Kate Griffin freelance journalism and editing

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.

The BBC is currently considering axing three of its regional news services. The local “opt-outs” for Oxfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Jersey (plus surrounding areas) may be closed as part of the BBC’s money-saving drive, misleadingly branded “Delivering Quality First”. This blog post was written to answer some of the more common questions about the proposals.

“What we do matters. That’s a point I never thought we’d have to make.” Anna Wagstaff opened the Quality in Publishing summit with a snapshot of the current situation in academic publishing: cost-cutting and outsourcing leading to a decline in quality.

Attempts to harmonize easily strand when considering population environmental banks to harmonize with disease-oriented/clinical banks.

Make sense? Thought not. But that sentence was taken from a medical journal with subscription costs of nearly €900 a year, a journal covering important developments in European medical research.

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.

I really should have mentioned this a month ago, but my slight shock at events overcame my instinct to report them.

At our October AGM, I had the honour of being elected chair of the Oxford & District NUJ Branch. I’ll be following in the experienced footsteps of Peter Cann, who I’m glad to say will be staying on the branch committee as vice-chair. (In other words, we’ve effectively swapped roles.)

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?

Written for the December issue of the Oxford & District Branch NUJ newsletter.

When I set off for this year’s ADM, I had a jumble of different worries in my head. Would people be unfriendly to me as a newbie? Would it be a world of Machiavellian backstabbing, or a snooze-inducing bureaucratic slog? Would I have to actually stand up and speak?