Telegraph, you’re fired
You know that spring is in the air when the days are getting longer, the weather is getting warmer, and everyone stops organising social events on Wednesdays. The fifth series of The Apprentice starts tonight, which means forsaking all others for a midweek date with Sir Alan Sugar until June.
Anita Shah gets fired two hours too early by Telegraph.co.uk
I was looking forward to watching the first episode until I made the mistake of turning to Telegraph.co.uk for a news fix this evening. The paper’s Twitter feed directed me towards a bold headline that announced “Anita Shah ‘gutted’ to be fired by Sir Alan”. The story went on to explain that “last night’s episode on BBC One, in which Sir Alan revealed someone had ‘bottled it’ before the cameras had started rolling, saw the hard work start immediately” before giving a blow-by-blow account of the first show.
Which is all very well, except the story was published online almost two hours before the programme was actually screened.
Why Saturdays are the new Sundays
Saturdays are on the verge of overtaking Sundays as my favourite morning of the week. It has nothing to do with the length of the lie-in, the quantity of tea consumed or what’s on T4. Instead, it all rests on what there is to read over those extra cups of Earl Grey.
Six new sections: the redesigned Saturday Times
Thanks to the heady combination of The Observer, the Sunday Times and the Mail on Sunday, I have always considered the day of rest to be my favourite day of reading material. But since its relaunch in January, the revamped Saturday Times has been giving these Sunday stalwarts a run for their money (and not just because it’s cheaper).
You might have found this blog by searching for journalism. You might have been brought here by my observations on politics, multimedia, the law, public relations or the European Union. But statistically, you probably found it looking for a Lamborghini.
Click me baby one more time: search engines love Spears
That’s right. Despite the hours that have gone into carefully crafted blog posts on everything from Andrew Marr to marmosets, the vehicle most likely to bring traffic to my blog is the Lamborghini Gallardo. I unwittingly parked one in a post about celebrity blogging in December, and since then around 800 visitors to my site got here as a result of searching for the supercar. In second place in the search statistics comes Lucinda Ledgerwood from The Apprentice, and taking a feeble third place is my own name.
Snow news day
Every bus driver in London has his feet up with a cup of tea. Teachers and teenagers have swapped school work for snowball fights. Even judges and paramedics are reluctant to strap on their snow boots. We’re walking in a winter wonderland, but only if our journeys are strictly necessary.
An appropriate sign at Berkhamsted Castle
I knew I was snowed in before I had even opened the curtains this morning. Overnight, Twitter users had traced the falling of every flake, and their updates were beamed to my BlackBerry the moment my alarm went off. As dawn broke, people across the country were sharing their snowy snaps with the BBC and Channel 4, who in turn shared them with TV viewers and web watchers. The Guardian has even taken to live blogging the weather.
Fashion, food and working for free
My blog posts this month may not have been as frequent as normal, but I’m not dead. I’m not lazy. I’m not even suffering from an extended New Year hangover. I’m simply at the cutting edge of blogging fashion, according to the Sunday Times.
Slow down: the road to blissful blogging?
Slow blogging is the organic cuisine of blogging; the crash diet for RSS readers; the anti-Twitter. According to Todd Sieling’s Slow Blog Manifesto, it means blogging little and often and ”speaking like it matters, like the pixels that give your words form are precious and rare”.
Fiery skies in Florida
Here’s the sun setting on 2008 and shining on 2009 as seen from Miami, South Florida.
For more images of fiery skies and festivities from my winter break in Miami, visit me at Flickr.
Last sunset of 2008 over the Bay of Biscayne
Sun shining on South Beach
First sunset of 2009 from our balcony
Broadening horizons in Brussels
There was the time that the water to a luxury hotel got cut off just as 30 jetlagged journalists pulled up outside. Then there was the time an editor turned up to tea with a tantrum-stricken toddler in tow. And then there were the no-shows, the demanding divas and the fearsome freeloaders. During my days as an overworked PR girl, I came to think of press trips as the equivalent of school trips for people who are old enough to drink and in possession of their own passports.
But my recent visit to Brussels was my first experience of a press trip from the perspective of a journalist on a jolly. Thanks to the European Commission, I spent three days in blustery Belgium, learning about the EU from the inside out and enjoying meetings, meals and mingling, without having to organise any of it.
Flying the flag in Brussels
As part of the European Journalism Centre’s superb introduction to reporting on the EU, we chatted about communication challenges with the BBC’s Mark Mardell, pondered PR problems over lunch with British Government spokeswoman Victoria Courtney, mingled with the press corps at the Commission’s midday briefing and much more – all before dinner and discussions with Bruno Waterfield from The Daily Telegraph.
Props in the European Commission's TV studios
I stepped onto the Eurostar at St. Pancras with a vague idea for an EU story and an even vaguer idea of the bits and bobs that went on in Brussels. I came home with a clutch of semi-formed feature ideas, an enhanced understanding of everything European, and a supply of Belgian chocolates that should last until after Christmas.
For more images of Brussels, visit me at Flickr.
The sweet streets of Brussels
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