Anybody planning on going to IAMCR Conference?

Hi!

I was wondering if any of you is planning on going to the next IAMCR Conference in Egypt? I haven't decided myself yet - depends on whether I got money or not - but it would be nice to know if some others are on their way to there.

/merja

website on journalism ethics

Hello all,
and happy new year!
(This will be a busy year for me: my last year of funding, so I plan on focusing on my dissertation only. We'll see how I manage to do that... :)

Those of you who are on ECREA mailing list (see: http://www.eccr.info/ecrea/) already know this, but to inform the others:

There has been set up a website for the journalism ethics related issues - especially global journalism ethics: Journalism Ethics for the Global Citizen is the name of the site.

The aim of the website is [I quote from the site:]
"Journalism Ethics for the Global Citizen at the University of British Columbia aims to study and improve journalism standards through discussion among journalists, academics and the public. Media reform is best accomplished through informed and inclusive debate in civil society, and through public understanding of the issues that confront journalists in the 21st century."

The site might be worth checking, haven't done that yet myself though. You'll find the website here: http://www.journalismethics.ca/index.htm

***

BTW, Amsterdam was great (except the weather), a big conference with a nice, cozy athmosphere. (And I love the city!!! :) :) Although, (a confession...) I noticed that I probably attended too many conferences and courses last year for in A'dam I found it a bit difficult to concentrate on the presentations and get excited about the academic networking. Enough is enough - and now is time to stop travelling and start writing the dissertation!

Good luck with your disseration (and other) work!
Cheers,
Auli

A Happy New Year (with your text set in Courier)

It is a new year now, and I am about to finish my dissertation. I thought it might put some healthy pressure on myself to say so in public. It won't exactly be handed in within the next few weeks, but a full draft will soon be handed over to two good cops at my department that I will, of course, ask to be as bad as they can when they read through it and comment on it.

What an amazing and awkward puzzle it is to find the proper place for the points I want to make in the text and to fill in the gaps where taken-for-granted information turns out to be missing (because it is only taken for granted by me). It is a great relief however, to have the formal deadline (February 2) at close quarters. I can hand in library books that I will now definitely have no time to read, and I can delete sketchy parts of the text that I definitely won't have time to develop this time around.

Moreover, I have found some comfort in a distinction (made in a Danish book on doing PhD's) between the Courier Dissertation on the one hand and the Times (or was it Times New Roman) Dissertation on the other:

The Courier kind (which will often be set in Times anyway) is the unpolished text which presents a number of interesting and substantial results, but which is not ready to go to print. As opposed to the Times kind which is.

The main point is, that the courier kind will serve to prove whether or not the candidate has earned the title of PhD. Moreover, if the dissertation is to be published, it will probably need editing in any case, and weeks or months spent polishing the dissertation might not be worth the effort.

Well, that's all from me for now. I wonder if people are still visiting the blog every once in a while? I would love to hear how things are going in your various quarters.

A Happy New Year to all of you.