Richard Burton lecture

Richard Burton, the latest guest speaker in JOMEC’s online lecture programme, was a regional news reporter for over twenty years before editing telegraph.co.uk, Europe’s first web-based newspaper. He has recently left that position and is currently acting as a consultant and lecturer.

To blog or not to blog.

Why read this blog? Why do I even write this blog? If I’m honest, the answer to the second question is because it is part of my course assessment. I’ll know the answer to first when it has been assessed.

Mr Burton’s long and colourful career in journalism has led him to a similar view to my own regarding blogging. Why do it? What is the point? And who wants to read the ramblings of a trainee journalist anyway?

Mr Burton said: “No one’s interested in your view unless you’re a known quantity. Forget about what you have to say, only about the commodity of the story, not an opinion.”

The internet is flooded with nobodies expressing their opinions. At times looking for my weekly blog of the week can seem like shuffling through a massive pub full of opinionated pissheads.

I don’t care if people are angry because of dog breeds or because of what Erin Davis did.

Mr Burton added: “People are more interested in what Chantelle from Big Brother thinks than me, because she’s a known quantity.”

Here I would disagree with him. After listening for over an hour to the raconteur regale us with journo anecdotes about getting a Hitler moustache from an angry mechanic and leaping fences while being chased out of a one-man country, his experiences certainly have commodity.

Read him call JOMEC "probably the best media school in the land" on his blog.