Category Archives: PortfolioPrint

When Religion Makes the News – A Workshop for Journalists

Religion is an element in many high profile stories today but how well are journalists supported in their efforts to understand and interpret its role? I have organised with NUJ Training Wales the first event in Wales to address this urgent skills issue.

WHEN RELIGION MAKES THE NEWS: Workshop & Networking Event, Cardiff

A workshop for all journalists living or working in Wales: 8th November 2016

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Pitch Your Ideas Workshop

I never fail to be impressed by how well participants in this workshop grasp the pitching principles I offer. I am convinced that most people are aware of what it takes to make a good sales pitch but perhaps have not had the opportunity to pull what they know together and also to reach for the sales person hidden inside each of us. And it’s fun – as you can see  in the photograph above – happy faces at the end of the workshop I delivered on 10th March! Continue reading Pitch Your Ideas Workshop

Regulating the Regulators – the Press Recognition Panel and Wales

We all remember Leveson. And we still hear late rumblings from that consideration of corruption in the UK press as well as continuing debate as to how best to deal with it. A need for regulation was generally acknowledged but what system should be used? The compromise reached was the creation of self-regulators overseen by a Recognition Panel established by Royal Charter and the Panel came to Cardiff on 14th July.

The Press Recognition Panel  held a consultative session in the School of Journalism, Cardiff on the criteria to be used when assessing applicants for recognition. This consultation process ends on 31st July.

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Faith and Violence – the journalist’s role

On New Year’s Day this year the Western Mail published an article by the Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Wales, Saleem Kidwai. He claimed that a precious achievement in Welsh cultural life is in jeopardy and that a generation have felt ‘rejected by their fellow Welshmen’.

 Welsh-Muslim youth who thought themselves like any other Welsh person got a rude awakening post-9/11 — a sort of cultural shock that they were not like any other Welsh person. Overnight, they were the other, the enemy…

As Mr Kidwai set out the traumatic ramifications of this tragic dissociation I felt the force of his appeal that, “As a society…  We have to reject any attempts to marginalize Muslims as second-class citizens” but I was perplexed as to how to go about that.

Until I perceived a potential response from the world of journalism itself – from journalism in Wales.

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Winner Aber Valley Arts Festival Short Story Competition October 2014

WP_20141011_010Adjudicator: Grahame Davies: “A mature and wise piece of work that gives us what we want from our writers: in the face of failure and sense of loss, a sense of meaning, understanding and hope.”

Martyrdom on Television – St John Roberts and the Small Screen

 

Photo: Keith O'Brien
Photo: Keith O’Brien

Martyrdom on Television – St John Roberts and the Small Screen

Based on the 60′ documentary Merthyr Meirionnydd, presented by Guto Harri, produced by me for S4C.

Article for Welsh Journal of Religious History (Bangor University, Centre for the Advanced Study of Religion in Wales).