Kate Griffin freelance journalism and editing

We’ve been hearing a lot about the Leveson inquiry. But another inquiry has been quietly rumbling on at the same time, and the findings should be very interesting to journalists.

TThe House of Lords has a select committee on communications, and it's conducting an inquiry called The future of investigative journalism. They're asking what its role is and how it will evolve in the future.They’re also looking at business models for the industry: in other words, how do we make serious reporting pay?

Jeremy Hunt has now announced plans to give out licences for local television stations. Ofcom has identified 65 towns and cities where local terrestrial TV is technically possible and these places will be invited to bid for licences.

Sub-editing jobs at the Oxford Mail and Times are under threat from plans to centralise. Subs were recently told of plans to create a “regional editorial production operation”, combining the subbing departments for for Newsquest Oxfordshire and Newsquest Wiltshire. The new regional operation would be based in Oxford.

The spending cuts we’re facing today will not only be the largest since World War II, but perhaps also the most heavily spun. Finding out the real impact of the cuts means going beyond the press releases and searching for the small print in lengthy documents.

Health reporter John Lister has spent the past 26 years doing just that. He has become a familiar face on television as one of the few experts who can provide informed comment on NHS funding.

“I liked The Stig. He came round my house, he had drinks... and all the time he was writing a book.” For the first time since “Stig-Gate” unfolded, Jeremy Clarkson publicly shared his feelings of betrayal. But the interview wasn’t with a national paper or broadcaster. He was talking to Witney TV, an online news station that didn’t exist six months ago.

We want to consume content without paying for it. So why do we still equate professionalism with getting paid?

An article I wrote is the cover story for the latest edition of Metal World, the quarterly magazine for the International Federation of Metalworkers (IMF). I was very excited to see the feature in print today, accompanied by Andrew Wiard’s excellent photos.

The ADM for the National Union of Journalists happened over a week ago, but this is the first time since then that I’ve been able to sit at my home computer and collect my thoughts about it. Even now, this is going to be a rushed "what I did on my holidays" post, because I have to go off and do other things. In summary, I’m very glad I went, and very grateful to Anna (secretary of the Oxford & District branch) for giving me the push I needed to go along.

Good surprises:

The Times website was criticised for its coverage of Saturday’s “Mili-band”, the climate change protest where hundreds of people formed a ring around Kingsnorth Power Station in Kent. Robin Henry’s piece was illustrated with a stock photo of helmetted police in a riot situation. (This has now been removed, after reader complaints, and replaced with a stock photo of a power station which may or may not be Kingsnorth.)

Twitter is full of the claim that the Green Party is “anti-science”. Some of the people making that claim are on my own feed; they’re people I like and respect. So I’m disappointed that so many of these self-appointed champions of science seem to be basing their claim on the same Times article, while others don’t bother to give any source at all.