TimLuckhurst's blog

The Today Programme's Jim Naughtie has been on the road in the USA with his Edirol (or perhaps a Marantz or a Sony) and a producer. His mission is to examine the culture war between God-fearing,  Sarah Palin adoring fans of the conservative insurgency known as the Tea Party movement, and Liberal supporters of President Barack Obama. His features depicting and exploring the antipathy  that now divides Americans between two incompatible visons of their own national dream make fantastic radio. In the first piece he talked to Tea Party activists in Kentucky and found them spitting blood, fire and brimstone about the grim obscenity of 'big government' and the imminent threat of SOCIALISM...In the second Jim reported from cosmopolitan, multicultural New York and met Obama supporting trade union activists preparing for their Labour Day parade..Of course you have already heard and discussed these pieces, because every student and future student in the Centre for Journalism knows that listening to Today is an absolute duty as well as a joy, but just on the off chance that anyone was in the shower at 07.30 on Monday and Tuesday morning... 

The first part of  Rory Caroll, Guardian south America Correspondent's, three-part investigation from the Juarez valley, rotten heartland of Mexican drug cartel violence, is an important story made gripping by truly superb writing. His introductory paragraph is sublime, among the most compelling I have read in recent months. This is serious, public-service journalism at its most powerful.  Caroll appears to have taken substantial risks to complete his investigation. The results tell us things that informed citizens need to know while conjuring images that transport us to the scene. Now, isn't that  what good journalism is for?  

HSBC, the bank that survived the credit crunch without government help, is offering bursaries of £15,000 to students who make the best videos about their future ambitions. Details here.

...to all the superb candidates who have today won places on the Kent BA in Journalism and the News Industry. In an intensely competitive year every one of you has performed exceptionally well to get in. Our new freshers are a very cosmopolitan bunch. You come from every corner of the UK and the English-speaking world. Everyone in the Centre for Journalism looks forward to seeing you in September. Until then we hope you will enjoy celebrating your achievement. If you have any questions we have not already answered about the course, the National Council for the Training of Journalists, preparatory reading, listening and watching (e.g. which newspapers to read, radio news to listen to, TV to watch and news websites to browse),  please don't hesitate to contact us at journalism@kent.ac.uk. Our Facebook site is a good place to introduce yourself to your fellow freshers and to meet second and third year students and our new MA students. The link is on the toolbar.  

And deprives us all of the public space created by good, clear verbal communication.  So wrote Tony Judt, the brilliant historian who died last week, aged 62, of motor neurone disease in a final essay published in today's Guardian. It advances the most passionate argument for the teaching and deployment of rich, plain English since George Orwell lambasted obscurantism in Politics and the English Language. If you read nothing else today - a deplorable thought - read this. After all, as Judt asks, "If words fall into disrepair, what will substitute? They are all we have."  

Following glowing recommendations from John Saunders, Suzanne Franks and BBC Radio 4 (for which many thanks), I have just finished 'Nothing to Envy - Real Lives in North Korea,' by Barbara Demick.  This account of state repression and human misery in North Korea deserves every syllable of praise already heaped upon it, and more. It is extended reporting at its most brilliant. Demick, a former Korea correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, has the ace correspondent's eye for detail. Having read it I feel I know more about life in the world's last entirely unreconstructed Stalinist state a.k.a. the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea, than I thought it possible to learn. I know infinitely more than the repulsive Kim Il-Sung (brutal and depraved leader of his benighted homeland from 1953 until his death in 1994) and his repugnant son Kim Jong-il, ever intended me to know.

During the Second World War, pioneering female war correspondents insisted that they could go anywhere as long as they had a typewriter and a toothbrush. Author Sarah Blake was inspired by them and she has recently published a novel, The Postmistress, in which the heroine broadcasts from London during the Blitz. During her research for the book she took a close look at the careers of several excellent women journalists including Martha Gelhorn, Clare Hollingworth (who witnessed German preparations for the invasion of Poland) and Sigrid Schultz. Blake has written about these fascinating women in this feature for Stella, the Sunday Telegraph colour magazine. Many thanks to Lesley Phippen for spotting it.   

 Once in a while I read a column and really, really wish I had written it. For weeks I have been looking for the historical analogy with which to illustrate the argument that removing debt from the economy is not the same as taking money out of circulation. Dominic Lawson in today's Independent has found exactly the right example: Frederic Bastiat's advice to the French National Assembly in the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars. In doing so Mr Lawson also offers a compelling antidote to the argument that reduced state spending is inimical to growth. He also offers a powerful incentive to read and reread the history of the French revolution. It inspired Karl Marx too, of course (the revolution that is, not Dominic Lawson's column).  

Stephen Glover is still away, so I'm still writing his column for The Independent. Irony of intense ironies it is called 'Media Studies.' This week, having overcome the shock, I take a look at Media Secretary Jeremy Hunt's emerging plans for the future of local television. I could not resist including a reference to one of my favourite spoofs on TV news culture. If you have not seen Anchorman, the Legend of Ron Burgundy, I recommend it very highly. Ron is a fictional representative of that breed of local TV bunnies who are so thick they will read anything that appears on the autocue.  

Is coverage of Britain's new coalition politics hitting the mark? Are old editorial habits, more applicable to left/right polarity, proving less than ideal in the ConDem Nation? Kevin Marsh of the BBC College of Journalism started a debate about this last week on his blog. I decided to take it on in my column for The Independent. What do you think? All opinions will be appreciated.