Entries from December 2009

Monday, December 28th, 2009

The importance of scheduled backups

The Online Journalism Blog seems to have gone into meltdown. Publisher Paul Bradshaw says it’s up, but that all content seems to have vanished. “Could be bad.” It’s a timely reminder that online is not permanent. In fact, online content is particularly vulnerable to simply vanishing into the ether if you fail to pay your […]

Saturday, December 26th, 2009

The shape of content yet to come

As you sit relaxing this Christmas – roasting chestnuts on an open fire, rocking around the Christmas tree and watching mommy kissing Santa Claus on YouTube – ponder the strange truth that Web 2.0 is not as new as you thought. For the idea of user-generated content has been with us for several decades. According […]

Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009

So this is Christmas…

Posting will be light, as they say, on Freelance Unbound over the next week or so, as my media attention is distracted by the triple-pronged attack of tea, chocolate and wall-to-wall festive TV. There will be some activity, but it’ll probably be mostly on the Stop.Frame animation blog, as I finally get to write up my […]

Monday, December 21st, 2009

Journalism job ads: not for actual jobs any more #3

Here’s a fine example of a cool-sounding TV presenter “job” that many young journalists would scramble for. The catch? It’s that attractive “Voluntary” salary. Which is code for “no money” – though they do offer food and travel expenses. As well as devoting one day a fortnight to filming and presenting the show, any young […]

Sunday, December 20th, 2009

Editorial cartoon of the day

Here’s a fine example of journalistic excellence from that paragon of local journalism the Bloom Beacon. Makes you proud…

Friday, December 18th, 2009

Student assessment hand-in. No last-minute panic, then…

It’s student hand-in today for one of the online journalism modules I teach. And students who have not made an appearance for weeks – sometimes months – are suddenly sloshing content into their site as if there were no tomorrow. Which, technically, there isn’t I guess. I don’t know why I thought it would be […]

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

New models for online publishing

Here’s a sign of the times from Jason Preston’s Eat, Sleep, Publish blog. He writes: It’s increasingly difficult, and maybe impossible, to run a profitable content company on the internet if you’re paying for your content to be produced. Well, we kind of knew that, given how difficult it is to find paying freelance writing […]

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

Who’s going to news:rewired?

I am, for one, as I’ve finally got my act together to sign up. There’s a list of registered delegates (so far) here. I’m looking forward to it. There are some interesting names, both speaking and attending, plus I get the chance to meet some folk who I know via Freelance Unbound, but have never seen […]

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

Which CMS? Drupal vs Expression Engine – a diary of frustration

I’ve been posting a bit about dithering between WordPress and Drupal for a web development project, and also which one to use for a student learning environment. Fellow blogger Soilman is in a similar position – though he’s dithering between Drupal and Expression Engine for bigger, corporate sites. Here’s how he compares the two: Drupal […]

Sunday, December 13th, 2009

Blog stats geekery: interim update

Here’s a teaser for those WordPress stats geeks who simply can’t wait until March to read the full-year update on this blog’s web analytics. Moving to self-hosted WordPress away from the coziness of WordPress.com has caused a certain amount of stats upheaval. Primarily this is because I now have Google Analytics installed. WP stats Up until […]