'Hackademic' Andrew Calcutt was a journalist for 25 years before he became an academic. As a journalist, he worked in print (Arena, Esquire, Living Marxism/LM, the Modern Review), in broadcasting (Clarke TV for Channel4), and online (commissioning editor, Channel Cyberia for MSN). As a lecturer in journalism, his priorities are good copy and clear thinking.

Postgraduate programmes in Journalism; curriculum development.

Journalism and society in financial times.

• BA Journalism
• BA Sports Journalism
• Postgraduate Certificate in Magazine Journalism
• MA Magazines

• CC1500 Study Skills for Journalism
• CC2501 Understanding the Culture Industries
• CC2512 News Reporting
• CC3000/1 Dissertation
• CC3502 Magazine Media
• CCM502 Journalism: social change and changing profession
• CCM503 Magazines: craft and critique
• MSM529 Dissertation by Media Practice.

• In Defence of Journalism, Proof: reading journalism and society, www.proof-reading.org (2010)
• Journalism Studies: a critical introduction, co-written with Professor Phil Hammond, (Routledge, 2011)
• London and Recession: Fictitious Capital?, co-edited with Professor Gavin Poynter and Iain Macrury, (Ashgate, forthcoming)

• (1998) Arrested Development: pop culture and the erosion of adulthood, Cassell
• (1998) Beat: Princess Diana and the iconography of victimhood, Sheffield Hallam University Press
• (1999) White Noise: contradictions in cyberculture, Macmillan
• (2000) Cult Fiction, with Richard Shephard, Prion/Orion
• (2001) BritCult: an A-Z of British pop culture, Prion/Orion
• (2004-2010) editor, Rising East Online and Rising East Essays www.risingeast.org

Chair, London East Research Institute

From 'Magz, tabs and broadsheets in the year of Hackgate'

"British journalism has been shaken by Hackgate; but it has hardly stirred itself into positive action. Journalists have failed to provide a sufficient explanation of their recent behaviour; nor have they offered a credible account – even to themselves – of what they are for, other than eavesdropping on messages meant for murdered teenagers. This essay explains why tabloids journalists got hooked on intensely personal information, and understands Hackgate as a backlash against the unprecedented levels of press intrusion which have accompanied the intensive personalisation of news.

"Understanding these developments, and the way they complement each other, is especially important because journalism’s current ignorance of why it has been behaving badly can only strengthen calls for an external body to regulate journalism and police the behaviour of journalists. In left-of-centre circles, recourse to regulation is often couched as a challenge to Rupert Murdoch’s controlling influence over News International and, so it is alleged, all British news media. While it is important to reveal the authoritarian tendencies inherent in the left-of-centre approach (a point well-made in a series of articles on Sp!ked www.spiked-online.com), unmasking authoritarianism will not stop its progress – not without a sufficient explanation of journalism’s recent regression. On this matter lack of knowledge is power against press freedom; hence when this essay aims to account for Hackgate as an outbreak of revulsion against the continuing compulsion to personalise the news, it stands for liberty as well as clarity."

Read the rest of my article at www.proof-reading.org

www.maglab.org.uk