Andrew Marr's My Trade, tracing the history of British journalism, is quite rightly required reading for all students at the CfJ. Today he kicks off a series for the revamped BBC web site by looking to the future. His conclusions may be of some reassurance to those wondering where their studies might lead them, or whether we're right to keep banging on about this notion of convergent journalism: "Just a few years ago, I was shaking my head and saying I thought I'd had the best of times for journalism, and wouldn't want my children to join the trade. No longer. I'd like to be 20 and starting out again right now."

Banish propriety, abandon caution and prepare to laugh: Julie Burchill, the 51 year-old former 'hip young gun slinger' and, more recently, superstar polemicist, has a new column in the Independent. There are several reasons to celebrate - let's start with the evidence that Alexander Lebedev can afford to invest in expensive columnists - but king among them - for me at least - is that JB remains an acute, challenging and funny voice in a market where too many are  constrained by fear that they might offend somoene. She will offend lots of people, deliberately. Read her first Indy column here.    

A ludicrously botched bank robbery leads to the question, Can you be too incompetent to understand just how incompetent you are?
Errol Morris is a filmmaker whose movie “The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons From the Life of Robert S. McNamara” won the Academy Award for best documentary feature in 2004. He is also one of those annoying people who never seems to produce any piece of work that is less than brilliant, even when in this case it is "just" an fanciful little blog entry.

The UN Security Council has condemned the escalating ethnic violence in Kyrgyzstan, calling for calm and the restoration of order following the bloodiest ethnic clashes seen in the region since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Self-op online and TV reporter Robin Forestier-Walker reports from the Uzbek side. Robin feeds the VO and pictures to Doha, where they assemble his video story. Shows what you can do solo in a difficult situation.