Latest Blog Posts

• Why newspaper design and the architecture of a newspaper still matters (and what happens to your product when you disregard it)

  It’s easy (and cheaper) to ditch newspaper design, but be warned doing so could cost you dear in the long run – and here’s why. Like any other profession, newspaper journalists have their own technical language. And newspapers themselves also have their own ‘architecture’ (or at least they did). When it came to newspaper design and editorial thinking we were always told – though I never knew the science behind

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• How writing things down helped me turn ideas into reality (and develop a portfolio career)

  Have you ever wondered about how to develop a portfolio career? For me the answer lay in the power of writing things down. I am a great believer in writing things down, and it is something I do regularly not least because I’m a writer but also because so often when I put pen to paper it seems to make things happen. This year it has even helped me develop a

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• Monty Don and Naga Munchetty (or modern journalism and the British ‘surveillance’ state))

  It must be a strange life being Monty Don and Naga Munchetty. Both are excellent broadcasters in my view – and I admit to being particularly partial to Monty and Gardener’s World. But if my Google newsfeed is to be believed, then I reckon they are being spied on. In fact I think it’s worse – I suspect they are being trailed by some form of insidious artificial intelligence, a

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• The strange death of local journalism?

  A lot of people have been predicting the death of the press – but has that moment finally arrived? The Covid-19 outbreak has certainly hit the revenues of media companies across the board – and that may yet translate into an existential crisis for some – though others are keen to stress we are not yet facing an extinction event and publishers have worked miracles during the pandemic to keep

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• What is the difference between journalism and content marketing?

  What is content marketing and what’s the difference between content marketing and journalism? Be careful, who you ask that question to. Most news journalists worth their salt would recoil at the question even being asked. Journalism and content marketing – distant cousins or sworn enemies? It’s no surprise really – no journalist worth his or her salt would see their trade in such grubby terms as content marketing – after

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• Why journalists know how to squeeze as much as you can from a single story (and how you can do it too)

  Have you ever wondered how to squeeze as much as you can from a single story? Well, journalists have this little trick for doing just that. It’s simple really, but most people – particularly those without a media or marketing background – will never realise it. And here’s why – because usually the time you start to think about telling a story is when it’s too late, ie after it’s

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• Would you hire a content marketing editor via Zoom from £30 an hour?

  For a while now I’ve wondered if people stuck on how to write content would pay to hire a content marketing editor via Zoom for an hour at a time to help them. Now I want to put the idea to the test to see if a £30 plus VAT offer to hire a content marketing editor via Zoom would appeal. Or to put it another way, I need a

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• Thinking about death and how to stop it

  At the moment before lights out, the same thought has been coming to me: “I’m going to die” Or more to the point: “I don’t want to die” May be it is an age thing – at 48 I’ve recently entered the so-called ‘sniper’s alley’. Or may be it is the loss of loved ones and friends. Actually now I think about it, it may have started when my Grandma

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• Easy steps to help you create a basic content plan for your business

  Mention the word content or publishing and it’s easy to get in a tangle or to recoil in horror at the thought if you are new to this. But actually if you keep it simple you can quickly build up an effective basic content plan for any article or post you wish to create and publish. Here are some easy steps I’ve put together based on my own experience which

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• Will Covid-19 mark the end of the road for cars in Norfolk?

  Now is the perfect time for new thinking on how we do things   Dear Norfolk County Council, New Anglia Lep, Broadland District Council, Hellesdon Parish Council et al Now that we have experienced life in lockdown under Covid-19 I was writing to urge you not just to go back to business as usual when the restrictions are lifted. Things are going to be different for us all anyway, and

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