Sue Thomas

Journalists who tweet: How the news is changing

I've been invited to give the Annual Leicester Mercury Media Lecture at the Leicester Literary and Philosophical Society on Monday 8th February at 7.30pm. It will be an honour to speak at this learned society which was founded in 1835.

My title is Journalists who tweet: How the news is changing First blogs, now Twitter. Today it’s not enough just to write your copy - many journalists also have to blog and tweet it too. How are those changes affecting the profession and its audiences? This talk discusses the impact of social media upon news reporting and the ways in which contemporary readers expect to interact with the media.

Transliteracy Conference, 9 February 2010

Very excited about the first ever Transliteracy Conference at Phoenix Square on 9th February 2010. The speakers' abstracts cover a fascinatingly broad range of topics including ethnography, reading practices, fiction, convergence, digital art, geography, music, comics, interactive graphics, remote audiences, film adaptations, the networked book, critical theory and interactive fiction.  Browse through them here.

At the time of writing there are just 8 tickets left. Register here. Hope to see you on the day!

You can also follow the general discussion about transliteracy on Twitter.

'Obama - now we will see': my blog post from the inaugural celebrations Santa Barbara, California on this day last year

This time last year I was temporarily living in Santa Barbara, California, and was fortunate enough to attend a live screening of the inauguration at the Arlington Theatre. As I left the theatre afterwards I heard a man say 'Now we will see..' and someone responding 'Yes. But let's just enjoy today'.

I wrote about it here, and about 'change we can believe in' and the legacy of Steinbeck here

In Memorium: Millie Niss

I read today that net artist Millie Niss died in Amherst on November 29, 2009 aged 36. I met Millie when she travelled to England for the 2004 trAce Conference where she ran a workshop on Sound Poetry in Flash  and trAce also published her article Why I Write for the Web in November of that year. Her quirky website Sporkworld attracted much attention and affection in new media writing circles.

It is a sad loss that she should pass away so young.