Shorthand means long hours.

Fresher rantings.

If you're reading this, well done. You found me.

I'm training to be a journalist at Bournemouth Uni.

9:00 am.

So there i am, my first year, a fresher. Ahhhh freshh! There's nothing like the fresh air in the morning...no?Especially on a cold, bitter, RAINY, winter Monday morning. Slowly, I rise from an irresistible slumber, and i remember the Shorthand exam looms just around the corner. They say new dawn, new day. I say new dawn, new torture. Well, at least it has been for the last week anyway. For the past six days, shorthand has been the bain of my existence. I shower. I check facebook. I headbang to rage against the machine. Then i get dressed. Can't wait for the exam, i think.

Is shorthand becoming a thing of the past?

I know of friends, employers and even lecturers who may think that. It's surprising how many of us out there have trained in this alien language and don't actually use it. Or even how many of us out there who haven't trained in it and still manage to get an outstanding job within the journalistic community. You, the reader of this blog, the marking lecturer, the future employer, potentially, hopefully, will most probably have asked yourself the same question. If you haven't please stop reading now.

When I say shorthand I think of newspapers. But are these slipping into the deep abyss of online news infotainment? Are they well past their sell-by-date?

It is not a question of how or why or what will eventually take over the news mediums and methods we know today. But when. Of course, there will be no definitive point at which we can legitimatly say, "switch!". This is no digital switchover.

Newspaper sales are down; the public are turning to the net to catch up on the news. It's quicker, faster and free. Editors I have worked for in the past have told me they don't even use shorthand these days. Why should we? We have dictaphones, cameras, microphones. All of this technology keeps things moving away from the traditional news mediums that started the whole journalism thing off. Imagine this.

One hundred years down the line, technology is so advanced we can read the news online as it happens. Packages are a thing of the past. It's all about what's happening NOW. News an hour ago is old news and the next generation's kids haven't even heard of newspapers. In fact, there's a newspaper museum just off of Oxford Street, London. Scared? Probably not. Still...imagine that.

Well I just happen to like newspapers. I quite like reading about lots of different things just because they're there. I might even stretch to liking shorthand. We should preserve our traditional news methods. How else will we read the news on the train in the mornings for 30p!!

Oh and one more thing. Britain's great. It's great because we love to laugh at ourselves.

And when I say laugh I mean invade. And when I say ourselves I mean other people.

Let's bring the boys home.

Matt