What's in a Surname?: A Journey from Abercrombie to Zwicker

Surnames are much more than convenient identity tags; they are windows into our families’ pasts. Some suggest ancestral trades (Butcher, Smith, Roper) or physical appearance (Long, Brown, Thynne). Some provide clues to where we come from (McDonald, Evans, Patel). And some—Rymer, Brocklebank, Stolbof—offer a hint of something just a little more exotic or esoteric. All are grist to the mill for David McKie who sets off on a journey around Britain to find out how such appellations have evolved and what they tell us about ourselves. En route he looks at the surname’s tentative beginnings in medieval times, and the myriad routes by which particular names became established. He considers some curious byways: the rise and fall of the multi-barreled surname and the Victorian reinvention of "embarrassing" surnames among them. He considers whether fortune favors those whose surnames come at the beginning of the alphabet, and he celebrates the remarkable and the quirky, from the fearsome Ridley (the cry of which once struck terror in the hearts of Northumbrians) to the legend-encrusted Tichborne, whose most famous holders were destined to suffer centuries of misfortune and controversy. Elegiac and amusing by turns, he offers a wonderfully entertaining wander along the footpaths of the nation’s history and culture, celebrating not just the Smiths and Joneses of these islands but the Chacepots and Swetinbeds, too.

McKIE, David

Reference

Windmill Books

Digging Deeper is a comprehensive manual of investigative techniques and a guide filled with practical tips on how to find information on the public record in Canada. Too often, journalists and other researchers take the lead from others, allowing governments, corporations, and other organizations to define the news, deciding what is newsworthy and how a story will be told. Digging Deeper shows how investigative journalists escape the 'handout mentality' by thinking independently and developing the research techniques necessary to produce investigative reports. Award-winning investigative journalists discuss how to develop story ideas, how to develop research strategies, and how to pitch stories to editors and producers. Individual chapters offer practical tips on how to research individuals, businesses, and public institutions, including how to use freedom of information laws to access information on the public record. Following the paper trail may lead to other avenues for investigation: surveillance and undercover work. The chapter on interviewing explores who to prepare for interviews, techniques for gathering information from an interview, and how to deal with difficult or reluctant sources. Finding information is only half the battle. The authors also discuss how to effectively catalogue, index, and organize the vast amounts of information collected during the course of an investigation. They show how Computer Assisted Reporting (CAR) can be used to extend the reporter's research capabilities. And finally, the authors show how to bring it all together: how to use the results of research to write investigative pieces for print, radio, and television for maximum impact and audience interest.

Digging Deeper: A Canadian Reporter's Research Guide

Politics & Social Sciences

Cribb, Robert

Jobb, Dean

Social Sciences

Oxford University Press

Computer-Assisted Reporting: A Comprehensive Primer is a foundational guide to CAR, and the only one written from a Canadian perspective. Ideal for journalism students as well as practicing reporters in print and broadcasting, the text provides indispensable instruction and helpful tips for using the major classes of CAR software. Each chapter teaches a range of software skills using the same types of data that journalists encounter. Engaging examples are drawn from actual CAR generated articles and newsroom stories. To ensure accessibility, the text avoids acronyms and complicated computer terminology, and is richly illustrated with informative screen shots. Computer-assisted reporting has become an essential skill for all journalists, a fact that this text acknowledges by combining the best elements of traditional information gathering with modern computerized techniques.

Computer-Assisted Reporting: A Comprehensive Primer

Vallance-Jones, Fred

Writing, Research & Publishing Guides

The Data Journalist: Getting the Story is the definitive introduction to using data and technology in reporting for both journalism students and working practitioners. The text covers both the basics and more advanced techniques, discussing what data is, where it is stored, how it can be used, and, ultimately, how it can drive incredible journalism. Covering all of the major methods used by modern journalists, including current and cutting-edge technologies such as Google Fusion Tables, ArcMap, and Ruby on Rails, The Data Journalist demonstrates how to tell stories with data and how to combine the results of data analysis with traditional reporting. This engaging overview of the field pairs the theory and principles behind each method with examples drawn from top stories from around the world. It walks readers through the key techniques using detailed overviews paired with instructive online tutorials, offering readers both a theoretical and practical approach to incorporating data journalism into all media. Written in an accessible manner and suited for use by students and journalists alike, The Data Journalist is an invaluable guide to combining the results of data analysis with traditional reporting to create compelling journalism.

The Data Journalist: Getting the Story

Computers & Technology

Databases & Big Data

The decade of disillusion: British politics in the sixties;

Basingstoke. Macmillan

Public Relations and Nation Building: Influencing Israel (Routledge New Directions in PR & Communication Research)

Toledano, Margalit

Routledge

Reconfiguring Public Relations (Routledge Advances in Management and Business Studies)

This book reconfigures the field of public relations so that it can better engage with the changing world of the 21st century. It identifies the virtual absence of contemporary theories that are core in other disciplines and fills the gap by integrating critical, postmodern, poststructural, postcolonial and other relevant theories into public relations. Reconfiguring Public Relations reenergises thinking about diversity through equity and in terms of business enterprise and environmental sustainability. It makes the case for more equitable diversity strategies in an era of increasing globalisation and establishes their relevance to organisational identity and core values. The book clarifies the present by taking a look back at the past and projecting forward to possible futures, including scenarios.

Reconfiguring Public Relations: Ecology, Equity and Enterprise (Routledge Advances in Management and Business Studies)

Business & Money

Munshi, Debashish

Economics

Marketing & Sales

All public relations emerges from particular environments, but the specific conditions of Israel offer an exceptional study of the accelerators and inhibitors of professional development in the history of a nation. Documenting and analyzing the contribution of one profession to building one specific nation, this book tells the previously-untold story of Israeli public relations practitioners. It illustrates their often-unseen, often-unacknowledged and often-strategic shaping of the events, narratives and symbols of Israel over time and their promotion of Israel to the world. It links the profession’s genesis – including the role of the Diaspora and early Zionist activists – to today’s private and public sector professionals by identifying their roots in Israel’s cultural, economic, media, political, and social systems. It reveals how professional communicators and leaders nurtured and valued collectivism, high consensus, solidarity, and unity over democracy and free speech. It investigates such key underpinning concepts as Hasbara and criticizes non-democratic and sometimes unethical propaganda practices. It highlights unprecedented fundraising and lobbying campaigns that forged Israeli identity internally and internationally. In situating Israeli ideas on democracy in the context of contemporary public relations theory, Public Relations and Nation Building seeks to point ways forward for that theory, for Israel and for the public relations of many other nations.

Great British Bus Journeys

Starting on a green bus in Leeds and culminating atop the number 94 as it speeds towards Trafalgar Square, David McKie sets out to reclaim Britain's towns and villages and transforms them into strange and wonderful locations of history, legend and personality. Travelling the length and breadth of Britain, from the Forest of Bowland to Bradwell-on-Sea, McKie's tour offers a unique survey of our land, conducted from the back seat of our service buses. A truly beguiling read, Great British Bus Journeys is the perfect companion for the modern daytripper.

Travel

Europe

Isis Large Print

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Books by McKIE, David