MA Online Journalism: Law for bloggers and journalists with Paul Bradshaw

Warning: this is a long post, get yourself a cuppa before you start…. Last week I popped along to the Coffee Lounge in Brum for one of Paul Bradshaw‘s open MA Online Journalism sessions. This one was about the law & blogging, something I obviously need to be aware of with The Lichfield Blog. As [...]

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Defamation – Case Law: Derbyshire County Council v Times Newspapers Ltd

Held, dismissing the appeal, that since it was of the highest public importance that a democratically elected governmental body should be open to uninhibited public criticism, and since the threat of civil actions for defamation would place an undesirable fetter on the freedom to express such criticism, it would be contrary to the public interest [...]

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Hyperlocal: Give me your ideas, I'll (try and) make it happen.

Some of you may be aware that I’ve begun writing a WordPress plugin using OpenlyLocal. It’s not the only thing I’m working on though, and I have lots of ideas. However, I know that there’s plenty of hyperlocals out there that probably have their own ideas of what would make their life easier, or just [...]

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Getting serious about hyperlocal, part 3: Money, money, money!

Parts 2 and 3 of this series covered legal issues and journalism. Now I’m going to cover that big elephant in the room: money. Much (most, all?) of the hyperlocal efforts at the moment are voluntary, passion-driven projects. Many I’m sure cost only time; it’s easy enough to run a site on WordPress.com for free [...]

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My (disappointing) correspondence with Michael Cashman MEP over Mandelson's 3 strikes policy

With today’s announcement of the Digital Economy Bill containing the dreaded three strikes policy I thought I’d share my disappointing correspondence with Michael Cashman MEP. I first wrote to him with; Dear Michael Cashman, I’m biased as my career is based entirely on the web, but Mandelson’s plans to implement disconnection without trial for those accused of copyright [...]

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