8 Purchases to Make the Most of Life in the Netherlands

I have entered the Expats Blog March Writing Contest with a piece on eight things you should buy if you are an expat in the land of the Dutch to get the most out of living here. Head on over to Expats Blog to read it if you  like... go on, I'll wait - Top 8 Must Buy Items For Expats in The Netherlands.

Finished? How was it? Did it resonate with you? If you liked the article please share it with your friends using the links under the article on the Expats Blog page - you can use Twitter, Facebook, Google + or LinkedIn to share. Those precious clicks could help me win one of the prizes categories. A creative comment under the article is also most welcome - how many of the eight have you bought?

Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2012 Exhibition in The Hague's Museon

(c) Amanda van Mulligen

Organised by the BBC Wildlife Magazine and London's Natural History Museum the Wildlife Photographer of the Year is an annual prestigious international photography competition.

For those of you in the area the Museon in The Hague is displaying the amazing wildlife images captured by exceptional talent from behind their lenses - and I can say first hand it is well worth a visit. The images are stunning, thought provoking and mesmerising, representing photographers from across the globe.

The categories are varied and show the beautiful, the weird, the contradictions and the ferocity of nature. Some photos show the relationship between man and beast, the horror man is capable of, others show breathtaking natural phenomena.

You can find more information about the different categories and winning photos on the Natural History Museum website.

The exhibition runs until 5 May 2013 and entrance tickets to the Museon are €10 for adults which provides entry to the entire science and culture museum - which is also worth a tour round if you have not yet been. More info can be found on the Museon website.

The Wildlife Photographer of the Year Exhibition in Museon, The Hague
(c) Amanda van Mulligen

‘Glory days’ of journalism? No, yes, no and yes.

In nine years of calibrating the health of the news media in the United States, the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism never has painted a bleaker picture of the performance and prospects of the press than it did in the annual report issued on Monday. 

So, why is Matthew Yglesias of Slate smiling? More on that in a moment. But first, here’s a sampling of what Pew had to say:   

Signs of 

What newspapers should cover

Last month, I talked about how newspapers often squander their scarce resources by running stories that are longer than they ought to be.  Today, I’d like to suggest what editors can do with all the space they save by not taxing the time and patience of their readers.

The way to make room for fresh and relevant coverage, as suggested previously here, is to use graphics instead of words; to stop

Why retail apps should worry publishers

From Best Buy to CVS and from Kroger to Macy’s, the biggest buyers of newspaper advertising have launched sophisticated smartphone apps to establish increasingly direct and profitable relationships with individual customers. 

These efforts should give publishers the shivers, because this new channel represents a major threat to the retail lineage that constitutes half of what’s left of the

Expat Life: I'm Changed from the Inside Out

"Nothing is comparable to the new life…in a new country. Though I am still always myself, I am changed to the marrow of my bones" ~ Goethe

I don't think there is a quote that can more accurately sum up the effect expat life has had on me. Of course I am still me, but the person that left England in 2000 seems like a stranger now. I have the feeling that I wouldn't recognise that girl from pre-expat life if I bumped into her in the street. 

Of course I am still me, but my life has changed in more ways than I can count. Consequently who I am has changed too. In more ways than I can count. 

I speak a foreign language every day. I have been through culture shock and come out the other side unscathed but changed. Expat life offered me a new career on a silver platter. There are many things I see today as 'normal' that were completely alien to me a decade ago. I sometimes find it hard to remember I had a pre-expat life. It seems so long ago, so hazy. 

My new environment has changed me, changed how I see things, changed how I think and feel about things. It has changed my daily life. It has changed me from the inside out. To the marrow of my bones.

How has expat life changed you? Have you been changed to the "marrow of your bones" by moving abroad?

So long again, Chicago Daily News

On March 4, 1978, the presses fell silent for the last time at the Chicago Daily News, an iconic and crusading newspaper that was unable to adapt to changing times. The following article, which originally appeared here in 2005, is reprinted as a reminder of what happens when a paper runs out of readers, revenues and ideas.

"It's fun being the publisher when things are going well," squeaked the

‘We’re working hard to get out of paper ads’

It’s hard to overstate the velocity and magnitude of the shift from mass to target marketing in an era when, as ComScore reports, 50% of mobile users have smartphones and 37% of digital page views occur on mobile screens instead of desktops. 

But don’t take my word for it. Instead of attempting to characterize the disruptive impact of these changes on newspapers and other mass media, I am