Another side to my industry...

Photograph by Richard Aird

Last night I went to a talk at Newcastle City Library by Simon Donald and Geoff Laws and heard about a side of the journalism industry that I had never considered before - that of cartoons.

When I was younger, the first and only thing I used to do was look at the cartoon page - they are what attracted me to newspapers.

Photograph by Eleventh Earl of Mar

Simon Donald talked about setting up Viz magazine and what it meant to him. It was interesting to hear about how the magazine that has become a North East institution was running at a loss at first.

Geoff Laws discussed how he got into the cartoon industry and how hard it was to work on page layouts in comparison to the use of computer programmes which are used in industry today. He also mentioned the tight deadlines which he had to meet on a daily basis while working for the Journal.

I didn't know what to expect from this event as I had never been to anything like it before. The talk, which was part of Local History Month, was conducted in the style of a chat show with the pair asking each other questions, answering questions and telling funny stories about life in Newcastle during the 1970's and 1980's along the way.

Despite the talk of dreaded deadlines, the event made me more excited that I will be going into such an interesting and demanding industry which is so unpredictable.

Bloggers "inadequate, pimpled, single"

Photograph by funkypancake

I have just come from a lecture in which my lecturer contradicted himself big time.

He started by commending a person in the lecture for his work on BlogPreston, he said that he was very impressed by the site.

In the lecture we were talking about specialist journalists, those in the industry who write about one particular thing such as sport, health education or fashion and he mentioned blogs.

He said he wouldn’t trust a blogger over an established journalist as he doesn't want to read the opinions of someone who is not a trusted journalist. He practically agreed with what Andrew Marr said last month when he described bloggers as "inadequate, pimpled and single."

This contradicts almost everything I have been taught over the last year and a half!

Firstly in another module we were told to set up a blog and that blogging is an important tool in the changing world of journalism. Also I have always been told by an editor of a local newspaper that if you can't get work published somewhere publish it yourself so that is what I do in my blog.

After saying that he wouldn’t trust a blogger the lecturer gave us some tips on how to become a good specialist journalist and guess what one of his suggestions was.....

That we write a blog!!!

He either thinks blogging is a good idea or doesn't - he can’t have it both ways!

As for Andrew Marr's opinions on Blogging and citizen journalism, if it wasn't for the latter, news companies like the BBC wouldn’t have had many of the news stories such as the 7/7 bombings that they have had as quickly if it wasn’t for citizen journalists.

Also I am a blogger, I am not pimpled, I have been told that I have good skin on a few occasions, also I am not single. Finally and most importantly, I should hope that I am not inadequate as I am paying a lot of money for my journalism degree and I wouldn’t be doing so if I thought my degree would be wasted!