acts of daily journalism The Contributoria Tapes: Burn your house to the ground: why you need to kill your darlings to maintain your independence. This piece was originally published on Contributoria — find out what that means and why it is posted here by reading this note. Article background This was the first of three* collaborative articles that I worked on for Contributoria under the pseudonym of Howard Wilkinson. And boy did we get in tro
acts of daily journalism The Contributoria Tapes: Tell your own story This piece was originally published on Contributoria — find out what that means and why it is posted here by reading this note. Article background My third pass through the Contributoria process was during the July pitch / August writing window, where the theme was “Independence”. Independent and al
acts of daily journalism The Contributoria Tapes: A great fresh tax for your local coffee making indy? This piece was originally published on Contributoria — find out what that means and why it is posted here by reading this note. Article background For my second Contributoria piece I ignored the editorial theme about the future because I don’t do futurology (though I might, in the future, you can’t
acts of daily journalism The Contributoria Tapes: Can you really live on ‘social capital’? This piece was originally published on Contributoria — find out what that means and why it is posted here by reading this note. Article background This was my first piece for Contributoria — a response to that month’s suggested editorial theme “The Future of Money”. It was a gentle troll, as quite a
The sudden but not unexpected death of Contributoria The journalism project Contributoria has announced that it has published its last issue this month. I wasn’t surprised to hear that the site would close, but the pace of the closure did catch me off guard. I’ve written for the site several times as I was interested in the mechanics of its crowdfundi
what I have been listening to The Returned mets Serial: welcome to Limetown I came to the podcast Serial midway through its run—just in time to still be a bit of a tastemaker, but way behind the real cool kids—based on recommendations but without any real knowledge of what I was getting into. Now I don’t mean I didn’t know what it was about, I mean I didn’t actually… Contin
higher education Virtually deserted — uni campuses on Second Life In The Last of Us a large section of the action focuses on getting to, and then exploring, the abandoned (fictional) University of East Colorado. For someone who spends a lot of time in similar settings it’s pretty haunting to walk with Ellie and Joel through classrooms, quads and student halls all
Learning & Teaching “Support tickets” in production classrooms I’m just doing my annual module review forms for 2014-15 and so I’m being asked, by the form, to note any examples of “good practice” in the way I’m delivering the material. Now obviously I’d hope all of my teaching practice was good, but I take the question to actually mean “what do you do… Continu
PhD Space is hard I’ve been writing up the methodology section of my PhD, and in what is becoming a recurring theme in writing things up it’s caused me to go back over some things I read ages ago and get a fresh perspective on them. Today that fresh perspective is about what everybody else has been doing in… Continue
PhD Who are the hyperlocal producers? I’ve previously touched on some of the different profiles of people who make hyperlocal media in a post I wrote a long time ago. I’ve since been off doing other things that have brought me full circle back to the question of who is making hyperlocal media. In my PhD project my theoretical framework
Learning & Teaching Collaborative Learning in Media Education What seems like a very long time ago now indeed Paul Bradshaw, Jennifer Jones, and I ran a project we called Stories and Streams — an attempt to address a number of problems we were finding in the way that our students “consumed” their learning. In the project we sought to engage students in the des
fandom Fan, Fiction, and Twitter I happened to find this piece today buried deep in my archives: it’s a case study that was included in the textbook we use with undergraduates at the Birmingham School of Media — Media Studies: Texts, Production, Context — and it summarises the work I did with Inger-Lise Bore on the Twitter activiti
film This isn’t the Star Wars VII teaser review you’re looking for Sorry to be that guy and launch another review of The Force Awakens trailer that literally nobody asked for, but I felt millions of voices cry out and I just had to join them. Hopefully soon we will all be suddenly silenced. So a lot of people are picking apart this trailer shot by shot… Continue re
Disrupt me, bro GE15 gets a kickstart We’ve just passed 100-day day on the election countdown, and while once again we’ll find voices calling it as the “social media election” (despite previous elections making the same claims) the thing that’s caught my eye is that it seems to be the crowd funding election. First it was the Greens, cro
Running Night running (deserves a quiet night) Sometimes I think “I need a head torch” but then the road opens out from the woods and I’m running across the top of Blackroot Pool. The thin slither of new moon, the stars, and I’m a mile or more from traffic in any direction. It’s just me and the road through Sutton Park, and… Continue reading Nig
Disrupt me, bro No coding necessary — for your free audiobook download I’ve just started listening to the podcast Criminal, having heard about it when it joined the Radiotopia collective. It’s good, you’d like it, especially if you’re jonesing for Serial. But that’s not what I’m talking about right now. I’ve listened through the first couple of episodes, when the show
what I have been reading Getting in on the ground floor I’m a terribly safe reader. I stick to authors I know until I have a solid recommendation for a new one. Last week though I got to the end of the book I was reading and saw a tweet about The Girl on the Train that got my interest. My book had ended on a… Continue reading Getting in on the ground flo
what I have been watching Mockingbird Cinema, Custard Factory I hadn’t realised that the theatre space at Custard Factory had opened again and is poised to do lots of interesting things (because basically, I don’t get out much so I don’t find out things). A friend had his birthday party there last night (he rented the screen, we watched Top Secret, it was a gr
what I have been listening to Glengarry, Glen Cars I didn’t quite get into Serial hipster-early, but I just got the jump on the popular rush after a few people who really like podcasts tipped me off. Inevitably when they did they all said “…from the guys at This American Life.” And I wasn’t hip to that either. Well, today it was time to… Continue re
Disrupt me, bro Highs & lows street Today I had to do a lot of business with various companies on “the high street” and was struck by just how far we’ve come with remediating the Internet back into physical shops. Beyond all the obvious stuff about unexpected items in bagging areas, and outside of the economic discussion about cost cu
wtf Veg, part 2 So, I have an allotment now. It’s on White Farm Road, which is near the house. The Four Oaks Allotments are on a split site with the other plots around the corner on Four Oaks Common Road. We have our own social club with a club house that people can hire for things. It’s all pretty sweet. SHARE T
what I have been reading Veg, part 1 I’ll never be a vegetarian but I’m not the sort of boorish meat eater who claims he hasn’t had a meal if it doesn’t bleed. And so it goes I like vegetarian cookbooks and my absolute favourite ones are written by people like me: card carrying carnivores. SHARE THIS: * Share * * Twitter [http
design Pull the pull-quotes on mobile Today I was reading a very long read on my mobile and I kept on getting my flow broken by pull-quotes that had no right to be there. What’s a pull-quote? Well, here’s a useful definition and description from Magazine Designing: (A) Pull-quote is a display element which is used to attract the reader
Disrupt me, bro Statutory Notices for the 21st Century When, in the opening pages of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the people of Earth protest about the planned demolition of their planet, Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz replies: There’s no point in acting surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display at your loca
these are my words But what are you sorry for? My anxieties about the #FoxNewsFacts meme spilled over when Pete Ashton provided a really crucial critique of Emerson’s apology for the lies he pedalled on Fox News: Worth remembering, in these complex times, that a heartfelt apology and charitable donation does not cure one of alarmist racist bigot
