At a glance:
Henrik Örnebring, PhD in Journalism and Mass Communication and Axess Research Fellow in Comparative European Journalism at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford, blogs about journalism, journalism research, and events and workshops on these and related subjects held in Oxford and elsewhere.
About this blog:
This blog is about research on news and journalism and related topics. My current research project is broadly concerned with European journalism - its history and development, its current state, and its future.
I started this blog for many different reasons: because I was curious, because I felt I had to, because I felt there were advantages to an online publishing cycle over an academic one (with lead-in times often in excess of one year). In other words, for pretty much the same reasons that newspapers launch their various online initiatives: a mix of fear, curiosity and a vague sense that you miss out on something if you are not online - granted, the thing most newspapers miss out on in general is money, and that's not really a concern for me. But I digress.
I had, however, underestimated how much of a dyed-in-the-wool academic I am, and so often I found it (and still find it) difficult to write in the quick-and-dirty, short-update-is-better-than-no-update way that is the blogging idiom. For me, blogging is not easy to integrate into my daily routine and the speed and brevity of it all goes against all my academic instinct. For me, keeping blogging up is rather a daily struggle (or weekly, or fortnightly, or bi-monthly, or semi-annualy). But it's still easierto do than to Twitter, oh my God, don't get me started on Twitter! I could never Twitter. I digress again.
I have decided to keep at it, still, because it is sort of fun, and I do know that people who are not members of my immediate family read what I write. Some day I might hit on a formula and a production routine that works for me. Then I will take the Internet by storm, I tell you! Storm.
As a humbling reminder to myself, I also enclose here the text that was previously the "About" page. That text has been characterised by a media scholar as "naive and pretentious at the same time", an assessment I can't help but agree with. Read it and weep.
Henrik's Past Sins:
I started this blog because I wanted a different forum for my ideas, thoughts and comments. As a scholar of journalism, the time lag of academic publishing (measured in months or years) often feels particularly frustrating as my object of study exists in a totally different time frame (measured in hours or even seconds). A blog is different. A blog allows me to publish topical commentary while it is still topical. A blog gives me the opportunity to field-test ideas as I get them. And above all, a blog allows for feedback from a wider circle of people.
However, the remainder of the old "About"-page is still good (seeing as it consists of a simple bio and disclaimer), so here it is:
About me:
I am a 37-year-old academic with an undergraduate degree in Media and Communication from Karlstad University, Sweden (1993) and a PhD in Journalism and Mass Communication from Göteborg University, Sweden (2001). I have taught at several Swedish universities, among them Göteborg University and Södertörn University College. I came to the UK in 2002 as a Visiting Research Scholar at the London School of Economics and Political Science. I have since worked at the University of Leicester and Roehampton University, and in February 2007 I was appointed Axess Research Fellow in Comparative European Journalism at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford.
When I am not working I enjoy being with my family, reading comics, playing games, watching TV and writing fiction.
The views expressed in this blog are my personal views and not the views of the Reuters Institute, University of Oxford, Reuters, or any other organisation I am affiliated with.
