James Hansen in Parliament today

James Hansen, NASA scientist, is in Westminster today to give evidence to the Environmental Audit Committee on the impact of current science on climate policy. It’s being billed by new group Climate Safety as “one humdinger of a debate” between, in the red corner, Hansen and researcher Tim Helweg-Larsen of the Public Interest Research Centre, [...]

Pachauri’s blog and President Obama

Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has launched his own blog.
It’s a curious thing for someone already so well known, well positioned, to do (hence the exclamation marks from Wattsupwiththat). It is also not that sophisticated as a portfolio site.
Perhaps the process of leading the IPCC through tortuous negotiations [...]

Climate change likened to ‘Y2k scam’

One of the most arresting case studies in Nick Davies’ book Flat Earth News, about the ‘churnalism’ of poor reporting/stories that is sweeping through the journalism industry as the result of its commercialisation, is about Y2K - the millennium bug.
Davies successfully shows how a ‘non-story’ fed itself, both politically and in the press, until [...]

Engaging across blogging divides on climate

Last week, an anthropology PhD student in New Zealand wrote a summary and response to a paper I gave at the Association for Journalism Education annual conference, in September this year. I though her commentary was a thoughtful piece with a fair set of conclusions: that bloggers self-select their networks based on beliefs. And that [...]

Blog action day: the road to academia

Today is blog action day, and this year’s theme is poverty.
As for La Marguerite, one of my favourite personal/public blogs on climate and human responsibility, I was thinking of blogging something close to home, maybe climate related. But much of the thought process at the moment is around writing a critical incident diary for my [...]

Animal suicide: new global warming ad

Picked up this from a US-based social media and PR class blog.

This was unsettling to watch, for a few reasons. One, it is well made, put together by a Portuguese environmental organization named Quercus. The PSA was created by McCann Erickson Portugal.
The tag line at the end of the video reads “Global Warming - If [...]

Keeping the bloghead above water

What a few weeks. It’s the first time that blogging has coincided with the beginning of a new term at university. We’ve launched four new journalism degrees here at Sunderland, three of which are accredited by the NCTJ. So the blog posts have dwindled considerably. It’s been a trend I’ve seen across a number of [...]

Ten things I’ve learnt about blogging

To celebrate 100 posts, I’m taking a leaf out of Paul Bradshaw’s blogbook (1000 things he’s learnt about blogging) and reflecting on what I’ve learnt over the last nine months. A small thanks to Paul, as he’s certainly one of my top five blogs I check every day, and from whom I have learnt a [...]

Bloggers need awareness of law, ethics

We’re working on a new digital project at Sunderland that will give our students a great outlet to develop their skills online. One of the key issues we’re coming up against, of course, is the liability that we as a journalism department may have as publishers of student work.
A practical benefit of the new digital [...]

Get blogging

All journalism students should have a blog. That’s the clear message from the leading journalism bloggers and educators. For MAC 250 students the opening quote on this discussion should make you think about what to do after the module’s over. Take a look at Dave Lee’s blog as an example: the Guardian’s Roy Greenslade recently [...]