Uncomfortable

I'm writing this blog because I'm just not comfortable regurgitating other people's blogs without saying anything of interest. If you want to know what other people think, look at their blogs - not mine. The whole blog exercise seems to be a giant aggregator for lazy people. Just by quoting other people's blogs doesn't achieve anything in my opinion. I always thought that the golden rule of journalism is that you don't plagiarise. The task we've been set is just plagiarism to me e.g. "Ooh look what Guido Fawkes said. Isn't it interesting. Some other guy takes another view. Wow". Pointless.

Many essays I've been asked to write require me to regurgitate what van Ginneken/Tumber/Ward/McNae has said in their books. For law, I can see the logic in this. But the university system seems so intent on demonstrating that you have read something that there is little critical thinking or analysis of the issues asked about. A lot of this course is impractical in the workplace, for example learning about foreign journalism. When we graduate, if and when we get a job in journalism, unless we are fluent in Chinese, it is incredibly doubtful that for our first job, we will be posted out to Beijing to cover politics is it? Pointless in my opinion. I think the course needs to be much more practical lead e.g. produce 20 stories fit for a local weekly, see you in two weeks. If that doesn't promote self-generated stories, I have no idea what will. I know, let's learn about coffee house journalism. Or not.

On the first workshop we had for online journalism this semester, we were shown a slide quoting The Guardian's something editor. He was saying that student journalists must blog, and that he would enquire as to why student journo's don't blog. Why doesn't he want journalists that just write well? If I was an editor, I couldn't give a monkeys toss if they blogged about the news or not - as long as they could write a coherent story quickly and efficiently.

Anyway, now that's over with. I bought the Sunday Times today, and on page 3 was an article about how the government are trying to stop freshers' weeks full of drinking. The article contained the best quote ever.

"Professor Oliver James, a liver disease specialist and head of the medical faculty at Newcastle University, told Gordon Brown that he was “appalled” by the quantity of drinking during freshers’ week at his university.
“Students are being positively encouraged to go out and get blind drunk for a fortnight during freshers’ week,” said James."

That's a hell of a lot of drinking to fit into a week there, James. And I always thought a fortnight meant two weeks! Silly me!

I watched The Politics Show as well today. The main piece was about the price of alcohol, with the opening point being that beer is now cheaper than water, implying that consumers are thinking: "Actually, forget the water, beer's cheaper!". Not the best argument I've ever heard.

Goodbye for now...I've got to make being in £9000 worth of debt seem worth it.

Ben