April was placement month, when the Cardiff students were scattered across various UK newsrooms putting the skills we’ve learnt during term time to use in the real world. My first placement was ‘oop North at the Press in York.

York is a ridiculously pretty city and completely different from Cardiff. A change of scenery was just what I needed, really. The most difficult part was being chucked into the deep end in a city I’d never visited. Finding stories was a challenge, but that’s exactly why I decided to go somewhere completely different.

As it goes, I pitched some story ideas and features and didn’t do too badly after all! Highlights included this feature on Lindy Hop (a dance I’m now addicted to) and this story about a newsagent shutting in the city centre, which caused a far bigger ruckus than I’d anticipated.

After a week’s respite in Cardiff, it was off to the other end of the country to Brighton, where I spent a week at journalism.co.uk. I’m really glad I got to spend some time on an online desk during the placement window, particularly as I’m a bit of a keen bean when it comes to digital journalism. I was lucky enough to attend the PPA conference, which meant I got to hear speakers from Stylist magazine as well as the Big Issue.

There was a particular googly-eyed moment when Simon Rogers gave a presentation on data journalism at the Guardian – this resulted in a feature on the website about some of their best data-visualisations. It’s an area I’ve had a play with, but after the presentation, I’d really like to hone my data journalism skills some more.

While writing a short blogpost about the Big Issue’s presentation at the conference, I noticed the Big Issue’s 1,000th issue is coming out next week, so I managed to organise to speak to both founder John Bird and editor Paul McNamee for a feature article due next week on the website.

Before all this I helped fellow blogger and CJS alumni Amy Davies with a photoshoot – she works for a camera magazine, so she gets the enviable job of testing out all their fancy new equipment on willing test subjects. Check out her full blogpost here for more hilarious shots of me looking bemused and/or staring into the distance…

One of the sewing community’s most prolific and popular sewing bloggers, Zoe, holds her Me-Made challenge once or twice a year, where she challenges herself to wear nothing but her self-made garments and asks other bloggers to join her. Those taking part share their outfits via the Flickr page or on Facebook as well as on their blogs. I’m liking sharing on Twitter at the moment, it seems to work fairly well, although I predict my images tab will look very self-obsessed and vain by the end of the month…

Because I’m only wearing one me-made garment a day, I’ve decided to try and blog every day as well. Possibly not the best idea in the month I’m due to travel to Brighton as well as the impending doom that is exam time. But, I feel it’ll do me and my blog good to actually make a conscious effort to blog every day. I imagine I’ll miss a couple, but blogging 5/6 times a week will be a lot better than around once a week.

My only worry is finding something new to talk about every day. I’ve based it around the premise of writing about a different garment each day, but I have to wonder how boring it’ll get. Normally, Seamless posts get a decent amount of feedback, so it’ll be interesting to see if the comments drop when posts are daily and a little less thought out rather than weekly and topic-based. It’ll be the first time Seamless is more of a diary, if you will.

So, we’ll see what happens. Do check out Seamless, even if you’re not too fussed on sewing.

Normally I keep the craft blogging seperate from my personal blog, but today we’re going to have a bit of a Seamless invasion so I can test out new blogging software Ocqur.

Developed by some cracking multimedia journalists, Joseph Stashko and Jonathan Frost along with technical-whiz Andrew Fairbairn, Ocqur was created for those of us who enjoy a bit of online rolling coverage. I’ve used CoveritLive in the past, which I’ve been pretty happy with, so let’s see how Ocqur measures up shall we?

Love it or loathe it, you have to hand it to the Daily Mail.

Yet again, they’ve pulled a blinder with Samantha Brick’s confessional article on the woes of being just too goddamn beautiful. As ever, controversy breeds pageviews, as people share, retweet and pin everything and anything about the Mail controversy of the day.

As David Hepworth pointed out yesterday, even if you don’t read the Mail, you’d be hard-pressed not to know who Samantha Brick is if you have any sort of presence on Twitter or Facebook. In fact, the first I saw of it was on Facebook.

“Is it just me, or is she not that good-looking?” posted one university friend of mine. So it began and Samantha Brick more or less dominated my Twitter and Facebook newsfeeds yesterday.

I would absolutely love to see how much of the Mail’s traffic today and yesterday came from the kind of people who normally avoid it at all costs. No one can resist a train wreck, especially if it’s causing such a fuss on the Twittersphere.

Whether or not Samantha Brick is particularly beautiful is neither here nor there. The point is, her article has (at the time of writing) generated a whopping 4980 comments, a controversial follow-up from the lady herself and a whole article dedicated to the millions talking about it.

The Daily Mail know exactly what they’re doing, that’s for sure.

On the plus side, have you seen the spoof articles written in reaction to the piece? They are utterly, utterly brilliant. Check out this one from Bristol 24/7 editor Chris Brown. I’m sure there’ll be many more before the day is through.

I’m obviously a fan. As a Guardian reader, it epitomises exactly why the news outlet appeals to me. As a journalist, it shows how I plan and hope I’ll be working as a journalist throughout my career.

The newspaper is moving beyond a newspaper. Journalists are finding they can give the whole picture better. Over a year the readership grows – a little in print, vastly in digital.

Alan Rusbridger, Guardian Editor-in-Chief 

News has become increasingly social. Facebook’s quest to become a platform for everything we do online has seen the likes of the Guardian and the Independent embed themselves onto the site. I’m still uneasy about this – I mean, how many times have you seen five-year-old stories circulating on the website because friends have clicked on them? Regardless, it’s a hint of how integral social media is becoming to journalism.

If stories are shared and commented on, you have an instant gauge of the kind of mark they’ve made. But what news outlets are doing now is using this interactivity to generate new content and figure out where the stories go next, or, as the Guardian puts it, give “the whole picture”.

The digital revolution has long been seen as the death of print. Not everyone’s so keen on it. There are a couple of dissenting voices even in our newsroom, full of fledgling hacks who stereotypically understand how all this new media mumbo-jumbo works.

But, if you ask me, even if print doesn’t survive the decline in circulation figures, there’s a clear way forward online. There’s no point seeing print and online completely separate anymore, because the same core journalistic techniques are used in both outputs. Print won’t ever really go away.

Why blog? I actually think it’s an easier question to answer than you’d think.

Let’s face it, blogging is utterly addictive. Where else do you have such editorial freedom than on the internet? The immediacy of blogging is incredibly attractive, with a whole audience out there just waiting to see what comes out of your fingertips.

Or so you’d like to think anyway. There is a certain vanity to blogging, which one attendee at Cardiff Blogs articulated in one of his questions to the panel I was a part of.

“Who actually cares? Why do people read this stuff?”

The fact is, people are bloody nosy. It’s just human nature. Blogging takes things one step further than Facebook or Twitter – in my early days as a blogger, it was almost like reading a diary someone left open for anyone to flick through.

Yet blogging has developed so much since I first started my little angsty LiveJournal (long since deleted, but as the internet remembers all, I’m not telling you my username, far too embarrassing). It’s more than just detailing the mundane – bloggers have developed into distinct communities producing inspirational and thought-provoking content which has nothing at all to do with what you had for dinner last night.

In essence, this is why I blog: because I like to think I have something interesting to say. As a trainee journalist, it’s pretty much the perfect way to show an editor I’m keen and enthusiastic, or at least I hope so. Fingers crossed, blogging will help to get a job.

There’s no reason why not. I’m still fairly convinced The Siren, my Swansea blog, got me my place on the course at Cardiff. Part of the reason I set it up was because I was worried I wouldn’t get enough cuttings and experience on the university’s paper and I hoped showing I could be self-driven enough to drive my own content would show I was keen and willing to learn.

But there’s one huge factor I’m missing here. Blogging’s great for immediate content, proof of self-driven commitment and a willingness to write – but above all, I actually really enjoy doing it.

It’s the cliche they tell you not to repeat in interviews, but I’ve always loved writing. I was the kid in primary school who churned out exercise book after exercise book full of fantastical stories about dragons, magic and, er, Power Rangers. A long-running joke in the Cresci household involves me making my millions a la J.K Rowling with my best-selling novel, just enough to pay for Mami and Papa Cresci’s holiday home.

I may be a journalist nowadays, but I think I might always be a bit of a blogger at heart.

Want to read some more bloggers musing about why they enjoy tapping away? Check out my colleagues’ posts: Tom Rouse here and James Chapple here. Then there’s fellow panellist Ardie Collins over here. Cardiff Blogs have opened the discussion on their blog, so you can join in there too!

So much blogging, so little time.

Photo by Cristiano Betta

Yesterday, the Press Gazette wrote about a new study which found “death knocks” as a better alternative to relying on messages left on social media websites. I can understand why journalists would think using messages from social media sites would be less intrusive than disturbing the family’s grieving process, but I know better than most how valuable touching base with a bereaved family can be.

When I was 16, the night before my first GCSE exam, my grandfather’s farm burnt down. The first I heard of it was when I was woken by my parents in the early hours of the morning and told what was going on – we live about an hour away from the farmhouse, but this was where my mother had grown up and where we’d spent many a Christmas, although less so since my grandmother had died.

I didn’t find out whether my grandfather was alive or dead until I got up to go to school, but I knew in my heart of hearts as soon as I heard there wasn’t a chance he’d survived. The house was almost completely gutted by one of the worst fires seen in the area for quite some time. Understandably, it was of significant interest to local media.

We actually still have quite a lot of the clippings at home, which, now from the perspective of a trainee journalist, make for surreal reading. Human tragedy will always make headlines and ours was perfect front-page material.

As far as I can recall, the major issue was with photos. We heard through neighbours a local paper were trying to get hold of photographs of my grandfather, the majority of which had been destroyed with everything else in the house. Eventually, a couple of half-decent photos were found, but nothing amazing.

The next day a photograph of the house appeared on the front page of the paper, without my family’s permission or knowledge. We’re talking about a fairly remote farmhouse here. There’s easy access from the road, but you have to climb up a pathway to the farm and get past a couple of gates.

I remember revising for my Biology exam in my room and hearing my parents shouting and screaming. Thinking they were arguing, I crept downstairs to find them shouting abuse down the phone at the editor of the paper, who apparently couldn’t see what the problem was. I don’t know about you, but I would say an apology would probably have been the best course of action at that point.

The whole thing really upset me. I don’t know if this is a good or a bad thing, but I never would have seen the state of the house after the fire if it weren’t for that picture. To be quite honest, I nearly gave up on journalism.

Now, I can understand why the paper took this route. At the end of the day, it was a big local story and sometimes photographs can make or break a great splash. What I fail to understand is why, when they already had our contact details, didn’t they just ask permission or, at the very least, let us know a picture of the still-smoking facade of my mother’s childhood home would be splashed across the front page.

But the real sting about the entire incident was the complete lack of sympathy when my family complained. Our tragedy sold their paper that day – it was the least they could have done.

In the end, it wasn’t enough to turn me away from journalism, but it’s been enough to make me pretty scared of having to do the dreaded death knock. We’ve debated how ethical they are in Cardiff a few times now, and personally, I think they’re a necessary evil if you actually want to do a decent tribute to the deceased.

At a recent work experience placement, I sat next to someone who was on the phone to a bereaved relative. He handled it with the utmost of class and respect and the story the next day was a great one.

I still worry though – what if I get details wrong? What if I manage to utterly offend a grieving family like this particular paper did mine? I suppose I won’t really know until I’m actually sent on a dreaded death knock.

If you want to read a bit more about it, then I’d recommend checking out this article, about what happens when a seasoned journalist has to be on the other end of a death knock.

I promise my next blog post will be more cheerful!

Time was when I’d let someone having a cheeky grope in a club slide – not because I particularly enjoy the experience, but I used to think it was impolite to get angry about it.

After all, I was the one wearing the short skirt, was I not? This is the kind of thing girls should expect in a club, right?

Well, yes, it is – but that doesn’t make it right.

Last night I spent a good portion of my evening telling boozed up lads their sneak attack grind dance from behind was entirely unwelcome, even more so when they began touching me up. Every single girl I was out with got grabbed in some way or another and usually by the same culprits who were repeatedly told none of us were interested.

The old bum-grab is pretty much a staple feature of my night out nowadays – I can guarantee at least one person in my group will have their arse pinched or slapped at some point in an evening out in Cardiff. It’s got to the point where I’ve stopped being polite about it.

I have male friends who tell me I should be flattered, I should relish the attention “while you still can.” For starters, if you think I’m going to sit around moping strangers aren’t grinding their junk into me from behind, then you’ve got another thing coming. Secondly, it sort of implies I’m only really worth anything while I’m still ‘grabbable’ and/or wearing short-shorts.

See here’s the thing – like most people, I can be quite interesting when you get to know me. For example, the reason why I’m comfortable squaring up to the bum-grabbers is because I’ve spent a whole lot of time fighting and grappling men twice my size in various martial arts. Also, I have a brain. I know right, I was surprised too!

In short – being grabbed like a piece of meat really isn’t my kind of compliment.

There’s not a chance in hell I’m going to change the way I dress on a night out to try and dissuade this kind of attention. I made most of my pencil skirts, I’m not going to stop wearing them just because they attract some major cases of unwanted crotch-thrusting.

So I’ve decided – If I’m to expect it on a night out, then anyone who grabs me from behind may as well expect a sharp elbow to their solar plexus. Or if I’m in a good mood, I’ll chuck a Jenna Marbles-stylee ‘GO AWAY’ face at them. Classic.

I’d honestly love to hear an alternate point of view on this, so hit me. Do you enjoy grabbing strangers’ bums? What kind of reaction do you get? Also… any gents out there who have experienced this kind of unwanted attention on a barely-lit dancefloor?

The unease comes from how bloody easy it is to see what I got up to during my fresher year at university – and anyone who’s been a fresher at Swansea University will know quite well why I’m not so fond of this particular feature of timeline. Cue the mass-deletion of inappropriate and, quite frankly, inane statuses from my past five years on Facebook (has it really been THAT long?) and much tweaking of my privacy settings to make sure my Facebook was well and truly locked-down to the outside world.

I’m probably being a little dramatic – for starters, the content isn’t so embarrassing to anyone but myself, but there’s something quite unnerving about the whole world being able to see how much of a prat you were in years past. Plenty of my friends and acquaintances have done the same, with some even planning to pack up and leave Facebook as soon as the new profile is forced on their accounts.

Yet all of this embarrassing content is information we have given to the multi-million phenomenon completely willingly. All this data was always available for people to see – Timeline has just made Facebook-stalking a bit easier.

Facebook has become such an integral part of our online lives, even with this discomfort, most of us will find it difficult to leave it all behind. The site plays on a certain vanity we’ve developed – like contestants on a reality show, we’d like the world to see what we’re up to, if only to prove how much FUN our lives are.

Now, people can broadcast what they listen to while revising, which newspaper articles they read that day or even geographically pin-point exactly where they are at a certain moment in time. So much for Big Brother watching us – we’re all just watching each other.