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November 21, 2003

Casualties of war?

Literature now coming forward on journalists and trauma shows that some journalists experience symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as a result of covering disaster and traumatic stories. However, a vast majority don’t. Psychologist Cait McMahon is conducting a survey which journalists are encouraged to respond to. The survey, and other background, on the project, can be found at http://www.journotrauma.cjb.net/. The study aims to establish what is the best way of enhancing the psychological wellbeing of journalists. The study will examine -
  • Post traumatic growth (a positive response to trauma)
  • Post traumatic stress (a negative response to trauma)
  • Depression, anxiety, anger and dissociation as potential responses to covering trauma related stories
  • Personality traits
If you can assist, please complete the (anonymous) survey.
Posted by belinda at 11:26 AM | Comments (0)

November 20, 2003

Born under unlucky stars

If being born here doesn't make you an Australian citizen, what does? Good question. Apparently there are rules for refugees' children and then rules for the rest of us. The Parliamentary Library has done a Research Paper on the topic "We are Australian – The Constitution and Deportation of Australian-born Children". According to Australian Policy Online (http://www.apo.org.au/), which has posted the document, "The Citizenship Act was amended in 1986 to remove automatic citizenship at birth from children of 'illegal' immigrants and temporary visa holders, including visitors and refugees. Now such children only become citizens if they are 'ordinarily resident' in Australia for the first ten years of their lives." With this government's track record, chances are they wouldn't be allowed to stay that long. The full text of this Research Paper is at http://www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/rp/2003-04/04rp03.htm.
Posted by belinda at 12:08 PM | Comments (0)

Front page view

If you want to see today's front pages from different countries around the world, have a look at PressDisplay (http://www.pressdisplay.com/pressdisplay/viewer.aspx). This is a new service from NewspaperDirect (http://www.newspaperdirect.com/) and it promises digital replicas of 160 newspapers from 40 countries minutes after they are published. Viewing the front page is free - to see more would require payment. Papers open within a browser - no extra software is needed. The Sydney Morning Herald is currently the only offering for Australia. Anyone wanting The Australian would need to get it via rival service NewsStand (http://www.newsstand.com/).
Posted by belinda at 11:47 AM | Comments (0)

November 19, 2003

Coming attractions

If news is largely 'stuff that happens', planning ahead is not that easy. However, keeping tabs on events that will be newsworthy is important, and will be made easier with tools such as the BBC's The Week Ahead, Upcoming Elections Around the World or the World Events Calendar. Several such resources have been gathered by the ResourceShelf's Gary Price (http://www.resourceshelf.com/) and include about 15 services designed to keep you up-to-date on newsworthy events. The linked list is at http://www.resourceshelf.com/archives/2003_10_01_resourceshelf_archive.html/
#106683163817585256
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Posted by belinda at 02:08 PM | Comments (0)

Hacking Australia's Future

In response to the Government's Higher Education Support Bill, the Senate's Employment, Workplace Relations and Education References Committee has produced a counter-document called "Hacking Australia’s Future Threats to institutional autonomy, academic freedom and student choice in Australian higher education". The document says: "Important features of the nation’s higher education system are being fundamentally reshaped and redefined by the Higher Education Support Bill. Such a radical assault of the fundamentals of the system was not foreshadowed nor discussed during the review process. The sector and the broader community do not support discarding university autonomy and academic freedom. These bills will initiate a regime which will shift costs to students. It will stifle student choice and impose a heavy burden on families. These bills will deepen inequities in society, and undermine economic and social prosperity." The full text, (211 pages), is online at http://www.aph.gov.au/Senate/committee/eet_ctte/highed2003/report/highed.pdf
Posted by belinda at 09:00 AM | Comments (0)

November 18, 2003

Medical writing

The Australasian Medical Writers Association held their 20th Anniversary Conference in Sydney in November. The Association provides resources for medical writers and contact details for freelance members. Reports on the conference can be found at the AMWA site (http://www.medicalwriters.org/). Click on the link for Reports from our Twentieth Anniversary Conference 2003.
Posted by belinda at 01:21 PM | Comments (0)

Online Journalism Awards

Sports site ESPN.com won a gong in the 2003 Online Journalism Awards. So did The New York Times on the Web for coverage of the war in Iraq. The Awards honour excellence in English-language Web journalism and are administered by the Online News Association (http://www.journalists.org/) and the Annenberg School for Communication (http://ascweb.usc.edu/home.php) at the University of Southern California. The full list of winners etc can be seen at http://www.journalists.org/awards/winners2003.html.

Complete coverage of the ONA's recent conference is at http://www.journalists.org/2003conference/.

Posted by belinda at 11:18 AM | Comments (0)

Good news for head injury trauma victims

"An altered version of cannabis could be the first drug ever to shield the brain from the cascade of injury that follows head trauma", according to Kristen Philipkoski of Wired News. Apparently, "three basic processes contribute to damaging the brain when injury occurs, and the cannabis-derived drug acts on all of them: inflammation, neuron death and the breakdown of communication between neurons". Read all about it at http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,61239,00.html/wn_ascii
Posted by belinda at 11:08 AM | Comments (0)

ONA Conference report

Dr Stephen Quinn, author of Newsgathering on the Net, is currently based in the US. He attended the annual Online News Association conference held in Chicago on Nov 14-15 (http://www.journalists.org/2003conference/) and had the following report to make.

What's next? someone in the audience asked Jack Fuller, who gave the keynote address on the first day.

"I don't know," he said. "You probably don't either. Things are changing very rapidly." He spoke about lessons in humility he had learned from the online world: what we need to do is to experiment and assess the results, and adapt, and do it over and over again - not get wedded to ideology about what people want. Newspapers are notoriously difficult to change because readers get upset at change. Newspapers must experiment and adapt. Humility means recognizing oour own lack of knowledge - ignorance in the true sense. Recent research had shown that newspapers are conservative, perfectionist and reluctant to change, similar in culture to the military and hospitals. Fuller said he understood why there were some reasons to preserve some aspects of this culture - you want people to be perfectionists when they are doing delicate operations. Fuller said he hoped that newspapers had the potential to change. Read more about Fuller at http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/ReadMe/article.php?id=243.

Ideas for generating convergence kept being asked from the floor in several of the sessions. Here are the consolidated thoughts:

  • create competition (some newsrooms have whiteboards where people track successes)
  • leadership from top
  • awards (one paper has a golden Mr Potatohead award which is given weekly
  • encourage recalcitrants through carefully worded performance reviews
  • provide tools via training
  • ask reporters: "What do you need? What do you want?"
  • establish a convergence mission statement: defining urgent news. "An event of community news or significance," one reporter said of his newsroom.
  • reporters care more about profession than their employer. They will respond to ways to improve their journalism.
  • Give them people they respect as their leaders.
  • know how to talk reporters' language.
  • Support from top down.

How to attract a young audience was a common theme. Here are the thoughts of Don Estes, editor of chicagotribune.com

Estes spoke about the tao of FLOID. Fresh, local, often updated, images and interactive, aimed at the young demographic. Here are details about each:

  • Fresh: Day starts with shovelware at 6am but updates from then. Signals with timestamps, update tags. Morning: hard news; noon more utilitarian (mortgages, better deal on cell phone); evening more entertainment.
  • Local: breaking news with local angles "Our franchise is not Iraq or Washington, it's local news. "Concentrate on utilities - schools, weather, crime stats, traffic - what you can't get from our competitors."
  • Often update, never stale: aimed at work week 6am-6pm, Mon to Fri. "The story people see at 9am is very different from the story at 3pm that day."
  • Images and interactive: readers love photos (the most viewed feature). Polls and message boards. "For things that people care about these things take off like a rocket."
  • Demographics: young are targeted: "Advertisers love that. We have those demographics in mind when we design the site each day."

Blogging was another popular subject. The other keynote speaker was Andrew Sullivan, who runs a popular blog at www.andrewsullivan.com

Read the blog from conference attendees. See http://www.journalists.org/2003conference/blog/

Publishing unedited blogs on news sites is "a suicide pact," says a lawyer with Dow Jones & Company. See http://onlinejournalism.com/topics/brief.php?briefID=64468.

Posted by belinda at 08:44 AM | Comments (0)

November 17, 2003

Medical culture

Health reporters may be interested in having a look at EthnoMed, a Web site about cultural beliefs and the issues involved in the health care of recent immigrants. The site is largely about immigrants to the US, many of whom are fleeing war or conflict in their home countries, but the information would be useful to most reporters. The site at http://www.ethnomed.org/ has culture-specific pages for Amharic, Cambodian, Chinese, Eritrean, Ethiopian, Mexican, Oromo, Somali, Tigrean and Vietnamese cultures as well as other information.
Posted by belinda at 03:23 PM | Comments (0)

November 14, 2003

Convergence defined

Media convergence is much talked about and probably little understood. A new book, 'Digital Journalism: Emerging Media and the Changing Horizons of Journalism' has a chapter entitled 'Convergence defined 'by Rich Gordon. Online Journalism Review (http://www.ojr.org/) has posted the chapter in full at its site. It covers convergence in media technology, in media organisations and in media ownership and covers structure, tactics, information gathering, storytelling, and the implications of convergence. The chapter is online at http://www.ojr.org/ojr/business/1068686368.php.
Posted by belinda at 02:46 PM | Comments (0)

Ethical minefields

A new journal, the Australian Journal of Emerging Technologies and Society looks at the social implications of emerging technologies, from mobile Internet and wireless technologies to biotechnology and cybernetics. Gruesome piccies! It's at http://www.swin.edu.au/sbs/ajets/. The first issue looks at E-Publishing Today, Genetic Paternity Testing, Lawful Interception of the Internet and Technology and Trust. The journal is published by the Australian Centre for Emerging Technologies and Society, Swinburne University of Technology (http://www.swin.edu.au/).
Posted by belinda at 02:35 PM | Comments (0)

No way in

Peter Mares, author of Borderline: Australia’s response to refugees and asylum seekers in the wake of the Tampa, looks at the Government's refugee policy in action after the 14 Kurds arriving at Melville Island were turned back to indonesia. Read his thinkpiece at http://www.apo.org.au/webboard/items/00519.shtml.
Posted by belinda at 02:26 PM | Comments (0)

November 12, 2003

Who are the bad guys?

The US Congressional Research Service has produced a document on foreign terrorist organisations - what they call FTOs for short. Find out who they think the baddies are at http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/25996.pdf. According to the document, the list "publicly stigmatizes groups and provides a clear focal point for interagency cooperation on terrorist sanctions; however, some argue that it is inflexible and misleading, since groups that are not on the list are still often subject to U.S. sanctions." Also, once they make the list, groups stay on it for two years, regardless of activity.
Posted by belinda at 04:01 PM | Comments (0)

November 11, 2003

Gizmo heaven

People who love toys will love Gizmodo (http://www.gizmodo.com/), a blog for gadget lovers. These are sleek, expensive gadgets and highlights include a new Samsung camcorder the size of a mobile phone. It can record for two hours and you can carry it in your pocket. See for yourself at http://www.gizmodo.com/archives/010009.php. The blog also highlights Popular Science magazine's latest picks at http://www.gizmodo.com/archives/010070.php#010070.
Posted by belinda at 02:42 PM | Comments (0)

November 07, 2003

Reporting gay and lesbian issues

A new reference toolbox for journalists reporting on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues has been created by the US-based National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association (http://www.nlgja.org/). The toolbox (http://www.nlgja.org/pubs/toolbox_intro.htm) provides advice on sensitive issues such as same sex marriages and hate crimes against gays. As the site says : "No journalist would cover a professional tennis match without getting an education in backhands, foot faults, player rankings and grand slams. But some reporters step into the world of lesbian, gay bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people without taking the time to know what they're reporting about. "
Posted by belinda at 02:49 PM | Comments (0)

Community politics

The BBC has now officially aunched its new community politics site, iCan (http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/ican/). The aim of the site is to get people actively engaging in politics, particularly about grassroots issues. The project is a four-month trial, and will feature stories from local people. Tools for networking such as message boards will be offered at the site. The BBC's own story on the project is at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3236925.stm.
Posted by belinda at 02:42 PM | Comments (0)

World Summit on the Information Society

The World Summit on the Information Society (http://www.itu.int/wsis/) is about to open in Geneva. The first phase will be hosted by the Government of Switzerland from 10 to 12 December 2003. The second phase will take place in Tunis almost two years later, from 16 to 18 November 2005, and will be hosted by the Government of Tunisia. The site has a lot of information about the first phase of WSIS, including the Draft Declaration of Principles (both the latest version and previous versions), the Draft Plan of Action (again the latest version and previous versions), as well as basic information about WSIS.
Posted by belinda at 02:32 PM | Comments (0)