Richard Burton

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Burton) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 14:28:00 +0000

Michael Jackson: how to cover a running story

Michael Jackson’s death fell just right for the late editions, to the relief of night editors who must have been wetting themselves at the thought of running a 3am Final in limbo.

But they had enough on their plates, coping with web updates as speculation grew and newsrooms turned in desperation to Twitter which was, to anyone sifting their tweets, ahead of the game with the first referrals to TMZ, who broke the story way ahead of anyone.

It was interesting reading. As the midnight hour approached and many of the 60,000 tweets were reflecting the death line (Thanks to David Cohen, or dgcohen23, for that), The Times prefixed their home page splash with Breaking: Jackson 'dies' after suffering heart attack. The story moved very slowly though and the more follows was slow to live up to its promise.

The BBC got round it by splashing on Gravely ill Jackson in hospital and shoving their media player across top of the home page for some real-time reporting.

The Guardian did have Michael Jackson dead but attributed with say reports. They too offered only a few lines. Oddly, they were still attributing doubt to the hours-old: Farrah Fawcett dies at age of 53 – PA.

The SEO-savvy Telegraph wisely used cardiac arrest in a clunky-but-friendly 13-word head and repeated it in a 22-word summary. They did much better on the copy though, pulling together a story long enough to justify the subject, even if they had Micheal in the headline briefly. Ouch. Been there.

Then, as Google was apparently crashing under the strain of a search-term siege, TV news reports repeated, almost by the minute, that the reports were “uncomfirmed”.

At around 11.50, the BBC announced: Singer Michael Jackson is 'dead' then rather sloppily added a list of links that included the earlier gravely-ill story.

USA Today fared a lot worse. At 11.30, their site led with Michael Jackson dies at 50 - but clicked through to a lengthy obit with no mention of his death or the circumstances. A case of grab what you can from the basket and throw it up. An intro would have helped.

The New York Times had Michael Jackson, 50, is dead but put the story in the 'arts beat' section. Worse, it consisted of an incoherent series of blog-style posts with garbled reaction

By this time the Telegraph were rewriting the style book on attribution with an intro that announced he was dead, according to showbiz site TMZ, the LA Times, AP, the BBC and PA. Back well covered then, chaps.

The Mirror joined the slower sites by sitting on a couple of pars with a more follows and The Sun relied on a series of Yahoo links!

It was harder for the live broadcasters. Sky managed to grab a bit of airtime with Paul Gambaccini who managed to fill a quote book (remember those?) on his own with gems such as: “It’s the biggest news story in the world at the moment. I know it’s number one in Japan for example”; and when likening his death to that of John Lennon, adding: “There was one difference there. There was violence. Murder is much worse than a heart attack.”

But quote of the night went to Sky: “We just spoke to Uri Geller, a close friend. He was so emotional he couldn’t speak to us.”

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Burton) — Tue, 26 May 2009 19:09:00 +0000

Wired: the future just caught up with me

I’ve just read the second edition of David Rowan’s Wired magazine and he’ll no doubt rest a lot easier knowing I think it’s shaping up nicely. I didn’t dwell too much on the launch issue; I never do as they’re always too long in the making to represent real publishing.

Besides, it was hard to find. This month’s editorial puts that down to a sell-out, something I’ve done on all my launches. Hope it did but, even so, the truth is, no matter how much sway even major publishers have with the multiples, it’s hard to guarantee launches a good show in the independent newsagents.

I also wasn’t a fan of the original cover. I liked the fold-out image but the texture just irritated. But that’s just me. I’m the same with fabrics. Never could wear wool.

Anyway, this month’s “proper” issue does itself serious credit. It’s well-presented, eclectic enough to move beyond the obvious niche market and nicely mixes the waiting room reads (How to read war and Peace in 34 seconds) with those requiring a decent hammock and a bit of peace and quiet ( Britain’s Internet censors, How the Web was almost brought down, World’s biggest diamond heist).

I did smile to myself when I read that he’d sent writers to India, Kenya, US, Sweden, Italy, Holland, St Kitts. Must be wonderful not to have me querying the cost of an overnight stay in Blackpool.

Private jokes aside, good editors build the best brands when they do it in their own image. This is a good example. Here’s a very exceptional editor; an intellectual having fun with a subject that fascinates him.

We just need to see it in a few more shops.

Otherwise, I’ll just have to get a subscription.

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Burton) — Fri, 22 May 2009 08:50:00 +0000

To Davos and beyond

I have to say congratulations to Adrian Monck on his appointment as the new communications head for the World Economic Forum. I'll miss his blog, but what the hell; he’ll be in for a good time there. It’s one hell of a job.

How do I know? I was in line for it a while back, about a year before I parted company with the Telegraph, in fact. The title wasn’t quite the same and the internal changes that would have facilitated it never came about, but the job was roughly the same: travelling the world and spreading the word.

It was sold to me as the ultimate networking opportunity during the few hours I spent in a massively-gated James Bond-base style headquarters in Geneva. Apart from the meet-and-greet stuff at Davos, it offered what was probably the most enviable opportunity to get inside the global corridors of power than any in the media.

I’d gone as far as looking into the possibility of becoming a frontalier, one of those people who buys a small estate over the border in France for the price of a Barbican flat and commutes every day past sweeping vineyards in an open-top sports car.

My only recollection of a downside to the job was that, high up in the hills fronted by a dusty residential road leading to nowhere, where does one go for lunch.

Then I noticed outside on the grass overlooking the lake, loads of them working out in the sun, with a personal trainer.

Beats the queue for Pret any day.

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Burton) — Mon, 18 May 2009 09:25:00 +0000

Good excuse for being late for work

The day began a little later than usual, because a woman almost gave birth on a train.

Passengers travelling on the Central Line into the City were stuck for about 20 minutes as the driver gave constant updates. But left out the best bits.

After first explaining there appeared to be a door problem with the train in front at St Paul's Station, he then announced the unexpected labour.

But from then on, his minute-by-minute "customer updates" included everything from how the train was being cleared, how he could see the driver ushering people off, how the platform was now dangerously crowded, how it was being cleared, how we would be technically jumping a red light and "proceeding at 10kph or less", how only the first carriage would reach the platform as the other train was still there and how the driver would have to open the doors "manually from the outside" to let us out, single-file.

But no news of mother and baby.

It was only as I boarded the escalator for the exit that I found out. There, riding alongside me on the next one, strapped to a stretcher and screaming the place down, was mum-to-be.

The time it took to move her from the platform suggested either the ambulance had been stuck in rush-hour traffic or they'd expected a platform birth.

Eiher way, bet she calls it Paul.

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Burton) — Fri, 15 May 2009 13:35:00 +0000

Council papers - journalism they aint

I can fully understand why journalists on the breadline find the lure of jumping ship to council papers so attractive. But I can’t understand how they can still call themselves journalists. They’re not. They’ve taken the very well-trodden path across the road to PR.

It was ever thus. More than once a town hall took one of my promising, albeit starving, young reporters and gave them a living wage to write the sort of press releases they’d have rewritten or spiked a few days earlier. But they became as much a part of the spin machine as Alistair Campbell did when he left the Mirror for Whitehall – and never made any secret of it.

The defections have grown in line with the rise of council newspapers which are, in the main, awful. OK, in house magazine terms, which is more or less the genre in which I’d place them, some are not bad. But don’t let’s persist in the notion that they any more deserve a place in the media than the corporate newsletters big companies place in dump bins in the factory canteens.

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Burton) — Tue, 12 May 2009 11:19:00 +0000

Katie and Peter - the latest chapter

Jordan and Peter Andre's marriage is on the rocks, and they have asked for privacy during their difficult time.

I'd love to think their wishes could be granted, particularly as I used to rent a flat to his publicist and never once felt tempted to invade his privacy. Mind you, he had faded from view after his one fairly forgetable hit.

But that's beside the point. Given that the pair met on a reality show that reinvigorated his career, they sold their wedding pictures for a sum equivalent to 50 backbenchers' expense claims and made a fortune by living their lives in front of the cameras, they've got as much hope of privacy as Newcastle has of winning the premiership.

Incidentally, the publicist moved out ages ago. Pity. I'd love to ask her what she thought of the mileage the couple are getting out of this, particularly as their story is currently the most read on several national newspaper websites - even beating those expenses stories.

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Burton) — Mon, 11 May 2009 14:01:00 +0000

Raising Standards?

Just seen the new-look Evening Standard. In a nutshell:

1. The masthead: play with that at your peril. Eros defined the brand. Not sure where that has gone.
2. Standfirsts: over-long. They call them sells in magazines, which are read sitting down. This is read standing up.
3. Those Tesco ads: top and bottom of facing pages. Hope Tesco paid through the nose for them to sacrifice the editorial that now flows under them.
4. The design: has a look of Lite about it; breezy, modern and a bit freesheet. It’s not. It’s the market leader. It’s paid-for and should evoke authority. The spot colours don’t help.
5. It’s also day one. The key here is not today, but next week and next month when the staff have settled into it and moulded it.

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Burton) — Mon, 11 May 2009 12:57:00 +0000

Good Morning, here's the bill

GMTV, my morning favourite, have done it again. This morning they flew two presenters and a film crew all the way to Monte Carlo launch their Win £100,000 competition.

“What better place?” they asked as they stood on the deck of the boat emblazoned with banners announcing the OK!-sponsored competition. Indeed. But why did the viewer not get a single image of this “millionaire’s playground”?

Close-ups, side of the boat, cartoon cutaways of Jenni Falconer wondering how the cash would change her life, but no Monte Carlo. Just the odd snatch of blue sky.

Glad I’m not signing off the eccies.

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Burton) — Fri, 08 May 2009 11:37:00 +0000

Sorry can be the daftest word

Veronica Wadley must be chuffed to bits with the Standard's Sorry for losing touch campaign

All incoming editors arrive with a vision and want to stamp their mark pretty much immediately. But Geordie Greig’s campaign that includes apologetic ads on London buses is both risky externally and potentially undermining internally, if you factor in staff loyalties.

I've worked with Veronica and know she’s never one to do anything without conviction.

The only time I've shared office space with Geordie was in the eighties on the ill-fated Today. He moved on and may well have flown by the time Tiny Rowland bought out Eddie Shah and we relaunched with a campaign to mitigate the disastrous launch. By saying sorry. My views haven't changed since.

Sadly, there are many reasons for a newspaper to say sorry. Not agreeing with your predecessor isn't one of them.

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Burton) — Tue, 05 May 2009 17:39:00 +0000

Call me cynical..

“I’m from a marketing company ringing on behalf of Vodafone. You recently changed your Blackberry handset and we’d like to ask you some questions. Were you satisfied with the service?”

“No. It took three days when I was told it’d be done in one. I had nom proper explanation and was left without a functioning handset for much longer than I was told I’d have to.”

“Can I ask what profession you’re in. Is it public relations, marketing, sales of journalism.”

“Journalism.”

“In what position exactly.”

“Managing editor of a national newspaper.”

“Could you hang on a moment?”

A full minute later…

“Are you the person who dealt directly with the handset transfer?”

“Of course not. I have people to do that.”

“In that case, we can’t talk to you. We can only speak to those directly involved. Goodbye.”

I’ll spare the rest but summarise my response: You asked a customer care question of a media worker and got a negative response. You gingerly asked if they were in journalism and took advice on the implications. Then you came with a closing question to which there could be only one answer.

No hard feelings. I wrote this on the new Blackberry. Works a treat.

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Burton) — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 12:01:00 +0000

I paid £50 not to see Bob Dylan

There are some stars who just don’t get bad reviews. Paul McCartney’s concerts will always get the same slavish treatment as his divorce hearings. The Stones can play Honky Honk Woman like a pub band and still be lauded as iconic.

That’s probably why Andy Gill let him off lightly in the Independent and Bloomberg’s Mark Beech cut him a little slack after his piss-take of a performance at the O2 on Saturday night. Only Andrew Perry in the Telegraph seemed to see the concert I saw. That is, before I joined the other poor souls who voted with their feet totally hacked off after booking a ground-floor seat only to find they could neither see or hear him properly.

They couldn’t hear because his voice, so past it, it was rendered a grumble, didn’t take advantage of the arena’s sound system and couldn’t see because the wave of dew-eyed superannuated hippies who rose to their feet to greet his arrival, stayed upright throughout and the hapless hundreds from row B backwards were denied the convenience of the big screens that usually flank the stage.

Why? Because, venue staff assured me as I left, burbling Bob, Pop’s Poet Laureate couldn’t be doing with it.

Fine, I suppose: if you’re a true pop icon who’s always played by his own rules, we can expect no more.

Just don’t charge £50 a ticket and make us work harder than the band for the privilege. And don’t let nostalgia say it’s anything other than what it was.

Glad that’s off my chest. Now, what’s the chance of a refund?

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Burton) — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 10:56:00 +0000

No stop press at Press Gazette

Yet again, Press Gazette has been saved from closure, this time after being bought Progressive Media. It’s website opened for business again yesterday and it looks like we’ll be getting another edition for May.

Editor Dominic Ponsford said the deal was “a positive sign for all journalists working on titles going through dramatic change”.

I’d say that was an understatement.

I was, for different reasons, a little sad to learn that The Ecologist will stop printing from July and spare the carbon footprint by publishing exclusively online. It’s innovative, leads by example and the decision is completely in keeping with a magazine that has done shedloads to raise awareness of some of the most serious issues facing mankind.

All I can say is that it’s come a long way since its early days in small first floor office in Tavistock High Street when it tried to make an editor out of a local newspaper reporter who knew so little about the environment he arrived early for the interview and kept his car engine running for 20 minutes to keep warm while he sat in a car park reading a back copy and trying to convince himself that the Baldwin Effect was nothing to do with Coronation Street.

Luckily, I didn’t get the job.

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Burton) — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 19:16:00 +0000

To print or not to print

What would you do if the chairman of the local bench was up in his own court for shoplifting, threatened to pull his firm’s advertising if you ran a word of it and your staff urged caution because his wife had heart problems? Oh, and he was a pillar of the local community, did shedloads for charity and was a big golfing buddy of your chairman.

Yep – the poor sod gets 100pt Ariel Bold across the front page, a decent turn inside on his wife’s sudden heart attack and a cross-ref to a leader on how we expect our betters to set an example.

Obvious, yes? But not to the journalists of the future, apparently. The scenario is one used in media workshops run by the Independent Schools Careers Office to make candidates think about the dilemmas they could be facing in the real world.

Over two days last week, 40 of the 70-odd candidates from schools such as Eton and Cheltenham, said they’d either not publish it at all, or tuck it away inside so as not to sensationalise. A few said the decision was purely commercial, but most sympathised with his position and didn’t want to upset his wife.

Where does this come from? It’s not as if these extremely bright youngsters, all destined for our top universities, don’t read newspapers.

Could it be that these papers simply give a more caring impression than some of us may imagine?

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Burton) — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 15:56:00 +0000

Law and order, an appreciation

Last week saw the end of Law and Order, not the glossy NBC one on at the moment but the G F Newman four-parter I first watched on a black and white portable in 1979. If you’re unlucky enough to have missed it, it was the seediest of tales about a small-time villain framed for robbery by a bent cop.

It told the story through the eyes of the villain, the copper, the lawyer and, eventually, the prisoner “banged up” for a stretch because “he was well overdue”.

It was full of “nonces” and “slags” saying things like “leave it out,” and “do me a favour” and the worst swearing was the occasional “bladdy hell.”

But what made it so special was that it just rang true. Not the institutionalised corruption (heaven forbid) but the sheer vagaries of a justice system itself well overdue for a clean-up.

I spent days on end in courts in those days and absolutely recognised the judge who wouldn’t hear a word said against the police, the brief who met DCs in pubs to “do a bit of business”, the hapless families who packed the public galleries, the juries who got it all wrong and the prisoners who emerged with tales unbecoming of a modern penal institution.

Newman's tale was both entertainment and nostalgia for the days when the first seeds of a healthy cynicism were sown. Whether fact ever really mirrored fiction, I didn't know. But that didn't matter quite as much as the moment the elderly court reporter I'd spent years siting next to felt compelled to write to the local paper to voice his frustration at having to sit through "allegation after baseless allegation of police curruption made by criminal elements".

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Burton) — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 17:14:00 +0000

What a load of pap

Not the best night for press relations last night with BBC3’s somewhat repetitive mini-doc Paparazzi: Next Generation. Camera crews followed a group of young bucks with telephoto lenses, driving with one hand, jumping red lights and sticking their cameras in the faces of everyone from Amy Winehouse to Goldie Hawn.

Narrator Lee Williams did his best to big them up by referring to them variously as Top Gun, Lone Gun and Sharpshooter and pondered what it must be like “looking down the barrel”. There were shoulder-cam shots of chirpy chappies running around in pursuit of prey and one or two of them came over well; waiting for hours in one spot, giving it large when the moment came, and downloading £££-a time shots from their laptops.

But it was worth it to see the hapless Ryan Essex standing outside a Thames-side hotel waiting for the prime Minister emerge from credit crunch crisis talks. Somehow he hadn’t sussed that while shouting “Paris” outside Stringfellows may elicit a pout in his direction, shouting repeatedly “Gordon” would not.

Having failed to snap anything of value he complained: “It would have hurt him to turn round. Why is he so moody?”

He may have got a few pix in the papers, but it wouldn’t hurt to read them….

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Burton) — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 19:44:00 +0000

Oh Carol, you and your big mouth

It didn't surprise me at all that Carol Thatcher compounded her golliwog gaffe by taking ages to apologise.

From the little time I've spent in her company, it's obvious she has a somewhat bombastic sense of fun and I’ve no doubt, genuinely imagined it to be innocuous at the time and in the context she said it.

Admittedly, it would have been better if she'd fessed up and backed down on the spot. It’s daft, belongs to a best-forgotten age when black and asian people were described as coloured and it’s galling to find it’s still in circulation. But did it really warrant Adrian Chiles and Jo Brand "storming out" in disgust? Stick her firmly in her place by all means. It’d sink in later. But don’t blab…

Carol's a big character, great fun and it’s the public’s loss to see joining the queue through the BBC’s PC exit door.

And don‘t tell me there is any contrition in this punishment. No sooner had Jonathan Ross served his time in obscurity, he was back on his Friday night show taking the p*** and milking it for all it was worth.

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Burton) — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 13:43:00 +0000

Courting contempt

They've done it yet again. My local free magazine, The Voice of the Village, has committed another blatant contempt.

The same mag that all but convicted a drunk driver a day or so after his arrest, this week, under the headline; 'Man charged with post office robbery' listed in detail the full indictment, including times and dates of eight other charges and the date he is due in court.

But it also included the killer lines: He was responsible for the attempted robbery...he threatened staff... he demanded money...before lapsing into belated anonymity by concluing that 'the man' escaped in an uinknown direction on his bike.

And if there were any doubt as to who the guilty party is - they used an old police-issue mugshot.

There but for the grace and all that . . . but someone should have a word.

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Burton) — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 15:03:00 +0000

The future - in a single breath

I spoke to students and academics at Kings College this week, wired for sound.

Apparently, the entire 60-minutes is to be transcribed word-for-word for a university paper, which is why I had to wear a lapel microphone as I delivered a lecture on the problems facing newspapers in the digital age.

I'm not sure anyone is going to relish the task of typing up my remarks. But for the more fortunate, here in 150 words are the highlights of my advice to publishers:

Make integration work on a technical level before you integrate people and workflows/Don't ditch your print edition until you can afford to ditch your brand/don't imagine you'll have the same pulling power online when faced with more organic and innovative competition/Be honest that the main point of integration is to cut jobs – and cut the right ones/Give blog space to new voices with something to say, not to corporates trying to appear on-message/Tailor your content to the actual medium and not to your perception of how it should be/Remember you are multi-media so don't treat any platform as a favourite son/Listen to those on the front line working with technology you don’t understand/Integrate best practice from both sides of the divide/Don't try to model yourself on something you’re not/Make SEO work for you, don't work for it/Re-structure staffing around key strengths and forget the romantic myth of the multi-media journalist - and never, ever, use the word content.

I'm not sure that'll spare a typist an afternoon's work, but it brought me down to earth, reducing my “keynote” address to a glorified nib.

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Burton) — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 12:19:00 +0000

Such gaffes are no laughing matter

I look forward to Simon Heffer’s missives to Telegraph staff more and more. The latest was doing the rounds on Wednesday, a classic, and one that, while entertaining, worried me for one reason: the more mistakes he catches, the wittier are the ripostes.
Among the latest gems, we had phrases that told us:

If you sleep with dogs you get flees
You can connect things to a computer with a UBS cable.
Russell Brand, was not "descent".
There were "peels of thunder".
Someone "seems let to loose" something.
A cook made a meal with suede and carrots
A Liberal Democrat MP was called Normal Baker

And on it goes… including the classic mention of the fact that Lucian Freud's unfinished portrait of Francis Bacon was completed in 1967.

All very amusing. But about 12 years ago, as a down-table sub there, I let through a nib on Randolph Churchill (spelt Randolf). The next morning the managing editor, Andrew Hutchinson, had his secretary call me for “an explanation”. I then endured a ritual bollocking in which involved a glass of wine, the words, “if you are to remain a Telegraph sub” and having to sit in a glass box while the rest of the 3pm shift filed in past us.

Needless to say, I didn’t do it again.

But, had my gaffe been reduced to the folly of a jolly round-robin email, I may well have done.

As we used to in those days, subs please note . . .

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Burton) — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 13:54:00 +0000

Ross and Brand fail the screen test

The complaints that forced the suspension of Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand had less to do, I fear, with the rather juvenile, but otherwise (let’s be honest) harmless messages on Andrew Sachs’ answering machine – and more to do with the webcam images screened when the row first broke.

The transcript seemed to suggest they’d had a liquid lunch. But the images were far more disturbing. The sight of two of the biggest beneficiaries of licence-payers money acting like stag-night karaoke stars while supposedly at work for our public service broadcaster were what jammed the BBC switchboard.

But, let’s be honest, it was a disaster waiting to happen. That these highly talented and experienced broadcast professionals were caught out by a camera defies belief.

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Burton) — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 18:04:00 +0000

The dangers in parish pump

My village magazine has done it again. Hard on the heels of a contempt so blatant I now use it as a teaching aid, this week's issue sees it questioning a court’s decision to jail a teenage sex pest.

After about five pars of routine evidence - including a bit of questionable description that could well identify the unnamed youth - it suddenly began to editorialise, chipping in with lines such as how the defendant must be "in denial" and that the offence was "clearly not a one-off".

Hopefully, a circulation of a few thousand may help to mitigate in the unlikely event that the judge decided to refer it up the line, and I wasn’t in court so don’t know if there was any privileged basis on which to base such comments, but that’s not the point.

Publications like this are springing up all over the place. Rather like the Gestetner-produced leaflets and newsletters that emanated from the Amstrad boom of the 80s, everyone is a publisher these days.

Except that, when you have a 120-odd page glossy with a high advertising ratio and a clearly well-organised circulation network, it does become more than a more back-bedroom affair. I know these organisations can’t afford a £500-an-hour night lawyer to peruse their copy, but a copy of Essential Law for Journalists could be theirs for under £20.

One amusing point: in their attempt to hype up the fact that they actually had a story, they flagged it: The story others would not print!

They clearly didn’t understand it was a fairly trivial local court case, not something that would catch the eye of the agency lads I know well who cover St Albans Crown Court for the nationals.

But they may well have unwittingly hit on the fact that local papers simply don’t have the resources to send anyone to court any more.

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Burton) — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 17:04:00 +0000

Back home and nothing changes

While I was sunning myself on the Amalfi Coast, Max Hastings was predicting darker days for newspapers with a James Cameron Memorial lecture attack on multi-skilling.

Further down the pile of industry comment set as aside for post-holiday reading was the announcement that Newsquest had become even further ingrained in the multi tasking bandwagon by replacing subs with multimedia journalists and giving them a breathless 31-point job description that included everything bar doing the delivery round.

And under that were two widely leaked emails from top brass at the Express and the Telegraph bemoaning the sort of schoolboy errors that would hold parish magazines to ridicule.

But just when all seemed lost, I received in my inbox an invitation to a PPA training course on effective subbing with a promise to: “Develop you copy writing skills!” (their screamer, incidentally. The laughter was all mine).

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Burton) — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 16:55:00 +0000

Puff and be damned

Should Journalism students be taught how to write press releases? Teachers at Highbury College in Portsmouth think so. As well as commendably giving them patches to cover around town and encouraging them to find exclusives, they are now being given the chance to learn new skills in a project run in conjunction with the campus marketing department.

Apparently, the marketing people feel it will give them an advantage when it comes to finding jobs. I’m not sure what advantage that would be – or what jobs they’re thinking of - but I can’t help feeling the future of journalism would be best served if they maintained a healthy distance.

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Burton) — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 12:32:00 +0000

The dangers of self-publishing

I've had a chuckle in the past about the endearing nature of the community newspaper: those in which poems share column inches with carnival pictures, wartime reminiscences and appeals for missing cats.

A combination of bespoke publishing advanvces and diminishing local coverage by the regional press has fueled their rise in many towns and villages. In some cases, they are hobbyist; the product of too much time on the hands of someone with good intent. In others, they are genuinely filling an information gap, an argument proffered by the publishers of the controversial new wave of council-run newspapers.

Some, like my local one, look on the face of it, to be highly viable businesses, judging by the amount of advertising and the fact that it seems to have a proper distribution network (it comes through my door and I see it in the local Budgens).

But there's a major difference between the Town Hall Times and the Living room Leader that publishers of the latter need to be aware of. The council offerings are compiled to some extent by professionals: usually a PR department staffed by NCTJ-trained former local paper reporters. The parish mags are run by those with no such experience, and here lies the danger.

I'm reading mine now. It's 114 pages, A4, glossy cover, packed with advertising and listings and has just treated itself to a redesign, courtesy of a local ad agency. With this new look comes a newfound confidence that has seen it add the word News prominently to its masthead.

And news there is; stories of vandalism, a school fete being washed out and a host of feel-good people stories of awards for this and that.

But it’s when they stray into the realms of serious journalism that things come unstuck.

The lead story tells of a woman's "miracle escape" from injury in a car crash. It has the headline: "Lady hit head-on by drunk driver". It's explicit in its detail; telling how the “drunk” swerved out in front of her and questioning how he could be so stupid. It goes on to say he was “led away by police”, almost hit another car and that the driver of that car witnessed the whole thing.

The only problem is, the driver she blames for this near-death experience, the magazine reports, has just been charged with drinking and driving.

And if you're wondering why I've not included any geographical details relating to this story – it’s because I don't want to risk the same contempt charges one hapless editor must be facing.

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Burton) — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 09:03:00 +0000

Don’t press me, I’m a journalist

Ian Reeves’ Media Guardian splash about the latest troubles at Press Gazette made uncomfortable reading: not just because it marks the demise of a magazine I've read for 35 years, but because the bickering and smarting behind the scenes painted a rather pathetic picture of an industry not at all at ease with itself.

I was particularly galled, but not a bit surprised, by his tales of editors bleating every time they were faced with the sort of direct questioning they demand every day from their own reporters.

We've long been guilty of dishing it out but not being able to take it. I could hold court for hours with tales of writers trying to suppress totally legitimate stories that involve them. From the NUJ branch meeting in the seventies where I was lobbied to “go easy” on a member up in court following a drunken rampage to the stringer involved in a serious car crash who recently rang just about everyone in my office to beg them not to cover his case.

But that's almost excusable set against Reeves' examples of editors who bleated when they didn't win awards.