Rebecca Hughes's blog

After being horrified by stories about student unions censoring what student publications can print, I set up an investigation. You can find it on Help Me Investigate. For those that have never heard of HMI before read their "about" section. Due to the vast numbers of universities in the UK, I figured it would take too long to do by myself. If you want to help, let me know and I'll send you an invitation.

Being reminded of the magazine was a slight smack in the face/reality check that we only have one week left of holidays. So you know the drill by now. Anyone who wants to contribute drop me a line at ummmagazine@googlemail.com

It was supposed to come out at the start of February, but I'd like this one to have much more input from everyone, so I think I'll move the date back until the middle of Feb. I'd also like it if you'd turn up on the first Monday back for a meeting. I'll arrange a time later. I want story ideas sent in before this date though.

Got asked to post this: 

"Dartford Living are looking for volunteer writers that are keen to write short articles and improve their CVs at the same time!

Dartford Living has been operating successfully in North West Kent and South East London for over 5 years.

The magazine is delivered to homes and businesses in Dartford, Greenhithe, Longfield, Darenth, Wilmington, Crayford, Bexley, Gravesend, Northfleet and Swanley. The online version of the magazine can be found on the Dartford Living website or on our Facebook page each month.

Year two, part two of “snow snaps”.

The snow has finally vanished (for a few days) so I decided that looking at pictures of it was the only way to make me feel happier.

Link/upload some of your snow snaps. I’ve got a couple here.

Hope you all had a lovely Christmas and that Santa gave you all you wanted; especially seeing as we have been such good little boys and girls this year…

Okay, now I feel that I have sufficiently masked my real intentions:

Once upon a time a husband and wife dreamed about stopping manufactured musical shit getting to the number one spot at Christmas. Instead of putting it in their list to Santa and sending it to the North Pole, they started a campaign about it on Facebook. Their Christmas wish was granted and they stopped poor little Prince Joe from having his own wish granted. As RATM rocked their way into the number one space, little did the happy couple realise, that their replacement choice spawned from the same evil empire. The wicked witch in this story being Sony Music Entertainment.

Recently I've been reading a lot of articles/tweets about journalism students needing more than just the traditional skills; they need entrepreneurial skills. Goldsmith's journalism department featured in this morning's Media Guardian for possessing those exact skills. It also mentions Birmingham, City, Newcastle... but not Kent.

(Yes, here she goes again...)

It sounded somewhat strange to me when I read that the LA Times were interested in an debate happening at the University of Kent. Then as the story began to unravel, it turned out that an ex-UKC student was now an editor at the LA Times and his next editorial piece was on the same subject as the debate - beauty pageants. He was hoping to get a transcript or a video of the event to show to readers.

I never know how many of you read this, but here we go -

Obviously with such things like the elections on campus, we should really chuck out another issue of the magazine.

However, due to the time it takes to print it/design it - the deadline for articles is going to be a week. We'll say 22nd November.

I'm hoping to steal a conference this week, but if I can't I'll organise a time.

Put your little thinking caps on this weekend. :)

For second year students, it's something we've been studying for a few weeks now, for first years you've got the joy of it to come - the law of defamation. So turn your attention away from Facebook raping each other for 10 minutes and do something productive for both journalists and bloggers. It's all explained much more here.

Okay, slight exaggeration – but it did help with my assessment this week and I figured first years haven’t yet had to put up with my Twitter ramblings. 
Not that I was at all guilty of leaving my video project to the last minute, but I was, on Wednesday night, madly searching for some more information on my chosen story.