Tuesday, December 04, 2007

Facing up to life in prison

Monday morning and in early to write the foreword to the final report of the NUJ's Commission on Multimedia Working which will be published later this week.

Then it's on with President Michelle Stanistreet to a meeting with Keith Mallinson, the UCU Executive member responsible for prisons, to discuss issues of concern about the NUJ Pathways to Journalism scheme which is run in conjunction with various prison magazines, the Writers in Prison Network and supported by the National Council for the Training of Journalists. It was a project I helped launch soon after I started working at the NUJ in 1998 - and is now a nationally recognised part of prison education, giving those who work on prison magazines a structured training scheme at various levels to help them learn more about journalism and the skills involved in being a journalist. Of course, it is difficult in high security prisons like Wandsworth to recreate a newsroom but the course helps many achieve increased skills and real self-confidence at seeing their work improve and get published.

Next up is a meeting with Roy Mincoff, the union's legal officer, to discuss the NUJ's legal services. Our current contract runs out early next year and we need to plan how best to provide the services members need after that. We look through performance records, case types and expenditure and will put a paper together for the Finance Committee on 11 January setting out a new tender process.

The rest of the day is spent dealing in meetings and phone calls with individual cases - and signing off pages for the redesigned website which will go live later this week.

Then its home, armed with the final version of the multimedia commission report - and two hours of reading through for any last minute changes. Tomorrow it goes to be designed for its launch on Thursday.

No comments: