They sold us a lie

As the end of my third week of 'real' world work experience approaches an increasing sense of depression is beginning to prevail. My first two weeks were at FHM (owned by Bauer) where they used to share offices with Arena. Arena had closed a few weeks before hand. So I had the joyous task of clearing away the Arena side of the office which really pushed home the point that the industry was in a state. A few days later, we heard before most, that Maxim was closing (someone in the Q office had a friend there who informed them immediately after they got the news).

While on FHM the staff there made it very clear that the industry was in a state. This should be all to0 evident to anyone in the industry, but my 'work experience' made me really feel this. One colleage at FHM had ranted about how educators are selling a lie by 'training' people to enter the media industry, when there are no jobs to be had. He pointed out that there is an incredibly bloated industry for 'training' people to enter the media, while the media industry itself is shrinking rapidly.

After two weeks at FHM I moved onto Q (also owned by Bauer), where it immediately became clear that jobs had just been cut on the Q website. This brought my thoughts back to the colleague at FHM, one comment in particular, "These educators are selling a lie when they train people to enter the media, there are no jobs to be had."

Social media to be taught in primary schools

The Guardian revealed proposals today that social media such as Twitter and blogging should be taught in primary schools. The plans have been drawn up by Sir Jim Rose, a former Ofsted chief, and are quite an interesting idea.

I say this more because a lot of new media thinkers seem to be suggesting more and more that the journalists role in the future will be as a facilitator rather than a writer. If this is to be the case then the transfer of the journalist to the classroom could be a very interesting step in furthering this evolution. It also comes at a very interesting time as many journalists are losing jobs. Whether the idea of teaching 4-11 year-olds the in and outs of twitter, podcasts and blogging would be an attractive switch I remain unsure.

Facebook tells users to fuck off

I was browsing the membership of a group I had created, when next to my name, I noticed Facebook was being rather rude. This is completely genuine.