Nocton sure on where to stand

I’ve never been to Nocton though I do have rough idea of where it is. The reason I’m talking about Nocton is the hugely controversial plans that have been presented to create a ‘super dairy’, which in entails what’s been described as ‘factory farming’ and using a more industrialised American inspired method of milking.

The pros are actually quite sparse to what I’ve found after observing the best publication with knowledge on the subject, which was the Farmers Guardian. I’ve found the owners of the potential site believe the construction of the site would help in ‘reversing the decline in UK milk production.’ I can see where their coming from but celebrity chef Raymond Blanc believes ‘The quality of milk produced so intensively is not as good as milk from grass-fed cows.’ Which makes think twice about the idea that were taking cows out their natural environment and also the welfare implications, it’s being described as if they cows are packed together and took out of the fresh air and slapped into some grey gritty factory.

Also as lecturer and passionate campaigner Debbie Wilson pointed out the company behind the proposed site could be accused of using darker underhanded methods to win public opinion. An example would be how at guest lecture at Lincoln university Debbie pointed out the fact the head of P/R for the company wrote an article for a local magazine stating why the dairy was such a great idea. Seems like you usual slab of P/R biased towards the clients needs. However the twist comes from how the article was credited. Instead of making it clear how the writer was in charged of P/R it failed to mention it and made it seem as if a normal journalist had written it.

The conclusion I think both sides have strong points but if you balance visual pollution against a country in difficult financial times you’ll never get a right answer. Maybe if the plans were reviewed in a manner with suited environmentalists and cause minimum damage to the landscape and ensure the welfare of the cows and produce a strong British product.

Team workingness

Teamwork its essential vital, from comic book superhero teams to super groups. It’s key in everyone’s life and most people have once had to placed in team work situation. It’s all well and good but the question is what you do when conflict and trouble appears?

The question to this seemingly rhetorical question is structure and organisation. Well this is what came across during our lecture today. Well more specifically organising the specific points:

• Contact- From the moment you say hi it’s key to create a strong contact system with your team from giving out contact details in case of emergency or organising meeting for guess what? contact or a better word communication.
• Assigning roles and a purpose- This is about ensuring that this most potential is dripped out the team by assigning roles their comfortable with and basically trying to sum the actual goal your team is trying to achieve. Like for example the production of a high quality magazine.
• Conflict and penalties- It’s natural that conflict will arise in some groups and some cases it could be just or create a better end result if that passion is re-directed re-productively. To help do this it could be key to set rules which could help direct conflict to more a productive conclusion. To do this it would be an idea to set up rules or a forum for people to express their thoughts with the group and let it be expressed in a more productive manner.
• The ‘passenger’ member – It’s a cruel term but I think it may be fair comment to say that in some teams you get one or two members which don’t particularly pull their weight in their time. To combat this the ideas we produced were to offer incentives for participation, i.e. a good reference after the exercise is completed or using contact details to try and find out why their not pulling their weight.

Ok now here’s a little back story about when I was in a tough team work situation and how I solved it and ideas on what I could have done better. Back in college our course group was assigned the task to re-brand the colleges hair and beauty saloon, were given the chance to put our names forward for our preferred positions and work in small groups on different areas of the task, I assigned to design which was pretty awesome, however what the rest of my class didn’t think was awesome was the fact that our project leader was not everyone’s first choice and most thought it was a terrible mistake.

Not before long the project leader was clearly not suited to the task due to her unorganised treatment of our tasks and everyone back to rebel and unproductively complain. Being the quiet kid of the group no one really listened to me so I went someone they would, the most intellectual and liked member of the group and persuaded him to create a structure where each part of the group had an organised plan which worked around each other, in conclusion turned out quite well and everyone got a pat on the back.

So now I’m going to quote Michael Preston-shoot’s ‘towards an anti value frame’ (Houdmill,2007) and how I could have applied to my situation.

1. Respect- If I had tried to promote respect for my team leader maybe people would have a better relationship with each other and things could have turned out even more amazing.
2. Self determination- If I had been more vocal and determined about trying to promote a stronger relationship with our team leader communication would have better and the future of everyone relationship with the project leader would have been stronger.
3. Individualisation- If I shown the group that since we were a team and everybody important in the college was watching that maybe if we put petty complaints aside and work for the greater good.
4. Maximising use of supports in the community- If I had looked outside our group and tried to someone who was used to deal with conflicts in the team somehow it would have salvaged the groups relationship with the project leader.

                       

So I guess everyones know what's been going on in the last fews days

Ok we all know sadly the planned rises in Tution fees has gone through but y'know what ? am I the only one who's see a little more silver lining to this  ?

First of the Goverment are changing the raised the income for which they'll wanting me to pay it back and take it in so such small amounts i'll probaly barely notice it, also in such a leaniant plan I may never pay it back and this debt literally affects nothing like getting a mortage etc..so I see it like the appendix served it's purpose but now deadweight.

Of course the cuts worry me alot because I think education certainly for schools and EMA getters. EMA was a life saver during college. It gave me the chance to study and not stress out so much about finding work and actually concentrate on my studies and argue with the people on my course who didn't get it about how unfair it was for getting money for 'breathing' whilst most of them had achieved jobs through connections, but of course they were some who got a job through going through the interviewees and being well suited. Also schools are quite famous for being victims of cut, in any logical plan shouldn't the Goverment be trying to create a better educated tommorw to deal with the uneducated mitakes of today ?

What's worries me is no media outlet has attacked how the matience system will work, what's happening to maitence loans and grants ? anyone who can answer that will have a niche story. In all the artilces i've read everyone seems to have totally forgotten about it.

On our attack for the whole education doom and gloom subject anyone feel this generation of student protesters could write a book called 'How not to protest', we have the extreme violence we've seen which achiveves nothing but a negative image of violence and being thugs, but at least it's a change from students being drunk layabouts. We just have the people who think shoving thier views down peoples throad and not waiting for a reponse will help their cause (which I experienced first hand when checking out a sit in, in which getting a word in for your views was about as possible as piece of gum not loosing flavour after 15 seconds of chewing), so baiscally that's it it's either extreme tatics and or poorly thought out theatricaility.

Let's just say we need a Skywalker for this ailing rebel cause.

Follow up post- But this time...it's Guardian

Ok before we start to flog my tired of catchphrase..what up my blog reading enthusiasts ?

So if you read my earlier post you’ll see it’s another news report on the effects snow have had on various public services around the good old city of Lincoln. This difference is from the one I did last week that this one I’ve done in the style of the national newspaper The Guardian. To adhere to this I’ve followed done the following things:

1. For my quotes I’ve imbedded them into the copy. An example would as follows- Solicitor Kelly Taylor said "There is no such thing as a free day off to frolic in the snow".
2. The normal wiritng age for a paper is 12, however since The Guardian as is slightly upper end I was able to use slightly more complex vocabulary like ‘procedures’ since the paper’s target audience could be considered slightly more intellectual since their in the ABC1 catergory.
3. In terms of structure the Guardian seems a little more comfortbale with using small paragraphs ranging from two long setences to bigger paragraphs from three to four sentences.
4. I also used digits instead of writing numbers which is consitent with a normal Guardian artilce.
5. However I did think the subject like covering the ST John Ambulance service fit into the niche angle The Guardian tends to look for.

Now for the things which I know aren’t consitent with a run of the mill Guardian artilce.

1. I realise the subject of the artilce is way to local or even for a national paper the term ‘mirco local’ may apply.
2. The length itself my be inconsistent with your standard Guardian artilce as mine only measures upto about 300 words (but I found this was limit before it became a tad overstrecthed) while most Guardian artilces are least 500 words or more.

Snow news- Guardian style- so pun free

Snow reeks havoc with key city services

A local medical charity and other city outlets have been struggling with their work due to the freak weather over the weekend.

The ST John Ambulance charity which provides a medical service alongside the NHShave received over a 100 call outs over this weekend all related to the snow.

The charity has found a sharp increase of call outs especially since the bad weather has hit.

Commissioner Peter Howie said “Were now equipped with snow shovels and spades to get through the snow”

Mr Howie also went to talk about his co-operation with the East Midlands ambulance services. “Were trying to support them in anyway we can but since the snows hit we’ve seen quite an increase in call outs”

Bus service Stagecoach suspended all operations from Wednesday due to sever weather conditions. One bus in bound for Mablethorpe overturned and ended up in a ditch.

Despite difficulties in transport local law firm Langleys have made it clear that workers don’t have the legal right to take a day off if their unable to get in due to the snow. Solicitor Kelly Taylor said "There is no such thing as a free day off to frolic in the snow".

This came about after Lincoln and and Lincolnshire councils reported widepsread absences despite their employees knowing the procedures in place for the event of heavy snow.

Travel has effected the citys education centre. The University of Lincoln was forced to close for five days starting on Wednesday due to harsh weather conditions making travel for staff and students extemely difficult.

All campuses were closed including the on site library and various deadlines was postponed until a later date. However many irate students complain their lack of acess to the library had seriously hampered their studies.

The follow up post

So if you stay tuned for the follow up this’ll explain my earlier post. For those of you who collect Blog-tastic Josh (the comic and blog, joking about the comic thing) we’ve been doing a lot about community media, specifically the local paper the Horncaslte target, due to some insensitive person shaking their dandruff outside our lecture got cancelled so we had to write a news report on Lincoln MP Karl McCartney’s surgery..which was cancelled.

So here’s the breakdown of how I think my report fits in with the Horncastle’s writing style:

1. I’ve used language which is suitable for 12 years and above (a common convention in papers)
2. I’ve copied the quoting style by leading it in by using ‘said:’, this can be seen for the quote from the student president.
3. In terms of length I’ve tried to roughly replicate the length of a common piece in the paper and keeping it between the word length of 150 to 200 words.
4. Despite me not being able to obtain any information from Mr McCartney’s P/R outlets at the time of writing I’ve tried to keep it the language unbiased, especially when I quoted the student president and tried to present a fair report of the event despite a difficult change with it being cancelled.
5. Also to keep to the piece Horncastle conventional I’ve tried to use short paragraphs keep one subject per paragraph and a maximum length of three sentences.

My attempt of writing- Horncastle target style

Students from University of Lincoln planned to bring their concerns about university cuts to MP Karl McCartney’s surgery at City hall this Friday.

The Universities students union organised the march starting on the campus at 4:30pm ending at Karl McCartney’s surgery forum.

The event which was dubbed ‘the tragic death of higher education’ was organised by the Student union to rally Karl McCartney to their cause in preventing proposed cuts the government intend to introduce.

However last minute Mr Mcarntey was forced to cancel his planned surgery.

Chris Charnley president of Lincoln student union said: ‘It’s an attempt avoid his constituents expressing their concern at his support for tripling tuition fees.’

The session has been re-scheduled for Wednesday 8^th December where students plan to peacefully protest at 1pm.

Stayed tuned for the next episode (or being picky the next blog)

Papers and words !

Let's dive in the knowledge pit eh ?

This week we looked at could be considered to be a dying art, newspapers and what conventions actually go into making one. Now if you think about it's hard, it could easily turn into print publication if you break down to it's root like the fact it covers news. To break it down I thought of the following points which could identify a newspaper.
1. Timing i.e does it come out everyday ?
2. Design ?, is it quite bland and on paper which is cheap and disposable ?
3. Wide target audience which is gained by covering any subjects like sport and world news ? (World news may not apply to a local paper unless theirs a local slant on the story)
4. A political bias perhaps ? (Like the Sun was with Labour but is now backing the Tories
)

These are just some general points below is more of an expansion of it:
Specific areas- Local (Like the Horncastle Target perhaps ?), National (The Sun), International (I can't think of many so far so I'll update that later, but some national papers like the Daily Mail cover international affairs)
Stakeholders- Work staff (like editors and journalists), advertisers who put ads in the paper, readers,owners and stakeholders who have money in the product, publishers and distributors.
Types of newspaper:
Red Top- These papers are like the News of the World which tend to have a political bias towards the Labour party. They have more focus on entertainment and may use simplistic shorter language to to get their stories across.
Tabloids- These tend to be (I'll use a harsh term) OK magazine but blander design and more formal. They always have a slant and tend to use the facts to put a point across, an example could be the Daily Express.
Broadsheets- These tend to be the more of the 'thinking mans' paper and tend to focus on hard news like politics and serious going on's in the world. An example would be the Times. They tend to supplement full and this could reflect their target audience who more disposable income to pursue subjects like theatre going and purchasing books to read.
Local Weeklies- These work on geodemographical areas. I.e a local paper will cover specific area like a set to of towns for instance. Again like the Horncastle target which covers Horncastle, Woodhall Spa and Conningsby.
Student/council newspapers: Like the super amazing Linc which comes out on a irregular basis and such council ones like the Lincoln county produced one which has been considered heavily biased towards the council. So this purposes the question are they really newspapers, in the case of Student newspapers I would say yes since they cover a wide range of events albeit most have a student slant. Council 'newspapers' however I would say are to just bias to be newspapers and even to an extent cheap P/R for the Council.
Specific subjects- So super cool examples of these would be the Financial times which as the name suggests as slanted quite towards the world of Finance, another example would be internal publications like the one produced for Royal mail telling workers what's going in the company. However for internal publications I would say their merely newsletters considering the biased and uneasy agenda they possess.

Now since I've finished blowing your mind it's time to reveal the agenda for next week, for those hardcore fans out their may know a few weeks ago I had to a presentation on a local community radio station. This time I have to do a local paper which has already been chosen for us, the Horncastle Target, and of course the sequel twist is I'm working in a group. Me and my group have split our workload between us and I'm looking forward to working with him it should be a memorable memory of sorts. So far my research has gone OK, not much of it was on the Internet and involved not using it (information not on the Internet ?, madness) so I've had to go through the paper itself which was quite abundant with relevant information and utilise Facebook to spy on editors profiles to obtain other bits.

The history of history books

This week we were treated to the history of the printing press in our generally mind blowing lecture (got the phrase out the way early).

This week we learnt how the progression of the storing and of the written word played a key part in changing the nature of the social classes and the mindset of your average human being. Specifically I’m referring to how the introduction of a mass printing press lead to the production of various scientific publications from radical voices of the time like Copernicus and Galileo were able to reach the masses which lead people to develop theories and beliefs. An example of this would be how Galileo's theories on the galaxy could have lead people to one get a better education then the one they have currently but also change their beliefs contradicting the one the church had represented.

Also in terms of the effects it had on class was the construction of a whole new one during the 17th century known as the Bourgeoisie which could have been considered to be the producers and key consumers of books and publications at the time and also bought at change to the countries info structure by allowing someone of no nobility of heritage possess some power.

Two key bits I have learnt however:
1. Ideas are based on ideas. To sum this up in less vague modern artish manner I’ve found for example printing guru Elizabeth Eisenstein presented various ideas and research on the printing press possibly influenced further publications and served as a platform for information.
2. The evolution of print is fragile and the written word is evolving. From going from cave paintings and simplistic illustrations utilised by the Church to demonstrate extracts from the Bible to manuscripts of key religious texts, printing presses and finally the computer. The written word is evolving even now through blogging (blogging on a blog whilst blogging?) and (something I need to do an account for) Twitter, the real questions is what's next for the word and questions marks?

My first ever serious journalism assingment ?

So here it is Friday night, one of the seven nights a week students use to go and drink and take residence in town centres whilst at a level of drinking of tipsy or way above. Usually I may be out their joining them to celebrate the end the week but tonight it's sober and unsocial.

On my first ever serious journalism assignment for website the Lincolnite I've been sent out with the Street Pastors, a church based organisation helping those around the town at night from ten till late, as I sit waiting for half nine and I have to suit up and brave the November weather I feel the nerves jangling and I hope it's not what I cooked earlier. Just last night I had bad experience in the Lincoln whilst walking past Chicken cottage to guy decided to start on me and a group mostly female friends because two of us were running and it exceeded the 'speed limit', fortunately no one was hurt but everyone was quite shaken and disturbed. I'm just apprehensive of what will meet tonight as this time I wont be bumping into trouble by sheer chance were probably going to be looking for it to give aid. I just hope tonight is safe as it will be interesting and it may be nice to be up at three in the morning and sober. Either way this should be an eye opening night.

Not more sequel puns if fifthquelly getting annoying

So let’s dive in again shall we?, this week we were treated to the appearance of guest lecturer who was none other then Radio lecturer and Lincoln universities community radio station manager Andrew David.

What Andrew did was to shake the whole guest lecture set up, which can be compared to adding cheese to a salad, fresh and a little more flavour. He asked to present our questions in lines with the 6W’s about Siren FM. So here’s what we learnt:

1. Started out as an online radio station broadcasting from two till six
2. Lecturers, students and the public can volunteer and the station runs schemes to get those less fortunate on the air.
3. Caters to an audience of nine to twenty five, however depending on the time it could change.
4. The studio was funded by the University.

So here’s what should be a consistent feature for each week of what shocked me. This week my shock came to me that the actual difference between mainstream and community radio stations is that community stations are looking for those niches, shows on Siren like motor mechanics or Roller derby would never get onto Radio 1 unless they were a wacky feature. As Andrew David said he’s looking for what’s in-between our ears (not hair) to make a show special which could be stripped down to those to super employable words creativity and orginiality, technologies gotten to that point it can create your bog standard music show, what makes it special is the bits in between the songs, the interviews, the features and the guests all of these are so key to making a show which would catch a listeners ear. I also found that mainstream radio is missing a serious niche, the 9 to 25 years olds and those with specialist hobbies like Jazz and projector noises, if the BBC saw these holes and dedicated little less time to over hyped DJ’s and more time to their audience figures should surely shot up quicker then Mentos in a coke bottle.

Will I ever become the master of communication ?

So this week after we did our presentations we tackled the subject of mass media in much more detail. After our previous lecture with taught about the wide range of services the BBC offers we moved on to how it and other terrestrial channels like Channel 4 came about. Essentially channels like ITV and Channel 4 were born for the simple desire of more choices from the neglected audiences strangely thanks to report done every ten years from the BBC. If you think about it seems to be quite true. Overall the BBC's content has always been deemed quite safe and most entertainment products to have moral message encoded somewhere, like Waterloo road demonstrating the perils facing teens in these so called strange times. Now compare it to something like Channel 4 (which is strangely funded via adverts and interests groups) which produces the insanely funny Intbetweeners which displays the more awkward and if done in a more serious light like Skins and controversial side of being a spotty faced teen it would never make it on to BBC thanks to it's Government influence of purity. On a side note it didn't surprise me that Channel 5 started out as a low budget alternative thanks to the amount of US import shows and pretty dull documentaries, but it did surprise me that they didn't have to produce any regional programming.

So onto what else I learnt today was again that recurring theme of how helpful technology like plans after World War 2 were used for tourism that the radio boom was created thanks to the Military using Marconi to create Morse codes for ships to be then commercialised and lead to the wireless radio, just another example of histories leap from military technology to commercial application.

So now I’ll produce my final shock. Looking at radio control models in other countries we found this:
UK radio: Public service (not such a shock)
US radio: Commercial interests (not surprising from a wealthy country)
Russian radio: Government controlled (This really shocked me, because the last time I checked Russia was a democracy and I though controlling media outlets to such a puppetry degree would be surely in breach of some kind of International law. It's not like the BBC who've only had the government control their content during Thatcher’s reign when their anti Thatcher programming was considered un-British, but even then they were given space to brief and report the facts.)

Some quite useful Tulip FM trivia

Hey their followers and non followers here’s my blog post for the week. As you may know or for may not know (so many positives and negatives) I’ve been putting together my presentation on a local radio or TV station. I choose to do a radio station and selected Tulip Fm from my home town of Spalding.

On my course of research I picked up a few facts which may not be relevant to my presentation to so I’ll pop them down below for the world to read or ignore as another ramble blog.

1. I’ve had at least 4 friends working as volunteers from the station, some got their chance by a bizarre twist of fate in which they were given a chance to work for the station in it’s years prior to going full time after they wrote poems about onions. Their original prize was going to be what must have been planed to be a super interesting tour of the local council offices in all the grey and dull glory. However that fell through so the back up prize was a tour of the radio studios and then a chance to work on the station.
2. They have the facilities for live bands and are toying with the idea of apparently doing a local Radio 1 live lounge style show, just without Fern Cotton sucking up to bands that were around before she was born.
3. I thought it was all funded privately by the station manager until I checked their website to find that they have various sponsors and advertising deals with local companies around Spalding thus making them a commercial radio station.
4. I also found out that Radio 1 DJ Greg James mentioned the station during his show many times thus boosting it’s popularity.

Y'know that thing Twilight well...

As my overly obvious title suggests this post may concern the Teen cult product known as the Twilight saga. Let's be frank you ever love it and can quote every line from it or despise it from the dim witted pretty boys to the obvious parallels between Romeo and Juliet.

Though right here I'm going to propose a quite controversial line of thought:
Twilight may be plague on the older legions of the world but it does have educational benefits ?
I'll break this down in the following points:
1. The actual intelligence of the writing may be in question but this book has done what Harry Potter did a long time ago and got kids reading thus using a little more brain power then usual and probably dragged them away from the teen dramas clogging up TV like One Tree Hill and the Vampire diaries.
2. This has probably inspired the little unknown trend of Emo's to do a little more then hang around in public and chortle and various random 'jokes' and maybe get a better grasp of the English language.

Of course there are the many downsides:
1. Throughout the entire series their seems to be this theme, "Oh hey I'm in love or just so darn so special it's OK to treat other people like crap"
2. The general idea that you need someone else to be happy
3. It's seems to obsessed with providing teen stars wannabes a chance to walk around with their tops off

Forquel !

So let's skip the basics and jump right in, again I had an slight headache after having my head blown again by today's enlightening lecture. I'm starting to see how insanely intricate the BBC and why it's so prominent as a media giver with BBC board of trustees and a Director general below them running things, it's so well organised to filter out anything unsuitable for air, well except a few exceptions here and their when they didn't quite guess the response of the audience. I'm starting to wonder if maybe an independent media producer got a little more organised and a tad better funded they could go into competition with the BBC, not to knock independent outlets that's basically where the hot blistering talent (like Chris Tarrant) is produced from and they usually make great work experience placements, which is all to great for me.

I also found how the BBC being many things like an entertainer you could basically call it an informer which is good the Government fund it which tends to explain why theirs little risque shows like Shameless or Pete vs Life on the BBC due to their slightly unsuitable nature. I'm still reeling at the TV licence and how broken to a monthly cost isn't to bad, just when I grow up I don't want to be paying a hundred pounds plus to watch cheap repeats of BBC 3's reality tv gems like Dog borstal.

OK this week I've been set a task of researching a local media outlet like radio or TV. I've chosen my home radio station Tulip FM, so here's some top shocking facts (for me) that I've found out:
1. Thanks to Ofcom I found out they tend to dig into the managerial team background to see if they're relevant for a community radio station.
2. I found out it was totally funded by advertising when I thought it was an eccentric radio lover who partially privately funded it.
3. I had no idea it's been running since 2001 (so where was my head when I was 9 ?, probably watching Power ranges and being exposed to dirty words)

Week 3- the weak link in the blogging franchise ?

Greetings fellow communicators it's the time of week once again where I regale you with a tale of my work based learning lecture. Now if you're wondering why I used communicators in bold instead of something much more simple I'll begin to explain.

This week again I had my brain introduced to a stack load of information I had already but I just wasn't aware of. This came in the form of communication I had some idea their communication requires body language,diction and of course dialogue for someone to get the whole message (which tends to be the down fall or print and radio sometimes) across, this is of course super important for journalists who need to know how to communicate so we can put the news across. This was explained in various theories like the famous Greek Philosopher Aristotle's model of communication which followed the points of thinking of something to say to actually saying it. So here I go trying to demonstrate to everyone (but mainly my lecturer) of how I think one of these theories work, I'm going to use the recent news report based about popular comedian Jon Stewart who inspired CNN reporter Rick Sanchez to make some anti Semite remarks recently, I will use the theory of Harold D Lasswell which is as follows:
Who: This covers who said it. So in this case it would be Rick Sanchez
Says what: What the the who said. This would be Mr Sanchez calling Mr Stewart a bigot and implying all major US News outlets are ran by members of the Jewish faith. For those who missed he said:
"CNN is a lot like Stewart, and a lot of people who run all the other networks are a lot like Stewart, and to imply that somehow they -- the people in this country who are Jewish -- are an oppressed minority? Yeah. [sarcastically]"- Taken from the Huffington Post
In which channel: This is the media outlet that was used. In this case it was on US radio
To whom: This whom the target audience is, so in this case regular listeners Sirius radio network
With what effect ?: This would classify the feedback from the target audience and listeners, so in this case the effect would be CNN management firing Mr Sanchez for his what was considered inappropriate and anti semites remarks.

The sequel (and hopefully not disapointing post)

So here we are in week 3 of me attending Uni. I am still 18 and according to my ID my name is still Josh Francis.

So in today’s class I can conclude I probably wouldn’t prosper in the production team at the BBC thanks to what was quite an interesting quiz on Safeguarding trust. Safeguarding trust for those who are aren’t to media savvy and those who are marking me is the method into how the BBC ensure they maintain their strong relationship with the public by ensuring all content is truthful and adheres various standards of tastes and decency, this works on the whole except for a few incidents which slip through the net (like the Andrews Sachs scandal). Overall I think this course is going to teach me a quality I may be missing in finding ways to maintain clear and concise programming despite errors. To break this down in case I’ve used to many big words I need to think more about the human element of journalism and think more carefully about if my work may ethically be a little of, I understand the laws like the Defamation act (in where if I saw something untrue or offence I could be taken to court), it’s just a shame their isn’t an aptly titled The journalism decency act (copyrighting that name if I ever end up in law).

Today I’ve also learnt that the BBC are pretty determined to maintain this high standard trust by releasing this quiz which acts like a gateway into the thought process of the BBC production staff and ceases to amaze me how the very little details to do count. Like how a pre recorded news report which comments on the traffic will need an additional comment by a live reporter to confirm the traffic is still pretty bad.

The dreaded intro

Josh Francis
18 years developed
Studying FDA Community Journalism at University of Lincoln

So here’s the first post to my student blog what’ll be updated weekly through the year with mundane rants and talks about my work. So whilst my tea is cooking lets begin. So here I am recovering from my week of Freshers which included late nights, fast food and the odd drink here and there. Though what was really great about this week wasn't the drink or the wacky adventures I embarked on it was the people. Even though I’m a trainee journalist it's still nerve racking walking out my front door and talking to people who I have really nothing in common with due to my rather niche love of all things geeky. Though this week it's not been tough meeting those into it my geeky way of life (which was cool) but meeting people who weren't and still getting on with them (super cool). So  I’m a little geek thanks to my love of comics and good old  sc-fi which  helps me space out when reality gets a little tough and  I need a new angle to look at things. So here’s some interesting stuff I’ve found so far on blogspot:

http://blog.traingeek.ca/- I'm no trainspotter I have to admit but what drew me to this  was the stellar photography of the subjects (obviously trains) and just how close the photographer actually got while in a highly restricted area.

http://projectnes.blogspot.com/- In a time where you need to have spare hours and decent TV and internet connection to play a computer game I’ve found myself harking back to the days of old school. So back where Sonic reigned supreme and Ryu dominated the Streets (obscure gaming reference, a brownie point to those who know what to)