First of all, here is the interview with Alfie I promised. It's the full shebang, which I edited down considerably for the University of Westminster Smoke Screen TV news package. It's also minus my first piece to camera, which is probably a blessing. It's five minutes, which is too long for a news programme, but I've chosen to put it up in full because this gentleman says some very interesting stuff about 'citizen journalism' and the commercialisation of their output.

Moblog have entered in to a partnership with Scoopt recently, enabling mobloggers to potentially earn money. Some moblog users seem to think this goes against the spirit of moblog, some are worried about credibility issues, and some about whether they'll lose the right to their photos altogether.
Discussion here

Take this with last night's ITV news piece on advertisers using YouTube to pedal their wares... can you hear the ker-ching of change a coming?



Secondly, here's the intro for the news package, pictures by our director Eren Ozkural and music by me with the help of my band Mama Shamone



This week on Smoke Screen News we have stories coming in on Ruth Kelly's request to lecturers to 'spy' on students for signs of extremism, vox pops on the new smoking bans in many campuses and an overview of the recycling facilities (or lack thereof) around Harrow campus.

I'm also trying to interview some of the Chinese students on the International Journalism course about how they feel now that N.Korea's gone nuclear and plans more tests. Are they afraid for their families? Do they feel solidarity with North Koreans? I've emailed a couple of MAJI students but please get in touch if you're willing to do a quick inteview, even if its just about your experiences in London. I'm aware that the media works *quite differently* in China so you don't have to talk about Korea if you feel it's unwise.

And on a lighter note, I'm interviewing the canteen's youngest worker tomorrow. He's 12, on work experience and the most polite and professional caterering staff member I've ever seen.

This week I was supposed to take a break (of sorts) and just edit everyone's footage together. However, as stories don't choose a time to break, I've found myself grabbing a camera and being ready to go in a matter of seconds, fingers grappling with the white balance as I jog along. I've also been taught three point lighting, which, although I'm very happy to know it, I can't imagine every using it. Far too harsh, I was up adjusting the lights to what please me. There are no hard and fast rules, just an intuitive sense of what doesn't look shit.

On a note of clarity, only one news package in and I'm developing a hatred of pieces to camera and 'noddies', where the camera cuts to separate footage of the interviewer pretending to respond to the interviewee with Diana-esque head bobbings. I like my news journalist-free as much as possible. I'd much rather have voiceovers if necessary than my ugly fizzog mugging to camera. It makes for much more straightforward news.

Oh, and we've got a very hot story coming in, which might get us into a lot of trouble, if not close us down altogether. My fingers are burning to blog about it, but we'll see how it goes.

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I took part in the History Matters mass blog on Tuesday. Feeling rather silly as I did it, I blogged every little detail from what I wore and had for breakfast to the state of the Silverlink and the gradient of faces from black to white as I travelled from East to West London. Apparently the combined mecha-blog will be stored digitally in the British library - on what format? Will future generations be able to read it at all? Are we creating a sort of digital Rosetta stone? That and the fact the site crashed three or four times while many people were blogging put a few of my closest off the idea of participating.

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Finally some signs.

Official, punk is dead.

And it's another useless apostrophe, I'm afraid. But if I don't keep putting them up, how will people EVER LEARN?!