News & Information from the world of writing. http://www.informedideas.com 2010-09-04T18:23:03+01:00 http://www.informedideas.com http://www.informedideas.com/images/M_images/joomla_rss.png text/html 2009-06-23T18:33:58+01:00 http://www.informedideas.com http://www.informedideas.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=86&Itemid=30 For the first time in Northern California, Michael Saldate, husband of Euna Lee and Ian Clayton, husband of Laura Ling will appear at a peaceful, community-wide gathering advocating for the journalists release. The gathering is being held at Morgan Auditorium (491 Post St. at Mason) in San Francisco from 6 to 8 p.m. on Wednesday, June 24, 2009. Saldate and Clayton will speak to a crowd including students, faculty and alumni of Academy of Art University (Lee in an alumna) and a long list of local supporters. The present and past cast members of Hair, The Musical and Young Performers International have volunteered to perform. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and award-winning journalist and author (and California's First Lady) Maria Shriver have been invited to attend. The gathering will be webcast live at www.academyart.edu/petition (http://www.academyart.edu/petition). Laura Ling and Euna Lee are American journalists who were recently convicted of illegally crossing the border in North Korea and other unspecified grave crimes against North Korea. They were sentenced to 12 years in labor prison. At the time of their... text/html 2009-06-21T11:29:30+01:00 http://www.informedideas.com http://www.informedideas.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=85&Itemid=30 The British Government has decided educators can stop teaching students the i before e except after c spelling rule because there are too many exceptions to the rule in modern English. Support for Spelling guidelines recently released by the Department for for Children, Schools and Families, states: The i before e except after c rule is not worth teaching. It applies only to words in which the ie or ei stands for a clear /ee/ sound and unless this is known, words such as sufficient, veil and their look like exceptions. There are so few words where the ei spelling for the /ee/ sound follows the letter c that it is easier to learn the specific word: receive, conceive, deceive (+ the related words receipt, conceit, perceive and ceiling. text/html 2009-05-02T09:12:18+01:00 http://www.informedideas.com http://www.informedideas.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=84&Itemid=30 Beginning Sunday, May 3, 2009, visitors can log onto a first-of-its-kind help desk at chicagotribune.com (http://www.chicagotribune.com/) to get advice on how to navigate government bureaucracies to get public information about schools, municipal governments and police departments. Led by a group of Chicago Tribune experts who have demonstrated their commitment to watchdog journalism, the new website includes an online forum which it hopes will grow into a gathering place for citizens wanting to get or give advice on how to learn more about the workings of their government. “We are committed at Chicago Tribune to being your watchdog in the corridors of power to ensure that your government lives up to your standards of honesty and openness,” Said Gerould Kern, Senior Vice President and Editor. “At every level of government in Illinois, citizens routinely encounter a culture of secrecy that denies you information about the way your government makes decisions. Police reports, school board deliberations, and investigations into public corruption itself, these records belong to you but too often you're told you cannot see them. So we're turning our spotlight on your government in secret.” text/html 2009-04-23T16:58:50+01:00 http://www.informedideas.com http://www.informedideas.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=83&Itemid=30 “Industry layoffs affect people of color disproportionately and destroy the gains we have made during past years,” said Rafael Olmeda, president of UNITY: Journalists of Color, in a statement calling on journalism organizations to summit this summer to help preserve the fundamental value of diversity in news coverage and newsroom staffing. text/html 2009-04-20T13:49:44+01:00 http://www.informedideas.com http://www.informedideas.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=82&Itemid=30 Writers targetting the teen and young adult audience need to hone their brevity skills. They might also want to explore photography, audio and video, because even amid rising economic insecurity only 11 percent of 18 - 29 year-olds would willingly give up their mobile phone and/or Internet connection if money got tight, according to the latest AnxietyIndex (http://anxietyindex.com/) from JWT.