Posts by Russell Brown
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Christchurch felt threatening when I lived there and any time I've visited since. I can imagine that might have been enough to keep me inside especially if I were older or other than pale-skinned. And I'm sure there are parts of Auckland, Wellington and other places where I'd feel the same. Just not necessarily right in the middle of town, and not quite so consistently.
I have to agree. The Christchurch CBD unnerves me even in daylight. I've never been approached by so many creepy critters blagging money and cigarettes in Auckland.
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I'm reminded of somebody you once hosted in the Speaker section - Young his last name was perhaps - who mounted the most appalling defence of the Tony Blair legacy, saying among other things that the critics of Iraq should just get over it already. A couple of people, front pagers if my memory doesn't fail me, immediately chimed in to praise the eloquence and prose, making the obviously delibrate choice of ignoring the content, and how it was framed. Surely we can look at those things too?
Oh yeah: this one from Joseph Young. I didn't particularly buy it, but he's a student: whatcha gonna do?
I can't find the praise you recall though. It was pre-System so there weren't any comments.
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Vague as hell (although I'm sure she is less so in her actual research). The Phelan piece was a lot more concrete and to the point.
Fair enough then. I'm over being (ahem) curmudgeonly about Phelan's paper, which doesn't mean I believe he has proved his point, still less questioned how own perspective or seriously considered why du Fresne or Trotter might think and write as they do.
What I did like about Thomas's paper is that she presented some actual evidence of a problem -- the students don't seem to know how to appropriately write a news story any more.
I'm less sure about her analysis of the problem: it occurred to me that the pastoral attentions of an experienced sub-editor might be a bigger influence on journalistic development than is presently acknowledged. Given the movement to outsource subbing by the big print publishers, that would be a problem. I recall the first story I got back from the subs -- certain illusions about my ability sustained damage.
In the case of the Media7 programme, Phelan correctly noted that it didn't quite match its billing, but ignored the event that the show did end up focusing on (an examination of the media where they forgot to invite journalists).
For Phelan the very question of "the sometimes uneasy relationship between journalism and academe" is itself the product of hegemon. But it's actually something that educators wrestle with all the time.
Liminal dude Jim Tucker on becoming director of the JTO in 2005:
Among [Tucker's] questions are: What are our high schools doing to turn students away from journalism as a hot career choice? Where is New Zealand's Bachelor of Journalism? Or our Master of Journalism programme? And who exactly should be teaching future journalists their craft - academics under pressure to do research or teachers with newsroom experience?
He says the major journalism schools are under pressure to take more students to help meet their ever rising costs. "What impact is that and the pressure for teachers to be academics having on the quality of journalism graduates? Is there significance in the outcome of last year's Qantas Journalism Student of the Year Award, which saw first and second go to two of the smallest schools in the country? One such result may mean nothing, but let's watch for a trend."
Tucker believes more work needs to be done to ensure that journalism training continues after graduates start in the industry: "I make that judgement from the appalling standard of writing I came across at the coalface of one of our major national newspapers last year. This was work produced by graduates from various J schools. It was poorly constructed, ignored basic grammatical rules, lacked clarity, was often unreadable."
People who teach journalists do worry about craft, and they have a right to.
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And I I like this from the 2003 JEANZ paper by Frank Morgan of the University of Newcastle in Australia:
The arts of media practice require us to master three kinds of knowledge.
• We need a body of professional knowledge, including production skills. Above all else, we must be able express ourselves clearly and cogently in our chosen medium – be it words or sounds or pictures or the various combinations of them embodied in various media forms.
• We need a body of contextual knowledge – the industrial, legal, political, social and cultural milieux in which we will work. And
• We need to know something about something else – the subject matter that we will report or analyse, comment upon or dramatise.
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The paper presented by AUT's Ruth Thomas at December's JEANZ conference, based on her PhD work, makes some points similar to Phelan's, but more persuasively.
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Hey, I've lost all my money. Can I come home and fuck that up for you lot, too?
Regrettably, the prick still has plenty of money for his purposes.
It would, however, be nice if the Herald stopped treating him like some kind of oracle. Really.
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yeah, sure, but I think we're talking about different things here. I was replying to danielle's 'knowing history' line.
for mine, life experience is far more useful when you're face to face with the mother of a dead child than an understanding of what some French philosopher has to say on deconstructionalism.
It's often overlooked how much of journalism is interacting with people, sometimes in unusual circumstances. My experience certainly helps me conduct myself better.
But I do think having some key historical narratives in your head is useful in doing many kinds of journalism (not least, running media panel discussions on TV shows). At the least, you know where to start in the clippings file. You'll also see angles and make connections that aren't immediately obvious.
Of course, much of that is a product of age and experience. I'm okay with political basic political history from about 1972. Before that's a blur ...
That's why the exodus from journalism by experienced practitioners is such a concern.
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Someone, possibly Robert or Megan, might be able to explain to me why Chch has both St Andrew's (College) and Christ's, because for humour purposes they do both seem to fill the same role, and I've never been able to work out what the difference is.
I think Christ's is nominally Anglican, and St Andrew's is Presbyterian/Scots. St Bede's is for the Mickey Doolans, as they say.
Christchurch likes to see itself as upstanding, but it always seems to have had a deviant underbelly. Bill Direen reckons it can thank the working-class Irish for that.
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You had to do that voice over at least three times before you could stop giggling right?
Nah. Pretty much nailed first take. I'm a pro.
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Bugger the postmodernists*: I'd just like young journalists to know useful contextual things like history. It helps.
I think there's also great benefit in either working outside the bubble before starting in journalism, or taking a break and doing something else in the course of a career.
To say that it offers helpful perspective to have been something other than a journalist is putting it mildly.
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