On a new conservative website called Culture11, Conor Friedersdorf argues that the Right needs fewer activists and more storytellers, including journalists.

 I'm going to make a similar point in my column this Sunday (which I finally turned in yesterday): that culture is more important than politics, and conservatives have erred in placing all their hope for change in politics, when what they ought to be doing is engaging more deeply with the culture.

 But as Conor points out, it's a big mistake to think that the way to engage the culture (or do journalism) is for the sake of propagandizing for conservatism.

You have to love the art and craft of journalism (or, I would say, novel-writing, film-making, etc.) for its own sake. And that means being willing to go wherever the truth takes you, even outside your ideological comfort zone.

David Randall’s half serious suggestion that newspapers should print a disclaimer similar to the one carried on cigarette packets “Cigarette Smoking is Injurious to Health” is a telling commentary on the constraints on the media.

Randall had in mind the unseen controls on the media, such as big advertisers’ interests, proprietors’ interest, political affiliations of the journalists themselves, their own biases, competition between them that prevents them from sharing information to mutually enhance their understanding of these etc, and the manner in which these prevent media organisations from being totally free or capable of representing what in itself is extremely slippery – truth.

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Murdoch University International Study Centre Dubai yesterday launched its first Bachelors in Media classes on its new premises at the Dubai International Academic City.

Professor Gary Martin, Deputy Vice Chancellor, Murdoch University, Australia, attended the event as a special guest. The first batch of the Bachelors programme including other courses will consist of 28 students from different parts of the region.

Professor Martin said market research has revealed the need for more trained journalism professionals in the region to meet the demand from the growing media industry not only in the UAE and the Middle East but also in other surrounding areas such as India and Pakistan.

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I just watched CNN gleefully play up the story that John McCain doesn't know how many houses his family owns, treating it as some sort of transcendent gaffe. Uh, his wife is an heiress who has a lot of property and doesn't do a good job of keeping track of it, as the recent flap over her unpaid taxes at a Coronado condo confirmed.

This comes after the cable networks gleefuly played up the story that Barack Obama is somehow out of touch and not ready for prime time because he gave a more nuanced, less cartoonish answer than McCain to the question from Rick Warren about how he would deal with evil. Uh, do we really think nuance and thoughtfulness are now political sins? How low an opinion do we have of voters' cognitive powers?

This drives me bonkers. Campaign journalism is increasingly a form of theater criticism. Yes, it's worst on TV, but it infects print media as well. I was on The New Republic's very smart The Plank blog, and it's hammering McCain on Homegate. What? What? Why?

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Earlier this month, John Edwards publicly admitted to having a previously rumored affair with a campaign aide. Since then, for some reason, some journalists have felt it necessary to defend themselves for not having dug up the story and reported it.

The Columbia Journalism Review, a journalism trade publication that scrutinizes press practices, had this to say: "Since last Friday afternoon, when the news of John Edwards's marital infidelity broke through to the nation's major media outlets, bloggers and commenters across the Internet have crowed -- as they did periodically since the story surfaced three weeks, eight months and one year ago -- that that darn liberal media was covering up for one of their darlings. And they are not pleased."

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Two highly-experienced reporters have joined a university's journalism teaching department.The Scotsman's former business editor Nick Bevens and STV's Scotland Today reporter Claire Dean will be teaching on the new MA Multimedia Journalism programme at Glasgow Caledonian University.

Nick started his career as a trainee with the Gulf Daily News, in Bahrain, and worked for a decade on various trade and industry titles in the Gulf and Asia before returning to Scotland in 1992.

His main teaching focus will be on business, international and other specialist reporting areas and from 2009 he will play a leading role in launching the university's planned MA in International Business Journalism.

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The California Senate has again approved a measure prohibiting administrators from retaliating against high school and college journalism teachers.

Once the state’s budget impasse is settled, bill sponsor state Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, is expected to send the measure to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. A spokesman for Yee told the Orange County Register that Yee expects the Republican governor will sign the bill into law because of his previous support of students' First Amendment rights.

Yee's bill would make it illegal to dismiss, transfer or discipline teachers who are trying to protect the free-speech rights of their students.

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What makes journalism so attractive is the experiences journalists have that never get written about. The reports from war zones and nations in famine are highly important and interesting, but to share experiences along with the people who are having their lives forever changed changes your own life. To constantly be where history is being made and experiencing the most dramatic events our lifetime has to offer is the ultimate goal I find with the field of journalism.

        With this goal in mind, I found myself an unpublished writer with no experience. I signed up with my university's study abroad program traveling to Shanghai, China in the coming summer of 2008. About a month before I departed for Shanghai, an earthquake hit Sichuan Province. The earthquake measured 7.9 on the Richter scale and caused damage that hadn't been seen in China for decades. CNN and every other major news organization were quickly on the scene sending out reports to the rest of the world. They were doing everything I wanted to be doing.

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There is a lively interview with Tom Wolfe by Carole Iannone in the current issue of Academic Questions. In it he manages to take down a half-dozen groups in contemporary society without a shred of fear or equivocation. To journalists who take to high a moral ground, he says that “reporting is the easiest thing in the world, because there are no techniques to learn.

There is an attitude. And that attitude is: ‘You have some information. I desperately need that information—and I deserve it!’ That’s the attitude. It gives you the willpower to go up to strangers and ask questions and demand answers you have no right to.”

On writers and the survival of literature, Wolfe mutters, “The novel is sinking into its kneecaps.” Why? “I blame it on these master of fine arts programs. Writers, important writers, used to come from all kinds of backgrounds. In the 1930s they went to great lengths to stress their proletarian origins.

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The Maitland Mercury has scored highly in the prestigious Northern NSW Regional Journalism Awards with its senior journalist Emma Swain named best print journalist and best print feature writer.
Emma won her awards for a body of work including a series of stories titled Did This Man Have to Die?

The reports published in the Mercury between November 2007 and May 2008 told the story of mental health patient Phillip Chell, whose body was found floating in the river at Hexham only hours after he had been discharged from Maitland Hospital with sedatives and a voucher.

Emma won the print feature report section of the awards for her feature titled No More Knocks, a story about a group of women escaping domestic violence through song in the choir No More Knocks.Emma was also a top three finalist in the print news section for Did This Man Have To Die?She was also in the running for the Tom Barrass award for regional journalism.

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