Author Archives: Karen Woods

The death of local radio?

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Remember the 1979 song Video Killed the Radio Star? Marconi’s invention has proved to be surprisingly resilient over the decades but an article I read today on a US media blog was alarming. In the olden days when I was a fulltime radio journalist, we lived for emergencies and crises . We dreamed of major   …Continue Reading


Transient technology

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Future generations will marvel at the way we lived in the 1980s or 90s. Today’s children are growing up in a truly connected age where many of the things we once took for granted are becoming irrelevant. What did we do without smart phones for instance?


The kindness of strangers

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She was sitting in an airport bar in a midwestern city, drinking cocktails at four in the afternoon. Does this sound like the start of a seedy novel? I sat on the next stool and ordered some fizzy water, found the free wifi and began to idly browse websites.


Big trucks

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North America is all about big trucks. Shiny creatures covered in chrome that thunder along the freeways night and day transporting bricks, beets and Bud Light across the States and beyond. Do their drivers still listen to country music and send enigmatic messages on crackly CB radios?


Duty free shopping?

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Does anyone ever buy overpriced perfumes, cigarettes, metrosexual jewellery and assorted knick knacks on planes these days? I’d love to know. The ever-smiling cabin staff push the trolleys to and fro along the aisles but no-one seems to get out their credit card.


Scandal of the rigged election

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Isn’t it lovely when a plan comes together? It can also be marvellous when plans crumble to dust. I did take a certain malicious glee in reading in higher education’s trade paper THE how Cardiff University’s efforts to appoint a new Chancellor ended in disaster.