Brixton Prison Radio

I POPPED into Brixton today to meet the Governor, Paul McDowell and his deputy governor, Amy Rees. 

I've always wanted to get into a prison, and having passed it on the bus to work over the last six months, I finally made it. 

The prison was splashed all over the papers earlier this month and I did a feature for SLP after the in-house radio station - Electric Radio Brixton won four Sony Radio Awards against the likes of the BBC, which was pretty impressive. 

The station is run by inmates who have to do six-weeks of media training run by the Prison Radio Association before they can get into the studio. 

Brixton is a bit different as it's a remand prison and turnover is high as inmates are awaiting trial and move on after being sentenced.

I was struck by how open and honest Paul and Amy were, and happy to talk about whatever I raised, which was surprising and refreshing in a situation of such tight security. 

It took a while to get in - there are locks on every door and no two doors can be open at the same time, and it's a pretty compact place with around 800 prisoners and 400 odd staff.

I didn't get a tour of the place this time but as we talked about stories I could cover in future, Paul, who himself sets aside one hour a month for governor's questions came up with the idea of me going in and being interviewed about working as a journalist. 

I was speechless and jumped at the chance to write a feature about the experience. 

I suspect it might take a while getting used to being asked the questions, but hey it'll be interesting.

And the pay off is that next time I've been promised a tour.

Joanna Lumley goes Down

THINGS were looking Ab Fab in Stockwell not too long ago when actress Joanna Lumley was spotted looking elegant in an understated long black coat and laden with a giant bouquet of posies (not gurkhas). On her way to visit someone it would seem. But it is hard to say whether she made it at all, judging by the number of times she was stopped along Clapham Road for her autograph.

OK So Where I Been?

EVERYWHERE but here it feels.

In the middle of a murder scene, talking to kids about their views on the ever controversial police tactic of stop and search, chatting up people in the street for a vox pop, racing to a yoga class, leaning as far over a police cordon as is possible without crossing it in order to squint for a quote off a tribute note.

Walking around on patch sniffing around for a lead, holding a candle at a vigil commemorating the Brixton bomb, grabbing a coffee, chasing MPs, not chasing MPs, meeting Boris more oft than anyone else for some inexplicable reason and happily causing a fuss with him over the East London Line on Platform 2 at Clapham Junction train station.

Writing about jobless estate agents who set up a pest control business and spending time summing my daily life in a nib on exhibitionist networking space, Facebook of course.

Riveting you say. Well, yes. And there's more to come. Watch this space. Now, how do I upload pictures using my shiny new mac? 

South London Press

I was at a leaving drinks on Wednesday with my colleagues and although it was a lively and enjoyable affair, the surreal thing about it was that it was for me.
I start at the South London Press on Monday December 8. Theres a faint sadness to be leaving Enfield underneath all of the anticipation for what’s to come, but for the same reason that I’ve watched outstanding former colleagues move on, it’s time for a change.
I’ve been in Enfield for 20 months and was reaching my natural leaping time. I’ll always remember it because it’s a good patch on which I learnt so much about being a good journalist.
It’s where I started out, the place I did the first of many death knocks, the area I came across teenagers wearing stab proof vests and where I grafted the bare essentials of what it takes to perform in the trade.
There’s a lot that goes down in South London, and the Press is going to be an exciting challenge. For a start, it comes out twice a week and covers Lewisham, Southwark, Wandsworth and Lambeth, which is the area I’m assigned to.
I don’t suspect there's such a thing as a quiet day down there, which is why it sounded like an opportunity not to be missed and I grabbed it.

Comment not so free

CENSORSHIP is such a spineless and pointless idea.
The futile thing about trying to ban something is that the persons being gagged are likely to find another way to express themselves and get their "offensive" material out some other way anyway so the censors may as well not bother in the first place.
Aside from raging against a universal human right, censorship reeks of supremacy and panders to creation of a nanny-state, where everyone walks around with blinkers on without an opinion, unable to deal with a bit of confrontation or whiff of a thought provoking idea.
Journalism is about pushing boundaries, and yet, in some parts of the world the idea of this terrifies those in power so much, you are more likely to be killed if you are a journalist than an endangered animal. It's worth mentioning that the internet is censored in North Korea, so
perhaps we should count ourselves lucky for our freedoms in this country.
But free access to Google doesn't ignore the fact that censorship that results in dumbing down a public that's perceived as incapable of making their own decisions does exist this side of the Atlantic.
Banning something that "might" provoke outrage is clearly used by those in power as a way to avoid dealing with issues that are being raised. It's being in denial, and it's patronising, to think yourself qualified to decide what information the public can and can't have access too. Did I mention it's arrogant?
It's unlikely that we'll ever have a world where free expression never leads to offence on occasion. But that's no reason to snuff it out and render it altogether invisible.
Turn the television off if you don't like what your seeing, hurl your book aside if you don't like what you're reading. Problems are not solved by banning words. Everyone knows that supressing something so as not to rock the boat doesn't work, and the boat rocks anyway so you may as well set it free and deal with it.

Keep Quiet

LAST week I innocently wrote a bit along the lines of the below for my blog entry on our website, http://www.enfield-today.co.uk/.
By the afternoon the following day, the offending material was scrapped as,"unacceptable", by the publisher and ripped from the web page.
I'll admit I was pushing the boat out a bit, I guess I subconsciously wanted to see how far it would sail before it was noticed.
I'm greatful that none of my colleagues on the editorial side of things thought my comments were aggressive and supported my small moment of anarchy.
So, this week I felt it apt to scribble something on censorship. See above.

Silly Season

THE newsroom is cloaked with a faint heaviness and everyone is feeling weary.

Having survived the not-too-silly-season that was August and after gearing up for an Autumn of hard news, an event we were unprepared for has frozen us in our pace.

We were told at the end of last week that the 137-year-young Enfield Gazette is going to be axed, leaving most of us reeling with shock and disbelief. That, and the fact that one of us is going to lose our job within a month.

There was no warning sign prior to our publisher's announcement but having sat through the ten or fifteen minutes it took her to deliver the news a swathe of nausea swept through the office and all of us had to get outside for some air.

The tragedy of this circumstance is that not only is the decision resulting in the death of a newspaper but one of us is going to be stuck without a means to live.

We are of course fighting the decision, and today went public with it, trying to get as many contacts, politicians and community groups as possible to write to the owner, Sir Ray Tindle in a bid to save it, and save us.

But at the moment I'm feeling pretty numb about the whole thing. And angry that it's all happening too fast.

The Sun - We Love It

AS with most newspaper offices, we have the nationals delivered daily.This means we’ve all read - or at least have looked at almost everything that’s going on around about the time some of our readers are reaching for their cornflakes.
We’re allocated a different paper each month, which I imagine is intended to keep our brains ticking over nicely since we’re not stuck with the same reading matter for two long. Last month I was mulling over the cerebral prose of the Telegraph, which can be a toughie. Not least because of its shape and size. There’s a part of me that enjoys it’s defiant shape - it’s the only paper that’s not buckled under the pressure to re-size.

But it’s a challenge to manage when your desk is already littered with paper. There have been times it’s just been easier to plonk myself on the floor and read it there. Most of us don’t tend to stick to the sole title assigned to us anyway, with loyalties lying elsewhere. If you return to your desk and find your paper’s gone, chances are you’ll know who’s nabbed it. There's a reporter on our sister paper the Barnet Press who has a thing for The Guardian’s G2 - as do I.
A fellow Enfieldian who sits next to me is known for snatching The Sun come lunchtime.

It seems a sandwich doesn’t taste the same without the tabloid punch of a red-top. Now that The Sun’s mine for a month I’m becoming convinced.

And of course, being a London rag as we are, everyone wants the Standard.

Usually all at the same time.