Blurred Keys

UPDATE: The winners for 2009 3 Student Media Awards, Smedias, are now here.

The Irish student media awards, the Three Smedias, were held in Tripod last night, bellow are the all the winners (in bold and orange) followed by the other nominees…

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The National Union of Journalists’ magazine, Journalist, has gone online, with at least the April edition only being distributed in digital form.

While the publication was previously only posted to NUJ members, it can now be viewed at thejournalist.org.uk.

A PDF version is also downloadable, and is designed for printing in A4.

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The Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland will hear the case of restaurant review which was said to be defamatory by a jury last year.

The review of the ‘Goodfellas’ Italian restaurant in west Belfast was published in the Irish News newspaper in 2000.

Last February, £25,000 in damages was awarded against the newspaper to restaurant owner Ciaran Convery,
who said the review was a "hatchet job".

Meanwhile, the reviewer, Caroline
Workman, said it was "completely honest", the Irish News said the case "raises
profound questions involving the freedom of the press", while the NUJ called the result “disturbing”. The appeal is due to be heard on Wednesday. (Via Greenslade)

Northern Ireland blog, threethousandversts.blogspot.com, asks if, with problems such as community divides, could Northern Ireland sustain a quality newspaper.

The Unionist blogger also appears to have strong views on the IN&M-owned Belfast Telegraph…

Could NI sustain a quality newspaper? I don’t know but I hate the fecking Belfast Telegraph!

The standard of local newspapers in Northern Ireland is deplorably bad. I refer not to the frequently hilarious “man urinates in main street” ‘local-local’ newspapers from the various regions of the province, but rather what passes for our “national” journalism.

UTV recived a package last week containing bullets along with the personal details of a Belfast newspaper editor.

Death threats were also aimed at the press officer of Gerry Adams and several members of Sinn Fein.

MORE: Irish editor receives death threat in post

The new National Union of Journalists code of conduct as a result of the union’s recent ADM has been published at nuj.org.uk, here.

Also worth noting are pages on ‘Membership Responsibilities‘, and what the NUJ classes as ‘The Public Interest‘.

‘Sue Denham’ makes a valid point about how YouTube.ie, the YouTube Ireland portal, has been looking rather O’Irish since it was launched recently.

However, the pseudonym column in the Irish edition of the Sunday Times makes no reference to how the newspaper’s online Irish section is looking these days, rather empty that is (as pictured above).

As we’ve said before the Ireland section has been offline since the relaunch of timesonline.co.uk, it’s not often a week goes by where somebody questions where it has gone to, or will it be coming back.

Independent News & Media relaunched the Belfast-based Community Telegraph on May 31, but it looks like no outsourcing is needed here.

Roy Greenslade has details of how four diffrent geographical editions of the Telegraph have just one journalist; they do it all from reporting, taking photographs, sub pages, and publish the paper online too.

"The benefit of this is that we have huge ‘ownership’ of the
paper, flexibility and no breakdown in communication with subs,
photographers, etc. On the downside, we have constraints on the time
spent writing stories, because of all the other responsibilities" said a reported who emailed Greenslade.

"From a purely financial point of view, it must be an immensely lucrative option to management, as we are paid the same wage as a regular reporter, yet do the jobs of four people in a traditional newspaper".

The differences in news reading styles
at RTE and Sky are outlined by the Dublin-based BalconyTV.com in the below video…

Viewers should note that the
video may be distasteful to those of a sensitive (or too sensible) nature after
01:40.

BalconyTV.com which uses YouTube is shot from a balcony of an apartment on Dame Street in Dublin. The show which is about 5mins long, but varies in time, is normally host to musical acts. It won the best music website at the Digital Music Awards 2007.

A blog is after all only a publishing system, although digital and versatile their content can vary in similar ways to newspapers or magazines…

There’s nothing stopping a local newspaper using blogging software for publishing news, as what is been done at the Buckinghamshire Advertiser in the UK (vie BuzzMachine). In Ireland, that role is somewhat being filled by bloggers like the Limerick Blogger, but no local newspapers are at it yet.

Meanwhile, the Economist use their ‘the Inbox‘ blog to publish readers’ letters “soon after receipt”.

In off-line conversation somebody questioned the importance we attached to the recent news that the Irish Times are the first national Irish newspaper to start blogging.

There are two reasons to highlight the story; the Irish media are miles behind the media in the UK and other countries when it comes to blogging (partly understandable due to Ireland’s low broadband penetration) and the Irish Times look to be serious about their new project with journalists Jim Carroll, Conor Pope, Shane Hegarty and more to be announced blogging on Ireland.com.

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