Demand the impossible – sounds like the least we can do

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I’ve just come across this Guardian report about a free, five-day course at Goldsmith’s College in London on activism and radical politics. I commented on the piece, criticisng the piss-taking style in which it was written while also including an offer to help out with future courses or with spreading the idea elsewhere. Just in […]

Collaborative news anyone?

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I posted this in response to a LinkedIn question about reporter, collaboratively owned news operations. I dream of these as alternatives to the status quo. I’m sure their time will come.   The best one I came across, before it expired, was this: http://www.newstandardnews.net/ This is what it said about itself: The NewStandard was a […]

Worse than “cock-ups and casualties” at Thomson Reuters

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I wrote this comment in response to a commentary piece by ex-colleague and current friend Paul Holmes about recent editorial changes being for the better at Thomson Reuters, despite the recent “cock-ups and casualties”. I disagreed. Patrick Chalmers • I have a great deal of respect for Paul Holmes as an ex-colleague and as a […]

Indy media legacy documents Genoa G8 police violence

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[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNMAhN6PwAE&w=560&h=315]   Carlo Augusto Bachschmidt, director of the documentary Black Block, explains how work by independent media helped piece together the story of unprovoked Italian police violence at the G8 2001 summit meeting in Genoa. (Italian with English interpretation). His film features powerful testimonies by some of the dozens of activists who were savagely […]

Marrying revolution and transition – can it be done?

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These are two apparently very different films that I see as being totally on the same page. The first How to start a Revolution, is already out, garnering jury prizes at film festivals around the world. I haven’t seen it yet but I love the book on which it’s based, From Dictatorship to Democracy. It […]

Bragg channels Guthrie into Occupy London

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Learning how to do live TV interviewing with visionOntv is a laugh, you never know who might walk into their instant pop-up studios. I found myself interviewing the songwriter Billy Bragg this week down at the newly squatted Bank of Ideas, having dropped by to lend a hand. Bragg is a veteran of political activism […]

Not the nine o’clock news

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It’s not the 9 o’clock news but then that’s probably a good thing. Below you can watch three no-edit videos I produced as part of a mobile phone training run by visionOntv for citizen journalists. It was part of a whole series of events being run at the Bank of Ideas, a building that used […]

Occupy your smart phone

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You may have guessed I’m obsessed by democracy and journalism. I’ve read a lot about both and done a lot of the second. Journalism that helps improve democracy is what really gets me going. Not fake democracy, the odd meaningless election, but real democracy. That would mean people having direct and ongoing power over their […]