I’ve been meaning to write this one for a while. Late one night around new year, I watched the last episode of the BBC adaptation of Anne Frank. There was one particular moment that stuck. After discovering the families in hiding, Nazi soldiers ransack the tiny attic- finding Otto Frank’s box of valuables, bearing a military crest. He tells them it’s from the first world war, he fought for the country of the soldiers who were now destroying his family. It got me thinking about how people are expected to live and die by countries, by faiths… but the resolution of one conflict always seeds the beginning of another.

‘The only girl I’ve ever loved was born with roses in her eyes, but then they buried her alive one evening, 1945′

Being reminded of Anne Frank, I also remembered Neutral Milk Hotel’s distressingly beautiful album ‘In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.’ I’ve loved it for years but now it won’t leave the player since I stumbled across televisual Anne Frank. An introduction and reasons why: It’s a strange, upsetting, sincere record which is often cited as a favourite of all time… It’s definitely up there for me and the friends who introduced me to it. As a statement it meant a lot to singer Jeff Mangum too.  ‘In the Aeroplane Over the Sea’ was released in 1995 and he hasn’t recorded anything since.

So… why is it relevant? Mangum was so affected after reading Anne Frank’s diaries that he wrote the songs as a sort of tribute to her. Listening to them is like having a wonderful nightmare- they are filled with disorientating dream imagery and it’s sometimes not really clear what he’s on about. Two-headed boys in jars, disturbing childhoods and teenage sexual exeriences whirl together, all set against the backdrop of transient timescales and bigger questions of existence, mortality and religious fervour. It’s mainly made up of Mangum’s voice and basic guitar chords with embellishments of psychedelic marching-band brass, drums and a lot of fuzz. The instrumentation may be simple and the images may be dense, but the overall message is opaque and devastating. Whatever that message is, he expresses it perfectly. Tying it all together is the fate of Anne Frank. At the climax of the album Mangum bellows out his longing to hand her a different fate. It’s an expression of his own helplessness in the face of unimaginable yet avoidable tragedy.

‘I know they buried her body with others, her sister and mother and five hundred families. But will she remember me fifty years later? I wish I could save her in some sort of time machine.

Know all your enemies… we know who our enemies are.’

Anne Frank wrote as an innocent experiencing growing pains and first love against the terrifying backdrop of Nazi occupation. She wasn’t involved in the politics and ideologies of a troubled Europe- she was a victim of them. Who are the enemies? Faith leaders, government ministers… children? Do the former suffer the consequences of their decisions as much as the latter?

I wonder how many diaries there are in Gaza.

The blog is focussed on the US media but with a decrease of sales in newspapers here in the UK, the idea that local TV news is more profitable and therefore the future is an interesting one. Although the recent decline of itv local news would seem to contradict this, does it not give space for a new form of local online tv news to emerge? Only if the advertising revenue can justify it.

“Metro papers are beginning to fail, and their online publications have not generated ad rates that can support large newsrooms, much less the video capabilities of TV stations. At this point, it looks like local news is going video.”

As more ways of accessing the news become available, issues over where the funding comes from become increasingly tangled – just look at the license fee in this country. When I paid my tv license for the year, I noticed that using the internet is now taxed under the license fee. This makes sense in some respects due to free television content on the BBC iplayer and so on but how long before traditional televison switches to a completely user-generated platform? Will use of the BBC website alone justify the license fee? Well, no, because viewers are likely to watch an ever-increasing range of content from across the world and not stick solely to one beloved source. When this time comes, the BBC might use some sort of paid subscription model for access to all of its content. Whether this works or not is something else so what about other news outlets? Online advertising revenue is still too fragmented to support busy newsrooms.

On to the post about Google.

In an effort to increase their own profits, Google appear to be attempting to centralise all news output. At the moment GoogleNews is still just a portal into other news sites but as The Future of News attests, screening live coverage of events like the Republican convention is direct competition to TV channels. Why bother visiting different sites and agencies when you could just use Google? A completely centralised, globalised, profitable news source. Uh oh.

As a footnote, there is also this.

Archives of 244 years of newspapers available, for free, on Google. News and history convene to simultaneously become more accessible and more profitable.

Lives are cheap in Somalia, and the prospects of making a legitimate living, let alone a fortune, are few and far between. After reading the recent UN report into the country, it’s clear why the people feel frustrated. A defunct political system that doesn’t serve anyone, least of all itself, supposedly governing a country where over a million people are living as refugees. A poor, dry land ignored by the world even though around 10,000 people have been killed by a vicious Islamic insurgency in the past two years. Infrastructure? Where do you start?

Just have a look at the amount of ministries listed on the Somali Government website – doesn’t make sense does it? The ministry of human rights section is a bit sparse. Click on the tourism ministry- he’s not looking too happy, even though it proclaims at the top of his page: ‘Please feel to stay Somalia, world’s best place.’

If you’re a pirate.

There are few to no alternatives. If you can barely feed yourself on a meagre fisherman income without getting killed one way or another, it’s just easier fishing for oil tankers. The rewards are certainly more tangible. It’s an industry with excellent turnover. All the houses, guns and down-time you could ever possibly need.

These previously poor fisherman are even hi-tech clued up enough to use complex GPS systems and online banking. Even facebook would probably come in useful. It’s available to anyone after all (apart for half of all office workers), and an application with the ability to ‘connect to anyone around you’ must be handy to notify everyone in town there’s, say, a gigantic trade ship stuffed full of oil just three miles off the coast. Or Nintendo Wii’s.

Peter Wilby starts it off in the guardian.

It was always going to happen, they’ll begin to say. It was obvious from the polls, the buzz, the simple fact that Bush was the most unpopular president of all time, right up/down there with Nixon. How can the Republicans come back from that? John McCain just wasn’t novelty enough for the nation. No breaths of fresh air there. Of course there’s the other problem with McCain – did you ever see him hold a baby? He’s got those stubby little arms which I doubt he could clap together let alone cradle an orphan. Baby photo ops are essential for any elective candidate.

Babies love Obama.Well, as the journalists start to shift with opinion from elation to austerity to disappointment (we hope it’s not inevitable) thoughts go out to the big man himself. Cool as a cucumber of course.

So… I’m president. Right. Nice big desk. What’s in there… ah. So, down to work.

To do list.Hmm. Economic crisis.

Big one.Two confusing wars. Cheers George.

Religious fanaticism: Still in fashion.And the phone’s going… Oh hi Dmitri Medvedev… what’s that?… uh…. er… rrright.

Ok, goodb…Hmm.Tea.

Actually, it makes perfect sense if you think about it.

Circus 2 Iraq, or the Boomchuckka circus, is a project which believes ‘circus is an international language that crosses Walls and brings people together, giving people something positive to do with their lives, in places where there is so little to do because of illegal walls and occupations.’

http://www.circus2iraq.org/

http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?c=Article_C&cid=1158658430311&pagename=Zone-English-ArtCulture%2FACELayout#**1

‘I haven’t seen the children laugh like that since the war.’

Send in the clowns.

Well, maybe all these opinions and facts and analysis aren’t just being flushed off into cyber-nowhere. The blogs are out there in a cyber-somewhere, and you can’t lose it or get it wet in the rain. That there is probably enough reason for a journalist student to have a blog.