Over the next couple of days, we'll do a series of briefings for Year 2 students about their elective choices for next year.

On Friday at 12noon in the main newsroom, Sarah Lonsdale will talk about her module the Depiction of the Journalist in Fiction (JN510), and Rob Bailey will talk about his Sports Journalism module (JN512).

On Monday at 2pm in the main newsroom, I will talk about Advanced Multimedia Storytelling (JN506) and Richard will talk about Reporting Conflict (JN509).

I have set up a dedicated 'digitising station' for students to transfer video footage they have shot onto a computer for editing. As many of the cameras are no longer communicating with the PCs there is now a DV player connected to the computer by the second (locked) door in the undergrad newsroom. I have laminated printed instructions for how to use this equipment and stuck them on the workstation.

They read as follows:-

Can all students please ensure that they register for next year's modules by Friday,  22 March - even if all your modules are core, you must still register online.  If you have any problems doing this please contact Kelly Porter K.A.Porter@kent.ac.uk in Student Admin.

There's a brilliant feature on The Guardian's website today about Brentford FC: apparently the owners of the only football ground in the country to have a pub on each corner.

Today's Medway Messenger features an impressive investigation into illegal drag racing, written by second year student Matt Charles.

His story delves deep into Medway's underworld, exposing how 300 young petrolheads regularly meet on the Medway City Estate to compete in drag and drift races, including interviews with people who have taken part.

The Daily Telegraph is running a series of exposes of the questionable practices of local councillors and planning officers. Interesting, in as much as you don't often see a national broadsheet go undercover to turn its attention to local government - they will usually go for MPs.

It is rare to see the steps a journalist has taken to gain exclusive access to a story set out in as much detail as is revealed in these  e-mails between Isabel Oakeshott of the Sunday Times and Vicky Pryce. They are a must read. They raise several ethical issues; most important among them: whether the Sunday Times could/should have done more to protect its source.    

I've put a final test paper on the website - please use this as part of your revision. You can e-mail your answers to me if you wish. It's the last session next Friday before the exam on March 20th - it would be good to see more people making an effort to attend.

For second years working on their interactive feature assignments, here's a good example from last year. This is Huw Jenkins' moving piece about the Broome family. Click the image to play it.

Here are the teams for the District Challenge - I'm looking for five pages of strong, original local news from your towns. The stories you find can be used in your assessed portfolios, which are due at the end of the year.

The deadline for the challenge is noon on Tuesday, March 12.