Ian Reeves's blog

It's important that all second years spend the summer thinking about ideas for their third year projects, and doing some preliminary research. We'll be holding a briefing session on Friday 25 May in the main newsroom at 12.15pm to explain the criteria and get you thinking along the right lines.

Sincere apologies to all first years. I've made a mistake with your portfolio deadline - it should have been next Monday (May 21st) at 5pm rather than today. So you have another week to file.

Entirely my fault. I mixed up 1st and 2nd year deadlines.

If you've already filed, and wish to update your pieces, then you can do so by scrolling down to 'My Unpublished Work' at the bottom left-hand column of the web site when you're logged in.

I'll be a running a couple of revision sessions for the postgrads and second years who have opted to take the NCTJ production journalism exam on May 25. It's important that you attend both.

The sessions will be on the following dates:

1. 11am on Tuesday 15 May. This will take the form of a mock exam paper.

2. 11am on Thursday 24 May. We'll go through the mock paper from the previous session, and go over some final strategies for the exam.

Richard and I will be around at 1pm in the main newsroom to advise first years on portfolio submissions for convergent journalism.

A reminder to all first years, second years and MA students: Your conference diaries and blog posts for last term are due in next week if you haven't already completed them.  That's Tuesday, by 5pm please.

Please submit your conference diaries as Word or text documents to the assignments section of this web site. Remember they should simply contain a sentence or two outlining an idea that has arisen from each conference you have attended this term.

Instead of uploading to the web site, year two students should submit their interactive Flash features by copying all the relevant files onto one of the centre's external hard drives. I will show you which one to use.

Make sure you copy the following files:

The .fla project file (This will enable me to see where things went wrong if there are any problems with the final published file)

The .swf file (which is created when you select file-publish from the .fla file)

Any .flv video files or .mp3 audio files that play in the feature.

The final deadline for all third year project submissions is 5pm on Thursday 5 April.

The project submission process is detailed here. Please follow the instructions carefully.

Remember that copying files on to the hard drive will take some time. Please try not to leave it your submission until the last afternoon.

The roles for this Friday's final assessed news day are as follows:

Editors: Danielle Cheney, Jason West, Laura Hartmann

Executive team: Sara Malm, Jade Selby, Eva Tsipi

Assessed reporters: Paul Dunne, Grant Gibb, Sophie Jackson, Angela Davey, Dean Kilpatrick, Dan May, George Ocaya, Melanie Wimmer, Alex Dack, Sarah Wilson, Alister Houghton, Harriet Robinson

News team: Tom Ruzyllo, Nicola Sturmey, James Warner, James Averill, Ella Copeland, Joe Cladingboel

I'm chairing a debate in London next week to mark the launch of a book on grass-roots journalism that I've co-edited with John Mair, occasionally of this parish, and Neil Fowler, a former regional newspaper editor of great standing and recently Guardian Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford.

The panel includes Chris Oakley, the editor-turned-entrepreneur whose gamble in running a management buyout of the newspaper he edited paved the way for massive structural changes that transformed the newspaper industry through the 90s and beyond. We'll also be joined by two of the newer generation of entrepreneurial thinkers, Ross Hawkes of Lichfield Live and Tom O'Brien of MyMuswell, whose experiments with hyperlocal journalism blogs may well indicate the shape of things to come. Guardian media columnist and City University professor Roy Greenslade will add his unique insight to the proceedings too.

All third years should attend a briefing for this Friday's 60-Second TV news bulletin assessment at 10am on Wednesday morning in the small newsroom.