As a child I worried about the poor. I thought about them almost as much as I thought about how much I wanted to own a horse. And that was a lot. My mother said that the measure of poverty was when children came to school without shoes. She said I was to keep my eyes open for bare feet in the playground, but in the meantime I should stop worrying
Here are a couple of questions about asking questions: If interviewing is central to journalism why are so many interviews so boring to watch? If interviewing is a cornerstone skill in journalism, why do so many aspiring journalists find it so difficult to do?
The past 12 months have been, without a doubt, the most exciting in recent history in terms of disclosure of information. The disclosure of information by WikiLeaks, including collateral murder, the Afghanistan and Iraq War logs, Cablegate, the Guantanamo Bay files, the spy files and the global intelligence files
No question, Bruce Guthrie is a survivor. He, like thousands of journalists world-wide, lost his job during the tumultuous last decade. Newspapers reeled as advertisers realised they could decouple from journalism and shake off costs
On the evening of 14 April 1912, the Reverend Ernest Carter conducted a religious service aboard a steamship headed for New York. Marion Wright of Somerset, England, who was on her way to get married, sang the final hymn. It was John Henry Newman’s ‘The Pillar of the Cloud’
Some time back, I was reading the death notices in The Age, as one does, of course, when one retires and returns to Melbourne! One death notice intrigued me
For at least a couple of centuries the news media business was relatively simple. Journalists and editors produced content that people wanted to read and view, and distributed it thanks to privileged access to printing presses and broadcasting licences. The publishers or broadcasters were then able to sell the audience to advertisers. Money was made, and some of it was reinvested in the journalism. Simple, and mostly good
Suppose we could live forever? How would we prioritise our time? Would we retire? In Einstein’s Dreams, Alan Lightman playfully and beautifully describes different theories of time. In one of his vignettes, he writes
Putting children in the centre of our society acknowledges that all aspects of our future capacity depends upon us having the majority of our children and youth able to participate to their full potential
As a child health researcher and advocate, there are many situations which make me anxious in Australia in 2014. Child abuse and neglect is apparently rising, as are substance abuse and mental health problems in both young people and their parents (probably linked) and the resulting irreversible fetal alcohol group of disorders