never openly revealed their dependency on agency material. The intro was tweaked, the copy rejigged and the reporter's byline put at the top. The web exposed the lie when people were easily able to read multiple, ...
How the papers over-egged BBC cuts reports
Torin Douglas
is the BBC's media correspondent. Twitter: @BBCTorinD
Devil and Detail 3: An occasional series highlighting stories that are not all they seem. With all due respect to MediaGuardian, I don't think it added to the sum of human understanding with its coverage of the latest BBC cuts announcements. Its first story was headed "BBC Trust chair: we ma...
A quizzical look at language
Simon Ford
On Saturday, the Daily Mirror ran the headline "Boy, 14, Fire Bomb Quiz" above a report that "A boy of 14 has been arrested on suspicion of being a petrol bomber pictured at last month's tuition fee riots." And "Chamber offers bosses chance to quiz MP" appeared in the Coventry Evening Telegrap...
VAT: the wrong number at the wrong time
Charles Miller
edits this blog. Twitter: @chblm
So what do you think of the 14.29 per cent increase in VAT? Yes, that's (2.5 ÷ 17.5) x 100 = 14.28571 VAT has risen by two and a half percentage points, but not "by two and a half per cent". Roll of shame: - "The 2.5 per cent rise in VAT is immediate." The Times' editorial, today ...
There's no business like the news business - any more
Charles Miller
edits this blog. Twitter: @chblm
The Today programme's guest editor, Richard Ingrams, wanted to examine how journalism has changed, and, in particular, how a buzzing newsroom is now little more than a romantic memory for hacks of a certain age. He brought together Derek Jameson and Rosie Boycott to discuss what the prac...
