The Crucial Blog

Submitted photographs . . . . we often have to ask people to supply photographs for our clients' own in-house publications or to be forwarded on to newspapers and magazines for their use, but it's always a little bit of a trip into the great unknown.

Even the simplest of digital cameras can provide perfectly useable images but, at a time when more and more publishers are relying on contributed photos as illustrations, it's only the minority that understand the few basic requirements of that image's format.

REPEATED phone calls from PR folk are just about the biggest bugbears for journalists, I read this week on HoldTheFrontPage.  Along with Americanisms and corporate jargon.

2012 - where did it go? In the blink of an eye. For the UK, Washed away in a deluge of rain - many, many times.

Yes the summer was rubbish, yes the autumn brought even more flooding and yes, the economic gloom shows scant sign of brightening. But there were many things to celebrate.  Here's our round-up of just some of the happier news stories of 2012.

Crikey it's easy to waste time with the internet at your disposal. We've all done it.  We start with the best of intentions - to sit down and do some serious research.

WATCHING BBC Breakfast this morning has left me choking on toast crumbs as I endured yet another delivery of a serious news story riddled with jokey puns in the voiceover to match a (staged?) visual image.