Articles
Fatima Bhutto speaks out against Pakistan’s digital liberty crackdown
By Gouri Sharma Fatima Bhutto has criticised authorities in Pakistan for cutting off access to Facebook earlier this month. Bhutto used her appearance at the Frontline Club on Wednesday to highlight wh she things th the government was wrong to ban access to social networking sites for containing what it has called "blasphemous" content. If […]
The Times paywall is just the start – but will readers pay?
Pic credit: Chris King By Patrick Smith One way to boost newspaper revenues as print circulation and advertising revenues fall through the floor is to charge readers to read stuff online. The only problem is: will a generation that has grown up with free news content – that believes in a free web – cough […]
Will Apple save the news business? Apps, iPads, paywalls and how to make money from news
View in iTunes There’s no shortage of news around at the moment, but is anyone making anyone any money from it? As the print-based media come to terms with a shrinking advertising market and a promiscuous digital audience, many are looking to high-end devices such as Apple’s iPhone and iPad, which touches down in Britain […]
Israel and Palestine: Personal stories from Combatants for Peace, part three
On 28 July the Frontline Club asks: is the best route to peace in the Holy Land to put down guns and start talking? Four members of the Israeli-Palestinian activist group Combatants for Peace will be on hand to talk about how they plan to do just that. Tickets and more information on that event […]
First Wednesday Pre-election Special: Is this really a ‘change’ election or just more of the same?
Download this episode View in iTunes Pic credit: Chris King, Kat Banyard and Ivor Gaber at the Frontline. By Patrick Smith If there’s one word the British people probably don’t want to hear any more, it’s change. But – bear with us – with less than 12 hours to go before the polls close, the […]
Frontline Club Networking Party: Freelance video journalism showcase
For our next Frontline Club networking party, we’re inviting members, guests and friends to join us in celebrating the very best in independent video journalism.
On the Media: Celebrity dominance of mass media isn’t going anywhere
If you’re jaded by the vast number of column inches and broadcast airtime given over to the lives of the rich and famous, you may just have to live with it. The verdict of a panel of celebrity experts at the Frontline Club on Thursday – speaking at an On The Media panel debate in […]
Journalists and kidnap: the modern dangers of reporting from the frontline
“When you get it right you win awards. When you get it wrong people say you’re naive.” That’s how freelance journalist Sean Langan describes the dilemma facing journalists working in hostile conflict zones every day. In a sense, just to be there reporting from a war zone is a risk – but if there were […]
Frontline Club publishing update: blogs, podcast and video
We’re proud of what we do at the Frontline, bringing our members and guests a unique programme of debates, talks, film screenings and training all year round. But as well as inviting our friends to our home at 13 Norfolk Place, we also want people in the UK and around the world who can’t attend […]
Changing sides: BBC’s Richard Sambrook joins growing list of journalists who abandon the newsroom for PR
What is it that makes them switch? Higher salaries? Shorter hours? Whatever it is, there’s no shortage of senior BBC journalists making the move from the newsroom to the world of PR. The latest is Richard Sambrook, one of the highest-ranking journalists in the corporation, who is leaving the Beeb after 30 years to join […]
Digital Election 2010: social media’s important, but not a kingmaker yet
View in iTunes MPs, Westminster hacks and activists might be addicted to expressing themselves in 140 characters or less, but don’t expect this year’s general election to be decided on which party has the best social media strategy. But politicians and the media shouldn’t dismiss voters’ digital engagement either, according to a panel at a […]
Iraq: Assessing the media’s role in seven years of war
By Alison Larsen Seven years after the Iraq invasion, The Chilcot Inquiry has stirred up old tensions about the rights and wrongs of American and UK military intervention. But what role did the media play in reporting the conflict? An estimated 3,000 journalists reported on the Iraq war, including 800 embedded with allied forces, […]
Mandela’s walk to freedom remembered: South Africa still suffering effects of Apartheid
By Gouri Sharma It could take South Africans another two generations to release themselves from the inferiority complex acquired during decades of Apartheid. Expert panelists at a Frontline Club event to mark 20 years since Nelson Mandela’s release from prison spoke of the psychlogical and social problems still affecting the nation, despite the hope and […]
Understanding the Taliban: Experts warn military force is misplaced, as ‘psychological’ war rages on
View in iTunes Watch the full event here. As the United States and allied forces prepare to deploy 15,000 troops in southern Afghanistan to battle Islamic insurgents, experts are warning that the problem isn’t one of physical might but of completely misunderstanding what the Taliban is. In the week that the number of British soliders […]
First Wednesday: the reporting of Haiti so far – are journalists getting it right?
Though some reporters may be guilty of over-oversimplifying the crisis left in wake of the Haiti earthquake, journalists can still aid the country’s reconstruction by reporting the truth on the ground. That was the broad consensus from panelists at a lively First Wednedsday debate at the Frontline Club, who chewed over the complex business of […]
UK’s Afghanistan ambassador stresses need to negotiate with ‘unsavoury people’
UK and international forces will need to negotiate with insurgents, warlords and people responsible for serious human rights abuses in order to achieve stability and halt the deathtoll in Afghanistan, according to the UK’s out-going ambassador to the country. Mark Sedwill, speaking at a sold-out Frontline Club event ahead of the London Afghanistan Conference this […]
Digital Election 2010: taking political campaigns from the doorstep to the inbox
By Patrick Smith How will the UK General Election this year be won? By getting The Sun to root for you, or being the party that has the most attractive policies, or the least gaffes? Maybe when the date rolls around – perhaps in May – the winning party will be the one that connects […]
Another brick in the wall? Paidcontent conundrum poses more questions than answers…
To charge or not to charge for online news? That’s becoming the defining question for an entire generation of editors, journalists and concerned readers at the start of the 21st century. While media owners plead there is a commercial value to their content – “news isn’t free to produce,” they say – online readers weaned […]
Clive Stafford Smith: Journalists need to dig deeper on Guantanamo truth
View in iTunes You can watch the event here. By Patrick Smith Journalists and human rights campaigners need to “expose the truth” behind the United States’ extra-judicial prison camps such as Guantanamo Bay and Bagram prison in Afghanistan. That’s the call from leading human rights lawyer and founder of the Reprieve charity Clive Stafford Smith. […]
Testing my kit for mobile reporting in Africa
So, you’ve brought your smart phone with you to a country like Nigeria, brimming with all your favourite apps for social media and live video streaming. Will everything work? Well sort of, inshallah. Recently while training radio journalists in Kano in Nigeria’s north, I used a variety of applications to get an indication of how […]
Twitter’s quicker
“Just heard a big blast near badi chowpak. Donno what it was.”Not much of a quote, but it was enough to get the story out. Sandil Srinivasan, or 2s as he is known on the microblogging service Twitter, was in Jaipur on 13 May when the first of a series of nine synchronized bombs exploded […]
Citizen Cameramen
By the time the members of the original Frontline TV agency hit Grozny in the mid-90s to report on the Chechen war, it became clear that the market for pictures and video was changing. Newer, lighter, cheaper cameras meant it was easier than ever to become a film maker. This fact, coupled with the diminishing […]
In Roddy Scott’s Memory
Roddy Scott was one of a rare breed of journalist adventurers – able to take physical hardship, utterly dedicated to finding stories about real people, and working throughout as a genuine freelance – the kind of person the Frontline club was set up to support. His picture is one of eight in the frame next […]
Watch this MySpace
The message “So and so has added you as a friend on Facebook” is about as common as offers for Viagra in email inboxes nowadays. Until September last year Facebook was restricted to people with .edu email addresses but they have grown spectacularly since opening their doors to everyone and are certainly the talk of […]
Kitbag: John Coghill
John Coghill is a marketing consultant, freelance copywriter and photographer. He set up Projector Media four years ago to provide marketing services to publishers and extend brands through video and events. Before that he worked in marketing and business development for The Economist. In 2003 he started the Radios for Africa charity that distributes Freeplay […]
Bomber Boys: Fighting back 1940-1945
Night after night and at great risk, the daring young men of RAF Bomber Command rained indiscriminate death and destruction on Nazi Germany. They scored bulls-eyes on industrial and military targets. They also slaughtered innocents. “It’s a fair assumption that when Tom dropped our bombs women and boys and girls were killed,” one wrote home. […]
Kitbag: Jane Kokan
Jane Kokan is an independent news and documentary director/ reporter/ camera woman specialising in the Balkans, the former Soviet Union, Afghanistan, Iran, SE Asia and Africa working for a variety of international broadcasters. Often her films were made in extremely difficult circumstances and Jane often worked alone in the field doing her own camera work […]
In Memoriam: Danny McGrory (1952 – 2007)
The Coroner said Danny McGrory had an unusually big heart. All his friends knew that – he was one of the most generous of colleagues, someone you were always pleased to be away with, reassuring personally and professionally. To those at The Times he was known as “McGrory the Story”, a reporter who could write, […]
In memoriam: Juliet Crawley Peck (1961 – 2007)
Juliet Crawley Peck was beautiful, refreshing, inspiring, and exasperating in turns, a force of nature cast from some empire-building mould left over from another age. She faced with brisk equanimity the shooting of both of her husbands, the loss of an eye, and then latterly the cancer that returned to kill her. From her early […]
Stream on
The online video invasion has been promised for over a decade but in 2006 it finally arrived. High broadband penetration, reduced bandwidth costs, social networking sites like MySpace and easy to use video-sharing websites such as YouTube, Google Video and Guba have all contributed to explosive growth. And while the business models of the video […]
