‘Little c’ christmas is fine – it is ‘Big C’ Christmas that people fear disappearing
Look, I enjoy laughing about “The War on Christmas” as much as anyone. Is anything funnier than knowing that you are annoying someone by wishing them a “Wonderful Winterval”? Or explaining that it is only because of political correctness that…
“Vinyl revival” stories are the worst fake news stories of all
This is a real bugbear of mine, but people keep writing about it, so I’m going to keep moaning about it. There’s another round this week of stories about “the vinyl revivial”, because apparently vinyl sales have out-stripped digital downloads…
Friday Reading S05E05
Friday Reading is a weekly series of recommended reads from journalist and designer Martin Belam covering journalism, media and technology. SHAMELESS MARKETING PLUG: My wife has a new business hand-making fancy dress outfits for kids. She’ll be selling them at…
Friday Reading S05E04
Friday Reading is a weekly series of recommended reads from journalist and designer Martin Belam covering journalism, media and technology. It sometimes comes out on a Sunday. My wife has started a business selling hand-made children’s fancy dress costumes and…
Asking people to submit stories is not the local newspocalypse
Lots of attention on social media today to this story: “Newsquest title asks readers to write and publish stories as part of ‘simplified’ news sharing process” Another nail in the cofffin for local news etc etc But is it? This…
What Chris Moran learned from seven years as the Guardian’s audience editor
Every journalist should read every word of this: “What I learned from seven years as the Guardian’s audience editor“
Journalists need systems and training to help them fight online abuse
This is worth a read from my colleague Olivia Solon about being on the receiving end of abuse as a journalist: “A normalization of violence: how cyberbullying began and how to fight it” One of the things that fundamentally irks…
Yes, Trump’s tweets are a distraction – but one people clearly want to read
I have some sympathy with the view that Donald Trump uses his Twitter account to the do the “dead cat strategy” of distracting people and the media from more important issues. I think it is important that the media hold…
Friday Reading S05E03
Friday Reading is a weekly series of recommended reads from journalist and designer Martin Belam covering journalism, media and technology. I got to go to the Borderline Club today to see REM get interviewed about their “Out Of Time” album….
Friday Reading S05E02
Friday Reading is a weekly series of recommended reads from journalist and designer Martin Belam covering journalism, media and technology. That is guaranteed to be 100% free of that man…and is a bit short this week I helped launch our…