There’s an excellent piece in the Sunday Times today on Japan bribing voters of the International Whaling Commission to lift the moratorium on whaling.

I recommend reading the extended piece, linked to above, and not just the summary report on the paper’s front page. It’s a wonderful piece of proper investigative journalism, and the care the team took is apparent. For example:

On Friday the Guinea fisheries ministry denied Japan had paid any money to its delegates and claimed Sylla was not involved in IWC matters. Sylla was briefly put on the phone to say he had made everything up.

However, a reporter who telephoned the ministry earlier to check Sylla’s credentials was told he attended IWC meetings and had recently been at preparatory talks for Morocco as a stand-in IWC commissioner.

Wonderful. It’s been a long time since I thought that being a journalist was about shady parking lots and informants, but hot damn, every time I read a piece like this I can’t help but get excited like a kid. Hidden cameras, government bribery, and even a mention of prostitution. Cracking stuff!

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Posted by Dave Molloy in •Journalism
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I’ve had trouble convincing some of my friends to try Twitter; most of the non-media types aren’t on it. Every time I do have that conversation, though, I come back to the same argument. It’s not Facebook. Its power lies not in socialising with friends, but as a tool for connecting with individuals in a specific area of interest, and sharing content and news in a timely manner within that network.

Lately, Twitter has been less useful than itwas, and I’ve been checking it less and posting a hell of a lot less. It only dawned on me the other day that I wasn’t heeding my own advice. I was following too many people form too many different areas.

I’ve culled my list of over 100 people I was following back to 47. For me, around 50 is the magic number. It’s enough to dip in and out of whenever I want, and to be able to catch up with the flow of information without feeling overwhelmed. Selective following is also the key to getting the most utility out of Twitter: in my own culling process, I stopped following plenty of people I know personally and who are pretty interesting. But those people often used Twitter amongst friends for social reasons, or for a completely different network than my own. For social interactions, Facebook is a much better platform. Personally, I use Twitter for following the thoughts of those people in media on the subject of media, so I also unfollowed plenty of journalists and so on who Tweet their personal business more than anything else.

The tool I used for this whole process was ManageFlitter.com. It’s an excellent free service that will show you which people you follow are not following you, who’s inactive, talkative, shares links, etc.

If you’ve been less in love with Twitter recently than you were before, try a little spring clean. It really does change the entire feeling of your stream.

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Posted by Dave Molloy in •Tech
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I recently found myself doing an interview on short notice for a client, so I decided to do it from home for convenience. The day of the interview, I came across two problems:

• My phone adapter for recording does not fit anywhere on my cordless home phone, and the iPhone doesn’t record calls.
• I was calling a UK mobile, which would cost about €20/hour on my landline rates.

Erp. I wasn’t used to this. I had a paid office phone to use until now. The solution, I decided, was simply the too-little-used wonder that is Skype. No problem! Headset in, number prepped. Now, where was the record call option? Oh. It doesn’t exist. What now?

Well, there are a myriad of different options available to fix this gaping hole in Skype’s functionality, but for those in the same boat as I, needing a very quick fix, check out the wonderful Pamela for Skype. A program that runs alongside Skype, it automatically (or manually, if you prefer) records both sides of the conversation flawlessly in MP3 format. You can append notes etc, and, best of all, the free trial doesn’t have the silly recording limitations of 2 or 15 minutes that its other counterparts have on their trial versions (crucially, you must have the 30-day trial of the Professional version for this to be the case).

Cracking application which saved my skin. I now have a better-than-phone quality recording of my hour long interview, it cost about half of what I would have paid with regular landlines, and I may well use part of the paycheque from this job to buy the €20 license for this piece of kit.

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Posted by Dave Molloy in •Journalism •Resources •Tech
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Today is the final day for applications for the first round this year in the Simon Cumbers Media Challenge Fund. Last year, Trinity News was the first student publication to apply for funding from the fund, which they used to send three student journalists to Delhi, India and produce a special supplement on educational development. They also blogged from Delhi for the short time they were there.

Student media should take advantage of opportunities like this. Not only are we the most in need of additional funds, it’s also an excellent experience. Further, the media fund themselves are quite keen to have student involvement. Now, since the deadline is today, I probably should have written up this post a month ago. But, if you’re in a college publication (or any other, for that matter) their website might be worth checking out. The other deadline for applications this year is Wednesday September 30th.

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Posted by Dave Molloy in •Resources
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