Burton and Blogging

Richard Burton's lecture was by far the best of any we have received so far this year. And it will probably be the best of any we will have in the future.

Richard was the head of the Telegraph's website until he left the paper in the midst of a turbulent round of job cuts a couple of months ago. He made the website probably the best of its kind and is rightly revered by those working in 'new media'.

The thing which most struck me about the lecture was that it was a lecture about journalism and not one about technology and cyberspeak. Richard highlighted my major problem with the idea of blogging- that your views are only interesting if you have an insight into something. I don't think that having to do blogs and posting on them several times a day is likely to give an insight into anything very much.

He stressed the importance of traditional journalistic values which appealed to me a great deal. Being the third generation of my family to work in the trade I have always been aware of certain core journalistic skills like knowing how to interview, reporting accurately and writing succinctly and it is nice to know that they have not been forgotten in this brave new world.