How to write the near-perfect application for a job

Masters students in journalism pitching their ideas to senior management at ITN. At the Uni we grill our students on how to pitch a brief, an idea, a documentary, and we're told it makes a differenece

I am a senior lecturer, a former broadcast professional who consults for a number of companies and am continually involved in helping companies to hire talent and have recommended journalists, and would-be journalists (highly selective) to employers over the years.

This 10 point guide is for the brilliant, hardworking students and job seekers, who can't get past the application form, despite the fact that you've got all the right elements for the job.

If you're a blagger, this'll help you too but you'll prob be found out at the interview stage.

1. Be generous, but do not overburden your replies. If they want 150 words. Stick to 150 words. Not a letter more, or a letter less, if you can. It's all part of the ritual of discipline.

2. There are list of attributes you need to meet. If you can't the jobs not for you. If you can be meticulous in answering them with examples. Do so, but don't labour the points.

3. Refrain from saying how the job will help you build your career. That's nice, but the employer is interested in what you will do for them.

4. Refrain from showing off with the many things you have done. It may appear unfocused. Be judicious in selecting those that help your application.

4. Don't skimp of info, assuming because everything you've shown so far means you're the right candidate, when asked "why are you the best" you answer, "See what I have said before|". DELETE

5. Don't say this job was made for me! And cut down on the personal praise. The more vain you are, the less attractive you are.

6. Front load the key words required of you. The person looking at your application, will firstly skim read. If she or he misses key words, they may not be enthused to comb through it in detail.

7. Note down your salary. However be aware. If the job is £20,000 and you currently earn £70,000 it will be a tall order convincing those sifting through applications that the salary will be attractive to you.

8. This should be no. 1  really, but if you've got this far, then it'll make sense. Everything firstly lies in your presentation. There may be 100 applications to go through, and the sifter may only have 20 minutes. They'll find all sorts of ways to discriminate. An unprofessional looking document, with badly formatted texts makes their job easier.

9. Don't be funny or humorous. It runs the risk of misinterpretation. Believe me. After I have been through my 200th applicant, I have no sense of humour.

10. If you make it through practice your pitch. We drill our students at the University of Westminster in the art of the pitch. It is a cognitive practice, understanding what the employer is looking for. Get it right and the job is one step closer.

NB. If you're at a university ask your SU or lecturers to brief you on pitches and applying for jobs.

How Apple closed down Apple.com and my greatest party trick

Ajaz Ahmed AKQA founder in velocity mode

Ajaz Ahmed is the embodiment of cool, mid 40s, founder of one of the world's most successful Ad companies, and a multimillionaire. Last year 80 percent his company AKQA was sold to WPP Martin's Sorrell.

From the 90s when he first conceived of his ideas and found a loyal audience in Nike, Ahmed's company, and approach appeared to mirror the ethos of the one and only Apple.

Cool, innovative, and daring to turn the Ad industry on its head,  Apple's endorsement came in the way of a high profile piece on its Apple.com site.

Being cool just got cooler.

Not now though, Ahmed still generates column inches, indeed writing his own book, "Velocity" on an emergent philosophy of advertising which is a good read. But his Apple profile has vamoozed. Not that this should worry him.

To be exact, Ahmed and several other pros, to which Apple provided some of its star dust have been stripped from Apple. Only to be found in the Internet barren land of wayback.com

An Apple friend tells me the site, Apple.com,  has been decommissioned and with it my own 'not-so-worthy' endorsement.

How Apple made me cool, really!
Let me explain, back in 2006, via an acquaintance of an acquaintance at a UK tech conference, I approached an Apple executive to tell him how the Mac is embedded in my genes.

And given I'm one of the first people in the UK to be genetically fingerprinted. Really! And no I'm not a crim, that perhaps was a big claim.  Incidently years later when I graduated in Applied Chemistry I made my first radio docmuentary aired on the BBC about the Dr Jeffrey's the man behind the gene science.

So the Mac then let me do so many things e.g. videojournalism, I couldn't do when I was either with the BBC, or Channel 4 News. For instance this promo here which includes an interview with former head of the CIA and travelling on her majesty's the Queen's private jet.

In fact I bought my first power book by taking a flight to New York, walking into a store, paying $3000 and getting back on a flight again. Oh I did have a walk about and lunch before flying back. But the cost of the ticket and Mac was still much cheaper than UK prices.

My Mac had become my Johnny Mnemonic helping me bag a couple of awards. Apple, supposedly liked what they saw and dispatched a reporter to interview me.

It didn't go well.  From loquacious, I became lugubrious and so  I was thoroughly amazed to read  the article that emerged.

In fact the article became a party piece at conferences. Not the vain quest to big up myself. I'm just a guy with a mac who gets tired of rules, or what Foucault calls discursive formations.

No, the party trick was if I was ever asked for my email, or a delegate found it difficult to spell my name I would say, google "David Apple". Two common words that generated nearly a billion searches and more often than not, I'd come first in the rankings.

Unhinged in cyberspace
The Chinese, particularly in China loved it. Somehow I owned the web, or knew jobs himself.  A month ago someone pinged me from own website, viewmagazine.tv. "you've a broken link to your Apple page".  An old Chinese friend; the chinese as I have come to learn get provenance in a big way.

And truly enough I was no more. My friend within Apple says, Apple are now a different company. In the mid 90s they were pushing on the Macs. That technology is now so outdated, as is Apple's strategy which has grown into a polysemic one of  hardware e.g. iPhones,  Apps, and Softwares.

David Dunkley Gyimah presenting at Apple Stores.

I'll  miss the Apple Pro site featuring Ahmed and others, and not least performing my own party trick. From twice presenting at Apple a site, my first talk languishes on page 3, or 4 or... depending on the SEO of the day, under:

David@Apple

www.viewmagazine.tv/david@apple.html‎Citizen journalists in focus at Apple Store talk
 Says Macworld Magazine: A special event for 
citizen journalists takes place at the Apple Store Regent Street when ...

So that's how Apple decomissioned Apple.com and my greatest party trick. In fairness, Apple is still profiling those who use its products in innovative ways. Here's Apple Pro the next generation, using Aperture, FCP et al. 

All of which has given me an idea. Apple's still a big part of what I do. but there's no point in flying to the US to buy the latest, however, if Apple is listening, I'm just about completing my PhD into the future of storytelling, a labour that has taken six years, several countries and countless interviews  -and truthfully I couldn't have done it without my Mac.

David Dunkley Gyimah's viewmagzine.tv

Because I have filmed the making of my PhD and the films I'm submitting on my Macbook.  Hi Apple, did you hear that :)


David Dunkley Gyimah, is a senior lecturer at the University of Westminster, an artist-in-residence at the Southbank Centre and a videojournalist/ film maker.  He's formerly worked in many areas of traditional broadcasting at the BBC, Channel 4 and ABC News as either a reporter, producer or series maker. His currently completing his PhD which examines a wide range of story forms and what makes them innovative and engaging with audiences. Apple, once gave him a free powerbook.

Journalism's continuous flux of change should be expected and will favour the fittest

David Dunkley Gyimah teaching at the Chcago SunTimes, in Chcago 

When you’re own nothing everything is something.

The assumption, perhaps some of us make, is journalism owes us something or society. That somehow we elect our journalists in an attempt to see democracy work, in the way we elect politicians.

That the right to practise somehow is beyond reproach, once you have deep pockets or a benefactor to build that institution. But history tells us journalism has a continuous streak of turmoil.  

Today's 140 characters would have been as painful to newspapers as the threat of Television in the 1950s. Our pain is just being expressed here and now. Picture Post, a highly respectable photo mag lost the bulk of its journos to this new medium.

Burgeoning communication theory from the 1920s with the heat of industrialisation gave journalism recognition and some stability. There was the them (citizens) and us (journos), the few who could afford the license against the many who couldn't. The theories and practices that underpinned it. The business of journalism took hold.

Yet share a thought for those who also wanted their voices heard, but couldn't. There were just so many outlets where you could practise the craft, while others clamoured against the walls.

Struggling to find work in the UK in the 90s (all sorts of reasons), though I have had a fairly successful career with the BBC, Channel 4 News and a stint with ABC News in S.A, I tempered my frustration with the following:  "the media doesn't owe me a job, though I’d really like one".

Today, many more of us are realising that.  But history also tells us of the ingenuity of those scribes and image makers continually attempting to safeguard their livelihood, as well as push boundaries. Daniel Defoe's attempt to practise a new sort of journalism 300 years ago was derided by many at the time. Defoe, to make a living and extend his creativity also became an author, a tradition not uncommon today.

In effect, journalism is experiencing its own market correction. Did it have it so good that making money became the motive for some proprietors? That's another debate. But the soul searching we're undertaking, necessitated by the Net and digital may well be welcomed in years to come.

Because if the science or art of info gathering and dissemination is about holding the powerful (how did they get there?) to account; or making society work better because we're better informed, though, yes, knowing is not the same as doing. Then there's a strong case to be made that we're not doing so well.

Politicians have learned to run rings around journalists. We need more training in the zen of the new media. PR has become JR (journalism release) and soft news can't often tell the difference between primary requisite news, e.g. there's going to be bad weather ahead and it's down to global warming patterns, versus there's going to be bad weather ahead so wear your grey scarf it'll match the sky.

So if somewhere in this chaos a new journalism emerges, different to its antecedents, because now the pros, prosumer and citizen-journos have to try harder, well that can't be a bad thing, and by the way I don't believe in utopia either.

David Dunkley Gyimah is a former Knight Batten Winner for Innovation in Journalism for  viewmagazine.tv. He is an educator, videojournalist and is completing his PhD examining a unique aspect of news and videojournalism.

How sharing became the new anti capitalism/ softer capitalism : innovation web and videojournalism

Mark Little CEO Storyful hosting at NewsXchange - Pic David Dunkley Gyimah

"People say to me, what's your business model, and you know first of all  if I knew I wouldn't tell you"... Mark Little's remark eighteen minutes into this video: Innovating in tough times raised a chuckle from his fellow panelist.

Out of camera view, there were no audible gasps or sighs of despairs. After all you could argue the reason why delegates attend any number of media gatherings is to learn methodologies of success from the innovators.

And they're entitled to their pound of flesh, except perhaps where the theme is explicit e.g. How to be an innovator in tough times, is about innovation and not revelations of a company's business model.

Overall a schema, if not an overall methodology, is to attend a conferences where the jewel crowns are of any small, to successful company, is likely to be on display. Between 2001 and 2008 by my own estimates this was rife as web 2.0 and the conversational tone engineered into the web took hold.

The most prominent in the news rooms became the heart model for the news workflow. Gone was the cinema stall arrangement to a theory of funnelling the news into the centre of the news space and metaphorically the heart of operations.

BBC's heart model in construction - taken in 2012 before their launch

Now, largely the strategy for writing a blog, creating a social universe or showing how to crack your head open for a You tube laugh is common practice.

But look hard enough and the same subjects recycle various conferences, unless that is it involves pedagogy in research, and even then. In the latter case you'll likely to pay a prettyish penny.  Take knowledge that is a unique commodity e.g. Financial Times data news, or how the Concord Monitor made good on its paywall. Both good examples of info that is rarely, if ever free.

How to learn how to shoot  as a videojournalist is another.  Otherwise, you're never short of digital know-how boxed as your cure-all coming your way at the next conference.


The Sharing Theory 
The sharing theory, which has engulfed the internet is a combination of cognitive practices as  ecclesiastically old as Adam offering Eve an apple and more contemporary and postmodernism partnerships, which involve BOGOF, buy one, get one free, or GOFTU Get one free then upgrade.

The latter surfaced in the mid 90s following Marc Andressen's Netscape breakthrough. Whilst Andressen subscribed to the true spirit of disruptive anti-capitalist economics in his ground breaking work, by the time Microsoft frankensteined Moasic to Internet Explorer, the idea that nothing is really free was crystallising fast.

The push for sharing as a theory can be attributed to one of the most remarkable doctrines of its time, which was so alarming when it emerged, it was as much ridiculed as it was adopted by the new evangelists.  Doc Searls, Christopher Locke, Rick Levine and David Weinberger published their opus de The Clue Train Manifesto.

Its 95 thesis read as a social, cultural and economics panacea to the status quo. Anti-capitalism was the new hip with decrees such as:

• Don't worry, you can still make money. That is, as long as it's not the only thing on your mind.
• Have you noticed that, in itself, money is kind of one-dimensional and boring? What else can we talk about? 
• Markets are conversations.

It's good to give became the new mantra, because sharing ultimately is altruistic, though that is a myth.  While that has currency for those who are clearly selfless in their aims e.g. Gates' charity, many of us share because it buys us credibility. It's a social badge of sorts. On the other hand businesses threatened by Net's anarchy re-engineered their own business model.

By providing you a platform to speak, share and talk to one another, you become one of their matrix and if many of us sign up, to advertisers that's eyeballs. And eyeballs mean (all together now ) MONEY!

Ten years ago, I can still hear the howling laughter of BBC types as I,  a zerozen tried to get a commission for a programme. There are citizens and netizens, but in the early days any netizen without any successful scars from the maddening dotcom boom was a waster, a zero.

Why does this matter at this moment and time. I have been musing over what I do with the pragmatic sections of my PhD practice which takes a deep look at developing a theory that would underpin videojournalism on the web.

That research over six years, involving four continents, hundreds of interviews needs to be shared, but its intellectual property is, I'm told by my supervisors, worthy of a book.

It's a no brainer really, but more importantly, it underpins a new tide that is grabbing hold of the web, a softer form of capitalism, a new Clue Train Manifesto that says we love to share, but truly not all things are sharable, which makes Mark Little's opening remark refreshingly candid.

End ++

David Dunkley Gyimah is an Knight Batten award winner in Innovation in Journalism and International videojournalism winner. He is completing his PhD which examines and posits ideas for an evolving story form. The grand theory encapsulates various media and storyform theories. David has previously worked for BBC Newsnight, Channel 4 News and ABC News in South Africa in 1994.
He is an artist-in-residence at the Southbank Centre and a senior lecturer and academic supervisor for a number of companies. His work can be found on his site www.viewmagazine.tv

Integrated Multimedia Videojournalism's New Ideas. Please bare with me

Prepping on late night food for the Arab Media Summit in Cairo

It's 11.30 pm, we've just stepped of the flight to Cairo to find out in the morning the agenda we had planned for their summit needs to be changed. &^%$£?? Major ouch! Journalism is in a crisis in Cairo, that swiftly needs a solution.

It's different to what I am aware of  in the UK and US. The pros are, they believe, suffocating under the weight of social media and the independent news maker.

Nothing stays the same, everything changes.

Followers of this blog, which principally deals in videojournalism, , ideas, academia and journalism innovation may have noticed how strangely the blog has changed over the past couple of days.

The reason being I'm experimenting with a new layout. After six years of blogging and with a whole wealth of information to hand from my extensive work, the need has arisen to display this on a more open, and easily navigable blog site.

Some of that info includes work I'm about to start with the Comedy theatre, one of London's most successful comedy houses, as they go digital in a big way, looking to expand into India.

Equally exciting is another company, OrgVue which has found a way to use data visualisation to help companies figure out their output/ staffing etc.

More rceently, I have had the pleasure of working alongside a medical data company, Dendrite, supervising a true talent who has built a top rated site from scratch.

Pragmatic ideas
Then there's my own personal work from my thesis, which, if the logic holds means the way we teach doc making/ videojournalism and news needs a radical overhaul. The text tells you how, with some powerful people in the industry combining their thoughts. I'm looking forward to sharing that with the industry.

Couple of years back I received this email from the BBC.

Dear David 

We are currently organising BBC Worldwide's annual Leadership Conference in October which is aimed at the top 150 senior leaders across the company. We would like to invite you to speak at a session focusing on 'Creativity and Innovation: Creating the Winning Idea' which currently has speakers including Innocent; Ten Alps and Bebo. The session will run on Thursday 5th October from  11:20 - 13:30. With your fantastic experience in both old and new media and your insights into next generation TV both in the UK and US, you would be a valuable addition to the panel. Your slot would be around 20-25mins, followed by a 60 minute Q&A panel session in which you would jointly answer questions from our staff.
About the Leadership Group Our Leadership Group consists of around 150 of our senior staff from acrossour seven business areas: Global TV Sales, Global Channels, Content &Production, Magazines, Digital Media, Home Entertainment and Children's. They are a lively and talented group of people who would greatly enjoy theopportunity to hear you speak and we very much hope that you will find the event interesting too. 

Head of Communications

More recently, I spoke to executives at the BBC, so with my new findings rather hope I can share some more with broadcasters.

Recently speaking at BBC Meetings

In June, however,  I'm in Denmark presenting to their journalist in a week which includes some of the world's best thinkers in image making, such as Bombay flying Duck, Drea Cooper  from Califormia is the Place and Michelle Michael, a highly respected VJ from the US.

Timetable for Denmark talk.

One that I hope meets the need of the pro and pragmatism of the student, whether that's academia or life-student.

Unfortunately, many of the blog skins treat key words as categories resulting in a mis-alignment of pages. Horrible!

I'm hoping this can be resolved really soon. So in the meantime, I have reverted to the blog of old and hopefully over the weekend can present the new site, without all its detritus. So please stay in touch and we'll get this experience to where it should be.

What is videojournalism on the web, in multimedia and offline - a major study and film - and why it matters

What is videojournaism and why it matters?

What is videojournalism?  

This could be a boring academic question, but it isn't. Many have defined, or described it, but few have attempted an anthropological (historical) examination.

Some people have, but as journalistic enterprises and as a journalist myself they've made for interesting reads, but I wanted to attempt something different. A deep invasive examination into what it is, and its purpose. I secretly refer to it as the lost chapters.

Why does this matter? Here's an analogy. You can't begin to understand social media, without the contribution of web 2.0, web 1 and unequivocally going back to the break out of the web itself into the public domain in the 1990s

Only by interrogating its past, provenance,  can you understand the potential of its future. And that's what I have set out to do.  In the 1990s there were around five different pioneers that emerged in the US, UK, Denmark, Germany and Japan.

What if some of those people never went away. What if they quietly continued with their craft? What if they harboured deep thoughts about it and amazingly emerged and said we did it quite differently.

What did they mean? Then they showed us and from that we could see the endless possibilities, its potential and where videojournalism was strangled. Yes its potential was pared down.

You may think I sound like a salesman. That magic snake potion for the media's woes. But actually my research has the dryness warranted from academic research. No hyperbole, but substantiated facts.

The process has taken me to China, Cairo and Chicago. Its language and construct is more expansive, yet as previous posts going back to 2007 show it's not a utopia. There is no such thing, but the form when it bears its fangs it constitutes an artistic form par excellence.

But why would anyone bother reading it?  Its 85,000 words, involves more than 150 interviews.

They include the figures that brought videojournalism to the BBC and has taken 6 years as a part time PhD.  So when I do publish please feel free to skip to the conclusion then work you way backwards.

5 Reasons for presenting

Why would anyone consider reading it. If you don't mind here's 5 rhetorical answers

1. I was one of the first official (National Union of Journalists) videojournalists in the UK in 1994.
2. I have spent near 20 years immersed in its form and style, in one year creating 500 stories on air. Before being a videojournalist I worked for the BBC e.g. Newsnight, was an on air reporter for BBC 2 Reportage and ITN's London Tonight and produced for Channel 4 News and ABC News.
3. I have used it on projects to create: 

• commercials, turned around in a day that went out on CNN International
• Being Heavyweight boxer Lennox Lewis videojournalist during his fight with Tyson. 
• Creating the first ever Country-to-Country videojournalism broadcast (Ghana and South Africa)
• Launch the UK's first newspapers training with the Press Association
• Created films that have been well received international, winning international awards
• Used it t create Obamas 100 Day film showed at the Royal Festival Hal
• 
  

     4. It's been one of the most difficult things I have undertaken and I'm grateful for opportunities such
     as being a judge for the UK's television Emmys, the RTS that opened my mind some more.
    5. Its work that extends from winning the J-lab knight Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism
     and the international videojournalism awards in Berlin.

And I'm looking forward to sharing it with as many people as possible, my good friends in the US and universities, Europe, China and Ghana/South Africa. They're linning up nicely.

Its place in a future of journalism when its done and that's soon, because I'm also making it into a film. The results I believe will question videojournalism to the point that "there is no such thing as videojournalism, yet there IS videojournalism". This almost drove me mad.

In the meantime I look forward to sharing and explaining some of its preliminary findings such as the image above, how videojournalists read a scene in making a film.

10 things social media is yet to get right in the new society

The clamour for all things social could make you think nothing else existed remotely similar before 2000. Hobbes, 300 years ago puts paid to that. 

Whilst it would be difficult for anyone to deny the benefits of social media, the corollary is that its blind side obscures an array of pernicious tendencies.  Put succinctly, we have acquired social tools without the social etiquette or an acknowledgement of the framework that Hobbes considered important for the social contract. That is things that are ethically and morally right to do.

The effect has been a growing, perhaps more selfish (meism) social class, sometimes unable to see past the effects of their own screen. Of course this will change, but before that here's 10 things that social media and its evangelists are yet to help us get right.

1. Anti-social classrooms.

Until universities understand how to thoroughly uses social media in lectures and one of the deepest thinkers here includes Howard Rheingold, the design and exchange of knowledge will be found wanting.

One of the biggest setbacks is the now antiquated front-facing design of lecture rooms, followed by the inevitable FB time inbetween that crucial link in information. You could argue if the lecturers were more engaging this wouldn't happen, but that's not always the case. I have come across past students who

• from the onset are buried in their FBs and when asked will say they can multi-skill. 
• or that they were not supposed to be in lectures in the first place. 

Multiskilling is a now an almost ubiquitous function, yet as many scholastic works prove, left side brain associated with reading, and right side brain in watching are two separate brain functions.

In my own simple tests, I have students read a book then attempt to play ping pong at the same time, otherwise a more severe act with sometimes tragic consequences is texting and driving at the same time. It's not advisable.

Until we evolve more efficient brains or find ways of making lectures more socially engaged, (I now build social media breaks into lectures which appear far more important than tea-break) the lecture hall becomes the anti-social classroom.

2. Dear Ms Elizabeth Landy.

Oh no, the social media generation opt for the more "Hey Lizzy ". A blurring of social space and real space means increasingly its difficult to separate who's your friend and the people with which you ought to be building a professional relationship.

We're only a click away from addressing our next potential employer, Jonathan Barnes OBE, for that banking job, with "Hey Jonny". Either we get socially etiquetted up or a new range of finishing schools will emerge to help us understand that there are your friends and professional friends.

3. Likes You.

Liking and disliking someone and their exchanges has moved from the water cooler into a social space, where authors, particularly budding journalists struggle to understand that the whole point of journalism is to "be on the record" .

"Oh no if I reveal myself, I'll get lower grades", I overheard this once. What you're not prepared to say in person, refrain from saying on public space. We're actually getting much better at this is my perception.

Partly because, whilst an out of place comment is one thing, tipping your hand too far is likely to incur the law of defamation (if you can afford it), a potential beating (which I would not advise) or an exchange which may hurt you when you realise the person you've taken on has bigger google juice guns than you.  Overheard, a student photographer asking her lecturer to take down his comments about his brilliant writing as it occupied the top ranking of her name, and the photographer wanted to be known for his photographic work.

Quick win solution:  encourage trainee journalists to learn to say what they feel without always hiding for the wrong reasons around anonymity.  You're going into a profession where you get paid for critiquing with your byline attached.

4. Eyes on your forehead.

In 2056 human beings will have their eyes situated on the crown of their heads. If that doesn't happen, the number of fatalities walking the road in a straight line into traffic, whilst texting, will continue. It's more dangerous than you think says Laptopmag blog. In the US, according to the Guardian newspaper, fines will be issued to those walking as if they needed a tan on their necks. The walking talking texters have created their own social rule so that they have right to way on crowded streets. But what happens when we're all double bent walking along a-texting?

5. Damn politics.

3,000,000 online petitions versus 3,000,000 people lining the streets. Which one appears more potent? No one's saying online campaigning doesn't work, but its been said on more occasions than I care to remember that the lot who campaigned against Thatcher's poll tax were more political active on the hustings compared to today's youth. Is this all myth?  Will it be social media that makes politics cool to the point we hit the streets again? Would the poll tax have been abandoned solely if people adopted an online strategy, not withstanding the occasional Flash mobs?

6. The Coward Boss.

Not up to breaking the news, as it should be, on something as dramatic as a loss of job, or ending a relationship, a generation of social mediasts might argue what the fuss is about.
As a media exercise I pose a question to delegates that challenges when and where they would report casualties in a combat army. Some are quick to express how Facebook would be ideal. Then there are those that acknowledge that the ideal situation would be to firstly contact by phone or face-to-face someone from the injured person's family. Social Media scholars may need to provide the blue book on what is socially acceptable to say and what requires the human touch.

7. Its not on google, it never happened.

Yep, it's that simple, social media's omnipotence means a generation believe if its not on google, it never happened and if it's not on the front page, it's not important. Mediastorm are arguably one of the best global cinema journalism storytellers, but you won't find them on page one of "cinema journalism", though I'm certain that will change.

This reliance on the world's leading internet service provide led one scholar Professor Tara Barabazon to ban her students from using google and wikipedia. My own reasons for cautioning the exclusive use of google is the loss of flaneurism - the art of physical wandering and serendipity finding new contained knowledge from journals and books.

But actually a more pressing reason also exists. Dr Alison Williams, a colleague of mine, has just completed her doctorate and part of her study showed how physical spaces assist in creativity: going for a walk, a shower, riding in a bus. So walking to a place where knowledge is, the library, may provide additional, hidden reasons for creativity.

Undoubtedly, google and Wiki (Wiki leaks) have proved their importance, and google continues to digitise the world's brains, but knowledge from social media does not yet trounce all the other media entities. Confidential agreements, and research knowledge still restricts information.

8.  Think before you reflect.

Social media has made us more prone to speak without sometimes reflecting on what we're saying. Cognitive awareness is being substituted for immediate emotional gratification and sometimes playing to the gallery, making us perhaps more socially impoverished. Paris Brown, 17, one of the youngest youth police commissioners in the UK, found this out to her embarrassing costs when she tweeted .... "or I am an anti social, racist, sexist, embarrassing XXXX. Often its the latter." Here are examples of Tweets gone wrong from ReadWrite Social.

9. Lonely girl, lonely boy.

Paradoxically, and not unsurprisingly we're social beings who like physical company. And while social meet ups via social media may increase our social network, nothing beats physical space. That feeling of finding friends online, combined with other factors, can lead to the most un forseen consequences e.g. grooming.

Dating, or trying too in the social space has led to a new word, Catfish, and the series from MTV featuring couples meeting up for the first time and realising all is not well.

10. The secrecy syndrome

Social media makes us increasingly unable to hold secrets, but also inadvertently creates the perception of one upmanship. Paraodixically, the hiearchies we so complained about in journalism, have been replaced with a new breed, endoresed by their social media status.

The more folowers you have, the more important you are. Except that we know that's not the case, but online that's the perception and has led to the practice of tweet-trawls ( I have made this up) where we discover how Tory Minister Grant Shapps in boosted his twitter followings,  first broken by Channel 4 News.

Bowie's comeback album was not only a triumph in music, but in presenting a majestic surprise to his fans. It didn't make social media. Neither did an important assignment endorsed by President Obama who had to act as if nothing unusual was taking place at a correspondents' dinner when Navy Seals were prepping for that mission.

The argument isn't whether we need to keep information secret. That debate still rages in the wiki-saga, but that in dealings where we would prefer personal information was not divulged it stays secret.

I often say to students I can give you the on the record of what's going on in  journalism and the off the record, which comes from private conversations and since those conversations  can be damning, I'd prefer they were not discussed, but you decide on the arrangement you want. Chatham House rules or no rules.