Front pages reviewed: Tuesday 1 March 2011

All the papers bar The Indy focus on the increasing pressure put on Gaddafi with The Mail, Telegraph and Times having almost identical headlines. There must be nothing in the news…

Front pages reviewed: Monday 28 February 2011

 The Telegraph’s scoop is dull but they have a fantastic scoop on the back pages, with an England cricketer announcing he is gay. The Times has an exclusive with Tony Blair, The Guardian has a report from 30 miles from Tripoli and The Mail has cancer.

Cameron’s statement is the final nail in Gaddafi’s coffin

So far the govt have been hedging their bets a little across the Middle East. They have tended to condemn governments like Mubarak’s in Egypt and Ben Ali’s in Tunisia only when it is certain that they were going.

So tonight’s statement by David Cameron must be the final death knoll in Gaddafi’s coffin.

Front pages reviewed: Thursday 24 February 2011

Sorry this wasn’t done last night. Was working through the night. The Guardian and Indy both have reports from inside Libya, The Times and The Mail focus on the failure to rescue stranded Brits and the Telegraph goes with bed blocking in the NHS.

Churnalism tracked… and the Mail have already cocked up

Its an issue that has faced any journalist. Its 6pm and you get a press release shoved on your desk and your editor tells you to bash out 200 words asap. You want to go home and relax but you know you should fact check the random piece of paper in front of you. What do you do? Well maybe this new tool will stop journos being so lazy…

Front pages reviewed at midnight: Wednesday 23 February 2011

A bizarre feeling of deja vu every night at the moment. Again the Times, Indy and Guardian try to tell the story of Libya without having a correspondent there while the Telegraph makes a point of ignoring the story.

Front pages reviewed at midnight: Tuesday 22 February 2011

Another night where all the newspapers bemoan the fact they have no one in Libya. The Times and The Guardian have the same reporters as last night, both of whom summarise other coverage. The Indy has a special report by Robert Fisk on Gaddafi, but Fisk is currently in Beirut.

Front pages reviewed at midnight: Monday 21 February 2011

Libya is the story of the moment but what is interesting is that none of the nationals have anyone in Benghazi or even Tripoli. This is because all Visa requests are being turned down so anyone trying to get there is struggling. To make things worse the Libyans are interfering with internet and television signal, so Al Jazeera is also down. So tonight’s papers all, bar the Telegraph, splash with a story about Libya written largely in London.

A brief absence

Sorry I didn’t do last night. I have to be up at 4.30 for a job so will be missing tonight’s blog as well.

Sorry all

7 leading thinkers react to the ‘turmoil’ in the Middle East

Tonight I went to an Intelligence Squared event entitled “Turmoil in the Middle East: Is the genie of democracy out of the bottle?” where 7 key academics and journalists on the Middle East reacted to the events in recent weeks.

On the panel were Oxford academics Tariq Ramadan and Eugene Rogan, brilliant SOAS academic Deniz Kandiyoti, City Uniersity academic Rosemary Hollis, journalists Nabila Ramdani and Roger Cohen and American military strategist Edward Luttwak.

I can’t go into too much detail as it was a two-hour event but I wanted to summarise the top 5 points I took away.