‘Our newsroom in the cloud’: Slack, virtual newsrooms and journalistic practice

Virtual newsrooms have enormous potential: enabling journalists around the world to pool their knowledge, skills and perspectives within joint projects, such as the Panama Papers. These virtual newsrooms are supported by Online Collaborative Software (OCS), the most popular of which is Slack. But although many of the world’s top news organisations now use Slack, there is no empirical research examining its impact on workplace processes or culture. This article presents the results of a year-long ethnographic study of a global digital news outlet, whose remote journalists collaborate, almost exclusively, via Slack. We found that the platform deepened relationships and enabled new creative practices across geographic regions. However, it also contributed to the erasure of the line between private and professional spheres for workers, and introduced new opportunities for management to shape newsroom culture. We argue that the concept of ‘space’ as developed by Harvey can helpfully frame the analysis of these new, important digital platforms

International journalism and the emergence of transnational publics: between cosmopolitan norms, the affirmation of identity and market forces

Much has been written about transnational public spheres, though our understanding of their shape and nature remains limited. Drawing on three alternative conceptions of newswork as public communication, this article explores the role of international journalists in shaping transnational publics. Based on a series of original interviews, it asks how journalists are oriented in their newswork (e.g. are they cosmopolitan or parochial in their orientation) and how they ‘imagine’ the public. It finds that interviewees imagine a polycentric transnational public and variously frame their work as giving voice to those affected by an issue (imagining the public as a cosmopolitan community of fate), performing and reaffirming a particular kind of identity and belonging (imagining the public as a nation) or pursuing audiences wherever they may be (imagining the public as the de facto audience)

Later life sex and Rubin’s ‘Charmed Circle'

Gayle Rubin’s now classic concept of the ‘charmed circle’ has been much used by scholars of sexuality to discuss the ways in which some types of sex are privileged over others. In this paper, I apply the concept of the charmed circle to a new topic– later life – in order both to add to theory about later life sex and to add an older-age lens to thinking about sex hierarchies. Traditional discursive resources around older people’s sexual activities, which treat older people’s sex as inherently beyond the charmed circle, now coexist with new imperatives for older people to remain sexually active as part of a wider project of ‘successful’ or ‘active’ ageing. Drawing on the now-substantial academic literature about later life sex, I discuss some of the ways in which redrawing the charmed circle to include some older people’s sex may paradoxically entail the use of technologies beyond the charmed circle of ‘good, normal, natural, blessed’ sex. Sex in later life also generates some noteworthy inversions in which types of sex are privileged and which treated as less desirable, in relation to marriage and procreation. Ageing may, furthermore, make available new possibilities to redefine what constitutes ‘good’ sex and to refuse compulsory sexuality altogether, without encountering stigma

Visible-light sensitisation of near-infrared luminescence from Yb(III), Nd(III) and Er(III) complexes of 3,6-bis(2-pyridyl)tetrazine

Reaction of the potentially bis-bidentate bridging ligand 3,6-bis(2-pyridyl)tetrazine (BPTZ) with various lanthanide complexes [Ln(tta)3(H2O)2] [Htta = thenoyl(trifluoro) acetone; Ln = La, Nd, Gd, Er, Yb] in aqueous ethanol afforded the mononuclear complexes [Ln(tta)3(BPTZ)] (Ln = La, Nd) or the dinuclear complexes [{Ln(tta)3}2(μ-BPTZ)] (Ln = Gd, Er, Yb) in which one or two, respectively, lanthanide tris-diketonate {Ln(tta)3} units are bound to the N,N-bidentate compartments of BPTZ. Crystal structures of the dinuclear complexes [{Yb(tta)3}2(μ-BPTZ)] ·CH2Cl2 and [{Gd(tta)3} 2(μ-BPTZ)]·2CH2Cl2 show that the metal centres have an approximately square-antiprismatic eight-coordinate geometry; there are close contacts above and below the plane of the BPTZ bridging ligand between peripheral trifluoromethyl groups from a tta ligand associated with each metal centre. It is not apparent why the larger lanthanides La and Nd only give a mononuclear complex whereas the smaller lanthanides Gd, Er and Yb give the dinuclear complex in each case. UV/Vis spectroscopic titrations of a solution of BPTZ in CH2Cl2 with increasing amounts of [Ln(tta)3(H2O)2] (Ln = La and Yb) show very similar behaviour, with stepwise binding constants K1 and K2 for association of the two {Ln(tta)3} units of ca. 106 M-1 and 105 M-1; allowing for the expected statistical factor of 4 there is an additional reduction in the value of K2 compared to K1 which may be associated with a steric interaction between the two {Ln(tta)3} units when the dinuclear complex forms. Steady-state and time-resolved luminescence studies on the complexes with Yb, Nd and Er, both in the solid state and CH 2Cl2 solution, show that near-IR luminescence on the microsecond timescale can be sensitised by irradiation either at 337 nm into the tta-based transition, or at 520 nm into the low-energy BPTZ-centred transition. © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2003