BBC Radio 4

Article — 20 January 2023 — 1,220 words

The gradual death of AM radio takes with it a curious part of Britain’s psyche

1215 AM. Not quarter past midnight, but a radio frequency familiar to generations (although perhaps not any of the younger ones). Today it has stopped broadcasting. As AM radio slowly disappears, a bit of British folklore goes with it.

Linknote — 5 December 2017 — 38 words

Media

Secrets from the BBC newsroom

A delicious article by Robin Lustig. It recounts the time BBC Radio 4 newsreader Neil Sleat met “the ultimate challenge to his professional skills” with relish. His task? To pronounce the name Janice Keihanaikukauakahihuliheekahaunaele.

Article — 15 January 2009 — 1,319 words

Spare part

Business — Current affairs — Personal — Technology

I see that the BBC’s iPM blog is asking for the human stories behind the current unemployment figures. Well, I am a human face of two recent news stories. As readers are no doubt sick of reading by now, one of those stories was the loss of around 27,000 jobs at Woolworths. The other is […]

Article — 23 October 2008 — 1,540 words

Rumours of blogging’s death are exaggerated, but not greatly so

Media — Society — Technology

There’s been a lot of chat recently about whether blogging is dead, sparked by this article in Wired by Paul Boutin. It’s easy to scoff at the article, and the idea that blogging is dead is obviously nonsense. But I doubt the claim would have got so much attention if there wasn’t a bit of […]

Article — 17 July 2008 — 1,381 words

Why is technology news not news?

Current affairs — Media — Technology — Web

I’ve been wondering a bit about the way technology news is still ghettoised. I don’t mean news about the latest rubbish web 2.0 start-up with a ridiculous name. I mean quite important stuff. Security problems and the like. Take what happened last week. A patch to fix a major flaw in the DNS was released. […]