Melbourne Cup

The race starts at 3 pm. Live audio is available from Radio Australia from 2.30 Melbourne time. Live video on BigPond is free if you registered in time.

Cup live video

BigPond is allowing ALL broadband users in Australia free access to their live streaming video of the Melbourne Cup tomorrow. You must register to get a password and instructions.

Rural award - SA

Entries for the South Australian Telstra Rural Journalist of the Year Award close today.

Diwali starts tomorrow

Diwali - the festival of lights - starts tomorrow Tuesday 1 November 2005 and lasts for five days. Hindus and Sikhs celebrate it as the start of the Hindu new year. Houses are decorated with fresh flowers, garlands and lights, and fireworks are set off. Candles or lamps are lit to represent the spirit of God as truth and light. It is also known as Deepawali and sometimes described as the Indian Christmas.

Halloween

Today is Halloween - All Hallows' Eve - and tomorrow All Saints’ Day.

CBA awards close

Entries for the Commonwealth Broadcasting Awards 2006 close today, London time.

Natali prize

Entries for the Lorenzo Natali Prize - and its AU$ 22,000 prize pool - close tomorrow, Monday 31 October 2005.

News map

An Italian site GeoNews is plotting Google News stories on a Google Map of the world. You look at the map, decide where you want your news from, and click on the icon for any story there. Up comes brief details and a link. It refreshes every thirty seconds. Weird but fun.

BOB awards

Voting for Deutsche Welle’s world-wide Best of the Blogs (BOB) Awards are in the closing stages. Before November 20 go to their award blog for links to some of the best blogs in the world, and to have your vote.

DST

Daylight saving time starts tonight and ends in all states on Sunday 2 April 2006. The ABC has details and a handy interactive clock. Officially this becomes Australian Eastern Daylight Time AEDT and the equivalent for Central and Western time. Non-daylight saving time is designated Australian Eastern Standard Time AEST, and equivalents.

Farmer Writers’ AGM

The annual general meeting of the Farm Writers’ Association of NSW is on at 11 am Menzies Hotel Sydney today. A talk by Mark Spurr Managing Director of Meat and Livestock Australia follows the AGM.

NEMBC early registrations closes

Early registration for the National Ethnic and Multicultural Broadcasters’ Council conference in Geelong 25-27 November 2005 closes today.

ASC media awards

Nominations for the Australian Sports Commission Media Awards close today.

Jail journalism

The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) is teaching journalism to prisoners in UK jails. The scheme piloted at Wandsworth in 2001 is now set to go nationwide. It ‘gives the socially excluded the opportunity to gain valuable journalistic skills’ but one has to ask what it does for public perception of journalism and journalists, already very low in most developed countries.

Media Report

On this week’s Media Report at 8.30 am today on Radio National the Chairman of the House of Representative's Communications Committee , Queensland National MP Paul Neville. He thinks it is time for the ABC to be subjected to a minimum quota for producing Australian drama. Listen live online here.

OUP language report

Susie Dent Fanboys and Overdogs: The Language Report was published by Oxford University Press on 6 October 2005 [hardback pp163 ISBN 0192806769 AU$35]. It is OUP's annual catch-up on the language and full of firm decisions and delightful examples. For one, UK's The Sun summed up the defeat of Glasgow football club Celtic who hit a new low in the Scottish Cup when beaten by newcomers Inverness Caledonian Thistle, popularly known as Caley.
The Sun headline was "Super Caley Go Ballistic, Celtic Are Atrocious."
And the Queen's decision not to attend the wedding of Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles.
Britain's Mirror headline read "Royal Wedding Snub Sensation: Heir Rage."
The New York Post opted for "Queen to Skip Chuck Nups."

JEA Ossie Awards

Entries and judging criteria for these student awards are now on the JEA website. http://www.jea.org.au/awards.htm. The winners will be announced at the JEA Conference 29 November 2005.

News Xchange

A conference of unusual relevance for working journalist News Xchange is on in Amsterdam 10-11 November 2005. Some 500 journalists get together for the conference which is not for ‘media’, does not consider ‘communications’ and just concentrates on what is worrying or interesting the poor slobs at the sharp end. At this stage it is planned to blog the whole conference and the transcripts and papers go up fairly quickly.

Photo agency

There are now two online photo agencies specialising in digital/phone pics. The latest Spy Media is based in the USA and offering free uploads until the end of October 2005. The first was UK based Scoopt. Working journalists who take such pics can now upload them to both sites where the pics are published automatically and if/when sold the site takes a slice of the action. Photo editors will have to keep an eye on these sites for fast breaking stories

Public service broadcasting book

Those of us who must “talk-the-talk” of public service broadcasting will find UNESCO’s just released Public Service Broadcasting: A Best Practices Source Book (UNESCO, Paris, October 2005 143 pp) an essential reference. It is a fast pdf download from the UNESCO site and hardcopy is free from most UNESCO offices. Do not be put off by the foreword which is very different to the main contents.