Journoz: Updates for Australian Journalists

Behind the Homefront

This new blog, from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, is "a daily chronicle of news in homeland security and military operations affecting newsgathering, access to information and the public's right to know." Read it at http://www.rcfp.org/behindthehomefront/.

Women and development

The World Bank (http://www.worldbank.org/) has developed a new site, called GenderNet, to try to 'reduce gender disparities and enhance women's participation in economic development through its programs and projects'. It is a good place to find relevant gender statistics, information on the Millennium Goals as they relate to women, and to find people to discuss issues with in forums. See for yourself at http://www.worldbank.org/gender/.

A lot of hot air?

We've had engines powered by petrol, diesel, ethanol and solar power, so why not one propelled by air? Motor Developpement International (http://www.mdi.lu/), a Luxembourg company, has a design for one, and hopes to distribute model fleets of them within the next year, according to Wired News. The car runs entirely on a stream of compressed air delivered to a two-stroke engine. Money is the crunch - the people who want the technology are not necessarily the ones who can afford to pay. Even at 300,000 euros to get a license to develop the car, it might be cheaper than implementing the Kyoto Protocol. Read the full story at http://www.wired.com/news/autotech/0,2554,60427,00.html/wn_ascii.

Diplomacy Monitor

Keep on top of new official statements, policy documents, press briefings and speeches worldwide via the St. Thomas University School of Law's Diplomacy Monitor (http://www.diplomacymonitor.com/). It is updated all through the day with new material. Full-text searching of every document archived within the database is available. The site also holds working papers and reports on the Net's influence on global diplomacy, such as The Rise of Netpolitik - how the Internet is changing international politics and diplomacy.

Understanding illnesses

Health journos might find the online tutorials from the US National Cancer Institute helpful when reporting certain diseases and syndromes. The tutorials, called Science - Behind the News, are easy to follow and well-drawn, and aim to make complex material intelligible to the layperson. Current offerings include info on cancer, gene testing, nanodevices and cancer, the immune system, angiogenesis and more. Some are also available in Spanish. http://press2.nci.nih.gov/sciencebehind/

Never out of touch

According to Wired News, a research team at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University's Institute of Technology, has developed a new context-aware mobile-phone technology called the SenSay. The phone, still in prototype, keeps tabs on e-mails sent, phone calls made and the user's location. No more telephone tag, missed calls or frantic voicemails - the phone will help callers track you down - regardless of where you are or what you are doing. Scary thought. Read all about it at http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,60428,00.html/wn_ascii.

City slickers clean up on health

Richard Denniss of the Australia Institute (http://www.tai.org.au/) has looked at private health insurance across Australia and found that "the 30 per cent private health insurance rebate results in a disproportionate amount of government health expenditure being channelled into capital cities despite the poorer health services and outcomes in regional areas." The paper, "Health spending in the bush: an analysis of the geographic distribution of the private health insurance rebate", is based on unpublished ABS data and can be found at http://www.tai.org.au/WhatsNew_Files/WhatsNew/regional%20health%20insurance.pdf.

Job Network

With the demise of the Commonwealth Employment Service by 1998, employment assistance services began to be delivered by for-profit and community-based providers such as Job Network. Job Network has just been awarded its third contract by the Federal government. The Parliamentary Library has released an e-brief on this third contract and what it means for the unemployed. It's at http://www.aph.gov.au/library/INTGUIDE/ECON/JobNetwork.htm.

Net or nothing

UQ postgrad student An Nguyen has published an article on First Monday (http://firstmonday.org/). The piece, The current status and potential development of online news consumption: A structural approach, says the Net will become a major news medium in the years ahead and compares online news consumption across the globe. Read it at http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue8_9/nguyen/.

All join in

New Directions for News (http://www.ndn.org/) has just produced a new publication, based on research into "participatory journalism", which can cover everything from moblogging to Web page publishing to blogging. The report "We Media: How audiences are shaping the future of news and information" can be found, chapter by chapter in PDF at http://www.ndn.org/webdata/we_media/we_media.htm.

Bacteria-eating bugs

With antibiotics becoming less effective due to over-prescription, the worry that superbugs will one day ravage the human race is more and more a worrying possibility. Now along come bacteriophages which, according to Wired News, "eat drug-resistant bacteria for breakfast". Read all about Georgian scientist Alexander Sulakvelidze and his work on bacteriophages in the full story at http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.10/phages.html.

Helping the elderly cope

Wired News has an interesting story about how hi-tech gadgets are helping frail and elderly people stay in their homes, rather than be forced into care. The gadgetry includes "kitchen appliances that remind dementia patients how to use the coffee pot", and "prototypes that incorporate networks of wireless sensors and digital devices to issue medication reminders and even determine a senior's level of activity". All a very good story idea - it's at http://go.hotwired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,60439,00.html/wn_ascii

Unmediated numbers

If you are interested in American polling, try looking at the Gallup Brain, a searchable database of more than 60 years of public opinion polling in the US. You can click on each decade. It includes answers to more than 125,000 questions, and responses from more than 3.5 million people interviewed for Gallup Polls since 1935. It's at http://brain.gallup.com/.

Professors online

Jay Rosen, professor of journalism at New York University, has started a blog called Press/Think at http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/. Today's post is all about opinion crowding out news and why talking heads only want to be seen on TV.

Worth the bother?

Will going to university or TAFE get you a job? Or a better job? Facts and figures on this can be found at GradLink (http://www.gradlink.edu.au/), which also has job-seeking help, GradsOnline (http://www.gradsonline.edu.au/gradsonline/), which has graduate destination surveys and charting and the National Council for Vocational Education Research (http://www.ncver.edu.au/), which publishes a Student Outcomes Survey.

September 11 sites

Gary Price has collated a handy set of 9/11 links on his ResourceShelf weblog at http://www.resourceshelf.com/. Links provided include archives, exhibits, reports, and articles, such as The Television Archive, a library of world perspectives concerning September 11, 2001, at http://tvnews3.televisionarchive.org/tvarchive/html/.

Why RSS rules

Attention newsletter publishers - Chris Pirillo of Lockergnome (http://www.lockergnome.com/) has a handy posting on why RSS beats email publishing cold. It's called Why RSS Will Kill E-mail Publishing, and it's at http://rss.lockergnome.com/archives/services/007074.phtml. As Pirillo says, RSS is unspammable, and you can't get a virus using it. Looks like it has my vote already, and they are just the first two points. More on what RSS is all about at http://rss.lockergnome.com/.

BEYOND THE PACIFIC SOLUTION: NEW DIRECTIONS IN REFUGEE POLICY

Australian Policy Online (http://www.apo.org.au/) is sponsoring a forum, Beyond the Pacific Solution: new directions in refugee policy, at 1.30 pm next Wednesday 10 September. The forum features:

• Peter Mares, author of the multi-award-winning book, "Borderline: Australia's Treatment of Refugees and Asylum Seekers"
• Kathleen Maltzahn, coordinator of Project Respect, a organisation working with women and girls in the sex industry, particularly women trafficked to Australia for prostitution
• Klaus Neumann, a senior research fellow at the ISR, who is researching the history of political asylum in Australia

Venue: AGSE Building, cnr William and Wakefield Sts, Hawthorn 3122

Further details: phone 03 9214 8886.

What's happening for young people

Still at school? In full or part-time study? Working? In an apprenticeship? Or on the dole? A new report, How young people are faring 2003, looks at the work and education prospects of 15-24-year-olds now and gives numbers and statistics on who is doing what. The report, prepared by the Dusseldorp Skills Forum, is at http://www.dsf.org.au/papers/dl/How_Young_Faring_AUG2003/How_Young_Faring_AUG2003.pdf.

Keeping them honest

The Key Centre for Ethics, Law, Justice and Governance, Griffith University has prepared a paper, "Ministerial staff: a need for transparency and accountability?" as a submission to the Senate inquiry into the staff of members of parliament. The paper's authors, Anne Tiernan and Patrick Weller, identify five problems, namely:

• the system has outgrown the arrangements designed to support and control it
• it is premised on a number of myths and assumptions that have become redundant as the staffing institution has evolved
• the roles and responsibilities of ministerial staff and the public service are ill-defined, undermining the quality of advice and support to ministers
• there is too little public information about the operations of the staffing system
• the ministerial staffing system lacks transparency

The paper is in Microsoft Word and can be found at http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/committee/fapa_ctte/mops/submissions/sub04.doc

Newsgroup tool

Anyone keen on tapping into global vox pop will find NetNewsTracker handy. It works as a personalised clipping service for postings to USENET newsgroups. It searches newsgroups twice a day for any phrases that you choose, then delivers the results via email. You could use it for names, phrases, consumer comments, or company and product tracking, for example. The service is at http://www.netnewstracker.com/.

Time to lose the 4WD?

They call four wheel drives 'sports utility vehicles' in America and they are wrecking the environment faster than small cars do. The report, Driving Up the Heat: SUVs and Global Warming, looks at the impact of SUVs on the environment, and it is not a happy story. Pollution! Global warming! Oil dependency! Read the bad news at http://www.sierraclub.org/globalwarming/SUVreport/.

Gizmo garb for journos?

Foreign correspondents and roving reporters may be keen to test drive the eVest, a jacket that can carry all the gear you need to stay in the electronic loop while on the job. The jacket functions as a 'Personal Area Network'. With up to 42 pockets, its 'channels' can connect mobile phones to Palm Pilots, digital cameras, or laptops and still leave plenty of space for your low tech keys and wallet. Have a look at the jacket - you can zip off the sleeves on hot days - at http://www.scottevest.com/v3_product_info/features.shtml.

Pacific Media Conference

The Pacific Islands Media Association of New Zealand will be holding its 2003 conference on 3 and 4 October at Auckland University of Technology. Several key events will be happening including the launches of the Niue Star newspaper and the Pacific Journalism Review as well as the PIMA Media Awards. Over the coming weeks, more information about the conference, including registration forms, will be made available via the PIMA website at http://www.pima.org.nz/.