Puppy Dog Tales

Innisfail dog trainer Wendy Craven runs dog training courses using positive reinforcement methods to reward a dog for it's correct behaviour. I met with her a few weeks ago at the Innisfail Showground after I saw her card on a noticeboard and rang her for a chat about dog training. She was running a one-on-one training session and invited me along to watch. Wendy says she's been involved in canine training in one form or another for around thirty years now and has been running her TOP DogS training courses for the past six years.  

This type of training was initially developed for dolphin training and later adapted for use with other animals, and involves signalling to the dog using a small clicker, and then once the dog has done the desired task, rewarding it with a small treat. The technique uses only positive reinforcement, there wasn't a choke chain in sight.

Wendy offers a range of classes, including a puppy class where dogs learn to socialise with each other and practice basic tasks such as learning to sit, walk and stay. More advanced courses continue the clicker training and dogs learn better walking behaviour as well as practice longer stays at greater distances. 

Wendy says it's important to build a bond between the handler and the dog. She showed me how well the technique works with her 6 month old working kelpie, Gidgee. A small piece of food was placed on the ground in front of Gidgee and it was obvious that she really wanted to eat it but she resisted the temptation. Wendy says this type of training is important and can prevent an inquisitive puppy from getting too close to toads and snakes.

Wendy Craven and Gidgee

If you're interested in Wendy's dog training classes, she can be reached on 0418 871 982.

Sunday Morning in Port Douglas

Port Douglas this morning. The after effects of the night before. And no, nothing to do with me. Would you believe drinking in public places including roads and on public footpaths in Queensland is prohibited under the Liquor Act 1992 and carries a $110 on-the-spot-fine. Doesn't bother some people, obviously.

War: What is it Good For?

This week in our journalism lecture we looked at war and disaster reporting. Marie spoke of the dangers involved, both physical and psychological, and the problems of remaining impartial when journalists are embedded with military units and rely on them for protection.

Over the last century the role of the war correspondent has evolved from a soldier with a camera or typewriter under direct military command to a civilian journalist either working as a freelancer or for a news organisation. 

Military control over reporting has also changed. Previously, stories that arrived back home were filtered through military censors and editorial systems supportive of the war effort and were usually up-beat stories of how the war was being won

During the Vietnam War  this began to change. Accredited civilian journalists were given an honorary military rank and were allowed great freedom in their ability to move around the war zone, hopping on and off military transport as space allowed. Photographers and journalists could be in the middle of a jungle firefight and yet still be back in Saigon in time for drinks a few hours later. This freedom, along with improvement in communications systems, meant that TV viewers back in the US could see the death and destruction of war for themselves the very next day. Journalists were also no longer relying on military press releases for their information. They'd seen first hand how events had unfolded in the field and began to doubt the official record on how well the war was going. This discontent spread to the American people and the US government started to lose support for the war.

The negative Vietnam War reportage led military commanders to try to limit reporting during the invasion of Iraq in 1991 and Afghanistan in 2001. Strong media criticism followed and so the US military began the practice of embedding journalists with military units in the field for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Many questioned the impartiality of these reporters, who now relied on the soldiers around them for food, transport and safety. John Pilger's 2010 documentary "The War You Don't See" is also heavily critical of the role the media has played in recent times, a media that seemingly never questioned the evidence presented by US and British governments in their justification for war.

Of course, the problems of being allowed to get close enough to the action to report is not new.  Martha Gellhorn, already a seasoned war correspondent who'd reported on the horrors of the Spanish Civil War and the Japanese invasion of China, had problems getting access to the front line in 1944. US army public relations officers felt women needed to be kept away from these areas. Gellhorn had other ideas and smuggled herself on-board a hospital ship to witness the Normandy invasion for herself, and later reported on the atrocities of Dachau. She was also a correspondent in Vietnam. Highly critical of the US war machine, her reports from that time are still powerful pieces of journalism.

If you want to read some great war and conflict reporting I'd suggest Gellhorn's "The Face of War" and "Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq" by Dahr Jamail. If you want to read about photojournalists then try "The Bang-Bang Club" by Greg Marinovich and Joao Silva. The authors and their friends, Ken Oosterbroek and Kevin Carter, were photographers covering the township wars in South Africa during the early 1990s. And of course, read and watch John Pilger!

I Don't Believe It

I don't want to turn my blog into my daily whinge (though it's starting to look that way with the recent poo-paddling story and my Jetstar woes yesterday) but I'm going to have a moan anyway. I was quite horrified at the behaviour of some of my classmates during my two lectures today. 

I don't really care what anyone does during the lecture if it doesn't disrupt anyone else. Look at Facebook, check your emails, play your games, even read your novel, just don't sit and talk to your friend all the way through it. 

This morning two guys behind me chatted through the photography lecture, then this afternoon two girls had a lovely conversation during political science. And this time it's not just me having a Victor Meldrew moment, some of the other older class members weren't happy either with the disrespect shown. If you don't want to be in the lecture, don't go. If you want to have a loud heart-to-heart with your friend, go and do it in the library like everyone else.

Whinge over, until next time, I'll go and have my medication now. 

Not Giving Up Without a Flight

When I was a kid, I was always fascinated how someone could walk into the travel agents and book a flight for sometime in the next year. The next year! By some curious trickery, the airline could say where and when their jumbo jet was going to be months in advance, they'd even tell you to the minute when it was going to take off. I couldn't figure out if I'd be doing maths or PE later that afternoon, how were they so organised?

Well, years later, older but not necessarily wiser, I've learnt that their trickery was just someone with crossed fingers and a spreadsheet, and that planes don't take off on time, in fact sometimes they dont even take off at all. Jetstar JQ926 from Brisbane to Cairns this morning for example, was cancelled due to unforseen mechanical problems. Of course, you know who was supposed to be sitting in 10D don't you?

OK, not the end of the world but a pain in the butt for sure. The cynic in me wonders if it really was my plane that had the mechanical problems or if another plane on a more important route such as Brisbane to Sydney or Brisbane to Melbourne actually had the problems. We can't keep important business people waiting, lets ditch the tourists instead. Or maybe the flight was only half full and they thought they'd save some money by cancelling it.

There's only one way to find out and as soon as I get to the airport, I'll be requesting copies of their maintenance logs and flight manifests. It'll give me something to read while I wait for my new, and most likely delayed, flight to take off.

In the Sh*t Again

I knew something was wrong before I even walked into the room. The smell gave it away. The stench of human excrement isn't totally unexpected in a public toilet but it is certainly surprising to smell it in the shopping centre corridor outside.

Inside, someone had managed to poo all over the floor of one of the cubicles. A length of toilet paper led the eye nicely from the cubicle to another brown patch just outside the door. Now, I'm not saying I'm the most observant person in the world but the smell and the toilet paper were good enough clues for me to think that I should probably watch where I put my feet. Maybe Gen Y nostrils aren't as sensitive as mine because the smart looking young salesman that followed me into the toilets was oblivious to the danger and marched straight through the mess, adding a hint of brown to his previously all-black outfit. The Man in Black was now the Man in Brown. Literally.

I went in search of the cleaner but he was nowhere to be found. Maybe he'd already seen the poo pile and had decided to quit rather than have to clean it up. My good citizen gene kicked in and I went off to find the phone number for centre management. That's when I found the source of the earlier noxious niff in the corridor, yet another brown land mine waiting for an unsuspecting foot. What the hell had this guy been eating?

I figured standing in the way of passing pedestrians was the easiest way to keep them out of the poo. It was certainly easier than giving a mind-the-crap-on-the-floor speech to everyone walking by, especially if there was a chance that they thought I was the culprit.

A cleaner eventually turned up and the air went from brown to blue when he found the enormity of the task our anonymous exploding male had left him. I'm also disappointed to report that the centre management's phone menu doesn't have an option of "in case of poo-related emergency, push number two".

Wax John, Wax Off : Randy's Charity Strip

If you're a very hairy man possibly the most painful way to raise money for charity is to be waxed. All over. In front of people. In a pub. And just to add insult to future injury, John "Randy" Urquhart hadn't even been drinking when he decided to do it.

When I spoke to John yesterday, I asked him about the motivation behind his Wax John, Wax Off campaign in which he aims to raise at least $5000 for children's charity Variety. "I was looking at ways to support two mates who were doing a four wheel drive tour to raise money for Variety and had the idea of being waxed. People are always commenting on how hairy I am, I thought I'd make them put their money where their mouths are and get people to donate. And believe it or not, I was sober at the time " Randy said.

John's a paramedic with the Queensland Ambulance Service based at Northgate in Brisbane, and gets his nickname from his resemblance to Earl's crazy brother in the US comedy show, "My Name is Earl". His wife Elysha even has to ask for Randy when she rings the station as some of the other ambos don't associate him with "John". He said the QAS have been very supportive of his plans and gave permission for him to be photographed in uniform for the event's advertising.

John's big, and painful, day is 27 April 2013 at The Full Moon Hotel in Sandgate. The event starts at 6.30pm and will include a raffle, though probably not this author's suggestion of a "lucky-doormat prize" made out of the first wax strip to come off of Randy's back. He plans on a little Dutch courage prior to his depilation and says his main aim is not to scream out loud. 

John's encouraging people to go along to the Full Moon on the 27th and enjoy a meal and a few drinks and support him in his efforts. Take earplugs, the screams are going to  be awful.

For more details and donation information check out Wax John, Wax Off at the Variety website.

The Vocational Partnerships Group Open Day

As one of the country's leading youth service providers, the Vocational Partnerships Group have been helping disadvantaged young people for over 13 years. This morning the not-for-profit organisation held an open day at their new Innisfail office at 158a Edith Street.

The group runs Youth Connections, a program aimed at re-connecting vulnerable 14-18 year-olds with education by providing support tailored to an individual's particular needs. It assists students who are considering dropping out to develop the life skills and strategies that will allow them to stay in school. The program also helps those that have already dropped out of school to find work or further training opportunities. The new building has a computer room where young people can access typing or maths courses, or work on their resumes. It also has a kitchen where staff teach basic cooking skills. 

Diane Moorcroft of Vocational Partnerships Group at this morning's Open Day

The group will be opening their doors again tomorrow morning, 19 April 2013, between 10am-12pm and are happy to show people around the new building and explain more about the services they provide. 

                Vocational Partnerships Group, 158a Edith Street, Innisfail Phone:4061 7288

Carrie Smith (left) from Innisfail State School and Diane Moorcroft (right) of Vocational Partnerships Group work on a "Hands of Friendship" painting during the VPG Open Day

Carrie Smith from Innisfail State School adds her handprint to the "Hands of Friendship" painting during the VPG Open Day

Experimenting with Google Maps: Innisfail

Marie wanted us taking photographs this week so I thought I'd try combining a Google map with some iPhone photos I took yesterday. I originally just put the photos onto the map but they looked too small so I decided to add them to the post with a few extras photos too.

Crocodile water fountain, Warrina Lakes

Model train tracks at Warrina Lakes, Innisfail

View of the lake, Warrina Lakes

You'd think a sign wouldn't be needed looking at the colour of the water, Warrina Lakes

Windmill, Warrina Lakes

The Shire Hall, Innisfail

The Catholic Church, Innisfail
(I had one without the ute but liked this one better)

Waterfront down near the Johnstone River, Innisfail

Anzac Memorial, Innisfail

Anzac Memorial, Innisfail

Anzac Memorial, Innisfail

Boats on the Johnstone River, Innisfail
(The owner of the fishing rod also had a dog that was angrily telling me to go away)

The Canecutter Statue, Innisfail

The Jubilee Bridge

Looking west along Edith Street, Innisfail

Innisfail Court House

The Chinese Temple on Owen Street, Innisfail

The Chinese Temple on Owen Street, Innisfail

The Chinese Temple on Owen Street, Innisfail

Rankin St, Innisfail

Innisfail's Water Tower on Mourilyan Road

View Innisfail Photo Tour in a larger map

Storify and The Feast of the Senses

This is something I put together while learning to use Storify. It's a service that allows you to pull information from various social media sources and then link everything together into a story which is published on the Storify site. It can then also be posted into your blog posts. 

Innisfail Court House

Well, that was an interesting way to spend a few hours in Innisfail on a Monday morning. I took myself to court. I was researching a journalism assignment in the library last week and found a book on court reporting, which is something we have to do later in our training. I thought that as I've got the week off and didn't have to drive to Townsville for uni, I'd go and have a look at how things worked here in Innisfail.

I sat in on the Magistrates Court, the first tier of Queensland's court system where the less serious offences are dealt with such as traffic infringements and minor drug cases. When I did my ambulance training many years ago we had to attend Coroners Court and the District Court in Brisbane to watch the proceedings there but this was my first time in the Magistrates Court. 

Most of the sessions are open to the public. If you want to go and have a look, the dates are listed on the Queensland Courts website under Court calenders. When you get there just tell the security staff that you're a member of the public who wants to watch a court case and they'll show you where to go. Dress appropriately, turn your phone off and if the magistrate is in the court when you enter or leave, you're expected to give a nod of the head and shoulders towards the bench.

One of the reporters from the local paper was in court and I'm interested in seeing how the cases I saw are reported in Wednesday's paper. 

News Photography

This week in our journalism lecture we examined the use of photography in the media, discussed the elements of a good news photo and reviewed news values regarding photojournalism. I've long been fascinated by the work of photojournalists, not only do they have to consider the news aspects of a story, they have to juggle camera settings, lighting and composition all while getting as close as possible to the action.

Sometimes during war, they get too close. Injuries are common and the risk of death ever present. British photojournalist Tim Page was wounded four times in Vietnam and fellow Briton  Don McCullin was threatened with execution after being imprisoned by Idi Amin's troops in Uganda. He once avoided death after the camera he was putting to his face was hit by a bullet fired by a Cambodian sniper. Talented photojournalists killed in war zones include Robert Capa, Larry Burrows, Henri Huet, Sean Flynn and recently Chris Hondras and Tim Hetherington in Libya.

Not that the dangers of photojournalism are confined to war zones. Since the September 11 terrorist attacks, police officers and security guards have clashed with photographers over the rights photographers have when taking pictures in public places. During the London riots in 2011, rioters even targeted press photographers, fearing that photographs and video footage could be used by authorities to identify them.

We also looked at the ethical implications of photojournalism. Marie showed the Adnan Hajj photo of the aftermath of an Israeli bombing attack on Beirut to illustrate how digital imaging software can be used to manipulate a photo and put a different spin on a story. There are fierce arguments about the editing of news photographs, some regard even basic adjustments such as cropping to be too much. Other ethical implications include the use of posed photos, how photographs  portraying death or nudity are published and whether photographers should just document an event or become involved it. 

Two photographs mentioned during our tutorial highlight this last point. Kevin Carter took a Pulitzer prize winning photograph in Sudan in 2003 showing a vulture standing behind a little starving girl. He received worldwide condemnation when it was later revealed that he hadn't taken the child to a nearby aid post and, already suffering personal issues, committed suicide a few months later. Nick Ut took an earlier Pulitzer prize winning photo of a Vietnamese girl with severe burns running down road after a napalm strike on her village, though in this case he helped her and took her to hospital before developing his photographs. I hope that if ever I'm faced with the dilemma of missing a deadline and helping someone in need, I'm in a position to make the right ethical choice.

The Long Arm of the Law: Legalities of Social Media

I've been reading Mark Pearson's "Blogging and Tweeting Without Getting Sued" and would encourage anyone who blogs, tweets or uses Facebook to have a read, too. 

Pearson explains, in a very easy to read manner, how anything you write on-line is considered as published material by legal systems world-wide, leaving you open to defamation claims if you've said anything questionable about anyone. He also suggests carefully reading everything that you repost or retweet. Anything that could be deemed as defamation in the original post has now been published by you leaving you open to the same defamation laws as the original poster.

And don't think that being in a different country from a potential victim gives you a measure of safety. He explains how on-line posts can leave you feeling the wrath of over 600 judicial systems around the world. Legally it doesn't matter where you write the post or tweet, what matters is where it's viewed.

In today's litigious world simply hitting a "like" button on a Facebook page can have legal ramifications. I'd encourage everyone to think twice before they post. And at least a thousand times if alcohol is involved!

Phil's Tale: A Story in Three Acts

I thought I'd post last week's journalism tutorial piece about my classmate Phil. The idea of the story was to write a 500-word profile feature using a three act structure. We had to grab the reader's attention with Act 1, tell the story during Act 2 and then end with Act 3 linking the story's ending back to the beginning and "closing the circle".

Adventures in Academia 

If you’re in a hole and want to get out of it, the first thing you should do is stop digging.  As a plumber and gas fitter, Phil felt he was knowledgeable enough about holes to know that he was in a deep one desperately trying to climb out. He felt the need to do something worthwhile with his life, he just didn’t know what.

He began looking through the careers pages of the local newspaper and quickly found that he wasn’t qualified enough for any of the well paid and interesting jobs that caught his eye. All of those jobs needed a degree. There was only one thing to do. He’d go to university and get one.

But what would he study? He wasn’t sure what career path he eventually wanted to take. Spending years studying for a degree that left him stuck in another, albeit well paid hole seemed a waste of time and money. He read that studying another language was not only good for your cognitive function, it didn’t do your career prospects any harm either; maybe he could do that and work overseas somewhere.

Phil thought back to all the places that he’d visited. China is Australia’s largest trading partner and he’d enjoyed walking on The Great Wall and seeing the Terracotta Warriors but would he want to live there? It’s overcrowded, polluted and the language is very hard to learn. Maybe not Chinese then, what about a European language?

France was the first country he’d visited when he went to Europe and had always been one of his favourite destinations. He could just picture himself in the City of Light, sitting outside a little bistro near the Seine, sipping red wine and watching the world go by. A job in Paris, maybe at the Australian embassy, or working for a non-government organisation, sounded ideal. He could hop on a train and be in London in a few hours, catching up with friends and watching the footy at Twickenham. That would be perfect. He’d learn to speak French. Trés bon.

He looked at what else he could study. What about anthropology? On his travels he’d loved exploring new cultures; getting off the beaten path and mixing with the locals to see how they lived. What better way to get a degree than studying the science of humanity itself? He enrolled in the Bachelor of Arts programme at James Cook University.

Initially he was worried how he’d cope with going back to full-time study as a mature age student and he’ll admit to a few sleepless nights before handing in his first assignments. All that’s in the past now though and Phil is enjoying his time at uni. He’s found that the stress of a looming due date is nothing compared to the worries he had when he was self employed and trying to find money for his suppliers, in fact the only holes Phil finds himself in these days are excavations during anthropology field trips.

The Thirty Hour Day

I'm starting to feel a bit snowed under with all the uni work I've had lately. I've weekly blog posts to write for political science and photography plus two for journalism. I've also been writing extra daily posts for this blog too, though that's my own, possibly crazy, choice.

Last week during our journalism tutorial we were given the task of writing 500 words about a classmate which added to my weekend workload. Still, if I want to write, I can't complain about being given writing assignments. That's as bad as a truckie who hates driving or a pilot scared of flying.

I'm also working on multiple assignments. I spent (wasted) hours on my music media assignment only to produce something so absolutely horrendous, I feel sorry for the lecturer that has to grade it. I might check if she has plenty of Panadol before she listens to it. I should probably find out if she's prone to seizures too, tell her to stock up on some Epilim if she is.

I've also got a new multimedia photography assignment to work on, a political science essay to write and an exam to study for. There's also another journalism assignment on the horizon, as well as the half completed one I'm busily avoiding by writing this post. That one's due in the mid-semester break next week.

Maybe all I need are a few time management skills and a few extra hours in the day. Six should do it. Plus a few days added on to the end of the week. Maybe I should have asked the woman I saw in the library yesterday about juggling uni and a home life? She was studying on the floor while nursing one baby and corralling an older kid under a table. Maybe I should shut up and just get on with it?

iPhone Battery Back-up

A few months ago I was watching a show on SBS about the Christchurch Earthquake. It featured a lot of footage taken straight after the quake, presumably from mobile phones.

I got to wondering whether my iPhone battery would last long enough to record video and take photos if I were caught in a similar situation. I looked around on the internet and found a few fairly expensive cases with built-in battery before finding one for about $25 on the Jaycar website.

I've been using it for a while now and am quite pleased with the results. The case itself doesn't add too much bulk to the phone, though it's a little too long to fit in the belt pouch I had. You can switch the battery on or off as needed. If you leave it on, it will discharge the in-case battery before your phone battery; when charging it charges your phone before the in-case battery. It even has a little pullout stand on the back so you can watch movies.

I'm sure plenty of people would find it useful, not just would-be journalism students.

Blogging Ethics: My First Dilemma

While reading the news last week I saw stories from the UK about an Australian entertainer who'd been arrested during Operation Yewtree, the Metropolitan Police operation into Jimmy Saville and alleged paedophilia. 

Mainstream media (MSM) in Australia and the UK hadn't named the man but a quick search on the internet soon showed that social media sites didn't have any qualms about doing so. I considered writing a blog post about the implications of how our media had decided not to report this fully as it seemed relevant to my earlier post about agenda setting in the media.

I knew that mainstream media organisations have codes of conduct to follow when it comes to reporting certain types of information involving celebrities and I wasn't sure if their reluctance to name him was because they were just following those. People on the internet have no such restrictions and report whatever they want. I certainly didn't think it was for the vague legal reasons cited in a few of the newspapers. 

The ABC's Media Watch covered the story last night and said that the British media hadn't named the man due to rule changes in the wake of the News of the World phone-hacking scandal. Presenter Jonathan Holmes then goes on to question why Australian media haven't named the man either.

I didn't write the blog post. I didn't feel I had enough information about why MSM hadn't named the man. Was it due to a code of conduct or was it for another reason? I wondered if highlighting the story without knowing the full details would leave me feeling ethically compromised. In the end I decided that as I'm not a journalist, I still have a choice on what I write about and chose to write a different post.

Using change.org for Story Sources

A few weeks ago in Cairns I saw a sign on a noticeboard asking people to sign an on-line petition in support of getting fairer home insurance for people living in Far North Queensland. 
I took a photo of the sign and have finally just got around to looking at the website.

Our journalism lecturer Marie has said that we need to always be on the lookout for new story ideas and change.org might be one such source. It's an on-line petition page where people can set up petitions in support of their own campaigns. 

Obviously there are going to be some petitions that don't go anywhere or are overseas, though there does seem to be some local content. The Tips and Guides page at the bottom of the page shows petitioners how to get their campaigns out to the media. 

In this article from journalism.co.uk Rachel McCathy suggests ways a journalist can use the site.

Peruvian Medevac Flight Uses Taxi Lights For Take Off

I've heard of using the headlights of ambulances and police cars to light up a landing area for helicopters during medical evacuations but how many vehicles would you need to light an entire runway? Well, according to the BBC, around 300 should do it.

On 2 April 2013 residents of Contamana, a remote town in eastern Peru, used the lights of around 300 motorcycles and motorcycle taxis to light up the local airfield runway so an emergency medical flight could take off.

Doctors had decided to evacuate a 31-year-old woman and her new born daughter, along with a 17-year-old boy with a possible case of leptospirosis, to a hospital in Pucallpa. By the time the flight was organised, darkness had fallen and the pilot couldn't take off as the airstrip at Contamana doesn't have any runway lights.


A local radio station put out an appeal asking motorcycle taxi drivers to go to the airstrip and light the runway so the plane could take off. Peruvian news outlet El Comercio reported that the flight landed in Pucallpa without incident.



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The OmniMirror: Shopping and Social Media

Brisbane-based entrepreneur Yazz Krishna has taken the "selfie" or self portrait to the next level. His company Fives Faces has developed The OmniMirror, an in-store interactive camera system that allows shoppers to take photos of themselves in different outfits and then upload the photos to their Facebook or Twitter accounts to get feedback from friends and  family. 

The OmniMirror is being marketed as a device that ''blurs the lines between shopping in-store, online and social media''. All of the photographs are branded with a special border of the store's choice and Mr Krishna estimates that by using social media in this way, each photo has the potential to reach over 10,000 people. The OmniMirror also allows users the chance to sign up for store news and updates, go on-line and search a company's website and can even be configured to show videos of a store's latest advertising campaign.

Journalism Fundamentals

This week in our journalism lecture we looked at some writing fundamentals. Marie talked about information attribution and the dangers using anonymous sources and discussed the nuts and bolts things such as spelling, punctuation and grammar. 

In their book 'Blur: How To Know What's True In The Age Of Information Overload',  authors Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenthiel tell a wonderful story about a journalist named Homer Bigart. During military press briefings in Vietnam, Bigart would ask countless seemingly dumb questions before going out with military units into the field. Other less experienced journalists would return to Saigon and file stories recounting the official version of the events, but Bigart's stories were different. The answers to his seemingly dumb questions, now on record, along with his own eyewitness accounts enabled him to refute the official line on how the war was progressing. The book quotes Pulitzer Prize winning journalist David Halberstam who described Bigart's style as "portable ignorance" and William Prochnau, who said of Bigart, "He shows up knowing little and then finds out everything".

In their book "All The President's Men", Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward detail the tremendous difficulties they had using anonymous sources in their investigation of the Watergate Scandal. Unless two independent sources confirmed their information, they wouldn't use the material.

We also looked at a video called Caine's Arcade and had to write a story using the inverted pyramid style, where all the pertinent information of who, what, when, where, why and how is contained in the first few lines. After 17 years as a paramedic, figuring out what to write in a short report isn't usually too much of a drama, however in our tutorial, we had to interview a classmate and write a 500 word article based on that interview. What I've discovered is that knowing what to ask in an interview when you don't have time to prepare is difficult.  In the ambulance service I had a safety net, we ask standard questions for each type of case. If you attend a patient who's had a fit, then you'd want to ask how long the fit went for, what it looked like, what happened before, what happened afterwards. Someone who's had a fall gets questioned about being knocked out, do they have dizziness or neck pain? For a patient with chest pain, you'd ask a different set of questions. What I'm finding now is that I often don't have a clue what to ask someone now it's not ambulance related. Until I gain some experience, maybe I can specialise and be an on-scene car crash reporter?

What's Your Poison?

I'm always happy to help out with bad alcohol purchases. I don't mean hangover bad, I mean those drinks marketed and packaged so well that they look fantastic in the bottle-shop but when you actually get them home and try them, you wish your taste buds had been surgically removed at birth. Get a really bad one and you'd do it yourself with a pair of pliers.

Cyndi is one of these shoppers. Mostly she sticks to her tried and true favourites but once in a while she'll see a new product and give it a try.  Usually she'll have picked a winner but sometimes she'll get a dud, which is where I come in (I'm still talking drinks here by the way!).  Her misfortune is my good luck, though my liver might have cause to disagree. It means I get to work my way through her unwanted purchases. I have to admit that this time even I'm struggling. Belgian cider with red fruits certainly isn't a Holmes family favourite. I suspect that it's sweet enough to bring on diabetes, the sugar is already giving me a headache and I've only had two. Still, I'm not a quitter and we've got plenty of Panadol, so I think I'm set for the night. Cheers!

Interested in Interest Groups?

This morning the ABC News website has a story about union lobbying, here's a link.  Qld government seeks to curb union lobbying

Queensland's Education Minister John-Paul Langbroek doesn't like that under existing workplace agreements, a school principal was allowed to use a work email to ask workmates to lobby the Premier over the Gonski education reforms. He has now written to regional education directors demanding that campaigning be done out of work hours. 

A Brief Campus Tour

After five hours in the music lab, I'm really not sure my techno track is any further advanced than it was last week. I add a new bit and it sounds OK, but then I play it with what I've already got and it sounds...less OK. A lot less OK. Will.I.am and The Black Eyed Peas won't be worried that's for sure.

Today I thought I'd add some photos to the blog to show any non-JCU readers around the campus. There's no photo of the Nursing Block where I have political science and music media lectures, just imagine a pile of ugly bricks and you're there.

The School of Creative Arts.

The front door of my torture chamber (not just visual media, the sound labs are in there too).

The entrance to the Eddie Koiki Mabo Library.

I've no idea what this building is or what happens in there.

The Multi Media Journalism building.

Consequences

Just a short post today. Well, that's the plan, I sometimes get carried away on a rant, as you know. I just wanted to follow up on a few things that I've blogged about previously and to share a couple of links for those of you who may be interested. Our lecturer Marie says we have to consider the wider impact our stories can have, and I think that these illustrate her point.

After my Is nano a no no? blogpost, here's an article from The Age. Apparently fear about nano-particles in sunscreens is causing Australians to give up on sunscreen altogether. Sunscreen fear a risk to health

Maybe it's me, but I think I'm seeing a link between the silliness of a story and the outrageousness of the comments that follow it. This is a follow-up to the story I blogged about on Friday, Commenting on Comments  The usual public support for ambulance officers seems to have changed after the story's portrayal of them complaining about not being able to eat lollies and drink soft drink. After reading this story will someone decide that driving a person with chest pain or severe bleeding to hospital is better that waiting for an ambulance?  Ambulance dispatchers do their lolly over eating ban

The library socks are packed and in a few hours I'll be on my way to Townsville for this week's uni, either swerving around the potholes or sitting at the various roadworks. I must say I do agree with the woman in The Cairns Post the other week who, when asked what was the worst part of the Bruce Highway, answered "the bit between Brisbane and Cairns."