Huge congratulations to Dean Kilpatrick who will join Kent on Sunday as a trainee reporter on May 23 and also to Sara Malm who has started working shifts at Mail Online, probably the world's most successful newspaper website. It is becoming something of a pattern in the Centre for Journalism that our most determined students secure jobs in journalism before they have graduated. I hope everyone will join me in celebrating Dean's and Sara's achievements in continuing a fine tradition. Dean will be covering the whole of Kent and he tells me that he hopes the opportunity will help him to expand skills he has learned in the Centre and to supply a regular stream of exclusive stories for his paper. He adds: "The course has obviously pushed me in the right direction as the NCTJ preliminary certificates proved essential in getting the job. I think it also benefited my application that I was able to suggest multimedia ideas and had carried out previous work experience." Sara's byline has already appeared on a string of stories for Mail Online. She also tells me that her multimedia skills are proving particularly useful.   

Every 14 days a language dies. More than a half of the world’s 7,000 distinct languages could disappear by the end of the century, threatened by cultural changes, ethnic shame and government repression, US researchers say.

Upton Park. July 14^th.

We all knew it was coming. From the very moment Derek Chisora’s promoter, Frank Warren, said at a post-fight news conference in Munich last February: “”I’ve got a great idea. If Dereck fights David, the winner fights Vitali”.

But the fight is morally wrong.

Have a look through a copy of the Daily Mail or the Sun and you are bound to find a cynical story of how young people are destroying society.

It wasn’t until doing work experience on a local paper that I realised how damaging stories like this can be to the image of the younger generation.

As part of my work, I decided that I would take a different approach and try to bring some light on the real situation affecting young people.

The people of Libya and other countries in the Middle East and South Asia might not be so keen on democracy after all.

The western press have celebrated the Arab Spring as the struggle for democracy against totalitarian dictatorships, but surveys have come to show that the people of Libya and other countries would prefer a ‘strong leader’.

Only 15% of 2,000 people surveyed by academics from Benghazi and Oxford universities said they wanted a democracy installed by next year and more than 40% wanted a ‘strong’ group or leader.

With the London 2012 Olympic Games just around the corner, I was left dumbfounded when faced with Argentina’s answer to an ‘Olympic advert’.

The big story of these local elections isn't in the numbers. It's in a single number, in fact. Politicians and newspapers can reel off endless stats detailing huge Labour gains and catastrophic coalition losses to their hearts' content, but there's only one figure that really matters today.

A diplomatic crisis has arisen which has the potential to make Euro 2012 as interesting for politics as for football, and to humiliate UEFA. It demonstrates - not for the first time - the naivety of imagining that sport and politics can be separated. The issue? In October 2011, Yulia Tymoshenko, former Prime Minister of Ukraine, was jailed for seven years following a trial that her supporters and many western diplomats condemn as politically motivated and luminously unfair.

JOURNALISM DIVERSITY INTERN

The NCTJ is to recruit a journalism intern to administer, promote and develop the Journalism Diversity Fund. There will also be an opportunity to write for the website, press releases and other projects where the intern can develop journalism skills and contacts.Applicants, who must have completed, or be about to complete, an NCTJ accredited course or distance learning programme successfully, will have a demonstrable interest in diversity and understand its importance to the future of journalism. In return we will offer a trainee level salary and further journalism training, development and networking opportunities.  The internship is designed to help the successful candidate develop a career in journalism.The intern will be based at the NCTJ’s offices in Newport, Saffron Walden, Essex.It is expected that the internship will commence in June 2012 for up to six months.Candidates must be bright, flexible, professional, proactive, hard working, organised, confident and willing to listen and learn.  Good administration and IT skills are essential. Applications from those who have not completed an NCTJ-accredited course will NOT be considered. Closing date: Friday, 4 May 2012 Further information can be found here and at http://www.journalismdiversityfund.com

Since Monday I have been closely following the trial against Anders Behring Breivik. It has simply been impossible to avoid seeing the pictures and footage of the Norwegian mass murderer smiling with satisfaction before his deeds were read out or the headlines “I would do it again”.  It has been the top story in most of the Scandinavian media outlets for the fourth day now.