Well first of all, apologies. One thing that seems to happen when you launch a network of over 30 blogs (here, here and here, if you’re wondering) is that, at the end of the day, you are not overly keen on blogging for yourself.

That is, however, remiss of me as I have got so much from this blog and it is very unfair to turn my back on it when the going gets a little busier.

So today, the day I arrive for the latest installment of the Journalism Leaders Course in Preston, I thought I’d give this little corner of cyberspace a little bit of TLC.

So I am sitting in my hotel room admiring the now infamous view of the Preston bus station/car park. I will, however, refrain from taking another picture to avoid the indignance of one of my north-west colleagues. (I have, instead, posted a luverly pic of the Preston skyline. In’t it nice!)

This is the last time I will see most of fellow coursemates. Ben and I (the Birmingham contingent) joined the course mid-way through. I imagine (although I’m not sure) that we will have one more module to go through around September time. But for the others, this will be it. It’s a shame – the group is so bright and I’ve learnt so much from them.

This part of the course is going to be on marketing. I’m not sure exactly how it will progress but, from the online seminars that we’ve had so far, I’m assuming it will question how well journalists know their readers and whether our infamous misrust of the marketing department may actually be to the detriment of our newspapers.

On Tuesday we will also have the Journalism Leaders Forum which will ask why isn’t the explosion of digital media translating into increased revenues for mainstream media companies. I suspect the answer has something to do with not owning the platforms by which the media is distributed and dilution of the market. But I will be interested to hear what others think.

Speakers include Chris Anderson of ‘The Long Tail’, Anton Grutzmacher of Hitwise, Peter Kirwan of the Press Gazette’s Media Money and Rick Waghorn of www.myfootballwriter.com.

As always I will try (and probably fail) to blog about it all as I go along.