Excellent piece by Richard Williams.

Do you remember  going to gigs at the Canteen. I certainly remember the Slim Gaillard and Chet Baker gigs. Sure I saw Mose Allison there.

“The Canteen was a jazz club at 4 Great Queen Street, on the eastern fringe of Covent Garden: a narrow single-fronted space on the ground floor, backing on to Parker Street. It functioned for probab…

Source: Chet Baker at the Canteen

I’ve written the article for Britain Journalism Review (BJR) on what journalists do with their paper and digital archives and what are the problems of preserving ‘the first draft of history’. It should be out in September.

I’m  following up with a natural second part to this which is: what to do about all those significant interview videos and audio tapes that are in warehouses and are historic in value. I made three Timewatchs in the 1990s with people who have never otherwise been interviewed.I interviewed at length a range of USAF (SAC), RAF and Red Air Force generals right down to pilots and then a long list of Cold War players including J K Galbraith. I would say many are of historic value and only a few minutes were actually broadcast. As Gavin McFadyen pionted out there are problems with locating the actual broadcast programmes and he believes there are lots of World in Action progs missing.

There were lots of other significant interviews in other projects I worked on. Mostly we edited in 30 – 60 seconds but there were dozens of hours of tapes. While I have transcripts in my paper archives the beta tapes are stored somewhere by the Independent TV company I was working and I suspect other journalists and film-makers have this problem. Please tell me your story:  paul.lashmar2@btinternet.com

Mark Rylance has written a lovely tribute to American poet Robert Bly in advance of the film on Bly coming out tomorrow. As another man who was involved with Wild Dance in the early 1990s and met Bly and his peers Michael Meade and James Hillman they had an enormous impact on my  life too. I was surprised at the time at the number of intelligent liberal men and women who thought it hilarious and all about hugging trees. Out of it came a new form masculinity that was not brittle but emotional and stronger.

Here’s Mark’s piece:

Mark Rylance

I was raised in Milwaukee up to 1978, when I was 18. My father was an English teacher, so I must have come upon the American poet Robert Bly through him. But the first time I remember meeting him was after a performance of Hamlet in 1989.

I felt a sense of excitement, and a certain nervousness. He had this penetrating ability to see what was going on, and he didn’t have any shyness about saying it. Robert was there the first time I went to a men’s gathering, organised under the auspices of wild dance. There were 90 men gathered, and it was remarkable. I think I got a bit relaxed back in a cabin after a session, and I called him Bob. I can’t imagine why. I remember him turning to me and saying, “You’re going to have to call me Robert.”

to read the whole article click here

There is a premiere of Robert Bly: A Thousand Years of Joy at Gate Cinema, London W11, on 7 August. Also sceening at The Barn Cinema, Dartington, on 10 August. robertblyfilm.com

Why journalists should be thinking about information security and source protection

Silkie Carlo, policy officer at Liberty, explains the importance of security for journalists, and what the introduction of the Investigatory Powers Bill means for them.

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Recent research from the University of Sussex has found the current surveillance threats to journalists “may all but eliminate” confidential sources for investigative reporting.

Paul Lashmar, senior lecturer in journalism at the University of Sussex, interviewed 12 investigative journalists about their knowledge of surveillance powers and their impact on journalistic work.

“All through my time as a journalist there has been a behind-the-scenes battle going on to close down journalists’ access to insider sources,” he wrote for Journalism.co.uk in June.

“The Snowden revelations – that our actions and movements are recorded digitally – raise serious questions over the ability of journalists to protect their sources whether in intelligence agencies, government or corrupt private companies.”