Forum Blog
About the Fixers’ Fund
Ajmal, a 24-year old journalist from Kabul, was taken hostage by the Taliban in Helmand province on March 4, 2007. He was working with the La Repubblica reporter Daniele Mastrogiacomo and their driver Sayed Agha. Jon Lee Anderson wrote about the murder for the Frontline Club Magazine and his article inspired the creation of the […]
IDF soldier blogs from the front line
A blogging American-Israeli combat soldier has been deployed to the West Bank. According to his blog, 25 year old Danny Brothers has finished his training with the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) and is serving in "al-Madina al-Muqaddasah" – a pseudonym for the city where he is stationed. In recent posts, Brothers describes his first foot […]
Frontline Club Annual Party
Don’t miss the date! Friday, 27th November from 7pm till late. Sponsored bar and food. Frontline Journalism Award Winners will be announced too.
Military blogging: “no longer worth the trouble”
The US military blog, A Soldier’s Perspective, has closed down after six years. In a message which has replaced the entire content of the blog, Iraq veteran and well-known military blogger, CJ Grisham, writes: "Blogging is no longer worth the trouble. Everything is fine as long as the stories are happy and positive. The military […]
Wonderwall: Why Berlin Still Matters? by Peter Millar
Peter Millar, author of 1989 the Berlin wall: my part in its downfall, recalls the heady joys of a generation and explains why their expectations remain so important today. My wife sat at home in floods of tears in front of the television, the uncomprehending toddlers hugging her knees. I was hanging out on a […]
Lone Wolf by Ed Vulliamy
John Kay, the singer who gave us ‘born to be wild’, left east Germany and the Berlin wall behind in 1944. He has not forgotten his roots or the flight that brought him to the west. Anyone who has not heard – and felt the impact of – the primal anthem of rock music, ‘Born […]
Burma deserves better by Philip Delves Broughton
The international community is good at moral outrage when dealing with the rangoon junta but always meets a stumbling block in geopolitical reality. Change in Burma will come only when the west decides to replace ineffectual sanctions with attempts to shape the economic landscape. Perhaps then Aung San Suu Kyi can be more than just […]
Club quiz
With quiz master George Chamier author of When it Happened.
Join us for another quiz evening in the Clubroom. You can enter as an individual or as a team of six. All money will go to the Fixers’ Fund which raises money for families of fixers around the world killed or injured while working with the international media.
WRL: Blogging, Milblogging and the London bombings
(Dusty history section) on the London bombings, 2005. I came across a couple of links on media coverage of the London bombings in July 2005 that I hadn’t previously discovered. Maybe you missed them too. Mike Thelwall did some research into bloggers and the bombings which ‘scratches the surface’ of the use of blogs to […]
Club quiz
Join us for the Club Quiz on thursday 22nd October with Quiz Master George Chamier. £5 entry donation to the Fixers’ Fund.
DoD Director of New Media: “It’s not about controlling the message anymore”
Continuing what is rapidly turning into an autumnal video season here on the blog, I came across this interview by David Meerman Scott with Roxie Merritt, the Director of New Media Operations at the U.S. Department of Defense. There’s some very interesting stuff in this brief video. A few points for those of you […]
VAN ES International Wake
Tim Heald and Penny Byrne are organising a celebratory wake in Hugh Van Es’s honour. There’ll be a cash bar and an opportunity to buy food for those who want. Doors open at 7pm and close when the last one is left standing. Bring youselves, some good van Es stories bearing in mind that the Frontline is the nearest thing London has to the FCC in Hong Kong which was latterly van Es’ spiritual home.
Frontline Club Quiz – Members and guests only
Join us for another quiz evening with quizmaster Justin Pollard from the QI. Event will take place in the Clubroom.
WRL: The ‘ghost war’ and war reporting
I tend to push most of my war reporting links through Twitter rather than on blog posts these days but I thought this little collection was worth a quick update. 1. Sean Smith chronicles three months on the front line in Afghanistan: "High explosive is zooming back and forwards, so the enemy is certainly there, […]
An Afghanistan strategy dialogue
Well worth tuning into this debate over at Abu Muqawama. If you want the background start here. Day One was a few days back now and they’re already up to Day Five.
Mr Blair: Was Jesus Wrong? If So, You Must Be Right by Peter Stanford
Illustration by Chris Riddell Tony Blair is busy outing himself as a man of God. Which is immediately ironic after all that time during which Blair refused to “do God” – as his media manager Alastair Campbell informed us. Since leaving Downing Street, Blair has used the G-word with a mixture of the fervour and […]
Insight into The Times’ Afghanistan debate
Earlier today I ‘sat in’ on The Times’ liveblogging debate about whether the war in Afghanistan is winnable. The Times have been experimenting with Cover It Live for a while now, but haven’t put it to use to cover defence issues until today (as far as I’m aware). The debate featured Defence Editor, Michael Evans, […]
Blogs on the helicopters
On Wednesday, the Prime Minister Gordon Brown quoted Lt Col Nick Richardson in Afghanistan who said he had "sufficient [helicopters] to get on with the task with which he’s been given". Which suggests he was given a very particular task (like painting a helicopter or something), because earlier that morning, the Head of the British […]
If you want a different take…
…on the recent deaths of British Army soldiers, Lt Col Rupert Thorneloe and Tpr Joshua Hammond, in Afghanistan then head over to Defence of the Realm. The author, Richard North, believes the BBC missed the point about the weaknesses of the Viking that the soldiers were travelling in when it was hit by an Improvised […]
Looted Britain by Frontline
Public utilities like telecom and gas and essential industries such as British Airways were sold off by the Tories in the closest thing, post-war, to legalised political corruption. What we all owned was taken away from us, flogged off at a cheap price to win votes, and the proceeds used to fund tax cuts. In […]
Pure Kashmir by Muzamil Jaleel
Illustration by Clara Vulliamy While Pakistan has helped the war on terror, it has been reluctant to crack down on militants from the Lashkar-E-Taiba group. Now it is under pressure to do just that – with explosive results. The guard stands lazily at the entrance of a crammed brick bunker. Without saying a word, […]
Truth: The first casualty of the Russo-Georgia War
Today, I’ve been multi-tasking: spending some time spying (with permission, I should add) on the BBC’s news operation, keeping one eye on the tennis, and reading a very interesting paper on the media and the Russian invasion of Georgia. I can’t really talk too much about the former (yet) and I don’t suppose many of […]
Iran Election: links on media coverage
This is a list of links I’ve been collecting on media coverage of the Iran election protests. It’s far from complete but it’s a start at least and hopefully it helps identify some of the main themes that are emerging. To that end, I’ve tried to group together links, although you’ll notice that there […]
FRONTLINE: A Broadsheet Launch – Members only event
Join us to celebrate the launch of the FRONTLINE: A Broadsheet. FRONTLINE: A BROADSHEET aims to be a high-quality, quarterly publication, in some ways radical; in others resurrecting traditions lost from the British market. FRONTLINE will address major events and themes in international and domestic British politics, culture, conflict and lifestyle. FRONTLINE will be political, […]
FRONTLINE: A Broadsheet
Finally we have relaunched our old Club newsletter to a proper broadsheet which is available to all. Subscription is only £15/year (4 issues). FRONTLINE: A BROADSHEET aims to be a high-quality, quarterly publication, in some ways radical; in others resurrecting traditions lost from the British market. FRONTLINE will address major events and themes in international […]
MoD and digital media: “We haven’t gripped it, but we’re getting there”
"I could not write about the past week without mentioning the tragic death of Rifleman Adrian Sheldon. Shelly was a much loved member of the Fire Support Platoon here at FOB [Forward Operating Base] Inkerman and his loss has been extremely hard to come to terms with." In among the stories about political meltdown you […]
Blog reaction to a new commander in Afghanistan
Lt-General Stanley McChrystal (right) addresses a press briefing on Iraq in 2003. Now he’s in charge of US forces in Afghanistan. (Defenselink.mil) Bill and Bob "Based on Gates’ announcement, it appears that it is a signal that field commanders will be held accountable for the lack of progress in their areas. Gates spoke […]
Coming to the UK: Obama’s digital strategy
Blue State Digital, the company behind the successful web strategy that won Barack Obama the American presidency, recently opened a London office, recruiting Matthew McGregor to run the operation. MacGregor, who was responsible for Ken Livingstone’s 2008 mayoral campaign amongst others will be at the Frontline Club to talk about Obama’s web strategy and what […]
10 worst countries to be a blogger
On the eve of World Press Freedom Day, the Committee to Protect Journalists puts together a list of the 10 worst countries to be a blogger. Visit their site to find out more about the 10 countries and the justification for inclusion. The list, in order, is below and Burma comes out worst. Click each […]
The myth of the Moldova ‘Twitter revolution’
According to the BBC thousands of protesters descended on Moldova’s parliament building yesterday to demonstrate against the Communist Party’s victory in last Sunday’s elections. The protesters are thought to be primarily made up of students and young people who claim the results of the election were fradulent despite being approved by election monitors. Twitter Unsurprisingly […]