Can one christening cake (and the absurd reaction to it) change the way we think about local journalism?

Can a story about a christening cake encapsulate one of the biggest challenges digital journalism has delivered to the regional press? I think so, and here’s why. You probably saw the story about the woman who complained about a christening caked including bears with ‘naughty bits.’ For what it’s worth, I thought she was talking

FOI FRIDAY: Jail smuggling, brand conscious police, cost-saving consultants and golden hellos for paramedics

‘Golden Hellos’ for new paramedics < Eastern Daily Press The East of England Ambulance Service paid the incentives to 59 qualified paramedics in 2013 to try and resolve the organisation’s staff shortage. However, five of the new recruits had to repay the £2,000 golden hello payments after leaving the trust, according to new figures. The

FOI FRIDAY: Lost property, tobacco investments, repeat offenders and long ambulance waits

10 good examples of FOI in action from the local, regional and national media: The longest ambulance delays – Huddersfield Examiner Tony Blair – and politicians in general – may not be made keen on the Freedom of Information Act, but it doesn’t stop them using it to dig out figures which suit their political

Books by Journalists: Two Minds To Die – Neil Bonnar

“What part of my life has been lucky? I was born a bastard, my mother died when I was a baby, the people I thought were my parents turned out to be just two strangers who brought me up. I’ve got no friends. No family. I don’t even have a personality of my own. Then,

How to make your live tweeting of an event indispensible for readers

Using Twitter to provide live coverage from an event is so popular largely because it’s so simple. You don’t even need a web-enabled phone to do it, so long as the phone you’re texting from is connected to your Twitter account. However, that means you have a rather one-way conversation – you’re broadcasting, in a

FOI Friday: Crime-ridden leisure centres, true truancy figures, NHS lay offs and Olympic torch costs

Apologies for the delay in the latest FOI Friday – a bad dose of chickenpox in our house has made keeping on top of it harder than usual! As ever, this is list is compiled using Google News and from suggestions sent to me on Twitter @davidhiggerson Crimes committed at leisure centres < < <

FOI Friday: Credit card spending, charging for policing, domestic abuse homelessness and noisy people

10 good examples of FOI in action from the local, regional and national media: 1. Unpaid parking fines < < < Scunthorpe Telegraph Just shy of £250k has gone unpaid in Scunthorpe over the past three years. Not a new FOI request theme, but a relevant one: If councils are so hard up, then why

FOI Friday: Rescuing fat people, dirty football grounds, spending on Facebook and young drink drivers

10 good examples of FOI in action from the local, regional and national media: 1. Bomb hoaxes at universities – Cambridge News Universities, as a rule, hate being covered by the Freedom of Information Act – which is one of the reasons I like to see stories generated by it. This one is interesting –

Going up, going down: The end of the of the football season in newspaper front pages

Nobody covers a football club quite like the local newspaper. The highs and the lows, the frustrations and the delights (with the sports desk normally being blamed for the former by readers, but rarely thanked for the latter). So it’s no surprise that when the not-quite-life-and-death matters of promotion and relegation are dealt with, the

FOI Friday: Unusual council waiting lists, a housing crisis, and the theft of a six-foot cardboard copper

This week’s list includes how to work out if there’s a housing crisis, how well used (or not) Sarah’s Law is in your area, and finding out what people are your local prison have been jailed for