This is the archive blog of Journoz.Com, the Guide to Internet Information Sources for Ethical Australian Journalists. To view the main website, click here:
Archive:
September 30, 2003
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/.
Posted by belinda at
11:46 AM
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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/.
Posted by belinda at
10:35 AM
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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.
Posted by belinda at
09:45 AM
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September 29, 2003
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.
Posted by belinda at
12:10 PM
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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/
Posted by belinda at
11:23 AM
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September 26, 2003
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.
Posted by belinda at
03:42 PM
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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.
Posted by belinda at
12:21 PM
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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.
Posted by belinda at
12:16 PM
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September 24, 2003
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/.
Posted by belinda at
05:18 PM
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September 19, 2003
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.
Posted by belinda at
12:54 PM
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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.
Posted by belinda at
10:59 AM
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September 18, 2003
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
Posted by belinda at
10:41 AM
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September 17, 2003
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/.
Posted by belinda at
03:54 PM
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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.
Posted by belinda at
03:43 PM
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September 12, 2003
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.
Posted by belinda at
02:45 PM
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September 11, 2003
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/.
Posted by belinda at
03:37 PM
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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/.
Posted by belinda at
02:54 PM
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September 05, 2003
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.
Posted by belinda at
04:02 PM
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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.
Posted by belinda at
03:29 PM
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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
Posted by belinda at
03:17 PM
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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/.
Posted by belinda at
10:48 AM
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September 03, 2003
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/.
Posted by belinda at
03:01 PM
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September 01, 2003
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.
Posted by belinda at
02:33 PM
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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/.
Posted by belinda at
12:50 PM
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