Here’s a free tip given to me by RMIT’s journalism course convenor Maree Curtis in an introductory journalism class around this time last year. It’s one I’ve found really useful, so here it is.
When you’re wrapping up an interview, ask your interviewee whether they have anything to add.
After a year of using this technique, I can tell you it works.
The Fair Work Ombudsman has appointed two Adelaide Uni legal academics to conduct a report into how widespread unpaid internships are in Australia.
I’ve written about the issues with the normalisation of unpaid internships before. While I’m not sure what prompted this report from the ombudsman, it’s good to see they’re taking an interest.
At Panorama, Sally Whyte did a radio segment today featuring an interview with Andrew Stewart (one of the academics doing the investigation) and a student who completed a long nursing internship. It’s worth listening to. My experience is in journalism, where unpaid internships, at least in Australia, are short. Nursing’s not like that – nursing students complete literally months of unpaid work, all for a position that’s not particularly glamorous (they don’t even get the bylines at the end of it).
Continue reading “Fair Work to investigate unpaid internships” »
The Australian Financial Review, or AFR, is easily one of Australia’s best newspapers. But it is inaccessible, expensive, and narrowly targeted at a business elite.
Today, the sheer brilliance of its journalism had it leading the agenda, even though most Australians never directly read its content. It published a well-documented piece which alleged News Corp, the parent company of Australian journalism company News Limited, had engaged in and encouraged a range of illegal activities against rivals of News Corp’s pay-TV offering.
The AFR made efforts to extend the reach of the bombshell, largely through online media.
I’ve been working at Private Media (pretty building to your left) for more than three months now, so this post is long overdue. I’ll explain why in a bit.
At the start of Semester 2 last year, a friend of mine at uni who had just interned at Crikey mentioned to me its Private Media stable-mate, SmartCompany, hardly ever got interns. Hearing this, I sent the editor an internship request. I figured if they hardly ever had anyone, I’d be more likely to get in during my holidays, when everyone tries to intern.
The editor responded within a day, told me to come in the week I had asked for. I realised the Friday before holidays started that the week I’d given him wasn’t, in fact, the week the holidays were. So I frantically called up and asked if I could come in Monday. He said yes, so I turned up three days later. At 7.30am.
Continue reading “How I joined the ranks of the gainfully employed” »
I once sat in on a lecture given by US Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia. When it came to the questions, a left-wing activist accused Scalia of war crimes. Scalia is credited with the conservative revival of the American judiciary. I’m sure such loaded questions are a dime a dozen for him. Nonetheless, his restraint surprised me. He merely raised his right hand as if in a pledge, and, smiling wryly, said the words ‘I am for good and against evil’. He then took another question.
Two days ago, something really odd happened to me.
I started following the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party on twitter a few weeks back. They tweeted something, and I responded.
For a girl like me (liberal, with Coptic heritage), that’s odd. Part of me couldn’t help feeling I’d almost sold out my family, given the pleasantness of the interaction. But you know how people make these decisions. Sometimes you just feel like being nice – and niceness is contagious.
But then again, odder things have happened in the Middle East. When Mohammed Bouazizi set himself on fire in December 2010, he couldn’t have imagined his act of desperation would resonate with and spur to action millions across the Arabic world. One act of resistance begets another, then another. More than a year on, nothing is the same.
You’d be forgiven for thinking TorrentFreak is a torrenting search engine like The Pirate Bay or Isohunt. It isn’t. Rather, it’s a news outlet devoted to the war over copyright currently pitting lawmakers and corporations against a new breed of everyday pirate.
Reading TorrentFreak is always a learning experience because no one else covers its subject matter so diligently or so well. Spend some time on TorrentFreak, and unless you’re an IP lawyer, you’ll read something new. In short, sharp news pieces the two writers, who as far as I can tell aren’t journalists, do brilliant journalism.
Is it neutral? Well, no. I’ve written before of my attachment to the ‘view from nowhere’, and the writers behind TorrentFreak definitely do not subscribe to that school. They do employ many of the conventions of newstyle, such as intros that summarise a story and tabloid-style headlines. But it’s clear whose side they’re on.
I awoke this morning to reports in the Australian press that Wikipedia would go black for 24 hours from tomorrow afternoon (Australian time).
I guess most journalists would have found out about it in their normal usage of Wikipedia. The world’s 5th visited site has replaced its usual community appeals with a stark announcement. In white on black, it currently reads, “Please note: In less than 26 hours, the English Wikipedia will be blacked out globally to protest SOPA and PIPA”.
This wasn’t just significant in the fight against SOPA however. It was significant for Wikipedia too.
From the closing summary of the Wikipedia discussion that sealed the decision:
Over the course of the past 72 hours, over 1800 Wikipedians have joined together to discuss proposed actions that the community might wish to take against SOPA and PIPA. This is by far the largest level of participation in a community discussion ever seen on Wikipedia, which illustrates the level of concern that Wikipedians feel about this proposed legislation. The overwhelming majority of participants support community action to encourage greater public action in response to these two bills. Of the proposals considered by Wikipedians, those that would result in a “blackout” of the English Wikipedia, in concert with similar blackouts on other websites opposed to SOPA and PIPA, received the strongest support.
The decision didn’t come out of nowhere. It was first suggested on the 12th of December, and consensus on it was not easily won.
Continue reading “The Wikipedia SOPA Blackout: A Backgrounder” »
Yesterday, the New York Times’ public editor wrote a blog post asking whether news reporters should challenge the facts made by newsmakers in the body of the original report. He wanted to know how they should do it, and how far they should take that liberty. Unsurprisingly, he received a fierce response, with many readers and commentators incredulous that he had even asked the question.
Others have weighed in on this far more intelligibly than I could (it’s worth reading some of the more prominent reactions). But one result of all the brouhaha was the Atlantic’s (re)visiting of the arguments of Jay Rosen, the American journalism academic and frequent critic of modern journalism.
Four years ago, on a friend’s recommendation, I made a last.fm account. At the time I was uncertain – it looked like another social network, and I hardly needed another one based around music. Don’t worry, he said. This is better.
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