CAITLIN FITZSIMMONS

I’ve been working at MediaGuardian.co.uk two days a week helping cover a staff sabbatical. I cover various media stories, from television ratings to job cuts. Today the focus was on the terrible events unfolding in Mumbai – I found myself speaking to the Reuters south Asia correspondent on his mobile phone as he waited around the back of the Taj Mahal hotel for the body bags to be brought out. The result was this article on how the media is covering the story, plus this blog on the Mumbai v Bombay issue and whether papers that stick to the old nomenclature are missing out on web search traffic.

Mondays are a busy day in media. Not only is it the publication day for the Media Guardian and the Independent’s Media Weekly, but The Australian has now shifted the publication date of its Media section from Thursday to Monday.

Today, I have an article on global business newspapers and the Wall Street Journal in The Australian, and a feature on how traditional media are adapting to the new media world in the Media Guardian’s Changing Advertising supplement.

In July I travelled to Damascus to attend an Iraqi wedding. It’s too dangerous to get married in Baghdad these days so people are increasingly crossing the border to Syria to get hitched. I wrote about it for G2, The Guardian’s daily features supplement, and the piece was published today. You can read it online but if you get a chance, do check out the print version with all the pretty pictures by my friend and colleague Peter Garmusch.

I’m going to covering a sabbatical on the MediaGuardian.co.uk news desk for the best part of the next two months. I’ll be looking for news on all aspects of the UK media industry, so please email me with any leads (you can use the contact form if you don’t have my email address). You can keep track of what I write for The Guardian and any blog posts.