And since they're students, they're getting paid peanuts.

The NUJ's annual conference is being blogged by a team of 15 journalism students (yes, other peons of the media industry like myself). Those are the mugshots of the team above, plus their two actual-journalist mentors in the corner. Somehow I suspect a few of those photos are not of the individuals they purport to be.

You can click here to read the blog, though at the time of writing very little exists. For example you can still read the instructions left on the blog for the young bloggers themselves to follow. This is all the usual highly basic bollocks like so:

Check your copy before posting. And always ask a co-writer to double check it for content, tone and typos before it goes live.

Since the students involved are print and broadcast - as well as those fancy MA students who you always suspect of spending more time concocting wild theories on which to base a thesis - we're promised a cocktail of text, video and audio reports from the Liverpool venue.

I'll certainly be keeping up to date with it, if only to weigh up the standard of material being put out by other journalists on courses like mine, as well as BA/MA courses around the country. And also because I feel a bit sorry for them after reading this section of their instructions:

There is no point writing for no-one, at least not for this project. So each of us needs to undertake a personal promotion campaign - email the site's address to everyone you know. I kid you not! Proper grown-up bloggers go to other relevant blogs, add their comments and then link back to their own sites - and that's a great way to build an audience. I'm not sure we've got time to do that really, but if you can give it a try, great!

There, I've done my bit. Someone on my course once called me a 'public servant' (of which I'm very proud, I might add), so that's my good deed done for the day.