When Joanna Geary, Web Development Editor for The Times told Cardiff journalism students, “Most news doesn’t require journalists, because of press releases. It’s like someone with three PHDs  flipping burgers.” It made me think about churnalism and how it affects the industry.

If the world of journalism work is based on PR people writing press releases only for journalists to rehash into their own words, you know mix the sentences around a bit, where is the originality? What’s the use in studying a post-graduate diploma, to learn the skills of the trade, if we get into a job just to churn out the same rubbish that PR peddlers want us to?

Also, thanks to the internet, everyone can be a journalist if they want. Ok, their articles probably won’t get printed in The Guardian or any other newspaper, but their stories/articles/ideas will be published online for all who want to read them. The main problem these people will experience is lack of money from their work, but if they’re only doing it as a hobby will it matter to them? The benefits they will have is freedom to write what they please with no press releases to churn out again and again.

But if hacks jump on the technology bandwagon it can lead to more individual writing, alongside the necessary writing of their job. Through blogging Joanna Geary estimates she has doubled her income in just 18 months and it’s something she started outside of her employment. Nothing to be sniffed at then. She says not many journalists are tech savvy nor are they willing to accept the industry has changed, significantly. So that’s where the new breed come in.

Journalists today need to be utilising technology to get ahead. If we do this perhaps we can pioneer in the industry instead of following other people’s leads.

Excellent piece from Richard Beeston as to how, tanks and rifles will not win the war. The Taleban pay more than the Afghan national army for people to fight the coalition forces, the failure to deliver meaningful development that makes people feel they have more to lose than gain from fighting and the chronic ineffectiveness of governmental aid (eg while I was in Kabul last week I heard of 1 US aid contract for $4 mn that didn’t happen for one reason or another and building schools in a war zone is unwise and makes the pupils a target) are critical issues. I wonder if Defence Correspondents leading the analysis in the western media is leading to a narrower analysis of the conflict than is needed? The core issues of how to win the peace and mainline development into the country so that it is sustainable, something that the people own and want to protect are critical issues that rarely cut through into the bulletins; it’s just about the hardware. Are the diplomatic correspondents in a better position to give a more rounded view on this?

(This was written to be another ‘page’ rather than post, and will soon be added to the list of pages on the right column of the Homepage.)

Miura bull with El Fundi (Photo: Author)

“The bull is a Spanish god who sacrifices himself.” Salvador Dali.

Without the bull, there is no bullfight, not only is this a semantic truth, based on the word itself, but also a scientific one. The entire design and structure of the bullfight for the past three hundred years has grown up around the Spanish fighting bull, and this is enshrined in Spanish law. From the Royal Decree 145 of Feb 2nd 1996:

Section V

Guarantees of the Integrity of the Spectacle

Chapter I

Characteristics of the animals of the bullfight

Article 44. “No animal will be fought in any class of spectacle that has not been inscribed in the Genealogical Book of the Breed of Fighting Cattle.”

Article 45. “The males that are destined to be fought in bullfights should be as a minimum four full years and in every case less than six.”

Article 46. “The minimum weight of animals in bullfights will be from 460kg in rings of the first category, from 435 in those of the second and 410 in those of the third.”

Article 47. “The horns of the animals in bullfights and training will be whole [i.e. unshaved].”

Article 48. Using a variety of Spanish terms which have no translation, the one-eyed, the one-horned, and even those with uneven horns are forbidden from the bullring, except for certain types of festival and training fight, and then only if it advertised these are not fully-fledged fighting bulls.

However, these are the bare bones of fighting bull, it is the particular anatomical, physiological and behavioural traits that distinguish the Spanish fighting bull from other cattle, and cattle in general from other animals, that are the prerequisites of the bullfight, because the essence of the modern bullfight – on the non-human side of the horns – is the charge.

Modern bullfighting is centred, for both audience and bullfighter, around a bull standing a certain distance from the bullfighter and being cited (from the Latin, citare to move, excite or summon) with a cape and then charging directly at it. It must then follow the cape’s subsequent movements in the manner the matador intends in order that the fight maintain its fine line between slack inelegance and fatal danger – and that last word is not hyperbole: of the 125 major bullfighters in the past 300 years, 40 have died in the ring.

The trouble, and controversy, comes when one tries to define the bull further than this. So, forgive me if become a little detailed in what follows:

The Spanish fighting bull, which is so uniquely suited to this activity has become, for reasons both good and bad, a creature of myth and legend. I don’t doubt that Ernest Hemingway was reporting honestly what he had been told when he said in Death in the Afternoon,

“Bulls for the ring are wild animals. They are bred from a strain that comes down in direct descent from the wild bulls that ranged over the Peninsula.”

However, there is simply no evidence for this. When I began my own investigation into the bullfight with my article in Prospect magazine in September 2008, I repeated this claim, and combined it with other things I had read, including an article in the peer-review journal Animal Genetics (35:2, ‘Genetic diversity and differentiation in Portuguese cattle breeds using microsatellites’, April 2004) and wrote:

“The Iberian bull, of the subspecies Bos taurus ibericus, is a man-made creature, measurably genetically distinct from other breeds and descended from a natural breed which was itself renown for its aggression.”

I was challenged at the time I wrote this by the animal rights campaigner Jordi Casamitjana (see his entry in ‘About the people’ to be found here) but, given what else he had to say, I wrote his challenge off as mere propaganda without realising I was indulging in the dissemination of counter-propaganda myself. The truth or falsity of such an account has considerable importance to our sentiments about the bullfight. The murder of a soldier in street violence will never invoke the same moral horror as the murder of a child in similar circumstances. The reality of this should be born in mind when evaluating the writings of those who are either pro- or anti-bullfighting. Not least because it then becomes reported as fact by people who should know better. For example, even in a recent book by Dr Evan D. G. Fraser, an environmental scientist:

“Spanish cows [in general] had a mixed bloodline. Much of it flowed from the light-coloured, utilitarian herds that had existed on the peninsula since Roman times… In Andalusia, they mated with Bos taurus ibericus, the black-coated savage who had walked the hills since prehistory, and from whom the modern fighting bull is descended. The urbane Moors had hunted him and pushed him to the edges of their neat, furrowed earth, but in Las Marismas [the marshy floodplain of the Guadalquivir River south of Seville- AF-H] he was free to do as he liked.”

p.128, Beef: The Untold Story of How Milk, Meat, and Muscle Shaped the World, Harper, 2009

The piece was co-written with Boston journalist Andrew Rimas, but it is Dr Fraser’s scientific background that lends weight to this claim which lacks any scientific currency. Dr Fraser is an enivronmental scientist, not a biologist, and when I asked Professor Albano Beja-Pereira, a field biologist and the leading expert in cattle genetics, he said categorically: “Bos taurus ibericus doesn’t exist.”

Which brings back to me to Mr Casamitjana, who is the Campaigns Co-ordinator of CAS International, the largest anti-bullfight pressure group, and who began an article on their website as follows,

“This is an article of scientific opinion, not of empirical science, but it is based on my scientific background as a zoologist specialising in animal behaviour (ethologist)… Jordi Casamitjana,. Hons BSc. (University of Barcelona). Zoologist.”

Now I don’t need to wave about my own Master of Science to point out that a degree below doctoral level leaves one a little underqualified to call oneself a scientist, zoological or otherwise. That said, this is his ‘opinion’:

“Bulls, otherwise very peaceful animals that spend most of their lives eating grass, sleeping and playing with each other, are submitted to such an ordeal that not only inflicts serious physical and psychological suffering on them, but also forces them to behave in ways they would not normally behave, namely charging other creatures so they go away, giving them the false reputation of being ‘brave’, which any other herbivore would have in the same circumstances.”

In our comment exchange on the blog post for my Prospect magazine article he went further:

“Bulls are herbivores, as are buffalo, hippos, elephants, deer, boars; they all have defensive weapons that can kill, and have killed, humans, and none of them are predators or ‘maniacs’ that attack for no reason. All of them, put under the same situation than the bullfighting bulls, from the selected breeding, the stress of the transport and the torture itself, would more or less react in the same way, with small differences due to their size and anatomy.”

So, where does the truth lie? Let us look at the science.

In the kingdom Animalia, within the phylum Chordata (those with backbones), among the class Mammalia (those who suckle their young), a subset of the order of the Artiodactyla (the even-toed or ‘cloven-hoofed’), are the Bovidae. Bovid is from the Latin bos, bovis for cow or ox. However, this family of animals (143 species) that ruminate or ‘chew the cud’, but neither have branched horns nor shed them (like deer), also comprises sheep, goats, antelope (including wildebeest), cattle and buffalo: African (Cape), Asian (Water) or American (bison).

Now, the bovids are all herbivores, but not all herbivores are bovids. Alongside Mr Casamitjana’s examples of elephant, hippo and boar, we also have the gorilla, the koala, the blue whale and the rabbit. The idea that their behaviours are in anyway similar is an amazing thought (and this is just sticking with mammals – termites are herbivorous animals). However, even within the bovid family we can see vast behavioural differences associated with the genetic difference between types.

Greater kudu (Photo: Author)

From my own experiences in Africa two spring to mind: the kudu and the sable antelope. After the ubiquitous impala, the most common antelope you will come across in the Kruger National Park in South African is the kudu. It is also one of the largest; at more than 300kg it is second only to the eland in size among antelope. Despite this size – and impressive horn array (see picture) – they are “not a naturally aggressive species” (to quote BMC Veterinary Research 2006; 2: 2).Indeed, so passive is it that in the Milwaukee County Zoo in 1988 two were bitten to death by a single zebra.

Sable antelope (Photo: Author)

At the other end of the antelope spectrum is the sable antelope (pictured right), which is far more rarely observed in the wild, and weighs a quarter less than its kudu cousin. However, this antelope is treated with grave respect by all predators, including man, and are well known to kill lions. Even within a herd of these antelope the level of violence is abnormally high which makes this near-endangered species hard to maintain in zoos. As a report put in Zoo Biology (2005, 12:2) “because of their aggressive nature, sable antelope present a challenge to captive management” (It is worth noting the developed neck and shoulder muscles on the aggressive sable and comparing them with the fighting bull.)

Vegahermosa bull with Finito de Córdoba (Photo: Author)

“In a bullfight the bull is the hero of a tragedy.” Ludwig Wittgensein.

And this is just amongst antelope. Mr Casamitjana would put in the same bracket both sheep, an animal I jog among every day in the East Anglian countryside, and Cape buffalo, an animal known by big game hunters as the ‘Black Death’ and often quoted as the most prolific killer of lions (and sometimes humans) in Africa. “Minor differences due to size and anatomy” indeed!

Looking at human fatality statistics is illuminating on the reality of dividing line between herbivores and carnivores. According to the Journal of Travel Medicine (1999, 6:3), between January 1988 to December 1997 there were twenty-one serious attacks on tourists by wild animals in South Africa and over 70% were by herbivores – 14% by buffalo. Of the seven fatal incidents, over 40% were by herbivores.

So, narrowing our focus further, within the bovids, and their subfamily the bovines, we find the genus Bos. There are five living species of this genus. Ignoring the yak, the gaur, the kouprey and the banteng; we are interested in those currently classified as Bos primigenius, which, according to the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature, is divided into three subspecies. The humped zebu cattle of Africa, Bos primigenius indicus, all other breeds of domestic cattle, Bos primigenius taurus, and the ancestor of both, the vast, bestial aurochs, Bos primigenius primigenius, of which we know:

“The last animal died in central Poland in the year 1627. Its former range was across much of the Old World, including Europe, north Africa, and large parts of Asia. [It is estimated] that the height of bulls at the withers [was] 170 to 190 cm [5ft 7 in, to 6 ft 3 in] during the Pleistocene period, with a curved, in‐turning horn length of 60 to 110 cm, and weighing between 450 and 900 kg. Females would have been little more than half the size of the bulls. The bulls were dark brown to black with a lighter, narrow stripe along the backbone. Females and calves were reddish‐brown. The diet of the animal would have been similar to cattle, including grasses, browse, acorns, and some tree bark. The species was a forest dweller and likely preferred marsh and wetter forests. [It is argued] that extinction was a consequence of the expansion of farms and pasture.”

(Quarterly Review of Biology, 81:3)

We know that all the Bos primigenius subspecies – despite being wildly different in shape, temperament and circumstance – shared their basic visual system. Unlike man and other predators who see with their eyes front, they have prey-vision with eyes protruding out to the sides. They also have far wider skulls than deer or antelope for horn-attachment. A narrower skull would mean that such a large weapon, with so much weight behind it, would break off on impact.

This means that they not only an increased visual awareness towards the vulnerable rear, and excellent vision at the sides, but also unusually poor forwards vision with a blind spot immediately in front of the head because the eyes cannot converge easily (the vision does become clear as you get further away from the bull, giving the famous “cone of immunity” for the man stood in front of them). The eye-placement and bone-contours of the skull also cause the visual plane to be unusually low down, so they have to move their whole head up to look up. Because of the physiology of the eye itself, this idiosyncratic optical array is in black and white and particularly sensitive to movement. The cape used at the end of the fight is red from tradition, not because of any natural antipathy to that colour. It also masks the blood of the bull and stands out, even in monochrome, against the golden, sandy background.

The reasons for this way of seeing evolutionary. Looking at the painting on the right, you can see that the aurochs’ natural opponent came at it from low down, was usually camouflaged so movement is a far better indicator than colour, and, when your horns are quite so lethal, it is not the predator snarling in front that you need to worry about but the one coming from the side or behind.

This visual setup is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition of the bullfight. The other necessary condition is its response to moving objects in this visual field. When the bullfighter walks towards the cow or bull (as I have done), he reaches a point on the edge of the bull’s terreno, its ‘terrain’ or ‘territory’. This boundary is exactly like the ‘biting point’ of the clutch on manual transmission cars. If you are careful enough, you can see the animal begin to trembling on point of committing to a charge. It is here that the bullfighter transfers the animal’s attention to the cape either by placing it further into the territory at the end of his arm, or by shaking it at the bull from where he stands. Either of these will invoke in the right sort of animal an overwhelming urge to charge the cape, which can then be used to direct the animal as close to – or far from – the bullfighter’s body as he wishes.

It is this irritability, this overwhelming urge to charge the aggravating image that appears before – rather than run away – that is the unique characteristic of the Spanish fighting bull over other animals. Other cattle have been bred to be easy to manage – for milk or meat – and the fight has been taken out of them. Having said that, one must realise how dangerous a regular cow can be. A cursory glance at the archives for The Times for the past decade brings these four examples from Britain:

Angry bull kills water board man

A WATER board official was gored to death yesterday by a bull that broke through a fence. Wilson Cowan, 56, was sampling water from a mains in a street in Pettinain, Strathclyde, when an Ayrshire bull in a nearby field grew agitated and began to bellow.

The animal charged through the wire fence and pinned him against his van. It gored him in the head and body, and tossed him into the middle of the lane. Road builders working near by tried to distract the bull by throwing stones but by the time they reached Mr Cowan, an official with the West of Scotland Water Board, he was dead.

9 June 1998

Cow kills man

A 74-year-old man from England died after being gored by a Highland cow near Plockton, Highland. The man, thought to have been with family at a holiday home, had apparently been walking on a path and come across the cow and its calf.

29 August 2003

Bull kills farmer

A farmer was gored to death by a bull as he rounded up his cows for milking. William Pennington, 68, had farmed the land in Dunham Massey near Altrincham, Cheshire, all his working life. It is understood that there was a delay before paramedics could reach him because the bull was standing over him.

8 July 2005

Bullock kills farmer

A farmer died after being trampled by a bullock that he had just bought at a livestock market. Raymond Burrough, 72, was attacked at Gateshayes Farm, Whimple, East Devon and died 11 days later. Mr Burrough was the Master of the East Devon Hunt and a leading member of the National Farmers’ Union.

1 January 2007

It is for this reason that:

“Section 59 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 bans bulls of recognised dairy breeds (eg. Ayrshire, Friesian, Holstein, Dairy Shorthorn, Guernsey, Jersey and Kerry) in all circumstances from being at large in fields crossed by public rights of way. Bulls of all other breeds are also banned from such fields unless accompanied by cows or heifers, but there are no specific prohibitions on other cattle.”

from the British Health & Safety Executive (HSE) wesbite

Despite the enforcement of this legislation:

“In 2006/07 injuries from animals caused more deaths than any other category. Eleven people were killed by animals, five more than in the previous year (2005/06). Three involved bulls, seven cows or other cattle and one a horse. All the victims sustained trauma injuries consistent with them having been attacked, trampled to death or gored and trodden on by an individual animal or a herd of cattle.”

HSE report, ‘Fatal injuries in farming, forestry, horticulture and associated industries’

In the US, where animal handling techniques are as advanced and safety conscious as anywhere in the world, the authors of one study found that from 1992-1997:

“Cattle were responsible for 142 deaths [more than any other animal]… Most deaths from cattle were from attacks or mauling from the animal, especially bulls.”

‘Occupational fatalities due to animal-related events,’ Wilderness & Environmental Medicine, 12:3

Returning to the particular breed of the Spanish fighting bull, what distinguishes it from the animals described above is a matter of degree so extreme that it becomes a difference of quality, not just quantity. It will relentlessly charge whether it is fresh or tired, strong or weak, hale or injured. This is what the Spanish mean by calling a bull bravo, which means brave, but in animals also means fierce. As it once did in English, the etymologcal ancestor of ‘brave’ being the Latin word rabidus. (In the Saxon poem of their defeat at the Battle of Maldon in 991 AD – my own family fighting on the viking side – the spirit can be seen in the line: “”Heart shall be bolder, harder be purpose / More proud the spirit as our power lessens.”)

In part, the circumstances of the fight cause this response: because the ring is circular and has no exit, so the animal can neither run away nor find a corner to back into, the animal must charge. However, this is a partial explanation. I have seen bulls in fights which have backed up against the fence and simply reared out at matadors standing inches away, but never charged.

This is a situation of extreme danger to the bullfighter. At that distance the bullfighter is as likely to be identified as a target as the cape and he has no chance to adjust the animal’s focus. This category of animal – into which all other bovids including regular cattle fall – is simply not possible to fight in the style of the Spanish bullfight. It is the incessant urge to charge, and the total commitment to that charge without deviation, which is required by the bullfight.

So, having argued that the bull behaviourally differs from other cattle in a very tangible sense, is there quantifiable scientific evidence that it is a distinct entity?

In a paper last year in the journal Animal Genetics (39:6), a team at the Faculty of Veterinary Science at Spain’s oldest university, Complutense, discovered that “the high [genetic] diversity in the breed – closer to that seen in Middle Eastern than European populations – is evidence of a certain degree of primitivism.” What this means is that the bloodlines that comprise the fighting bulls are some of the oldest in Europe (genetic diversity within a population increases over time).

A neat analogy to this situation is that with dog breeds and the wolf. It has been long known that the domestic dog descended from wolves somewhere between sixteen and thirty-six thousand years ago (the aurochs only thirteen – which makes sense as hunting predates agriculture). Recently, like the cow, the dog has been reclassified as a subspecies of its ancestral form the wolf, making it Canis lupis familiaris. Just as there is between breeds of cattle, there is great temperamental diversity between breeds of dogs. One might think of the docile labrador as an analogue of the British dairy cow, the Fresian-Holstein, whereas the boxer, bred at various times for both fighting and hunting large mammals like bear and wild boar, is more like the fighting bull. (See pictures above – note the heavier shoulders in animals which are more likely to attack, as with the kudu and sable antelope above.)

So when aficionados claim that the bullfight must exist to keep the fighting bull breed alive, one must realise that what they really wish to preserve is a man-made race, but an ancient one nonethless (although it is within a subspecies, within a species – which is a little narrow, and a great deal less natural than most conservation projects you will find the WWF publicising.)

It is also difficult to believe that it would ever be allowed to die out even if the vast herds were reduced to a few thousand individuals should the bullfight be banned. In conclusion, as I have noted a thousand times before, intellectual bad faith exists on both sides of the bullfight debate and this conservation argument is an instance of it. However, a certain sense of Spanish national pride and honour has come to be symbolised by the fighting bull existing en masse in the countryside, although this is perhaps of more interest to the social anthropologist than the biologist. Perhaps they are preserving windmills, but one must ask if that’s a bad thing…

El Pilar bull with El Cordobés (Photo: Author)

Alexander Fiske-Harrison – 3,800 words.

Switzerland has banned the building of minarets, after its people passed a referendum  to outlaw the slender mosque towers. The move is widely seen as an attack on Islam, generated by the ultra-conservative Swiss People’s Party (SVP), one of the largest parties in the country.

European countries are growing increasingly concerned about rising Islamophobia. The vote was not expected to pass. Yet on a 53% turnout, it passed by a clear margin. Over 57% of voters approved the proposal. Dutch far right parties are now calling for a similar referendum, and many states fear that anti-Muslim feeling could increase.

What is the problem with these simple, graceful mosque towers? Well, it’s clear that there’s nothing to be bothered about. Minarets adorn the top of mosques; sometimes, a call to prayer is made from its balcony (this is already forbidden in Switzerland). There are only four mosques with minarets in the country.

A minaret at a mosque in Serrières, Swtzerland. Photo by Tambako

So how did it all start? Ultra-conservative parties like the SVP started a petition demanding the banning of minarets. In Switzerland, if a petition gains 100,000 signatures, the government has to open a referendum on the issue. Reluctantly, it did.

Moderates were fairly confident the proposal would be rejected. But they got a nasty shock. Now, Article 72 of the Constitution, which deals with religion and state, will bear a short, sharp phrase: “The construction of minarets is banned.”

Muslims do not need minarets for worship, but the implications of the ban are extremely worrying.  The SVP statement* said the passing of the referendum was a refusal of “the rampant Islamisation of our country” before railing against arranged marriage and Muslim requests for “exemptions from swimming lessons”. Clearly, they are nutters, and they are trying to stoke up anti-Muslim feeling.

The SVP leaders, however, are claiming that the move is not anti-Islamic “This is not against Islam. The minaret is a symbol of political power,” a leading SVP parliamentarian told The Times. The party made heavy use of a statement by the Prime Minister of Turkey, the leader of a conservative Islamist party, who described minarets as “the bayonets of Islam”.

So the SVP set about making posters in red, white and black, showing a burkha-clad women surrounded by minarets drawn as bayonets. The main message of the image was clear: Islam is a threat. A Guardian editorial points to the added symbolism of red, white and black in Switzerland: it arguably has connotations of the Nazi swastika.

The SVP’s idea that minarets are political is clearly rubbish. They are a simple architectural feature on a religious building. But they know that the policy is against the European Convention of Human Rights on the grounds of religious discrimination. So they are claiming minarets are “political” to keep their constitutional amendment within the law.

The proposal is likely to be struck off under European law because banning minarets clearly discriminates against a particular religion. But the SVP may have already achieved their goal of increasing anti-Muslim resentment.

———

* SVP is the Swiss People’s Party’s German shorthand name. The SVP statement seen here is the French version. In French speaking areas they are called UDC (Union Democratique du Centre)

Part 2: The press and public – the reaction

Following my post about the Swiss minaret ban, here’s some follow up thoughts on some of the reaction.

Daniel Hannan in the Telegraph says he doesn’t like this particular referendum, but applauds the Swiss system. He says direct democracy like this is great: it makes for a more actively engaged electorate. Others argue that it produces “the tyranny of the majority”. I would agree. If the British people had referenda, capital punishment would be back today.

Some Muslim writers compare the minaret ban with the French furore about the burkha. Tariq Ramadan points towards anti-Islamic feeling in Europe but the French debate is arguably different. It is true that many people use the burkha to make anti-Islamic statements. It enrages people so much they feel justified in pouring hastily produced bile over Islam.

But the burkha debate is, at least theoretically, something different. This is a discontent with a conservative version of Islam, and a debate about the hotly contested meaning of hijab, the Islamic dress code. It is given added zeal by a particularly French commitment to secularism that, at times, moves from noble ideals to a grubby anti-Islamic reality.

Some secular writers are saying that perhaps the minaret vote is partly a reflection of Swiss society’s discontent with the increasing role of religion in public life. (See Joan Smith in the Guardian).  This is nonsense. If you’re concerned about this, you don’t vote to ban some small towers on a mosque.

The minaret debate has no legitimacy at all. It is simply an excuse to bash Muslims.

Muslims: the new bogeymen

Muslims are the new bogeymen of society, along with asylum seekers. Prejudice is often directed at minority groups, and these two are the 21^st century examples. Once it was acceptable to rail against black people or Jewish people; now it is Muslims and asylum seekers.

Take a look at some of the comments on media articles about the minaret ban. If we try substituting the word “Muslim” for “Jews” or “black people”, we see how horrifying it is.

Those with a jaundiced outlook on the left and right will spew the same predictable comments. They’ll say something like: “Most of the major terrorist threats in the world originate from people who say they are Muslim. So our vitriol against Muslims is justified.” The first sentence may be true. The second sentence is not. The existence of a tiny minority of terrorists does not provide the excuse to bash Muslims, and curb basic religious freedoms. That is just ridiculous. It is against basic democratic values.

But some seem to take leave of their brain and spout forth rubbish. Look at most of the comments in the Times. Or this person commenting on a Telegraph article, who says:

Oh, stop being so analytical!
What a wonderful result, and may the rest of Europe follow as soon as possible!
And not only with minarets as the target

But far right parties look to be winning. Muslims are being portrayed as “the enemy within”. This must stop.

Is charging for online content really the only way forward for journalism?

The Financial Times charges. So does the Wall Street Journal. The Johnston Press Plc started charging for the online content on six of its biggest local papers yesterday. The Times Online is putting up a paywall from the beginning of next year thanks to Rupert Murdoch’s penchant for the idea.

Is this just the beginning of a paid content domino effect?

Rob Andrew who works for paidContent.org, an online only news site that started in order to look at the concept of paywalls without having one in place, says things definitely seem to be going that way. Whether it will work is doubtful. The idea behind paidContent.org was that eventually, and not too long from now, all media would become digitised.

I find the concept technologically progressive but in reality, it’s an odd thing to imagine. No fluttering paper, no glossy pictures, no awkwardly sized broadsheet pages to manouevre deftly so as not to harrass the person sat next to you on the bus. Where would we be without these?

I already regret that we ‘ve substituted developed film for Facebook uploading, buying records for downloading and ebooks for library fines – this I can’t comprehend at all and have happily failed at – but most people have jumped the hardcopy-ship. Are people willing to do the same for newspapers- and keep paying?

Andrew said that in a “time of media abundance” it is “unnatural to pay for things online.” Overcoming this mentality while erecting paywalls to make up the profit shortfall smacks to me of  misguided desperation but some seem to think it’s the only chance the print business has. I really hope not. It comes down to added value, The FT and the WSJ can charge because their content is specialist. Can each British newspaper claim they are?

Perhaps we should look at paywalls as a way to save journalism, even if it is at the expense of the print medium, but I’m struggling to believe I could ever fully give up papercuts.

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…and other Tiger-related stories.
Here’s my cartoon from Monday’s paper:

©mørland/the times

For the top ten jokes on Tiger’s unfortunate meeting with trees etc, go to Comment Central.

©mørland/the times

In a blog post yesterday afternoon, Ruth Gledhill, The Times‘ Religion Correspondent, opined that she is “not exactly Miss Popular at Church House.”  Good!  A specialist journalist doing their job correctly should always have a slightly awkward relationship with those they report on – or, rather, their stories should occasionally  leave those they report on a little uncomfortable.

Specialist religious affairs hacks do not exist to do the Church’s PR – that’s for people like me to do!

Ruth’s blog post yesterday is a follow-up to Saturday’s article and leader on decreasing clergy numbers and the rising number of parishes they have to look after.  The paper blames increasing costs of clergy pension schemes and poor investment decisions for the situation. 

And in part, the paper is right.  It is increasingly rare for clergy to have just one parish to look after; and money problems are forcing many dioceses into considering drastic cuts.  But it isn’t just about money – it’s also about a lack of people – ordained people, to be precise! 

My own diocese of Lichfield faced the problem of too little money and too many posts a few years ago.  In 2002 the diocese was nearly bankrupt after years of setting a budget based on what we wanted rather than on what we, or more accurately, what the parishes, could afford.  After years of raiding the reserves to fund routine expenditure the cupboards were bare.  The synod tackled the problem head on, adopting a five-year financial strategy which would see a cut of 50 stipendiary posts over those five years.  The diocese also agreed not to increase the Parish Share – that part of the budget financed by the churches – by more than five per cent each year so long as the total paid by the parishes increased by five per cent each year.  In other words, parishes had to pay off their arrears.

Four years into that painful strategy and most of the arrears had been paid off.  A new-found trust existed between parishes and the administration of the diocese – the former no longer routinely referring to the latter as “Lichfield’s Black Hole”.  And the cuts due to be made in the final year were no longer required. 

The problem we faced back then is the problem so many dioceses, including Winchester, are facing now.

Seven years on, and our problem is the opposite.  We are actively trying to recruit priests to vacant parishes and struggling to do so.  Not because of our previous financial problems but because there aren’t enough priests to go round.

In the past few decades, the age at which people offer themselves for ordained ministry has increased.  This has brought with it considerable blessings, in that we have clergy with real experience of life and work outside the Church; but it also means that those members of the clergy have less time to serve between ordination and retirement.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has called for more younger ordinands; and this has been supported by bishops around the country.  In Lichfield Diocese the number of those being ordained – both stipendiary and non-stipendary (volunteer) has been increasing year on year; but we still have a long way to go before the numbers being ordained outstrip those heading for retirement.

As a result, parishes are being merged – either formally or informally through appointing priests to serve more than one parish.  But it is too simplistic, as Ruth Gledhill’s article and The Times‘ Leader appears to suggest, that this is always bad news for the church or for the communities it serves.

Ruth Gledhill, in her article, quotes Terry Sanderson of the National Secular Society, that open-minded great provider of ecclesiastical wisdom, as saying: “Such numbers remove the last vestige of justification for the Church’s establishment.  It is no longer representative of the nation and will become progressively less able to fulfil its claimed nationwide service.  Establishment gives bishops significant power and this is simply illegitimate and undemocratic.  It is quite clear that the Church of England is, to all extents and purposes, finished.”

On the same logic, please, can we now expect to hear less in the media from the National Secular Society?  It’s own membership, on a generous estimate, is no more than 7,000.  How can it claim to be national or representative of anybody with those figures.

But, back on topic.  In last night’s blog Ruth Gledhill reports on a Parochial Church Council meeting from Littlebourne in Kent.  The four churches in the benefice - one with just ten worshippers - pay a combined total of £50,000 as their share of the diocesan budget.  The PCC has reportedly been informed  by the Diocese of Canterbury that when its present Rector, the Revd John Allan, retires, he will be replaced with a part-time, unpaid ‘house-for-duty’ priest.  The article states ‘they will not be given their own priest ever again, “even if you raise £1 million.”‘

Such a situation appears unfair.  Why, if a parish is able to raise £1 million, can’t it get its own priest?

It goes back to the nature of the Church of England – every house in every street in every village, town or city is part of a Church of England parish.  The Church of England’s obligation to minister to all of England is a costly business which requires difficult decisions to be taken about clergy deployment.

There are some who believe that it would be desireable for every parish to have its own priest.  But would that really be desirable?  The database we use in Lichfield Diocese shows a figure for the population of a parish.  Clearly, this is an estimate - the Church of England doesn’t conduct censuses of the population and has the same access to government statistics as everybody else.  But, even accepting their use only as a guide, they paint an interesting picture.

Some of our parishes serve ridiculously low populations – this isn’t the number of worshippers, it is the number of people who live within the geographically defined boundaries of the parish.

Our least populated parish is All Saints at Statfold, which, according to the database, serves a population of just 10 people.  Surely this has to be a mistake!  I didn’t even know where Statfold is.  So I looked it up on Wikipedia.  Here, it is described as a “former village” on the outskirts of Tamworth.  According to Wikipedia, the population of Statfold was just 45 residents in 1851 – and this had fallen to just 26 by 1870.  So, perhaps our database is right about the size of the population. 

I don’t know anything about the benefice of Littlebourne which features in Ruth Gledhill’s blog; but if you accept the implication of the comments, that a parish should be able to buy its own priest if it has the money to do so; then you have to accept that it would be equally right for the parish of Statfold to buy their own priest if they could afford to do so – that the 10 people who live there could insist on their own priest while poorer parishes have none.

Of course, Statfold doesn’t have its own priest, all to itself.  In fact, although I’ve described it as a parish, it was merged into the Parish of Clifton Campville and its Rector, the Revd Simon Lumby, is Rector of Clifton Campville with Edingale and Harlaston and Priest in Charge of Thorpe Constantine and Elford.  In his spare time he also serves as Honorary Chaplain to the National Memorial Arboretum, near Alrewas.

Our next smallest parish, according to the population statistics on our database,  is St Mary the Virgin in Gratwich.  This parish serves a population of just 37 people.  This parish has also been merged, into the parish of Kingstone; which is itself part of the Uttoxeter Area Team Ministry comprising all the churches in the deanery of Uttoxeter in east Staffordshire.

Parish reorganisation makes sense.  And it’s nothing new:

• Statfold became part of Clifton Campville in the 18th Century. 
• Gratwich became part of Kingstone in 1934. 

As a result, you won’t find either of them in Crockford, the Church of England’s nationwide directory of clergy and parishes.  Officially, they don’t exist other than as part of the larger parish or benefice.  But in reality, such churches do exist and are kept alive by a dedicated team of clergy and lay ministers.

The church does have a shortage of money.  We are in the middle of a credit crunch which is affecting all voluntary societies.  I still meet people who wrongly assume that the Church of England is funded by the Government rather than the people in the pews.  We also have a shortage of priests.

But the Church of England hasn’t got this far without meeting many obstacles and overcoming them over the past few centuries; and there is no reason to doubt that, even though we sail through choppy waters, if we keep our eyes on Jesus the boat will make it to the other side.

The Church of England doesn’t exist to maintain the Church of England.  The shape of its mission and ministry will change over time as it always has done.  The Church of England exists to build the Kingdom of God.

Every house in every street in every village, town and city will continue to be part of a Church of England parish.  But the shape and size of those parishes may well change over time; as they always have done.

I am just back from 4 days in Afghanistan meeting the team, deciding on new recruits, developing the Oxfam plans for 2010 and talking to a mixture of Afghan and British journalists. While I was there three were killed in Khost, there was “just another rocket attack on the 5 star Sheraton hotel” (seemingly a normal occurence according to all) to the text message that a car with UN plates was looking to drive a bomb into an agency compound and people should be on their guard.

Guns, big fences, curfews and barbed wire dominate but within this environment there were also kites flying, beautiful snow-capped mountains, some brilliant Afghan staff packed with ingenuity and a hungry media keen to bang the government to rights.

We have got some great plans coming through for 2010, a photographic project following a village and assessing the impact of aid, a series of reports outlining how the $40 bn has to be spent better in the country and a review of the education and agricultural policies that are so critical to help people emerge out of poverty.  The troop surge and Obama’s will he / won’t plans dominate the conversations but the critical gap in Afghanistan is the absence of development to win the peace. Too often it is being front-loaded into part of the military operation which is making the school building or well digging programmes at best tokenisitic and at worst dangerous to the people who risk using them. US contracts for $4 mn for development being signed but not implemented seemed to be common place talking to the people I met, the tragedy of the waste of this investment is that so much good could be coming from this generosity but instead, as The Times wrote, the opposite is happening.

Three things will stay with me from this quick visit. It begins with the Afghan journalist who came up to the team in the old bombed out Presidential palace last week to confess to our team who had hosted a  press conference there that he had killed many people in that room; a very different kind of small talk. It moves to meeting the inspiring Afghan Women’s Boxing Team at the Olympic stadium – who don’t have a boxing ring and only 3 pairs of boxing gloves for 20 of them (they need money, let me know if you can help!) – to hear that they are now getting menacing calls from people within the community others who think they are doing the wrong thing.  They’re determined to try to compete for London 2012 and hopefully we will be able to do far more to help them in the coming weeks. To the discussion about Oxfam’s violence against women campaign in Afghanistan which is working with 2500 people in Kabul and thousands more across the country, a brave and bold campaign if ever there was one.

A man with a plan?

As both UK editor for www.paidcontent.org, an online media hub that offers news and business analysis, and a former graduate at Cardiff University, Rob Andrews was bound to have some interesting thoughts to offer.

And he didn’t disappoint, not just talking about how specialised sites like his own and The Financial Times are turning the online stream into gold, but also how other newspapers can avert financial oblivion over the next years.

As you might expect, there were some interesting figures in there – the growing dominance of online revenue was brutally spelt out: it was at less than $100 million in the first quarter of 2004, and now rakes in nearly $800 million.

Newspapers have never been able to bring that much in, and that problem is compounded by the fact they are now losing revenue from search engines.

The newspapers engaged in a free-for-all 10 years ago to try to increase their viewing capacity, not thinking that by opening the gates to the castle they would bring about the end of journalism as we know it, Jim.

The online money is not meeting the shortfall on falling traditional business – which is a third (yes, a third!) less than it was last year.

But it wasn’t all gloomy news for us newspaper folk. Rob is clearly an inventive and imaginative fellow, and he, more than anyone else I’ve heard, had some tentative answers for the mess that we’ve wandered into in search of our dream job.

After going over the paywall debate (and especially Johnston Presses potentially disastrous idea to erect them on the sites of their local papers) the debate moved to how newspapers can utilise the web to survive.

"I've been expecting you Mr Bond..."

The idea of benevolent benefactors may not sound like the ideal answer I would agree, but I would take it  any day over there being no funding for good journalism at all. There is some precedent for this, the Bureau Of Investigative Journalism has received £2million by the Potter Charity Foundation, and although it’s not ideal, it’s better than starving good investigative reporting.

Rob also thinks newspapers can learn from the music industry, who, seemingly being overrun by the tides of downloaders, now offer exclusives  and free give-aways to bring people back to their more traditional and tangible wares. It sounds very similar to what The Times is doing, so, again, there’s a precedent.

Although these may only sound like drops in the ocean at the moment, every revolution needs some seeds to germinate from. A start along a long road, but a start nonetheless.

A man with a plan?

As both UK editor for www.paidcontent.org, an online media hub that offers news and business analysis, and a former graduate at Cardiff University, Rob Andrews was bound to have some interesting thoughts to offer.

And he didn’t disappoint, not just talking about how specialised sites like his own and The Financial Times are turning the online stream into gold, but also how other newspapers can avert financial oblivion over the next years.

As you might expect, there were some interesting figures in there – the growing dominance of online revenue was brutally spelt out: it was at less than $100 million in the first quarter of 2004, and now rakes in nearly $800 million.

Newspapers have never been able to bring that much in, and that problem is compounded by the fact they are now losing revenue from search engines.

The newspapers engaged in a free-for-all 10 years ago to try to increase their viewing capacity, not thinking that by opening the gates to the castle they would bring about the end of journalism as we know it, Jim.

The online money is not meeting the shortfall on falling traditional business – which is a third (yes, a third!) less than it was last year.

But it wasn’t all gloomy news for us newspaper folk. Rob is clearly an inventive and imaginative fellow, and he, more than anyone else I’ve heard, had some tentative answers for the mess that we’ve wandered into in search of our dream job.

"I've been expecting you Mr Bond...."

After going over the paywall debate (and especially Johnston Presses potentially disastrous idea to erect them on the sites of their local papers) the debate moved to how newspapers can utilise the web to survive.

The idea of benevolent benefactors may not sound like the ideal answer I would agree, but I would take it  any day over there being no funding for good journalism at all. There is some precedent for this, the Bureau Of Investigative Journalism has received £2million by the Potter Charity Foundation, and although it’s not ideal, it’s better than starving good investigative reporting.

Rob also thinks newspapers can learn from the music industry, who, seemingly being overrun by the tides of downloaders, now offer exclusives  and free give-aways to bring people back to their more traditional and tangible wares. It sounds very similar to what The Times is doing, so, again, there’s a precedent.

Although these may only sound like drops in the ocean at the moment, every revolution needs some seeds to germinate from. A start along a long road, but a start nonetheless.

These guys are great, I just wish I could understand German. Here is a link to a piece I did some time ago for wknd. magazine where I had a brief stint as editor. Sanaa is an amazing place and will be going back to Yemen in January to do a piece for Esquire Middle East.

In case you have not noticed there is some media coverage of Dubai at the moment. This veers from the sublime to the ridiculous. The Dubai media coverage simply stays put at ridiculous. While no serious people take Gulf News, Khaleej Times or Emirates 24/7 as newspapers in the truest form of the world; ie: reporing the news, said papers could have least tried to inject some context into their reporting.

iUniverse is the publisher of my novel, Political Season, as well. Good luck with the book.

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Falling advertising revenues and the ‘online revolution’ have placed a strain on newspapers in recent years. So, what is the solution?

Is it conceivable to consider a world with no printed media? Possibly.

Is it conceivable to consider a world without The Sun, or The Times, or Private Eye? No.

Wherever technology is taking us, these huge brands will survive; it is in what format – and more importantly, how they will make money – that is the important issue.

Newspapers have traditionally relied heavily on advertising to boost revenues. While the market for this has waned – and with it rates for page space – the online ad market paints an equally glum picture.

With advertisers often paying on a click-by-click basis, no guarentee can be made for revenue to websites. And if, as Rupert Murdoch and a handful of other believe, paywalls are the answer, then reduced traffic to websites charging for news will see a steep fall in advertising revenue.

Also, do people even want to read newspapers online? I don’t believe so. I think people are happy to read news online – having access to information at your fingertips is the Web’s great selling point – but reading opinion, or any in-depth material, online can be taxing.

An study into the New York Times’s online readership found that users spend an average of just 40 minutes on the website each month. Many spend at least that with a newspaper every day.

At present, there is simply no market for online newspapers. Advertising will not cover the costs involved in producing the copy and charging customers to visit the site will reduce traffic and, therefore, damage the brand.

But newspapers are making little to no money and printing that much paper every day will eventually become unsustainable.

So, print media may end up a thing of the past, but that day will be a while in coming.

Because they aren’t athiests, they’re actually being brought up in an Evangelical Christian home!

“It is quite funny, because obviously they were searching for images of children that looked happy and free. They happened to choose children who are Christian. It is ironic. The humanists obviously did not know the background of these children.” Brad Mason (the childrens’ father in The Times)

Read more from The Times or the Christian Institute.

Today I bought the Times as there were no Guardians left at the shop. I don’t buy printed newspapers much as they are mostly full of useless information that’s poorly spell checked and too dominated by celebrities.

Two of the lowlights today from the Times (not related to celebrities):

• Green nail polish from Chanel is selling for £80 on ebay. This was on the front page, seriously.
• Gordon Brown has a network of helpers including someone who is a chairmaqn – I didn’t know that word had a silent Q, but there you go (page 32).

That last pearler was from an infographic (download it here) squeezed into a tiny space at the top of the page between the ad and the story. I can partly sympathise with the ‘visual journalist’ charged with creating it. I imagine they were given the brief with about 10 minutes until deadline so there would have been little time for them to spell check (a task usually left for sub-editors but they have probably all been retrenched). I can also partly sympathise with them as I imagine the briefing process probably went something like this:

EDITOR: Can you quickly do a graphic to tart up this story?
VISUAL JOURNALIST: What’s the story about?
E: Not really sure, they haven’t finished writing it yet. But does it really matter? Just put all these names in it and then link them together somehow.
VJ: But that doesn’t actually explain anything
E: Why does it matter? Graphics are just there to make the page look pretty.

Part of the offending graphic

In my previous career as an editorial design consultant I often saw how underrated visual journalists are in newsrooms (other than at the New York Times where I have heard that there are around 22 of them). Their skills are often seen as secondary to that of word journalists and they are not given anywhere near enough time and resources to properly craft their graphics.

Good infographics take time to create. Good infographics explain and offer insight. They can support the story, or they can stand-alone. They should make sense, or they should not be used. They are journalism, not decoration. The Times needs to do better.

Lest you think I am being one-sided, there are many visual journalists out there who do not deserve the title. Just because someone is good at using Illustrator doesn’t mean they can tell a story visually.

If you are wondering what the good bits were from the Times today they were the story about a Royal Commission report that recommends traffic lights be switched off to save energy and stop light pollution (page 36), and a story about how the charity Fine Cell Work teaches needlework to prison inmates so that they can learn new skills and earn an income to help support them when they get out of gaol (page 40).

Vreti sa stiti cam ce fac britanicii intr-o duminica seara de noiembrie? E suficienta consultarea ratingurilor emisiunilor de televiziune, populare showuri TV fiind in derulare la acele ore. Din pacate, popularitatea lor nu deriva din calitatea si rafinamentul respectivelor productii in direct ori inregistrate.

Mai jos, citez din excelentul articol al lui Tim Teeman, publicat in suplimentul cotidianului The Times, care explica psihologia maselor inca magnetizate pe canalul terestru ITV1 de emisiunile X-Factor, vizionat de 15,9 milioane telespectatori, I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!, cu 10 milioane telespectatori, si Strictly Come Dancing. Vestea buna ar fi ca aproape sase milioane si-au vazut totusi de vietile lor dupa X-Factor, neramanand pironiti in fotolii pentru I’m a Celebrity…

E despre puterea audiovizualului si despre evadarea din realitate a telespectatorului. Inainte sa pomenesc articolul in sine, cam asa as schita experienta mea in domeniu…

“Cum, n-ai vazut vreun episod din <Friends>? Sa nu cumva sa-mi spui ca nici n-ai fi auzit de serial!?” M-a intrebat, asa incat i-am zis colegei de vreo douazeci si ceva de ani si nu doar ca am dezamagit-o dar chiar am revoltat-o. <Friends> e peste saptamana, weekendul fiind rezervat pentru aceste X-Factor, cu cantareti aspiranti interpretand din repertoriul consacrat, I’m a Celebrity…, un fel de Big Brother dar nu intr-un studio umplut cu anonimi ci intr-un cadru natural amenajat pentru persoane facute cunoscute opiniei publice prin mass-media de divertisment, asa zise celebritati, plus Strictly Come Dancing, un concurs de dans imperechind personalitati din lumea sportului cu dansatori profesionisti.

In X-Factor, nu neaparat debordand de talent, poate aparea si vecinul din coltul strazii. Si totusi, am cunoscuti care-l vizioneaza, fie ei chiar lectori universitari sau absolventi de studii superioare cu multi ani vechime in varii profesii, carora li s-ar strica seara daca ar pierde emisiunea. Dependenta. Din autocenzura de a nu le rani sentimentele ori a nu le parea patronant, nu-i trag de maneca sa aspire la mai bine, sa aleaga o forma mai atractiva, mai stimulanta de divertisment. N-am spus nici inaltatoare, nici spirituala. Ci doar una mai aproape de nivelul lor intelectual.

Oferta e atat de mare, gusturile sunt atat de variate. Dar ce se ascunde in spatele foamei atator oameni pentru asemenea emisiuni televizate e mai bine punctat in comentariul ziaristului englez:   “Fanii acestor emisiuni vor continua sa o vizioneze, cu mare bucurie, deoarece samburele lor consta in evadari moralizatoare, ce ne aseaza o oglinda in fata ochilor. [...] In ultima decada, britanicii au devenit fericiti sclavi ai hiper-realitatii. [...] Realitatea de televiziune si showurile de divertisment din aceasta gama au cucerit inclusiv viata publica si chiar discursul politic. Naratiuni cu titluri incendiare la stiri… [...] Confesionalul si monologul au infectat discursul. Psihologia pop si dinamica operei de sapun are intietate in fata dezbaterii intelectuale; Drace, pana si intelectualii simt nevoia sa schimbe o vorba si sa opineze cu copiii pe tema X-Factor. [...] Care in primele 6 saptamani, inaintea reprezentatiilor, ii umileste pe concurenti, servind placerilor noastre umilirea si respingerea lor. [...] Aceste showuri sunt valve de scurgere, autostrazile evadarii noastre din realitate in fantezie. Putem chiar actiona impulsiv, in baza neplacerii noastre viscerale, apasand butonul rosu sau prin mesaje text. Avem oarecare control (sau mai bine zis iluzia controlului) si putem opri concurentii din reprezentatia lor de dans ori cantec sau sa-i punem in situatia de a manca rahat de crocodil. [...] E un ridicol concurs al vanitatii umane.”

Lanturi de librarii dau faliment. Pe nume Borders. Granitele. Limitele normalului si firescului au fost demult depasite. Activitatea paranormala este subiect de publicitate pe autobuzele rosii etajate si aproape orice semn din existenta actuala a individului pe pamant vestic occidental, asta pentru cine are ochii mintii sa vada, are o conotatie intunecata, de la bizar la luciferic.

Iar emisiunile de divertisment TV nu fac exceptie. In fotoliu, telespectatorul comuta pe pilot automat, de la constiinta vie la nerozia digerabila. E tot ceea ce mai poate cu adevarat digera. E un semn al degradarii noastre, al dezumanizarii si imbecilizarii spiritului uman. Aproape o jumatate de natie e cu ochii pe doi irlandezi de 17 ani, John si Edward, cod de piata Jedward, cu frezele lor ridicole, vopsite si electrocutate, in reprezentatia lor tipator de ridicola, lipsita de talent dar aplaudata frenetic, eventual chiar cu lacrimi in ochi.

Jedward au fost “eliminati” dar sunt reincadrati cat ai clipi in I’m a Celebrity…, luand parte la gogomania din jungla. Caci sunt deja celebritati. Aceasta e sub-cultura zilelor noastre si – din punct de vedere al telespectatorului roman – samburele ce a servit drept produs de import peste ani in virtualul din preajma Carpatilor.

Iar pentru cei ce-si spun ca tot ar fi mai atractiv decat “natangul” fotbal, sa stea linistiti. Cu cat a crescut oferta, cu atat admiratorii jocului de-altadata au pasit inapoi, vizionand cu pipeta.

Bronze of Degas' Little Dancer in the Metropolitan Museum (via metmuseum.org)

It hasn’t been the most restful Thanksgiving.

A few days ago, I found out about what could be one of the most significant art discoveries of the last 100 years.

For the last few days I’ve been piecing together the story, which involves a complete set of previously unknown plaster casts of sculptures by the Impressionist Edgar Degas including his most famous, Little Dancer, a New York art dealer’s quest to track down the forgotten plasters and a guarded secret shared by a clutch of excited scholars and hopeful private collectors.

Tomorrow The Times in London is running my story. 

Not everyone is convinced the find is genuine. It could be an elaborate hoax. But either way, for the artworld it’s a major event and for me, a reminder, should I need one, of why I love being a journalist.

*

Little Dancer points to sensational discovery of Degas sculpture hoard

They are either one of the most extraordinary art finds of the past 100 years or one of the most exquisite frauds to be attempted. One way or another, though, a complete set of 74 plaster sculptures of dancers, bathers and horses attributed to Edgar Degas will dominate discussion of the great Impressionist artist for years to come.

Bronzes cast from the plasters went on public display for the first time yesterday at the Herakleidon Museum, a private museum in Athens. The organisers of the exhibition are in talks with a number of London galleries about bringing them to Britain next year.

Scholars are split over whether the plasters are genuine. If they are, they would represent the purest record of Degas’s sculptural powers in existence. Excitement centres on the claim that these plasters were made during Degas’s lifetime. They correspond to the 74 Degas wax sculptures found intact in his apartments after his death in 1917 and cast and recast since then.

Read the rest of the story with images on Times Online

Degas discovery reveals fresh insight into first painter of modern life: Comment by Times critic Rachel Campbell-Johnston

*

It’s been a brilliant week for Never Odd Or Even, our best ever in fact. If this last week was a person, I’d be on one knee proposing to it. I can scarcely believe how we’ve managed to get away with it.

Rewind to last Saturday, and our Ask The Hoff app received nationwide coverage in The Telegraph’s magazine supplement. This gave the app’s sales and profile a much needed boost; sales increased five-fold and the app reached number 16 in the UK’s Lifestyle category.

Bolstered by this increase in visibility, we hit the social media jungle drums again and spread the good news through Twitter and Facebook. A BBC employee saw the news and passed it on to the Scott Mills show at BBC Radio 1, which has led to Ask The Hoff enjoying national radio coverage for the past three days. As a result the app has jumped to number two in the Lifestyle category and is currently the 45th most popular paid app in the UK. Unbelievable.

Ask The Hoff wasn’t our only app to enjoy the limelight this week. On Thursday, our collaboration with award winning travel writer Donald Strachan, Instant Florence, received national exposure in The Times. Admittedly, Donald wrote the piece but that’s the benefit of working with a freelance travel writer! Instant Florence has also become a top 20 travel app in Ireland, which is brilliant to see.

On top of all of this, two other exciting announcements. We’re working with a local developer to bring Ask The Hoff to the Android platform, for what will be our first Android app. We can also reveal we’re due to start work on a second celebrity app next week, due to be submitted to Apple early next year.

Finally, I travelled down to London for the first ever AppJam – a great networking event for developers, agencies and investors – and met up with Charlie at WhiteApp.com, an inspired service working with agencies to propagate good app ideas and offer a vital secondary source of income to developers.

For a tiny ickle digital agency, we’ve had a brilliant seven days. Let’s hope for another seven just like them in the near future. P

The idea of ’studying’ journalism is pretty new. The course I am currently on, the Postgraduate Diploma in Journalism at Cardiff University, was the first, and it was only established in 1970. So I ask: what is the virtue of a Journalism course?

This issue was brought home to me last week by a lecture from Joanna Geary, Web Development Editor (Business) for The Times. She didn’t study journalism, but has, in only a few years in the industry, landed herself a pretty awesome job at one of the country’s (nay, the world’s) most prestigious newspapers.

As a Journalism student, paying thousands of pounds to study, this should be pretty galling. And it would be – if I wasn’t already aware that you don’t need a qualification in journalism. That’s not to say it isn’t worthwhile; depending on where you study, you will garner a lot of incredibly useful skills and techniques that will make you, hopefully, very employable. But I probably wouldn’t have taken this course if I had got a job in the industry. It’s a means to an end.

Having said that, I hope that studying at one of Britain’s most respected journalism schools will, firstly, help me land a few rungs up the industry ladder and, secondly, give me a better chance of keeping any job I get, because I’ll actually be able to, y’know, do it.

Crucially, when it comes to job time, I’ll have been blogging and tweeting and been generally communicating with people, writing and talking  about all sorts of issues, journalistic or not. The best (or the most effective) journalism courses are practical and vocational: you don’t just ’studying’, you actually practise as a journalist. Publishers want staff who don’t need a whole heap of training, so if you can get that training elsewhere then you’ll be much more attractive to employers.

So the virtue of journalism courses – or the good ones, at least – is to give you the best training and the best chance of getting a job. If you manage to find employment without training then great, but if you don’t, the best chance you stand of getting into the industry is to immerse yourself in the profession.

Blogging meets my three loves; Macs, Coffee & Shakespeare...

Blogging has been a fundamental part of the postgraduate magazine journalism diploma that I am completing at Cardiff University. As I have said before, I was completely dreading the thought of blogging. I thought that I would be lost for words, wracking my brains for things to write, then struggling to find the time to actually blog at all. Instead I have found that I am conjuring up new things to blog about all the time, and it has almost become a case of what not to include, rather than scrounging and scrambling for inspiration.

Although we have continually been told throughout our lectures that blogging is a great way of showcasing our work and style of writing, it wasn’t until our online lecture with The Times’s Web Development Editor Joanna Geary this week that I realised the potential for this blog to eventually help me get an actual job in journalism. Maybe…

Journalism & Superman went hand in hand for 12 year-old Joanna Geary...

With her entertaining presentation, entitled How I Got My Job, And Other Stories, Geary told us about how she got into journalism- the hard way. Geary started with the dream of becoming the next Lois Lane (complete with Superman boyfriend) at the age of 12 and progressed to doing work experience with her local paper every summer for years on end. After graduating from university, and after many job rejections, Geary finally got her break at the paper when they needed someone young to shake up the business section of the paper. With plenty of enthusiasm, but not a vast knowledge of the world of business, Geary quickly made business her specialist subject- an initiative that most of our online lecturers have advocated that we cultivate for ourselves.

Like myself, Geary was initially reluctant to embrace the world of blogging.  It was Pete Ashton, who along with Stef Lewandowski set up the Birmingham blog network Created In Birmingham in 2007, who was the trigger in finally persuaded Geary to begin blogging. The CIB blog showcases the artistic and creative communities in Birmingham, and focuses on bringing communities in Birmingham together to celebrate the many creative aspects the city offers. Yet despite the initial relunctance, Geary caved in and started a blog. Here are the opening words to her first blog post in September 2007:

“I sit on the floor surrounded by badly cut pieces of laminate- the casualties of my hopeless attempts at DIY.

This, I guess, is as good a time as any to start my own blog.”

Yet once she set one up, she too couldn’t stop writing.

Bearing in mind the success of her personal blog, it wasn’t too long before Geary was asked by her boss to create a series of blogs for The Birmingham Post. Due to a slight misunderstanding, Geary starting to set up a whole network of bloggers in the Birmingham area, even getting prolific local writers on board through some tactical bribing. Even Geary didn’t realise the power of her blog network, and it was only a few years later that she landed her job at The Times, when an editor at the paper sent her a tweet on Twitter offering her an interview. This helps to demonstrate how Twitter is fast becoming the new email. Quick, and to the point, tweets of up to 140 characters can often have more of an impact than a wordy email. It certainly worked for Geary and even got her the high-profile job she has and loves today.

Dodgy DIY- as good a reason to start a blog as any...

Geary confessed that she isn’t, and never has been, a technological junkie. This is encouraging, as although I am not completely computer illiterate, I am no ‘techo wizz’ either. I just love writing. And if blogging can help me to eventually turn this love into a professional career then I will carry on blogging regardless. With my current struggles to obtain some magazine work experience for next Easter, Geary has given me a glimmer of hope that if I keep on trying I will get some eventually.  And if I still haven’t heard from the magazines I’ve applied to in a week I may even send them a tweet. Who knows, with the immediacy and directness of Twitter, they may actually reply…