Lockdown reads: Great journalism and writing you might have missed, part 12 (November 2020)

Good morning and welcome to this months roundup of interesting news stories. I began this particular blogging project at the start of lockdown one as it became increasingly apparent that the floodgates had opened on rampant conspiracy theories, disinformation and all sorts of other related crap that was making it increasingly difficult to distinguish reliable news sources from partisan ones. I don't think I've been able to help rectify this problem in any way as it's clearly much, much bigger than me, and all I could really hope for is to create a small pocket of sanity on the internet. Let's hope media literacy gets added to the national curriculum sometime soon and that changes are made in the wild west of the internet to make it easier to find out who owns and controls websites, news publishers, newspapers and broadcasters. And what their various business and news agendas might be. With this in mind, please do read The Guardian's  account of an incident involving press photographers and London's Metropolitan Police in November. Journalists, including photographers, are classed as essential workers during Covid. Something that is regularly forgotten. 

There's been a lot of news about vaccines over the past month, and you might have been finding some of the information confusing, or just have felt a bit overwhelmed. There's also been an uptick in vaccination related conspiracy theories and misinformation too, which means Full Fact have had a busy month. I've tried to select a mixture of vaccine related stories that will help with all of this, so strap in and select those that pique your interest. 

Firstly, Full Fact can confirm that A Covid-19 vaccine is not being administered via Covid-19 nasal swab tests. Similarly, that the UK government is not proposing to make Covid-19 vaccines mandatory. You can read their assessment of government plans to monitor Covid-19 vaccines for side effects here. You can read about Full Fact, and other stories they've fact checked, here. If you're not sure about how vaccines work, New Scientist's Sam Wong in his Science With Sam series does a good primer on YouTube. Perhaps the most quirky vaccine story this month though was the news that Dolly Parton had provided funding for the Moderna Covid-19 trial. 

In other Covid news, New Scientist provided an analysis of concerns about a new strain of the virus found in farmed mink in Denmark. Delayed Gratification published one of their longform slow journalism reports about the impact of India's first lockdown earlier this year and Wired have published a great, tech orientated analysis of how well Taiwan have handled Covid-19. City Monitor, the New Statesman's new urban site, published a great piece of data journalism last week which took a microscope to unemployment figures across the UK, and revealed some surprises. In New Mexico, the challenges of arranging school for children in remote and tech starved communities is given thoughtful treatment by The Independent. 

Another data orientated story, in some ways, is the exit of Dominic Cummings from Downing Street, which The Bureau of Investigative Journalism wrote about here. 

Following the spotlight on Manchester, and Andy Burnham, in October, Helen Pidd wrote a thoughtful profile of Greater Manchester's Metro Mayor for The Guardian. The Manchester Evening News did a thoughtful piece about the human cost of Covid via stories of local unemployment. In a similar Mancunian unemployment zone, The Meteor wrote about a retraining scheme that is helping unemployed theatre staff find work retrofitting homes to tackle the climate crisis. In other Greater Manchester news, there's to be a second phase of consultation, in the wake of Covid-19, as regards the fate of local buses. 

Despite the increasingly bleak midwinter economic outlook, there have been some good business stories recently, including the launch of a new online bookshop to rival Amazon, designed to help local independent bookshops. It sounds a bit like the Rough Trade cartel, only with bookshops. The Manchester Evening News wrote about the venture here. There's also a new UK start up making oat milk, and an ongoing scheme to recycle crisp packets into sleeping equipment for rough sleepers. 

The BBC provided a good longform look back at disability rights activism in the UK here. 1843 have some lessons in losing, CJR wrote about the Substackeri, Wired wrote of the broken dreams, and broken bodies, of would be e-sport stars, City Monitor wrote about an interesting housing campaign in Berlin, The Guardian reported that police are investigating claims that TV's I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here my have released non native species of insect into the Welsh countryside. Sticking with insects, there are some Very Hangry Caterpillars out there, and The Verge have a gently hilarious tale of an AI camera that fell in love with a football referees bald head after mistaking it for the ball at a football match. 

All images by me