Journalists facing deadly risks

Not for the first time, I’m ruminating about the deadly risks facing journalists working in conflict zones or countries like North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, Egypt or even India. It’s 1am and I’m reading the Guardian Weekly, starting with its world roundup, where my eye is drawn to a headline: “Indian journalist beaten to death.” In just 100 words we are told that Shantanu Bhowmick’s death at the hands of a stick-wielding mob brings the…

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The demise of Page Turner

Technology’s great, except when it does you out of a job. My friend Spike trained in the 1960s as a hot metal typesetter, a printing technique dating from the late 1800s. This industry relic was replaced by phototypesetting, which produced columns of print ready to be ‘pasted up.’ This last bastion of the printing trade was made obsolete by digital newspaper publishing systems, the personal computer and desktop publishing software. In the music world, the…

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