links for 2010-03-18

  • Kevin: Journalism.co.uk has an excerpt from the inaugural lecture by City University (London) head of journalism George Brock. I'm sorry to have missed it. He takes issue with a 2008 speech by Paul Dacre, the editor-in-chief of the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday. Brock calls some Dacre's arguments "grotesque and self-deluding arrogance". I couldn't agree more. Brock goes on to say, "There are those in society entitled to defend moral standards, but encouraging journalists to see themselves as moral referees has not helped to create or sustain trust in the profession." Absolutely. I look forward to hearing the full speech.
  • Kevin: With the Economist special on the Data Deluge and this post on TechCrunch about 'Big Data', we're seeing innovative ideas in terms of not only how to handle large data sets but also how businesses are being developed around making sense of these datasets. It's not necessarily new. eBay, Amazon and Google have been dealing with huge amounts of data, but there are new tools to deal with data and new ways to deal with different shaped problems with data.