I've got the Smoke Alarm Blues

What is it with smoke alarms? Have you ever known one to have a flat battery during the day? Our one decided that 3 am was the best time to let us know it was feeling a bit unwell. Cursing smoke alarm designers for the on-board clock function, I tried to ignore it but it's chirrup was too persistent, but only until I turned the light on to try to fix it. Then it stopped.

Thinking a truce had been declared, I turned the light off again only for the chirruping to start up again. Cursing smoke alarm designers for both the on-board clock and the light-deactivation function, I gave in and set off to the garage to get

Commenting On Comments

The Courier-Mail published a story this morning about a man dying of a heart attack due to delays in an ambulance being dispatched to him. As a former paramedic it's certainly a story that interests me, though I don't want to comment on the actual case. I do have a few issues with the actual reporting of the story, for instance if an Intensive Care Paramedic and a medical officer are called for at 12.24pm and they show up at 12.35pm and 12.39pm respectively, then they've taken 11 and 15 minutes to get there, not 15-20 minutes as reported in the body of the story. 

In journalism classes, we've looked at how modern media has had to adapt to the

Curry But Not in a Hurry

Cyndi has plans for me later, she organised a date for me with Jamie Oliver. Well, one of his cook books anyway. Now, I don't mind Jamie Oliver, some people can't stand him, but I find him quite entertaining and I can usually produce a passable imitation of the dish that's shown in the book. He's a bit slack in the quantity measuring department but after a few beers, a lug of this or a handful of that makes perfect sense. I also like his somewhat fluid approach to ingredient choice. Chucking in some of "this" because I don't have any of "that" is perfect for the slightly inebriated home chef who can't pop out to the shops for more supplies.

I've been given the job of producing a

Agenda-setting in the Media

Traditional media has had a gate-keeping role regarding the news that's presented to us. Thousands of stories happen everyday but only some of them make it into our newspapers and onto our television screens; media organisations filter what we see. This filtering depends on a range of factors including the media organisation's own ideology and bias, pressure from outside interest groups such as political parties and even the journalist's own personal views. Sometimes it'll depend on what other organisations are reporting on; even newspapers bow to peer pressure and follow the herd. 

Modern mass media experts now describe agenda-setting as a two layered process. The first layer refers to how the amount of coverage an issue is given in the media can change people's perception of how important that issue really is. This idea is often referred to as one in which the media doesn't tell people what to think, but it does tell people what to think about. If people see lots of media coverage about youth crime then they will tend to think that this is a major problem even if that may not actually be the case. Conversely, if the media doesn't give much coverage to an issue such a famine in Africa for example, people may not consider it to be important.

The second layer of agenda setting looks at how a story is presented; at how the media decides to focus attention on parts of a story that it decides are salient or important. To get a better understanding of this concept, I read a journal article that looked at the Australian media's coverage of

Beer Break!

Congratulations to my wife, Cyndi, she's now a qualified naturopath. Today's blog is going to have to be a seriously short one as I've been forced to drink celebratory beer from the minute I got home from Townsville and now this keyboard seems to have a life of it's own. I don't even know why I'm drinking, I should be working hard in my brand new role of press secretary and social media director. The first few weeks at uni have certainly highlighted that today's journalist needs to have the skills to produce content for a whole range of media, not just newspapers.  Social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook are ideal platforms to promote a small business, I just need to convince her that the best way to promote her business is to buy that new camera I want...

Plenty of Reason, Just No Sense

Today I thought I'd share another piece of the multimedia journalism student's university experience. This photo was taken in the sound lab today and it's an image of a piece of music production software called Reason. Believe me, at times, that seems to be the least reasonable thing anyone should have called it. It's a digital audio workstation or DAW, and it's a music making machine for

My View From The Library

Today the blog has gone mobile. I'm exploring the different ways that social media and technology can be used for reporting so today I'm blogging using my phone from the library on the JCU campus in Townsville. And yes, I have my library socks on.

Now some people can type quite well with the iPhone's keyboard. If you're one of them, then I'm sorry, but I hate you. If I don't watch what I'm doing the combination of my fat little fingers and auto correct turns my texts into

The Townsville Trip.

In a few hours I'll make my weekly migration down to Townsville. The car's loaded with all the stuff I'll need down there, my books, my laptop, my clothes. I've got my staple Townsville diet of two minute noodles, despite my naturopath wife saying I'd get more nutritional value from eating the boxes they come in.

I've downloaded some podcasts of my political science lectures to listen to on the drive down, though I'm not sure if that's really a good way to keep me alert, the text book puts me to sleep faster than chloroform. The FM radio reception is pretty bad after

Twittering About Tweeting

Now, I don't want your eyes glazing over but I want to talk to you about ....Twitter. Yes, yes, you don't use, you've no need for it, you're not interested in what other people had for breakfast.  I thought that once but I've certainly changed my mind in the past few weeks. For my journalism course we had to set up a Twitter account and have to tweet (see, four weeks in and I've picked up the lingo already) about news that interests us, as well post updates about our blog pages. Now, even if you're not doing a journalism degree, you still might be interested in the latest news and Twitter is certainly an easy way to find it. There's a lot of it on there.

Last week I submitted my first journalism assignment, a media diary where I logged my media use for ten days then 

I've got the HP Blues

My desk-top computer and I have...issues. I foolishly bought it a few years ago, falling for it's good looks rather than it's intellect. The HP TouchSmart 300 hasn't been quite the winner that I'd hoped. I fell for it's big touch screen, and for a little while happily swiped through web pages and photo albums, it was like having a giant iPhone to play with. Constantly cleaning the screen to get the fingerprints off was a pain but a price I was willing to pay, then I encountered a little problem that even I can't blame the HP engineers for. 

Retail Therapy For The Poor: You're a uni student now...

Before I was an unemployed uni student, back when I had a job and money, a trip to the shops often involved shopping for something fun and exciting like an iPad or a new camera. Today's shopping trip was to buy one of those little gadgets that spread a metal clip open so you can clip your papers together.

In my political science tutorial we have to be prepared to present a journal article that loosely (come on, we're first year students!) relates to what's been covered in that week's lecture. Next week we're covering political ideology and I've found a paper that compares

News Values

In our journalism class this week we looked at news values, the things that make news important enough to be news. We covered the cult of celebrity, looked at drama and quirkiness and considered the way in which news needs to have some degree of proximity to us to be considered newsworthy. Our lecturer Marie used the example of how after an overseas plane crash, local news agencies will always mention Australian casualties. While Hurricane Sandy was battering New York, local media used the fact that footy star Jonathan Thurston was coincidently visiting the city, to try to add an Australian connection to their story, something I found superfluous considering the size and impact of the main story. (In relation to Marie's point, I often find myself sarcastically muttering "that's all right then" after hearing that 400 people have died but none of them were Australian.)

Timeliness was also mentioned. A story has to be new or at least have a new approach or angle to have news value, something that was certainly demonstrated to me yesterday as the day's news unfolded. 

Blogging revamp..

I've been reviewing the viewing figures for my uni blog this week and they're not looking very healthy. I'm not sure if I'm losing readers as the blogging novelty wears off and my classmates stop checking out each others blogs, or if it's because my blog posts are too boring!

In an effort to spice things up, I've redesigned look of the page, using page breaks to shorten each individual story so they appear neater when viewed (well, I think so anyway). I also plan to make the posts shorter but post more frequently, with more day-to-day content rather than trying to write articles.

My other plan is to link theses blogs to my personal Facebook page to increase my potential audience. I'll try this approach for a while and see how that goes. If any one has other suggestions, please let me know. 

Eyes in the sky, feet on the ground.

Marty standing next to the tracker, inset top, his aircraft in flight inset bottom, Marty's Bixler aircraft.

On Tuesday morning, I met two model aircraft enthusiasts named Marty and Kevin who were flying their planes out near Townsville's Ross River Dam. I was curious about the weird-looking tripod-mounted contraptions the men had, as well as the funny looking goggles the men wore. Kevin explained that the weird contraptions were actually trackers that followed the model's flight and relayed a video signal from a small on-board camera to tiny video monitors mounted in the goggles. In the model aircraft world this system is known as first person view or FPV.

Inverted Pyramid Writing Exercise

Here's my very short inverted pyramid story attempting to cover the who, what, where, when, why and how of Humpty Dumpty's great fall.

'Humpty Dumpty fell off a Toytown wall yesterday and despite the efforts of all the King's Horses and all the King's Men, he was unable to be put back together again. A witness to the incident said Mr Dumpty was "Just sitting on the wall and then fell." Police aren't treating his death as suspicious.'

Media Convergence: More than a notebook and pen...

This week in our journalism lecture, we looked at media convergence. For those of us studying multimedia journalism, it relates to our core purpose, it's what we're here to learn. 

In the book Convergent Journalism - An Introduction (Quinn and Filak: 2005) the authors say that modern journalists need to "think multiple media" and be comfortable working across several media platforms. Widespread adoption of high-speed broadband, coupled with fragmenting media audiences - asset rich, time poor users that want news when they're ready for it regardless of TV schedules or newspaper printing times - have created the need for multi-platform storytellers.

Sunscreen: Is nano a no no?

Australians have been told for years to "Slip, Slop, Slap" and applying sunscreen before going outside is now a daily ritual for many. Australia has the unenviable statistic of having the highest skin cancer rate in the world, and we are four times more likely to develop a skin cancer over any other form of cancer.

Traditional sunscreens have used zinc oxide and titanium dioxide as ingredients. These work by reflecting and scattering ultra violet radiation, however they leave a white residue on the skin. Sunscreen manufacturers have found that they can avoid this and produce a clear product by grinding the particles down until they are less than 10 microns small. These tiny pieces are called nano particles, and are thousands of times smaller than the width of a human hair.

Citizens or Consumers?

The growth of the internet has changed how print media does business. The traditional view of the newspaper tycoon using his wealth and media influence to pressure governments is changing, and while there is no doubt that Rupert Murdoch is still a very powerful figure, some would argue that these days making money is a more important consideration than political influence. Despite superficial media arguments over whether broadsheets are better than tabloids, or tabloid newspapers care more for their readers than the so-called quality papers, commercial media's chief concern is for it's profit margin.

Falling revenue from decreased advertising income has led to major cost cutting measures by newspapers, including

It's not my fault, I was drunk...

Did anyone see the 4 Corners episode called Punch Drunk on Monday? It examined the effects of just one of the 70 000 incidents of alcohol-related violence that are estimated to occur in Australia every year.

18 year old Sam Ford was out with his girlfriend one night in Coolangatta when he was attacked by a drunken stranger in the street and suffered a brain injury that has left him with profound disabilities. The program also explored the increased workload of these violent episodes on  police, paramedics and hospitals, and estimated that alcohol related violence costs the community $187 million each year

Paul Nicolaou, the CEO of the Australian Hotels Association (NSW) disagreed with the findings of studies that suggest