Playing the game (real adventures in journalism)

The future is now

2010-05-15T17:32:00.013+01:00

I spend a lot of the time bemoaning the state of our industry. It may seem like I like to do it, but I truly don't.
What thrills me about this job is getting stories and bringing out newspapers. Newspapers, especially local ones, are truly important things for so many people and this current spiralling descent into extinction really hurts me.
I feel genuine sorrow for the new fresh faced recruits joining papers now. Working so hard to snag one of the few jobs on newspapers only to see them become a shadow of their former selves.
In five years time I dread to imagine what ridiculous pamphlet will be masquerading as a newspaper after more and more inevitable cuts.
It's easy to moan but what can we do?
Firstly we need to maintain our product's quality. If no-one is reading your paper there is not much defence in keeping it going. I know it's a struggle to remain motivated to do your job when it's obvious those above you have given up, but it is even more important to bring out the best paper you can.
Next is to fight every attempt to cut jobs, drop editorial pages and cut distribution.
It can often feel like there is no point and it's inevitable but the harder we make it for our MD to shave another couple of pages out of paper, knock a couple of thousand off our paper round or sell more ads on our premium pages the less likely he will want to do it.
Same for jobs. If he/she knows there will be an almighty row from the whole newsdesk over losing another reporter/sub the spineless twat is more likely to look to shed jobs in other departments first.
Embrace the web. It's not a replacement to newspapers, it's an added string to our journalistic bows. They still can't find out a way to make the same revenue out of their websites as they do our core products and I can't see that changing any time soon. But by treating the web as a part of your job as a journalist you not only increase your own skills base but you will start attracting new audiences who hopefully will start to look at your papers as well.
Bring in money ideas. By telling your ad team about a new shop/restaurant opening in town you might actually start creating revenue. You will get told things that may be great advertising opportunities which would go unnoticed by the ad sales peeps. The more money coming in, the better chance of keeping your jobs.
Keep the pressure on. If you are getting reaction from readers about changes at your paper, whether it be reduction in distribution, editorial or an obvious lack of news due to staff shortages get those people to complain all the way up the ladder.
Why not give discretely point them in the direction of your MDs phone number/email address. Let the ivory tower wankers soak up some of our shit for a while. They live such sheltered lives I doubt they have met an angry or disenchanted reader of their products for quite some time. Could be a nice thing to get them reacquainted with the green crayon brigade and see how easy their lives are after that.
Get out of the office. Meet some people, show that you care about the patch you cover. Re-engage with the readers so that hopefully they start to feel a bit of loyalty about their local paper again.
Get angry. You should be pissed off about what your companies are doing and how they are being run. Be furious about it. We are great at pointing out when other workers get shafted by their own employers but we are remarkably shy when it comes to defending our own jobs.
You want protection join a union. Work together to stop the bosses making these often ludicrous decisions that will ultimately send this business to the wall.
Things are changing in this industry and we cannot ignore the fact but our core job of reporting remains fundamentally the same. We just have a whole load of new ways of doing it.
Newspapers are still profitable. In some cases hugely so. But we are being bled dry by companies that have to see year-on year growth and are not satisfied by stable profits.
If the market is not there they make false profits by cutting pages, slashing staff and not putting out the same numbers of papers. Suicide by a thousand cuts.
If only our bosses realised if they actually listened to their people who love this job and harnessed a tiny part of the massive passion we have for newspapers, they might just have a chance of survival.
Role on the truly independent press, I say.

Local Newspaper Week

2010-05-13T19:08:00.009+01:00

How many of you have spent a few hours trawling through their archives or contacting the great and good to put together a feature for Local Newspaper Week?
How many have written about the importance of newspapers for local democracy, holding forth swords of truth and shining lights in dark corners and suchlike?
How many MDs have demanded their titles run this stuff in favour of news stories to highlight how important your papers are to the local community?
And how many of you realise what an enormous hypocritical crock of shit this really is?
Who the fuck are we trying to kid?
The majority of readers already know their local paper really doesn't give a shit about them. That is why they are based 30 miles away in an anonymous news hub being created by multimedia content creators who churn out unchallenged council and police PR.
The majority of advertisers feel like they are being sold a lie when papers produce ever dwindling ABC figures or have stopped publishing them at all as beancounters save cash by cutting distribution on a monthly basis.
Press officers rub their hands in glee as their irrelevant chod is printed, in many cases word for word, as the few hacks who remain on news desks struggle to fill the pages of the three or four titles they are responsible for which used to be fully staffed.
Senior managers continue to be paid bonuses while profits fall, titles close, journalists get sacked and our pay is frozen yet again.
The thing is we in the newsrooms actually do believe in the importance of local papers, it's a criminal shame our MDs really don't give a fuck.
Newspapers to them are vehicles to make cash so they can tick the right boxes, fill out forms and hit targets so they achieve their OTT this quarter. Editorial is an expensive and irritating evil to these tossers.
If they could sack us all tomorrow and fill it with ads they would without hesitation. Look at the advance of Atex and other template systems. Fuck any qualms newsdesks have with its effectiveness or reliability. One hack who had the system recently installed told me it was such a clunking piece of crap it was adding hours to the newsdesk's day in getting the paper out.
The management couldn't give a toss however as they save hundreds of thousands a year by sacking all the subs.
Don't worry about the quality, or the mistakes, we're still making a profit.
Tick box, fill form, yippee it's bonus time again.
Short term thinking breeding long term problems.
Johnstone has died but doesn't quite know it yet. But the group’s chief executive, took home £959,000 in pay, benefits and bonuses after reporting a 56 per cent drop in profits, five titles closed and more than 750 jobs shed. Its staff are now facing a further £15million in cuts.
The wonderfully named Sly Bailey, head of Trinity Mirror, took home a bonus of £671,000. TM's profits dropped 41per cent it shut 30 titles shut and 1,700 jobs were lost. She already gets paid a cool £1million.
A scandal, a disgrace. Nah, just newspapers.
And who is going to print that?

Praise the newspaper gods

2010-03-23T12:46:00.010Z

It's been a pretty good 2010 so far.
Newspaper editorial space has increased as advertising revenue gradually goes up. Our bosses are still maintaining it's tough out there but our front line ad staff spread a more hopeful gospel.
Our team is getting some cracking tales and the papers are looking great.
It's a time for optimism and forward thinking.
So tell me why the two organisers of our only UK wide regional press awards have decided that this year they will axe their events.
Wilmington, former owners of the Press Gazette managed to retain the rights to both the Regional Press Awards and the British Press Awards after the PG went tits up. The British Press Awards is still running this year, the Regionals however are being 'rested' (whatever the fuck that means).
The Newspaper Society has cancelled all three of its awards this year including the Weekly Newspaper of the Year blaming 'market conditions' and 'a need to improve the format of the awards'.
Apparently newspaper owners "felt unable to commit".
To my, oh so cynical, mind I say what a pile of horsecock.
For years the press awards have been an easy way to make a lot of money. At £40-£50 per entry and £100-£130 per seat at a table should your organisation get shortlisted, it's easy money.
But now the taps are turned off.
We had to pay our own entries last year so most of the office did not bother. And try getting a seat for the main event after one of your team got lucky. You may as well have asked the MD to suck you off.
Both awards went ahead and you could see the organisers shifting uncomfortably in their seats as the halls were half empty.
The writing was on the wall then and even I can see how bean counters actually have some justification in not paying out more than £1,000 in entry fees and a further bag of sand should we get an invite to the big show.
But this industry needs awards. Regional newspapers, now more than ever, need recognition for the great work some still do.
EDF are thankfully still doing theirs but they are only region by region. Other more localised awards are still going on and some groups are doing the in-house variety.
Journalists work long hours for shit money and one of the highlights of the year is the opportunity to put on a tux and take the piss out of your peers at a free booze up.
It also helps to recognise that bringing out good papers still matters and allows junior staff to make their CV a little more exciting with a press award or two.
It's a shame that once again money gets in the way. I wonder what entry fees and event tickets would cost if the events were not for profit.
Here's my suggestion. Get the big five newspaper publishers to stump up the running costs for a 2010 awards for the regional press. Make entry free and shortlisters get a gratis ticket to the big night.
After all each of these publishers crow about winning awards in their titles so there must be some commercial gain to this whole process.
Would £50/100k be enough to hold the first Local Newspaper Awards.
After all if the chief executive of Newsquest can cash in £200k worth of company shares to stick in his own piggy bank surely his company (and the others) can stump up ten or twenty large each to put a smile on their many thousands of employee's cherubic faces.
Fuck me, I don't half live in a dream world!!

Sign of the times part 3

2010-02-28T16:54:00.004Z

A recent job ad, once again missing the bleedin' point by about a country mile............

We are a specialist HR publishing company with both online and paper publications. We are looking for an Editor who can do the following:

Most importantly - write features and articles, cover stories, columns, news and the leading letter. (do all the work then)

Then, in no particular order of importance! (the irrelevant exclamation mark is possibly trying to make all the next pile of mind numbingly boring menial tasks sound slightly interesting)

•manage interns & in-house reporters and generate and plan feature/column ideas across all printed products (for in-house reporters read unpaid workies, we like to call them interns cos it makes them sound like they have a fucking clue)

•flat-plan editorial in all publications research background information for articles and fact-check (so back to writing stories again)

•search the internet and other medium for new ideas for features/articles/news etc (steal shit off other people, rewrite the intro and bang your byline on it. Come on, you have 50 pages of edit to fill about a subject so shit even those in the industry don't want to read it)

•sort through press releases (and bin them? or just copy and paste them on a page)

•establish and maintain contacts within the HR/recruitment industry (unlucky)

•set up meetings/interviews (with anyone in particular or just in general)

•interview (both face to face and on the telephone) (as opposed to using smoke signals or a psychic medium)

•track other publications/assess competition (there's competition!!!!!)

•ensure every word is proof-read on time and that all authors' amendments are implemented correctly (authors' amendments! So you need copy approval, oh dear)

•proof-read and edit all publications (after you have written them all I presume)

•sign off all materials and take full responsibility for corrections, mistakes etc. (fall on your sword you blaggard there's an errant apostrophe )

Your character should be - Flexible, hard working, driven and a self starter. (and barmy)

Most of all we are looking for someone who is passionate about writing and will just fit into our team. (not passionate about editing then)

Welcome to journalism 2010 you can be the boss - as long as you realise you are the boss of yourself.

No mention of any money. No mention of online skills.

Oh, and they missed off making the fucking teas.

Honesty isn't always the best policy

2010-02-17T19:23:00.001Z

Sometimes being right is not enough.
When you work for the nationals you can afford to roll in and spend a couple of days upsetting the citizenry because in 48 hours you know you will be somewhere else annoying the great and good on another story.
Make a complaint to a national and you may as well be talking to a deaf lamp post.
Your regional newspaper however has a much harder task when it comes to running those edgier stories and keeping the peace.
I use to think print and be damned. But after a while getting damned can grow a little tiresome.
How many times have you printed a story that is 100 per cent true and been innundated with complaints?
Or defend a splash you know is right because of a concerted campaign from the vocal minority.
Or apologised as a public relations exercise rather than a moral judgement.
When you are the local paper sometimes you can go too far and you have to admit when you are wrong. The old adage don't shit on your doorstep also rings true.
But even when you are right you can be horribly wrong.
I prefer my saying 'Report everything and let the subs sort it out'.

Sign of the times part 2

2010-02-09T20:14:00.004Z

A recent job ad spotted on HTFP.

Editor
Location: Market Rasen
Lincolnshire Newspapers Ltd
Do you want to join Johnston Press, one of the largest
regional newspaper groups in the UK, at editor level?
We are looking for a new editor for the Market Rasen Mail – a great opportunity to make a mark at a time of exciting challenges for a paper that is going
places.
The Rasen Mail is the heart of its community, a bustling market town in the Lincolnshire Wolds.
There is a very small team – and we need an all-rounder who is comfortable with reporting, editing and running the diary.
Applicants need to be NCE-qualified seniors who want to take the first step
on the management ladder and who have the right attitude to get things done.
A great package including company car awaits the successful applicant.

Please correct me if I am wrong here, when they say "editor" do they actually mean dogsbody who is prepared to do absolutely everything because they sacked everybody else.
This is supposed to be an editors level job yet they are asking the succesful applicant to do basic reporting. WTF?
I am all for lending a hand when things are tough but this is putting it in as a job requirement.
The clue to this ad is right at the bottom. Must have the "right attitude to get things done". Or in real English must work their nuts off doing every job under the sun for fuck all money because, despite being the "one of the largest regional newspaper groups in the UK", we seriously under resource our paper's editorial departments because we don't actually believe them to be important.
I imagine the company car in question is in reality a pair of roller skates and a push.
The only places this newspaper is going is straight down the shitter.

Masters of our own demise

2010-01-29T21:00:00.001Z

Back in the old days journalists used to have a strange device called a contacts book.
In it they would put the names and telephone numbers of interesting local characters, councillors, gossips, cops, lawyers, judges, tattle tales and other ne'er do wells.
The journalist would use another outdated device called a telephone and ring said contacts on a regular basis to get stories to put in the paper.
Some would give you regular stories, others were less forthcoming and normally motivated by petty spite, personal ambition or greed.
We called it basic reporting.
Nowadays we call these people 'community correspondents', we are their 'mentors' and the whole thing has the twee title of 'citizen journalism'. It's all part of the great hyperlocal plan - reporting down your local street.
But shouldn't your 'local' paper already be covering each of the areas.
Oh hang on, didn't all the reporters get fired already?
Is the real reason why Captain Desperate and the rest of his management flunkies are so keen on getting more local coverage because that is what people actually want?
Hire a couple of journalists then you dumb fucks. One journalist will produce more stories per week than your army of drivel-typing curtain twitchers.
Stop trying to get Joe Public to do my reporters' jobs for them on the cheap just so when the next round of lay-offs come they have some copy to stick between the ads.
Thankfully, at the moment, the majority of community correspondents are a complete waste of time.
They sign up write one piece about their holidays, or why they think President Obama is a great/bad President, then never log on again.
Others are prolific but equally irrelevant or worse utterly reckless with no regard for defamation laws or balance. A handful, a rare, rare breed, actually do come up with one or two stories every six months.
Back in my day these last guys would already be in my contacts book rung on a regular basis and filleted for their information. But maybe that's just me.
Is someone a citizen journalist if they come in with the splash one week but are never seen again? Or is that the internet equivalent of a ring in?
I have no qualms with Mr Smith posting his results of the Tiddlywinks Championships or the Railyway Model enthusiasts telling us about their AGM. Good luck to them and the six other people interested in it.
But creating people who may be able to replace me come the next revolution is utter madness.
I will no doubt get some flak from my forward thinking internet buddies, but while you are training up the next wave of 'citizen journalists' to do your job for free spare a thought for all the hacks already laid off last year and hope 'citizen journalism' doesn't take your job in 2010.

Bulls**t translator

2010-01-17T19:15:00.000Z

Journalism for the teenies. What they say and what it really means. Feel free to add your own.

Hyperlocal - Talking to people in the local area and getting stories from them. Just like we used to do when we had staff.

Web first - We really have no idea how to make money from the web but by banging up every story as soon as it is written eventually someone will write us a large cheque. Won't they?

Multi-tasking - Why can't you take pictures, do a video, write ten stories for both online and print editions, sub them, stick a headline on them, upload them and stick them on a page, get the teas on then deliver the paper on your way home? Lazy cunt.

Community correspondents - Curtain twitching wannabe journalists who lose interest once they realise they have to actually produce stuff on a regular basis.

Advertising downturn - What do you mean people want to read actual news stories in their local newspaper?

Media Hub - How many people can we cram into a shoebox building and just how far away from patch do reporters have to be not be laughed at for calling themselves local?

Sub-editors - Waste of money. Who needs to have a good looking paper that attracts the reader's eye when we can get the trainee reporters to slap it all up into a template?

Libel - An inevitability

Web Manager - An expert in cut and paste. Probably a journalist but not necessary

Stories - A rare beast sometimes seen in newsrooms but not actually necessary any more with the advent of emailed press releases

Pictures - Out of focus, badly framed, low res images sent in by utter idiots to highlight some awful shit that only they care about (see stories) Used to be taken by photographers.

Citizen journalism - A concept created by an utter twunt who probably worked in advertising before moving up the ranks to become a bean counting tosser (see stories and pictures)

Pay rises - As elusive as Lord Lucan. If McDonald's workers and cleaners can live on 12k a year what is your problem?

Newspapers - An inconvenient but necessary vehicle that global hyper mega corporations use to bleed local towns dry by claiming they care when they really couldn't give a shit.

Photographers -An unnecessary waste of money now that mobile phones take pictures. Who needs to see heads in pics anyway?

Internet - Like newspapers without the fussy printing, distribution and high cost base of newspapers. If only the greedy wankers could make real money out of it! (see web first) Great for porn.

Pay attention to the small print

2010-01-14T18:22:00.001Z

A very interesting debate at Westminster took place yesterday regarding the rise of the council newspaper.
I agree that council newspapers are a very real threat to local papers and should be either banned or forced to actually run as a business on the budgets they claim to cost and see how long they survive.
But a more interesting question emerged during the debate. What are the management companies going to do to improve the newspapers they already own.
Many complaints were levelled at the lack of cover of local politics in their local paper and the demise of the High Street office, both evidence of cost cutting to increase profits to the big companies.
The best point was made by John Randall a Conservative MP from Uxbridge

In my borough of Hillingdon the demise of local papers has been going on for some time. .........One of the problems has been chronic lack of investment in local newspapers.
Large multinational or national companies have come along and diminished the number of journalists, and diminished their skills, to the point where the Gazette series, which is the one we have in the London borough of Hillingdon, has its offices in Chertsey, which to all intents and purposes is a million miles away.
The people one talks to - the reporters, of whom there are one or
two on the ground, operating with a laptop and a digital phone - tend not to understand the area, so people are not interested in what is in the newspaper. Advertisers like me do not think it is worth while to advertise, so things go down the pan.
The local newspaper is a fundamental part of the whole. The internet will never replace it, because many people, including many of the more
vulnerable people, do not have the internet. The local newspaper is a very important thing, and we must do something, but it is no good just blaming one set of things.

Bravo.
Dear management, please wake up and realise the fundamental flaw with your business plans (if you actually have one). It is not so much due to changing tastes or new competition that revenues are dropping but largely down to creating a largely irrelevant product with your ridiculous cost cutting measures.
If council newspapers get the heave ho will the management dickheads put that extra revenue back into the papers. Will they fuck.
They will just carrying on bleeding the market dry until it's time to discard the husk the local paper now is and move on.

Bye bye naughties, hello teenies (well tweenies first)

2010-01-01T15:37:00.000Z

So it's hello 2010 and goodbye to rotten old 2009.
Now we are finally out of recession, according to our illustrious leader Mr G Brown esq, will the management have to come up with new excuses to trim back newsroom staff this year?
For I fear we will see more job cuts over the next 12 months despite also seeing a marked increase in advertising revenues.
You see, that increase just won't be enough for our bean counter bosses obsessed with forecasts, budgets and profit and loss pie charts. It will probably fall short of the money we were making before the credit crunch and recession and so other ways to balance the books will have to be found.
And that will mean we will lose more jobs to satisfy those greedy wankers who rule our lives and fuck the effect it has on the quality of our papers. Long term, shlong term, they say as they secure their jobs for another quarter by culling us.
What this industry needs, now more than ever is investment. Let's stop the downward spiral into extinction.
How about telling the shareholders to fuck off for six months and ploughing the profits back into the company? I am pretty sure advertising, editorial and distribution departments could spend this money frugally.
Sure, share prices will drop for a while but the net result will be long term growth and security for our industry - and increased share prices.
A couple of reporters in the newsroom would help immensely in increasing our coverage and improving the quality of our products.
Proper photographic coverage, court reports we can actually pay for, weekend/night rotas back on.
More better trained ad sales staff (who actually understand what they are selling) would go a long way to increasing monthly profits.
Increased circulation for frees, in-town promotion for the paid fors.
If everyone is reading your paper, people will undoubtedly want to advertise with you. At the moment I am hard pressed to find someone who gets a regular copy of my papers through their door.
It's not like I'm asking for better wages or anything, I realise Christmas miracle time is over.
In 2010, let's start treating our newspapers as a pivotal part of the community rather than a means to take as much from local businesses as possible (until they realise their advertisement is getting to about 10 per cent of the population).
Too much to ask? I live in eternal hope.

In support of the Ocker..........

2009-12-21T20:11:00.000Z

In 1969 a brash Aussie took over The Sun newspaper and changed the face of British journalism, for good or ill.
This "Dirty Digger" was derided and scorned by media pundits and the Establishment and his paper branded a "shit sheet" and a "six month wonder".
Rupert Murdoch now faces similar derision and naysaying from the pundits, self-styled"experts" and Establishment figures for his decision to set up a paywall for his online products.
"It won't work, " they bleat. "No-one will put up with it," they cry. "Everything on the Internet should be free," they wail.
Well I say fuck them, I hope Murdoch succeeds, not least for the fact it will secure jobs in journalism for a long, long time.
After all, if our websites really can make as much money as our paper products they will have to be treated far more seriously than the one-man-band operations many of the big "web is the future" corporations are running now.
If anyone can do it Murdoch can and, if he does, you can guarantee all of the whiney bitches who are knocking him now will jump right on board.
My concern is how to get Joe Punter to stick his hand in his pocket every time he wants to view a story or indeed pay a subscription to one or more newspaper sites.
I like the idea of micro payments. How about one pence an article?
It appears to be small beer at first but on a concerted web search session you can soon rack up the cash.
Twenty articles a day and you have hit the cover price of the Sun.
Or double it, treble it even and you are still only talking about three pence a click.
Offer a daily unlimited access for a discounted paper cover price to reflect the lack of printing, paper and distribution costs on the web.
Monthly and yearly subscriptions offering archive search, exclusive offers and articles can be available at even heavier discounts.
Grouped products, ie all News Ints libraries globally, available at seriously low prices. Lexis Nexis charges a fortune for its newspaper cuttings service and gets hundreds of thousands of subscribers.
It is not beyond the realms of possibility to create a similar system for much less cash
The real problem comes with the copying of articles onto other web-sites, blogs, forums etc.
I think this has to be tackled head on with an extremely aggressive team of lawyers stamping down hard on plagiarism and cut and paste merchants. The cost initially would be large and, yes, there would always be those "freedom fighters" out there determined to buck the trend but overall it could have an effect. Super injunctions, anyone?
Google alerts and other links go straight to the site and a charge is made per link, with some of that fee going to the original forwarding site.
Internet geeks will have a whale of a time with this "censorship" but ultimately news costs cash to produce.
If all you want on the web is a bunch of navel gazers commenting on comments that other commentators have made then carry on arguing about paying for your news feed.
Without cash we journalists stop doing what we do because we get fired.
Forget the rather ridiculous notion of citizen journalism taking over because it is a fallacy to believe your average punter would bother to do what we do on a daily basis for shag all.
There are some great hobbyists out there but the majority write libellous, biased chod or shit about what they did on their holidays.
And tell me those hobbyists wouldn't love to start making some cash for what they do.
I think the single biggest obstacle facing pay walls is not an unwillingness to pay for news but it's the method of payment.
If you could click on a link to a story that automatically debited your bank or online account by one pence, would you really umm and aah about the cost. Probably not.
But you can guarantee you will not pull out your credit card and type in your number, address and other details in order to read about the latest upset in Emmerdale.
If the newspaper organisations can put aside their differences and create a universal payment system that allows one click debiting from an online cash account (something like Paypal would not be too far off the mark) with free vouchers offering significant initial funds to use those accounts, I think the plan to charge could just work.
After all if senior management had seriously thought about paywalls before deciding to give away the farm online in the first place would we really be having this discussion?

To those incapable of snow driving.....grrrrrrr*

2009-12-21T20:03:00.000Z

If you feel not confident or incapable of driving in the snow please leave your fucking cars at home during a snow storm you utter, utter wankers.
Three hours to drive a journey that takes me half an hour on a bad day because some tossers shit themselves at a few flakes on the road.
Yes, it's a bit slippy and yes, you will skid and wheelspin a little but that does not give you the excuse of stopping every five metres while driving up a hill.
Your shit driving is causing this traffic chaos and if I was driving a company car I would have shunted you off the road by now.
Keep moving, use a higher gear and treat it like bad rainfall or better yet use public transport you total bastards.

*This is not strictly about journalism but it is a story on our website so I am entitled to unleash a little.

Ho ho frigging ho!

2009-12-16T20:24:00.000Z

I had my Christmas do last night and it made me feel sad.
As I looked around at the gathering of drunks, reprobates, egomaniacs, addicts, whores and subs that make up my wonderful newsroom, I realised that numbers had thinned from last year considerably.
We had lost almost a third of our newsroom in 2009 and it only really registered when we pooled our cash for our Crimble bash and it came to almost half of 2008.
This year has been hard, real hard. We lost our picture editor, deputy chief sub, reporters, trainees, subs, web monkeys, sports and ents writers. Some went easy and, I have to admit, some were dead wood, others went hard and were treated despicably.
The papers were constricted, in both pagination and editorial space, morale was at an all time low and it was the best we could do was to cling on by our fingertips to bring out papers that weren't total shit.
In terms of how we fared versus our opposition, I don't think we cut fatally hard in either circulation or staffing level. But severe cuts were made and in order to capitalise on this next year we need desperately to reinvest in both areas as quickly as possible.
However, I fear our profit hungry bosses will think differently. Their mantra is margins not manpower, and I truly believe their rapacious nature will mean 2010 is the year of make do and make money and not one of investment and long term growth.
My attitude is one of fight, fight, fight. I think the MD's belief that the internet is the new oil boom is over is to our advantage.
Our company's web growth is tiny in percentage terms to the real money making newspapers. While the net is important it is not, at this time, the cash cow they thought they could rape and pillage.
As the noughties become history I predict a resurgence or at least renewed enthusiasm in print media.
This clearly does not equate to any conceivable cash investment in our departments from our target obsessed wankers who somehow control our lives, however.
But who expects miracles at Christmas?

ps Ok I caught a serious case of Couldn'tbefuckeditis after I came back from holiday. These blogs can be a right pain in the arse.

Rumours of my demise.....

2009-11-10T07:40:00.000Z

No, I haven't been fired or killed myself (yet).
I have just come back from a magical two week holiday, the first of that length for many years.
The problem with having so much time of is
a) the shit storm you find yourself in
b) the amount of work that has stacked up in your absence
Due to this I shall be taking another short break to catch up and tell you all about it, and the other fantastic new initiatives my MD has recently vomited up, in a couple of weeks.

Web first, web last or web never?

2009-10-21T18:57:00.001+01:00

I think the majority of media organisations have some kind of web policy now.
Most of the big ones have declared that shoving everything written by their hacks straight onto the web is the way forward.
Some bizarrely still see the web as the enemy and have limited, if no presence at all.
I believe the answer lies somewhere in the middle.
Our guys want it all on the web, right now. Shorts, leads, second leads, picture stories and exclusives.
Soon as its written, bang it up. It's an official policy.
It is also ridiculous (and largely ignored by me) for many reasons.
The first and, I think, main one is what commercial value is there in putting all of your reporter's stories into the web product that makes a tiny amount of the company profit, but by doing so slowly destroys the value of the print product that still makes the vast majority of said company's profit?
Our managers would say more stories on the web equals more money in the long term.
Their reasoning may be sound (despite the fact more does not mean better).
They are building a fledgling product so they need stories to populate it and give users something to look at.
I agree with getting as much copy on the web as I possibly can. But chucking up everything as it is written is clearly devised by someone who has no concept of the value of real news.
How many times has web first meant your splash in your PAID FOR paper is out there two days before you come out?
How many times have you been scooped by your opposition papers by something YOU broke on the internet?
How many times have you followed up a national news story which started off as your OWN exclusive?
How many times have you LIED to your boss about whether a story is finished so that it makes the paper before it makes the web?
Our web heads - note the fact they are called managers and not editors - will argue that it does not matter because the web audience is different to that of your printed paper.
In that case, why not give the web our exclusives or non time-sensitive stories after - or indeed the same day - that our readers in our CORE product will see them.
After that I could not care less which agency, rival or national picks up on it.
This balanced approach works.
If you read the paper only, it's all new. Web only, it's all new. Web-paper combi reader (which I am told is a growing number) they get some new, some old but they are already progressive enough to skip over the shit they have already seen.
This way treats our newspaper readers with a little respect and our web readers get the same service.
(The only thing this approach needs is investment. You can't write the content needed with just one reporter and unfortunately that's all some of you poor bastards have on a good day. But that is another topic.)
There is a reason why newspapers have someone in charge of the whole page planning process. There is a definite art to bringing out a good-looking, easily read newspaper.
Even in your most bleak, crime and grime ridden weeks, it is possible to engineer a paper that does not make the reader want to open up their collective wrist for daring to live in their postcode.
This process should be applied to our web-sites - not just a first come, first served aproach to whatever happens to be knocked out of a reporter's notebook fastest.
There should be a balance between what goes online (and when) and what is saved for the paper.
Breaking hard news is always, for me, banged on the site straight away. Crashes, murders, fires, stabbings, court results, plane crashes and nuclear strikes from Axis of Evil states all are slapped up and updated many times during the day.
This is where the web-sites really earn their money.
Readers comments and pics can give you leads and quotes an army of reporters would struggle to get.
Pictures and witness reactions can flood in. Who didn't have more pictures you could handle last time it snowed or there was a major fire?
Also police appeals, council announcements, court cases, inquests, down pages, wedding anniversaries and the village fetes should all be subject to that instant news ideal.
If it's old news tomorrow, whack it up. Why not?
With luck and a good audience you may turn the mundane into magic for your next paper edition with a decent comment or emailed pic.
I love this aspect of the web.
But save the exclusive shit, the non time sensitive stuff, the features and the great picture story until the paper comes out.
The webbies can still have it at the same time your paper readers do.
Nobody loses and your products become one entity and not competing for your reader's affections.
The web is without doubt the future of journalism, but we ain't in the future yet.

And the survey says......

2009-10-21T18:49:00.000+01:00

Read it and weep, losers.

PR industry 'wasting its time' says survey
(Yes pedants, I know it is unrepresentative due to its sample size but who really gives a fuck?)

I offer no comment.
Instead I will be sending out 16,000 emails to every media organisation in the country, so check your junk mail folders peeps.

Dear workie person.......10 points to a great 'experience'

2009-10-14T18:35:00.000+01:00

Ok, can I please, for the love of God, write a disclaimer on this blog to prevent a series of comments about how much of a nasty prick I am.
I am not talking about lovely little school children or those who pop into the office to get 'a taste' of what journalism is like before they embark on a different career path.
I love these type of work experience peeps. All fresh faced and dewy-eyed. I ask nothing more of them than they ask of me.
I am talking about the many thousand journalism graduates, media studies kiddies and those already signed up to a course on the multi-million pound roller coaster that are the NCTJ prelims. These are the subject of today's dissection.
Work experience is the best way to get a job in journalism. I have hired the best and recommended the most promising.
If you show willing and enthusiasm (and let's not forget talent) this is your time to shine.
A mate on another paper recently had 145 applications for one trainee position so competition is fierce and the old adage 'It's not what you know, it's who you know' still stands. Sorry HR people.
Sure working for free sucks, but if it is a way to give you an edge over the competition then it makes some sense.
At worst, a good reference earned on work ex gets you an interview. It's up to you to do the rest.
So having, I believe, qualified my position I ask something of you many workies.
Read a fucking newspaper.
Any newspaper will do. Preferably mine, but I will settle for any national (Independent excluded). Your own local paper - free, paid for or printed with a John Bull set. Hell, the Beano would be a start.
The number of workies coming through my doors who have no idea of what an intro on a news story should look like is shocking.
And these are not greenhorns, but soap dodgers two years into a three year journalism course or half way through their prelims.
Reading newspapers helps you learn what newspaper style is. It doesn't change much throughout the industry but look at PA for an easy style. Simple, straight and spare the adjectives.
Murder IS brutal. Thieves ARE heartless. Vandals ARE mindless. A tramp IS smelly. Spare the bleeding obvious.
Second, it's called work experience for a reason. It is an opportunity to see how the real world of work works. So try and look the part. Shoes not trainers, trousers or a skirt not jeans, a shirt or blouse perhaps. You might even fancy a tie.
But crop tops, fluorescent blue cardigans or football shirts with flip flops (oh yes) really doesn't cut it.
You may not be getting paid but I will, sure as fuck, send you back to your tutors in tears if you turn up dressed for a night out at a roller disco.
Third, if your first attempt at writing a news story gets taken apart by a news ed don't take it too much to heart. You are here to learn and the best way to learn is to listen to those that know what they are talking about.
Please don't take it personally that you write for shit and someone dares to help you structure a story. Even the most seasoned hacks on the nationals have sat down next to their bosses and had their tale ripped to shreds. Except most of them don't walk out and tell their mum about the horrible man.
Fourth, engage with the other reporters. They are a mine of information. They have a job and can tell you how they got it. They can help you with stories, contacts and general advice. Most don't even bite. It also shows that you have the ability to make quick relationships with strangers which is a key trait of a decent hack. Don't hang around in workies corner and discuss how it's going to be when you lot get a job. Look around you. The majority of your new work ex friends will never make it into anything resembling newspapers.
Fifth, push for a byline. Do not let other reporters nick your work. Make sure if you get a story in the paper you stake your claim to it.
Byline the copy before you send it and, if you have to, talk to a news ed or a sub to get your moniker on it. Cuts are king and most of the time a news ed or sub won't care much whose name goes on top of it. But if you make a (small) scene, you can get that precious cutting.
Sixth, come to work bearing gifts. Not biscuits or cakes (although these are a good thing) Bring stories. Find something out locally, even if it's a dud, it shows willing. Think about what the paper covers and come in with a few ideas. Bring in a tale and you will rocket in the estimation of every news ed. We see dozens of work exes a year. Those who bring in stories you can count on one hand.
Seventh, understand what you are getting into. Read journalism web-sites, HTFP, press gazette, Media Guardian, and FSB should be on your favourites.
If you don't already understand how hard it is to get a job and what a parlous state we are in, you soon will.
This is not a job for shrinking violets or those who want an easy time. This is a tough business and will become increasingly so.
Please don't ask me on press day, an hour before deadline, about what is happening in journalism. You should already know. It's called research and it is the cornerstone of our job.
Eighth, remember if you book a week's work experience someone else is missing out. So please cancel in plenty of time when you get a job or go on holiday or decide you can't be bothered. Phoning on the morning of your placement really doesn't impress.
Ninth, try not to call the editor or managing director mate, pal, buddy or chief. They really don't like that.
Tenth, if you are going to turn up late, hungover, stoned, still drunk or nonplussed on day one, don't bother. I already have my reporters doing that I don't need a workie taking the piss as well

Wow

2009-10-14T18:26:00.000+01:00

I never imagined PR people could get so upset about one little post.
Jesus, if YOU personally aren't that shit then clearly I am not talking about YOU.
Just for the record I have written equally scathing articles about my own industry.
In fact, I have only really had a pop at your "industry" twice in about 70 posts because I am really more interested in the scandalous destruction of my own beloved industry.
But since I didn't write those blogs in bullet points with an easily digestible key to each post then why would I expect you to read them?
Anyway, I am going to continue to write about journalism and reporters and news and things for a while. So if you don't mind, can you fuck off and I will send you a twitter next time I slag your pointless jobs off.

Fact versus fiction

2009-09-28T20:08:00.001+01:00

Firstly, I have to apologise for my previous post. Its headline should have read 'Why the vast majority of PRs should die (or just have a bad day)'.
Judging by the comments (some of which came without editor's notes) I have touched a nerve and upset our PR brethren.
I hang my head in shame. I have been crass, sexist, and ill informed.
I am both upset and disturbed.
Not for voicing my opinion, however. Or swearing. Or writing what I felt on that day. Fuck it, it's my opinion. Read it, don't read it, I could not care less.
No, I am both upset and disturbed for the fact my chod got more comments than a recent tale on my newspaper's website (unique users = many 1,000s a month) about a scrote getting just three years for kicking someone to death outside a pub.
It got more comments than a story about a kid getting run over by a drink driver who walked free from court on a technicality.
More comments than a council's decision to evict five OAPs from the homes their families grew up in. The homes they thought they would live in until they died.
More reaction than our campaign to save a kid dying from leukaemia.
In the last two days more than a quarter of the total readership of my blog has come on to read and comment on what is, in essence, a load of made-up shit written by a self righteous, opinionated idiot.
Is this what really gets us riled? Is this the future of news? Why do you really give a shit? You don't even know who I am.
Welcome to the internet's world of meaningless shat and massive indifference.
Tune in to my next blogs. 'What I did in my Holidays', 'Why I think Hitler was pretty cool' and 'Why I reckon your mum is a whore'.
Or go and have an opinion on something that actually matters.

Why PRs should die

2009-09-24T18:33:00.000+01:00

I get sent at least 150 emails a day - it used to be significantly more.
I estimate that just 10 per cent are actually pertinent or useful.
Since I started here I have junked every single press release or crank email I get sent which has zero relevance to my patches.
Daily I still junk scores of emails.
Only a handful are from people with obvious mental disorders. The rest are from supposedly professional public relations people.
Do PR wankers really sit in their offices and consider the pap they have written so valuable they feel they have to share it with every mother fucker?
Or do they actually think that sending a poorly written press release to a newspaper some 200 miles away from the event they are promoting is a good thing?
What I most hate is the follow up call from a hopeless tool.
Sometimes it's so obviously a work experience idiot. Other times I hope it's a work experience idiot because I can't believe someone who cannot even speak legibly on the phone has a job in PR. (I actually can)
Today some dimwit thought I might be interested in a national initiative from some piss poor supermarket chain.
I asked what exactly was the connection with my patch.
"We have a store in your area," was the retarded reply.
Fuck off, was mine.
If I was to use every tedious puff a large corporation with branches everywhere put out where in the name of God would I stick the actual news?
Another reason why PRs should be shot is their chirpy voices selling their shitty wares.
"Hi, I'm Clayre/Arabella/Charlotte from Blahblahbollocks PR and I have got a great story for you. We've done a survey/asked a tramp/held a seance and discovered that INSERT NAME HERE has the ugliest/smelliest/smallest people in the world.
"No you can't see the actual survey and we can't actually quantify it, but we have a new make up/deodorant/platform shoe product that will solve INSERT NAME HERE's problem."
You fucking shower of overpaid cunts.
I honestly had an INSERT NAME HERE press release that someone had forgotten to fill in.
It's on our wall of shame along with all the other press releases that look like they have been written by a 12-year-old dyslexic turd.
PRs - some advice.
Target your audience.
Know your target newspaper's deadlines.
Stop pestering the editors with calls.
Find an actual story.
Fuck off.
Kill yourselves.

War declared: shots fired

2009-09-23T20:25:00.000+01:00

I am a very happy bunny tonight.
The first salvo in the war against advertising has been launched.
A very large (expensive) advertisement came in after it's ad deadline and we sent it back.
Stick your money up your arse.
It was a very powerful statement from editorial backed by my ultimate boss. In the very recent past the ad would have got through with no more than a tugged forelock and a ticker tape parade. No more.
It not only felt great, but I honestly think I felt a groinal stirring.
Since I recently declared war on advertising to save our titles, a little bit of departmental snooping has uncovered a number of rather disturbing traits among our downtrodden hard-working, market-deprived advertising staff.
The worst is ad reps booking premium space without a paying client to back it up. They like to hold the space so that they can achieve targets later in the week with a cheaper deal to a preferred client.
Unfortunately this prevents other departments from booking real money deals for full money punters as the space is gone. And some of those departments, I learned, can and will sell the ads for four times the shite deals our main sales staff are getting
Joined up thinking or bullshit target hunting? You decide.
Other idiocies include free space for potential customers who want to gauge effectiveness of future ads.
Or ads just shy of a full page space which get bumped up to full size later because they know the surrounding edit space available is unusable.
Selling largish ads for £50 on page 3,5,7 just to make target.
Ad staff who have no idea about left and right premiums or offer editorial write-up as part of the 'package'.
The management in recent months have spent a long time prowling news departments looking for 'efficiency savings'.
In less than a week I have uncovered gross examples of idiotic selling that even the most retarded spastic would find hard to defend.
This comes from a newspaper group that has been whining about the economic downturn for the last two years.
Bleating about being forced to sell more of our better editorial space in order to save our doomed titles.
Bullshit.
I know for a fact my papers have hit budget every week in summer during the worst recession since the Lord Jesus Christ used to walk the Earth.
Everything done within our group in recent months has been to increase page yield so that an unchecked, increasingly lazy, and inefficient sales staff can make their budgets.
Fuck them. Make them work harder.
Do your job and sell something you useless twats.
Do I whine to them when my team have a quiet week? Do I fuck. I make them get more stories.
There is no cease fire in sight from this camp.
And I fucking love it.

Game on?

2009-09-21T19:35:00.000+01:00

A businessman I know made me a very attractive and, I must admit, sphincter-clenching offer last week.
Over a number of glasses of vino collapso, we discussed the future of newspapers.
My argument is simple and oft repeated here.
As long as you give the readers a product worth reading there is still money to be made in print newspapers.
Couple that with a progressive web site in synch and mutually benefitting your paper product and the company has a good future.
Running a part paid/part free model is also looking like a good move in terms of circulation.
Make sure the whole area can get hold of a copy then no-one can complain they haven't seen the thing.
Sell ads like the pages they are on actually mean something ie premium deals on front of book pages.
How many times have your ad staff given front of book space away for peanuts on deadline day to make a ridiculous budget figure then expected advertisers to book early andpay full whack the next week?
I predicted that two or three local titles run independently could make enough not only to employ a fairly decent staff who are paid a fairly decent wage but would also turn over a healthy 8-10 per cent profit.
I know how much my papers bring in each week and it is serious cash.
The caveat is lose the money-hungry companies that currently run our newspapers. These organisations exists solely to satisfy faceless shareholders and are run by whore-mongering management bean counters who do not care if the product is worth reading or not.
As long as their monthly/quarterly budget figures are right fuck the consequences or long term effects.
By taking away their greed and producing something to be proud of, newspapers can survive and thrive. It may be idealistic but I also think it could just work.
Now my businessman is no slouch when it comes to newspapers and has made a considerable amount of cash from buying, running and selling the things.
So he told me find a newspaper worth saving and come back to him.
I do the news, he sorts out the business side of things.
Predictably, I woke up the next morning sore-headed and figured the previous night's conversation was drunken bullshit.
But I know this chap and he is not given to bravado. Hence my rectal dysfunction.
Suddenly it's down to me to put up or shut up.
Gulp. It's a daunting thought.
I truly believe that independently run newspapers are the future. Fuck the big companies. Once they realise there is no longer the ridiculous margins left in papers they will get bored and fuck off and do something else. (or hopefully go out of business).
There is going to be a lot of decent titles left on the scrap heap which will inevitably get picked up by entrepreneurial souls. Look at the Burton example.
Trinity Mirror discarded the spent carcass of what was once a popular title in the gutter after sucking the life from it. Businessman steps up and takes the helm.
Whether it works or not will depend entirely on what they produce.
Newspapers, like the restaurant industry, is littered with the sorry tales of failed wannabes.
But it is also home to many pioneers. Ray Tindle, Enzo Testa, Lionel Pickering, Chris Bullivant, and Frank Branston, to name a handful.
Whatever you think of them, and I imagine some of you harbour less than sweet thoughts, they went out and did it.
Created empires from bank loans and hard graft.
Is this truly the end of days or the new frontier?
I hope to find out.

ps anyone know any titles going cheap?

The eternal struggle

2009-09-17T19:05:00.000+01:00

The combination of editorial and advertising staff in newspapers should be a wonderful thing of symbiotic bliss.
A mutual sharing of ideas, concepts and schemes designed to make our papers greater and better than they were the week before.
Why then is it such a fucking hellish marriage of pain, anger, frustration, and paranoia?
My first response is mangement greed, my second is advertising staff's ignorance.
Since I started in newspapers back in the early 90s I have pleaded for a weekly/monthly meeting between editorial and advertising staff (not just managers).
It is an opportunity to air grievances, deal with customer complaints or sort out new projects or campaigns.
But mainly it's an opportunity to explain why editorial bothers to bring out a newspaper worth reading each week.
It's never happened.
In my career I have met only a handful of ad staff who really care and understand about the products they sell and why local papers exist.
My very favourite used to have a quiz at the start of the week to test her staff about the paper's content.
Most don't give a fuck, however.
Having said all that I am still a great fan of my advertising staff.
There, I said it.
I am a great fan of my advertising staff, even though I know they are not mine.
There, I told the truth.
The reason why I like sales is because it keeps me in a (lowly paid) job.
So I help them with tips by telling them about new shops, promotions or businesses with something to say. Convert that into cash, earn some bonus.
Or I give their best customers a few puff nibs or a slot in my business pages just to keep everyone sweet.
I come up with commercial ideas -some very lucrative -and I am present at meetings of the serious spenders. Mostly nodding and smiling (it's v. hard).
I know all their names and will generally bend over backwards to help out.
This alone should earn me a little kudos, you would think.
But the problem is I also care what my paper looks like.
We're a free so editorial space versus cash per page is a major issue.
Premium pages sell for more, so it figures the space up front they try to limit.
But I'm one of those old fashioned types of boss. The crazy sort who knows if there is nothing to read, there is also nothing to sell.
I'm also a hard-nosed, mean, manipulative bitch who knows exactly what to say and whose buttons to push to get what I want.
And I generally get what I want.
That is until recently when we surrendered a lot of space due to recession/credit crunch cost cutting.
We allowed advertising to sell more than we wanted on the proviso we got it all back once holiday season was over.
Well summer's over and those pesky ads are still spoiling my papers.
In fact they are ruining my papers.
So battle lines are drawn and favours are revoked.
Squeeze in ads over deadline - fuck you.
Front page promotions for ad features - fuck you.
Favours for clients - fuck you.
Fuck me - fuck you.
I don't do this lightly or in a spirit of belligerence.
I do this to save my newspapers. To stop the money hungry, management whores from selling everything we own to make a monthly budget figure.
My only goal in life is to carry on bringing out newspapers until I turn grey, drunk and shouty.
Give an inch and advertising will sell a mile.
It's time to claw something back for our readers.

Dinosauraus extinctus?

2009-09-14T18:56:00.000+01:00

Are curmudgeonly old hacks in the newsroom a good thing?
In my opinion they are. I would even go further and demand they are in the newsroom.
I am prompted to make this plea after reading two particularly interesting stream of comments on blogs on UKPG and the Meeja Guardian.
In a nutshell both contain criticism and immediate defence of two veteran newsmen. One is described as a "a repulsive bully and a dinosaur - the type of which is, luckily, dying out in british (sic) newsrooms". The other "tough and abrasive" and a "handful".
Magic.
This is exactly what our increasingly clinical newsrooms need.
One reporter's bully is another's mentor. One's abrasion is another's passion.
The interesting thing about these so called 'dinosaurs' is there is more support for their type of journalism than their detractor's condemnation of their style.
And, in the case of one, support comes from some seriously heavy hitters.
I love grumpy old bastard hacks. I always have.
Jesus, I should, I will be one soon.
I don't care they are rude, or upset people. I love it.
After all, with sometimes more than thirty years in the business don't you think they deserve the right to moan? Most of you are bitching after just 18 months in.
Their experience and contacts alone are worth five cocky young 'uns who think they can change the face of journalism in their first year after leaving college clutching a grubby media and communications degree (2:2 clearly).
You can learn more from a 'dinosaur' in ten minutes than you can in a month from your 24-year-old news editor who got the promotion because he happened to be the only senior in the office during the recruitment freeze.
Dinosaurs generally drink too much, have little or no desire to conform, hate the management and take a lot to get motivated.
They have been there, done that and got the free t-shirt from the PR.
But get them excited about a tale and watch the show.
The distinction must be made, however, between the passionate, ageing hack and the old fart destined to be taken outside and shot.
Both may be equally cantankerous, awkward and obnoxious.
But one still loves the job and is invaluable and the other is an old fart who should have been fired years ago but now it will cost too much. Management are just hoping they will die soon.
I don't like their negativity and I don't like their stink.
For the truly great old hacks treat them like you would a flea bitten yet cuddly, slightly lame, dog.
Take the piss and poke them all you like but don't be surprised when the evil fucker bites you.

Invest or die

2009-09-07T20:26:00.000+01:00

I had a well thought out coherent argument about large newspaper organisations investing all of their profits back into newspapers in order to bolster their products and create real newspapers again.

But in the spirit of all that is great in journalism - and because I am feeling a bit lazy - I thought I would steal some thoughts instead.

The question - why are we so fucked?

The answer - advertising revenue is plummeting

Why we ask?

Cos our products are getting increasingly shit.

Why? Due to a lack of investment of course.

timaych sums it all up on the UKPG website in the comments section. Good lad/ladette. He/she writes:

Why do advertisers pay huge sums of money to appear on F1 cars, or the badges
of
snooker and darts players?
Why do they pay top dollar to be seen across the shirts of Manchester United
and Real Madrid?
Because they want to be associated with top 'products' themselves.
Now, grab a copy of your local paper, compare it to a copy which was written
10 years ago. Then to one produced 20 years ago.
Small firms would rather go to a community newsletter to advertise services
while larger companies know and understand more wider streams of appealing
to the public, like the internet.
So - the answer to your question, IMHO, is (a) a declining standard of
newspapers (b) a total incomprehension by most groups as to how to use the
internet (c) the vicious circle of declining sales (linked to point a),
meaning lower pagination, meaning fewer advertisers, meaning a worse product
and so we go on.
So how does one stop the rot?
Someone somewhere needs to stop worring about recouping losses for a while,
invest in editorial to make the product, both online and print, attractive to the reader, then the advertisers will start come back.
The second coming of local papers. Still - that would take foresight, vision and a long term plan from those at the top...

Simples..................no?

Big pictures, big headlines.

2009-09-02T19:53:00.000+01:00

It really is true that a picture tells a thousand words.

Well actually, nowadays it's more likely a picture fills a hole in your paper a thousand words would have gone if you had the staff to write it.

Early on I learned (was mercilessly beaten) to realise that pictures in this job are worth far more than words.

After all who wants to read about a spectacular event when they can hopefully see it in an image (yes, ok, I now include video into this blog - just don't ask me to embed anything).

Who wants to read about a dead mum/kid/scoutmaster without seeing what they looked like before their awful newsworthy demise.

A good pic can make a shit story sing. A page with nothing worth reading on it look can look like you actually have some tales with a clever use of a pic.

Nationals understand the power of the pic. Most decent pictures in the nats don't have anything resembling a story to go with, but who cares. It is why most of the red tops have an equal or bigger budget for pics than news.

It's why freelance snappers earn more on day rate than hacks - despite the fact most sit in their cars scratching their arses when you are door knocking like a mad-man for a collect.

If news is king. Pictures are the emperor.

I reinforce the pictures, pictures, pictures mantra into my guys every day. It's gradually getting through.

If something explodes in the High Street I call my snapper before my reporter. I shout 'don't forget to ask for pictures' on every death knock.

Punters are getting more media savvy. We pick up an increasingly amount of reader pics on our breaking news stories.

On a ring-in, and if they are nearer than my lot, I ask them to whip out their mobile and take some snaps.
Mostly shit, but I like choice and we have had some front pagers from them.

I want images on every lead or it ain't a lead. Front page pic must be worthy of front page.

It doesn't happen every week and I know it can't but why strive for second best?

First call should be to get your snapper rolling, you can always call him back when if it's a false alarm. No harm in sending early because that extra five minutes could mean getting your guy to the scene before the tape goes up.

Words you can get on the phone.

Pictures show you were there.

Is ABC really as easy as 123?

2009-09-02T19:02:00.000+01:00

A high circulation - combined, of course, with decent informative editorial - is at the heart of every good free newspaper.
After all our strength is the little figure - found commonly on the back page or page 2 - which reveals the number of homes our product gets to.
Advertisers still love circulation figures because it equates to readers, and we are almost entirely dependent on the money they spend each week in our papers.
So, when our management decided at the beginning of the year that it would be a wizard wheeze to cut costs by slashing distribution, everyone else thought it was the act of incompetent fuckwits.
And how the chickens have finally, and beautifully, come home to roost with the new ABC figures.
My titles' circulations are down by tens of thousands of editions. In one case a quarter, another a third of their previous totals.
We print them next week and advertising staff are already being 'trained' how to lie their arses But our advertisers are not stupid and, mostly, live locally. They suspected this was coming months ago.
When little Billy the paperboy from number 7 gets the bullet from his £2.50-a-week job and they don't get a paper that week, they knew about it.
When their mum from the other estate and their brother-in-law from three streets over also don't get a paper they get a call.
When they meet other business people and hear the same stories they started to realise they are getting fed a rather large and unpleasant shit sandwich - with no sauce.
Now they actually know they are chomping on a turd baguette.
Readers are also equally unimpressed when they suddenly stop getting what they thought was their local paper.
They talk. They know. After all where the fuck do we get our stories from.
Suddenly your paper has gone from the powerful champion of the people, to an irrelevant, barely read, unreliable free sheet.
I see tumble weed and the hear the tolling of a single bell.
Once a decent ABC figure is achieved it should be cherished and protected.
Paperboys and girls found dumping editions in skips and under bridges should be flogged then sacked.
Every complaint to my desk about lack of delivery means at least 50 editions, sometimes as many as 200, have not reached their destination ie into the readers glorious, slightly sweaty, mitts. I used to get 5 a week. I now get 15-20.
I encourage and cajole my reporters to take each complaint seriously by recording it and sending it to our distribution department.
The very best complaints - those from powerful local figures or advertisers - I email to our head of distribution, our MD and group ed.
The resulting fall out of these latest 'cost saving' measure, I predict, will cost the company - and more importantly our papers' reputations - far more than the few thousand quid they 'saved' over the last six months.
This is short-term, bean-counting bullshit thinking at it finest.
Do management arseholes who have been in this industry longer than ten or twenty years actually realise all of their 'improvements', 'efficiency savings' and 'modernisations' over the years are the reason we are now witnessing the extinction of newspapers?
Or do they wake up and wonder how it is the newspapers they bring out weren't as good as they were six months or a year ago? Despite the fact six months to a year ago they sacked half the staff.
Short term cuts are always seen over a long term period, you absolute no mark wankers!
Wake the fuck up before it's too late!

Name and shame

2009-08-26T20:35:00.000+01:00

With another cull of journalists announced in the Midlands by those incompetent fucks over at TM, can anyone fill me in on any management fools fired during these hard times.
I read, and know, of redundancies across the country. Many of which have been the more experienced and necessary voices across newsroom floors.
But I have not heard of many MDs getting the bullet.
Surely they have to take some responsibility about the massive losses and circulation drops suffered in the last year.
Or am I wrong to think that the money grubbing wankers in charge are blame free for this scandalous, systematic destruction of a once great industry?
Let me know if you have any tearful tales of senior management whores getting their cards.
I need cheering up.

Gissa job, go on, gissa job

2009-08-26T19:18:00.000+01:00

I am made up by the number of job ads for real reporters jobs at the moment.
After almost a year of fake edit jobs or b2b bullshit, the market seems to have started to pick up.
And long may it continue.
I live in hope that my office might see the influx of new souls to replace the departed in the next few months.
So in the spirit of getting a new job or indeed your first job, I have a few tips for those of you polishing your CVs and preparing for interview.
Get names right. This tip is a deal breaker. I have tossed CVs and discarded cover letters when my name or the name of the paper is incorrect.
If you are one of 50 applicants for the same job (and you will be) failing to spell your potential new boss's name right will see you rejected before your email or letter is opened.
Keep CVs short. If you are applying for your first job your CV should be a page long - at most a page and a half. Mine is two and a bit pages and I have been doing this for nearly two decades in more than 14 organisations.
I don't really need to know if you worked in a travel agent during your uni holidays or had a Saturday job in a supermarket. We all did.
Provide a concise account of your qualifications and education with relevant work experience ie. what have you already done that relates to the job you want to do.
Include any awards, any extra courses or skills plus references. Everything else is puff and filler.
Hobbies and interests is a grey area. If you do something remotely interesting or hobbylike include them, however, socialising, drinking, reading and going to the cinema are not hobbies.
One of my favourite CVs listed sunbathing under hobbies. What a tool.
Spend time on the cover letter. For me this is the selling point. I want to hear about why you want THIS particular job. Why you are the perfect person for MY newsroom. Why THIS job ad caught your eye above all others.
Do not send me a generic cover letter that you send out to every other job. You know, the one where you change the paper and bosses name at the top. It's too obvious.
I want to see passion and enthusiasm. Not stock bullshit about love of writing and ready for the next step.
Pop in a few details that are relevant about the paper you are applying for. Mention a campaign or a news story you liked. Tell the boss what you will bring to the table.
Hard sell the mother fucker. Don't expect your CV to wow. They are boring and samey. A good cover letter is like your foot in the door at a death knock.
Don't pimp your CV. This is still a relatively small industry (and shrinking by the hour). Bullshit and lies on your CV can take only minutes to debunk. A phone call to a mate of a mate can quickly and easily reveal your claims about a chief reporter role and shifts on the nationals to be poppycock. Be honest, be frank. Don't get caught.
Do your research. Google your prospective employer, google his team and their stories. Look at the electronic paper which many sites have. Check out the council - who is in power, who are the MPs, check the paper's demographics (obtained with a quick call to the ad department). Look at previous campaigns, big issues, big stories, big libels.
Fuck it, google yourself to make sure the bollocks you are about to spout in interview doesn't come undone with that picture of you being arrested by the local constabulary.
It's all there. It's all online. There are no excuses for not spending a couple of hours doing your homework.
Target your audience. If you are applying for a news reporters role, the last thing your potential new boss wants to know is that you really want to be a sports reporter.
Either lie to him about your love for news or don't apply just because it's easier to get an NCE through news.
I don't consider sports journalism a real job, my only love is news so why the fuck am I going to waste my time training you so that you can get a non job. (ditto PR)
Get experience. This is a biggy for trainees.
In my book, commitment and enthusiasm is weighed above all other skills in this game. I will teach you the rest.
If you want to be hired as a trainee you must have shown enough initiative to have worked a few weeks in a real newsroom.
I had CVs out of my ears for the last trainee we recruited (many, many months ago).
Most had done a degree and started or completed the NCTJ prelims. It's almost the industry norm now.
But the very best - and the ones who secured the interview - had done all that and been to two or three newsrooms for at least a week - and produced cuttings.
I don't hold much sway with qualifications because I started this job with none and still have none and don't consider myself either at a disadvantage or a worse reporter for it.
But failing to prove that you really want to be a reporter is a real crime.
To illustrate my point, a couple of Oxbridgeites who, after securing a first class degree at our hallowed institutions, decided to embark on a career in journalism.
Their covering letters revealed they had not bothered to pursue NCTJs and sneered at the idea of real work experience but due to their academic brilliance felt they possessed the skills required to become a reporter.
The applications were binned.
It is only going to get harder to get into this industry. Newspapers are getting more and more about qualifications rather than ability.
Natural raw talent and great local knowledge is getting ignored because of pedestrian box-ticking HR interviews.
You need to shine more than ever to get ahead so don't let your initial approach let you down before you even get to a rare chance at an interview.

"I'm really sorry to bother you but......."

2009-08-24T18:37:00.000+01:00

Everyone has their own opening line for a death knock.
I quite like a bit of semi-sincere contrition - before I ask for a picture of their dead baby.
Make like I don't want to be there. And the truth is I mostly don't.
I must have doorstepped hundreds of grieving families and it still doesn't get any less nerve-wracking as I crunch up the gravel repeating the deceased's name over and over in my head so I don't blurt out the wrong one.
I still remember my first and I play over in my mind, on occasion, the very worst.
When I was freelancing every job seemed to be a death knock. I used to joke to people I met outside of work that if I ever came to their door with a smile and a handshake it meant someone in their family had just been fucked up.
That initial feeling of dread as you approach the knock never leaves, however. Will there be tears, smiles or threats. Will they understand I am doing my job or decide I have personally affronted them and unleash the hounds.
Some swear or abuse me, calling me 'scum' , others welcome me in and get the teas on. You can never tell which reaction you will get.
I once got chased by one guy in his car for about five miles after he beat up my snapper. And his son had only been blinded.
My 'favourite' death knocks are the one where you have talked the relative round and, just as they are peeling open the family album, the spouse comes home and goes spastic mental.
I have been tossed many a time. I now try to retain hold of the collect as I am physically thrown from the homestead.
It's a part of the job I dislike, but there is no greater feeling than walking away from the house quotes in your notebook and pic in paw knowing full well you just scooped everyone in town.
In a completely unrepresentative survey, I do find that families living in less salubrious areas tend to be a bit more forthcoming and open than the wealthy who are often the most abusive.
Women tend to be more polite than men, and parents seem to want to talk more about death through illness than those lost to violence or accident. Presumably they have had longer to come to terms with it.
I have only been hit twice during this job. Both on death knocks. I took the punches and considered them a form of involuntary penance.
I have come to terms with performing death knocks but, even after all these years and all those slammed doors, I still can't fully justify them to myself.
We claim that we are writing a tribute to the dear departed. Generally horse shit.
We say that it is cathartic for the family to talk of their loss. Crap.
We believe there is a public interest in knocking on a family's door shortly after their son/daughter was blown up in a terrorist attack. Bollocks.
We want to launch an appeal against guns/knives/leukaemia/death in general. Lies.
In reality we tell the family's anything to get through the door - to get a bit of background, a smiley picture, a grieving family shot - just so your nib becomes a down page, your lead becomes the splash.
You basically want a story and the dead scout's family is the best opportunity this week.
I am happy with this.
I am not saying the resultant story can not be something of value.
Be it a tearful appeal for a son's killer to come forward or a plea for funds to save other little crack babies.
Some death knocks forge relationships with the family and the reporter that can last years.
And this is why we do them across the country day in, day out.
But I can't pretend that the initial death knock is nothing more than cold calling for a tale.
Some you win, some you lose.
But there is no lofty ideal behind it.

On a scale of one to arsehole - what kind of boss am I?

2009-08-17T19:53:00.001+01:00

It's a fair question.
For some months now I have told you what I expect of a good reporter but not really what standards I set for myself or how my team are treated.
I can't accurately say whether I am a bad boss or a good boss, as, in the main, it is subjective. Depending on the reporter's own expectations and ambitions and direction they wish to take, it will ultimately alter their view of the way I work.
I am a hard news journalist, and I imagine I always will be. Nothing gets me more excited than a grisly murder or a disaster. Sick, yes. Realistic, definitely.
I am undoubtedly, at times, a mean bastard, unfair and rude.
But I would not let my reporter's do anything I have not already done or would be willing to do again.
When we are short staffed (which is often) I muck in. I come in early to do downpages. I make calls to contacts for stories. I deal with the mundane drivel (like uploading to the web) to free my reporters up to get me decent stories. I spend an hour a night reading through our web comments to get leads. I scour the local blogs and councillor's web sites. I still go to some council meetings and meet with as many players as I can to build good relations.
I do door knocks at weekends to get a head start when reporters are busy.
I will sit down with my team and go through their copy. I will offer them advice on getting pics, writing features and building relationships with councillors.
If they are having a phone call they can't deal with from an angry punter, I will get them to kick it up to me.
I will even help them with their CV if they want to move on or give them contacts to flog their stories to the nationals. God forbid, if they ever want to catch a train down south and work on the London papers, I will tell them what, and who, they need to know.
I let my reporters have time off for doctors, dentists, driving tests and other things beginning with d without making them fill out a holiday form.
I buy biscuits and cakes on stressful days and I let reporters go early on quiet days. I back my team up to the hilt when it comes to readers' complaints, legals and PCCs. I keep them off the radar of my bosses.
As long as the stories are coming in, I don't mind if the reporter comes in late or negotiates a morning off for a night job.
I make sure reporters take their lieu time and holidays. I realise their pay is shite and let them blag as many freebies as we can using the paper's name - including press trips abroad.
I buy the first round in the pub and, fuck me, I even make the tea (sometimes).
But to get you also have to give and I am a hard taskmaster. Chair spinners, clock watchers and bullshitters get short shrift.
My only goal is to bring out the best paper we possibly can. My motto is - get it first, get it right and get it all.
I truly care about what I do and my expectations of what we can do are higher than many of the bosses in local papers.
I give praise when it is due, but equally I give bollockings when a reporter drops a clanger.
I realise no-one is superhuman but to bring out the very best in reporters, I must push them.
If every time you fucked up you got a pat on the head and a 'never mind' would that make you worried about doing it again?
I have lost my temper and I have been an arsehole, I accept that.
If that makes me a bad boss, a dinosaur or a relic, then so be it.
But understand that sometimes, when stories are falling to pieces, legals are dropping like rain or deadlines are looming, I am equally as terrified of doing this job as you are.
It's just I'm not allowed to show it.

It's called a MOBILE phone for a reason

2009-08-16T12:14:00.000+01:00

One of my biggest annoyances is a reporter's basic inability to answer their mobile phone when it rings.
I sometimes have a subs query, an urgent message from a dying relative or I may need to send you to an address early when I get a sniff of a police raid.
So, pardon me for working, I may need to call you on your mobile phone out of hours or during your lunch break.
Ring, ring, ring....message. Ring, ring, ring.....message. Ring, ring, ring.....message. Then straight to message (as they turn the phone off). I text the little fuckers to ring me back asap.
Sometimes I get a call back within an hour but often, especially at weekends, I get nothing until they walk into the office on Monday morning.
Their excuse for ignoring three messages, eight missed calls and ten increasingly abusive texts - "I don't work at weekends".
One of the little turds told me at interview they wanted to end up on the nationals, so I asked whether they thought turning their mobile off when they worked for the bigs would be acceptable.
"Oh, I wouldn't do it then," they tittered. Then don't do it to me, you pathetic wanker.
The last thing my national news desk said as you left the office every night was make sure your mobile is on.
It is always on, day and night. And I always answer it, day and night. When it runs out of juice or is another room, I get a feeling of dread that I am missing out on something.
Do you think that reporters in Dunblane, Lockerbie, Hungerford, Soham or Hillsborough knew what was going to happen in their towns?
Of course they didn't.
(And yes, I also realise that in some of these cases reporters were unlikely to have owned mobile phones.)
But something as big as the above events will happen again. And maybe in your patch. After 5.30pm most likely, or even at the weekend.
So the next time your mobile phone rings, pick the fucker up or you may just be hanging up on the biggest story of your career.

Dolly Parton news gathering

2009-08-16T11:58:00.001+01:00

Wouldn't it be nice if everything we reported on happened during our contracted working hours - but clearly not during our lunch break.

We could have council meetings timetabled for 10am. Car crashes not before 9am and murders early afternoon please.
Major disasters like rail smashes, plane crashes and psychopathic shooting rampages midweek, thanks, to allow for enough time to follow them up before buggering off to the pub early on Friday afternoon.

Except, as we all know, it ain't like that.
News doesn't sleep and it certainly doesn't allow for our social or family lives nor the fact that sometimes we really don't want to get out of bed at 4am after a call from a police contact.

So why do some reporters today think that somehow they are exempt from working outside of their contracted hours?

Even during interviews I carefully explain the 9-5 day just doesn't happen. At least once a week there will be a night job, lunches are invariably taken at the desk and working late or coming in early on deadline day is the norm.

We try and make back those hours with time in lieu, but generally you will work as and when required.

Lots of nods at interview time, but once their dainty little feet hits the newsroom proper all of a sudden a militant level of clock watching comes into force.

Chairs are spinning at 5.30pm with no thought to ask the news ed if everything is ok. Hour long lunches are taken to the minute and coming in early is only down to public transport not breaking down.

The slack caused by their anally-retentive attitude to contracted hours is taken up by the real reporters in the office. The grafters who do the job because they love it and don't mind working a bit harder for the tales that matter.
It creates division and animosity in the office.

My hands are tied by HR. The hours are the hours, and by forcing them to do extra could lead to claims of constructive dismissal.
And these pedantic fucks are exactly the type who would do it.

To those of you who watch the clock while sitting at your desk, ask yourself why.
I imagine it is because you do not want be - or deserve to be - sitting at that desk.
You clearly have no idea about what the job is about.
You have no passion for news and you are biding the time until you can go into PR at senior level or some other worthless profession.

You are a fucking waste of space.
You make those people working around you work harder to make up for your laziness and lack of commitment.
You are keeping someone who may actually want to do your job from doing your job.

You are a cunt. And I feel like a twat for believing your lying "hard-working" arse during your interview.
Be a man/woman and resign.
Or better still toss yourself in front of a bus because it will be the closest you will ever come to getting your name on the front page of a newspaper.

You will abide by the grooming standard

2009-08-10T21:09:00.000+01:00

I wear a suit and tie to work every day. It's a kick back to the nationals.
Shoes clean. Shirt ironed. Conservative tie. Suit not covered in sick. Any less and you could be sent home.
In many respects it makes sense. In the mind of many, a suit and tie still gives an air of authority to the wearer. Even more so, in this casual age.
I remember one particularly scary death knock on a very, very hard council estate outside Glasgow.
I was pure shiteing it - to use the vernacular. There were neds (non-educated-delinquents) hanging from the door frame - beady eyes, baseballs caps, missing teeth and shiny shell suits everywhere - and I was convinced I was about to feel cold steel or a broken bottle this night.
As I left my car I noticed another of my trade - also white faced - leaving his car. A quick nod and we strode purposefully to the door - game faces firmly on. Through the neds, who parted for us, and up the stairs (lift was predictably fucked) and to the 17th floor flat.
We were in and out, quotes and collects in hand, within 20 minutes with the wee wifey considering us to be the polis - to continue the Irvine Welsh effect.
Not once did we say we were anything other than two guys in suits working for the papers but people assumed we were something we weren't.
And we were smart enough to allow them to think what they like.
Now imagine that scenario with you wearing a t-shirt, jeans and trainers. You ain't getting in the door without a chib in the guts
Since that day I use my clothes like a suit of armour.
Dress smart, act smart, work smart. From the moment I put my suit on, the outside world can not affect me.
I am important. I am professional. I will be taken seriously.
Also, dressing smart every day should be a necessity.
How can you know whether you will be sent to court or to a death knock, an inquest or a funeral?
Respect is not just given by how you act but also how you show up to someone's place.
Not everyone gets it.
My favourite fuck-off and get changed moment came when a new boy had his first day on a national's London desk - run at this time by an indomitably nasty news ed.
Our new recruit was dressed in yellow corduroy slacks, a mostly unbuttoned, unironed casual shirt and - the piece de resistance - sockless brown loafers.
Fuck me, if you wore a grey suit in that office or unbuttoned your collar you were deemed a dangerous rebel.
I have never seen someone so utterly humiliated in front of 50 plus hacks when the news ed bawled him out before sending him home for the day.
The new recruit went on to become a very successful foreign corr in a country where flip flops are the national costume.
The other evil cunt is still very much alive and still working on one of Britain's great (smartly dressed) national papers.
Maybe casual ain't so bad, after all.

Are we the authors of our own misfortune?

2009-08-10T20:13:00.000+01:00

I, for one, am deeply mistrustful of our beloved companies going cap in hand to the government asking for handouts and favours to keep newspapers alive.
It is a little like a beggar with a three-legged dog on a string asking for '10p for a cup of tea' before driving a 7 series Beemer to his eight bedroom house in Mayfair and then shagging his supermodel wife.
Up the arse, obviously.
Many newspaper bosses are practically willing to blow a Government minister or two for a few quid without truly understanding where newspapers and journalism stands today.
The money is out there, they just need to understand how to get it.
I blame newspaper management for a massive slice of the shit we are in. Their shortsighted, shareholder-appeasing horse shit has pared many newsrooms to the bone and caused the premature deaths of too many good papers.
But I blame reporters and editors for an equally large portion.
I read one of my sister papers this week. A paid for costing its readers 65 new pence per week.
This paid for wasn't particularly understaffed either. It had seven - count them seven - editorial staff not including the overall group editor.
Nor was it a gust-of-wind-will-blow-me-away stripped-down paid for.
This was a cat-killing, hernia-inducing, paperboy-cursing 100 pages plus. So money was obviously being made.
I had to read it twice to fully grasp the gravity of the situation we are in.
It was utter shit.
To be conservative, the splash was weak, piss poor, drivel that would struggle to find a home in the Oxtown Gazette. It was badly written, uninteresting and dreadfully laid out. It even turned to five, where the same picture was used and the copy was a virtual duplicate of what I had already read.
Page three was a turgid council story with a bad headline and no pics. Four, a boring charity sport story. Seven, a crime story that would have struggled to make a nib. Eight and eleven a similar inquest with nine breaking it up with a classic 'I'm old feel sorry for me tale'. At least it had a pic of the subject.
There was a cursory pop at the cost of council's own 'newspaper' on 14 but I couldn't help thinking I wouldn't mind having a gander at it to see what is actually happening in town.
This rag carried on for a few more awful pages which I flicked through rapidly.
Bear in mind this paper was a 100 plus pages paid for. It's 'news' stopped around page 20.
The pages themselves looked like a trainee sub had been given a key to the font factory. Headlines didn't make sense or were simply dull as fuck.
There were no pictures worth using at all. And the page shapes looked like they were created to maximise profit despite the pagination (which I realise they were).
Basically it was everything that gives a classic local paper a really bad name.
I know the patch this paper covers and it has some really good news areas, deprived communities, crime and a council that deserves a kick in the arse.
There is no logical reason to bring out this collection of utter shite.
So can we blame the MDs or newspaper companies for the year-on-year drop in circulation? Or do we look instead at the staff?
Is a lazy editor worse than a bad MD? Are badly directed journalists and subs more damaging to newspapers than a bean counting executive?
I think all of us should stop looking outside of our industry for answers and spend some time studying what we actually produce.
I know that the underfunding within this industry has crippled many papers but there is no real excuse for bringing out some of the shit which pretends to be news.
Bad papers are created as much by bad editors and poor journalism as they are by lack of cash.
If stories in newspapers are weak, we should ask why.
Being short staffed is not an excuse for sloppy, poor journalism. I have no staff, but it doesn't stop me concentrating on the great tales.
It just stops me doing as many things as I would like.
Underfunding of journalism is a terrible, dreadful thing but shit journalism is like cancer.
Once we accept lower standards and a lack of news values it will start to spread until there is nothing worth saving.
No matter how big our 'Hungry and Homeless' sign is.

When blogging is awesome

2009-08-03T21:36:00.000+01:00

I don't know the background to this story nor do I know the journalists in question but I stumbled across it in one of my random google/vodka moments.
I have heard of Branston because I have been in journalism long enough to know the players.
But this blog is awesome and truly shows the power of the independent voice.
It's all in the comments and it REALLY does show why newspapers are powers for both good and evil.
People in this blog I salute you.

http://frankbranston.co.uk/wordpress/?p=364

Journo, 30+ gsoh, ns seeks masochist to share laughs and late nights

2009-07-31T20:08:00.002+01:00

I have been single for a long time. Too long.
I often question why, since I have had long term relationships before.
Clearly I have many issues.
Anger, selfishness, a sometimes obnoxious often narcissistic personality, a talent for fibbing, shallowness, a sense of superiority, rudeness and an almost tourettes-like propensity for swearing.
But enough of my good points.
I remember when my last serious girlfriend left me. We owned a house together, had moved a long way from home together and both worked for big newspapers.
Unfortunately she worked in advertising and I worked in news.
Her switchboard closed down at 5.30pm. Our subs started working then and calls and queries would come in thick and fast and continued well after the time I arrived home. Usually at 8.30pm.
When I worked late, late on Friday and was back in the office for a 14 hour day on Saturday she was often surprised when I wanted to do fuck all on Sunday except chill out and watch some TV.
Her complaint was that she was bored all day Saturday because I wasn't there.
My attitude. At least you weren't fucking working.
This bullshit continued for a time until one Tuesday an ominous text appeared - "We need to talk."
Oh fuck, here we go.
It wasn't a surprise she left and after some tears and shouting, that, as they say, was that.
Four years of my life down the shitter.
I look back now and wonder, however, was my work utimately to blame or did I work harder to get out of the relationship?
Who knows. All I know is that it was a period of my life that I was deeply unhappy, in a job I hated, with a girlfriend who didn't make any effort to understand what I did for a living.
She's married now. Good for her. I hope she's fat.
So why am I still single.
I think it's because of nights like these.
Nights where I come home utterly despondent and depressed. Fucked off with my shitty life and my shitty job.
Nights where I finally realise that no matter what I do and how hard I try, management don't care about what we do.
Nights when I think that twenty years in this game have been for nothing.
Nights when I realise that most people see me as the ranty old man crapping on about the past.
Nights when all the shit I have waded through starts catching up and the darkness starts to get harder to suppress.
Why would I want to share all that with anyone I actually liked?

ps Did I mention I like animals?

Sustainable journalism

2009-07-30T19:46:00.000+01:00

I'm all for the spirit of the Blitz in a newsroom.

I love the idea of pulling an all-nighter in the attempt to cover a major story. Everyone's excited. No-one cares about the time or that they had plans that evening. Pizzas and takeaway boxes litter the newsroom and the boss has a case of lager sitting in the fridge. We are all pulling together for the good of the paper to cover that one huge story.

Why does it feel, however, that this attitude, this sense of pride and accomplishment is needed just to bring out a normal edition each week?

Why does each week feel like a Sisyphean Challenge (you know, the rock and hill guy), relying on good will and the fear of getting sacked in a jobless market?

I know it's the same for the reporters, but they have the added disadvantage of earning shit money and facing my wrath when they don't produce the mountain of copy needed to fill our pages.

A lot of talk is made about sustainability.

It's the new buzz word in this eco-conscious era.

Sustainable fishing, farming, rivers and forestry; sustainable buildings, communities, and cities; renewable energy and green technologies.

It's the new black.

So why can't we create sustainable newspapers?

Like deforestation across the globe, the greatest crime in our journalistic world is the systematic culling of reporters from our staff.

We still hear of job losses every week despite the economy apparently bottoming out. These are just the major ones highlighted by the unions.

We all know at least one someone who has been made redundant or just not replaced when they decided to quit the game altogether.

Recruitment freezes and consolidation of desks have been happening for months now.

After reading about other papers in my company and others, I realise I am actually quite lucky to still have three reporters on some of my editions. Albeit mostly trainees.

I hear horror stories from across the country - of one reporter writing everything in a paid for; one editor in charge of three titles with a staff of half; other papers resorting to taking in bought in nationwide features about summer style and holidays with just one or two actual news pages.

One of my editions just started making some bucks after a revamp. It has one reporter who now has to take on three times the workload.

He is a lovely old boy, a true pro, but he is feeling the strain.

When I asked for a trainee (total cost to company about £1,000 a month) so that we could capitalise on this new found stream of dosh, and to take the strain from Al, I was told no way, no cash.

Bullshit. I talk to the reps, and classified, recruitment and property. I make it my business to know what is going on and I know that this paper is now making profit.

So how can this formula be sustainable?

I fear my guy is a few weeks away from melt down, so I have a choice. Nick someone from another title to the detriment of that paper (already at famine-lean staffing levels); drop pages on a weekly basis from the newly profitable paper (alienating our new very keen readers); or take it up the arse until something breaks and management wankers are forced to take action.

Two hundred and fifty quid a week.

Half the price of a half page advertisement - of which there are dozens a week in the title - and this problem disappears.

Fuck me, for the morale boosting properties alone, getting in a new reporter would do wonders across our whole newsroom.

It probably isn't even the same amount of money it costs to pay for the four offices we are still renting at High Street rates after the management recently took the decision to centralise operations into a news hub.

I don't think it is even the amount of cash spent on management's company Mercs or Beemers.

At one function this year they forked out £800 for a table. Managers only. Networking you see. Piss up more like.

Sustainability means to endure, to carry on despite hardships. But all the other examples of sustainability mentioned above require some kind of investment. Some energy with which to endure.

Reporters are the energy of newspapers. They are the driving force behind the product, others sell.

Without a decent, sustainable level of reporters, extinction is inevitable.

Spider sense is tingling

2009-07-30T19:01:00.000+01:00

I have a niggling feeling I am about to get royally butt-fucked by the management.
Don't get me wrong, they are already slipping me a length every day I come to work and do more than I should to bring out a decent paper with limited resources.
But this time I honestly think this is going to be akin to a full-on management gang-bang.
Over summer revenues drop and pagination decreases. It's natural. Readers, schools and sources go on holiday, politics takes a back seat and advertisers spend less.
This year, due to the 'harsh economic climate', we reduced pagination further and allowed advertising to bend the rules in terms of how much and how many of my key news pages they were allowed to flog.
As a result the papers look shit, have little content and essentially look like every other piece of crap free that publishers use as circulations boosters for their dying paid fors.
We were promised it would only be a short term measure and I accepted by autumn we would be back on track.
As the weeks roll on, and no talk is made of our phoenix-like resurrection, I suspect this is just another management lie.
After all, why would they change a money making formula? Especially after our MD announces that, after all the earlier cuts, our profits are not quite as bad as predicted earlier in the year. In fact in this 'harsh economic climate' they are actually pretty fucking good.
In the management's world of short term decisions that created this long term problem, why would they sacrifice this increase in cash to go back to the bad old days of bringing out decent profit-low editorial pages?
It's a little like owning a stately home that is not making as much money as it did, but is still making a modest profit by just letting visitors in and selling ice creams.
Suddenly, someone has the wheeze of selling off the things that make visitors come to the home in the first place.
A few pieces of antique furniture here, a couple of regal oil paintings there, a chandelier perhaps? Al in the vain hope the visitors don't notice they are actually getting short changed.
Unfortunately for Lord Toffee Nose and his scrabbling for pennies he didn't actually need, the punters vote with their feet and suddenly he is in a real dilemma.
What's the difference with this analogy and that of selling all the space in newspapers?
Ultimately the readers (and yes the key word here is read) know when they are being sold a pup. It doesn't take them long before they don't bother picking the paper up because there is nothing in it.
I smell a spiral of despair here.
I am checking the job pages daily. Come autumn, if my predictions are correct, I am gone.
This rat is getting a new ship before the hole in the side of my current one becomes too large to fill with straw and false promises.

Why getting the facts right matters

2009-07-27T21:05:00.000+01:00

I think about death a lot. Almost an unhealthy amount. My own death on occasion, but mostly the deaths of others.
About how a businessman can leave home for work without a care in the world and end up in a mortuary slab with a knife in his gut a few hours later; about drunk drivers who smash into cars carrying mums and their babies; about masonry falling from a building on top of a chap as he sips a latte in the cafe below or getting hit by a bus as a teenager sends a text to his mates while crossing the road (which happens more than you think).
We deal with death every day.
Murders, car wrecks, inquests, disease, medical negligence, court cases, law suits, viruses even just obituaries for the great and the (sometimes) good in the local area.
When they come to our attention, the deaths are often sudden, sometimes brutal but always an immense trauma for the families of the victims to deal with.
Combine the loss of a loved one with the attention from the media and you can create a tense, pressurised situation.
We do the door knocks, we gather the tributes and we write the stories. If there is a court case or inquest we cover it but inevitably the stories dry up and we move on
What we write about them in our newspapers is often the last thing recorded about the people who have died.
Many families keep the tribute pieces and news stories as a lasting reminder of those they have lost.
So, for fuck's sake, at least have the decency to spell their names correctly when you come to write the stories.
Check your facts, check the spelling of their names and their ages even if you think you already know.
Jane could be spelt Jayne, how many ts in Matthew, Claire comes in many forms and even Alan has a Scottish variation.
Getting the basics right first time and every time is what maintains not only the reputation of your newspaper but also your own as a decent reporter.

The great swine flu swindle

2009-07-21T20:01:00.000+01:00

We are either on the brink of extinction or all about to get a bit of a cold.
Swine flu intrigues me from a journalistic point of view.
Firstly, as a moderately fit and healthy, youngish man, I comfortably predict a bout of piggy cough will not kill me. So I clearly write this with a sense of smug satisfaction.
Swine flu fears have been in the news for months ever since a few Mexicans died from it.
Initially reports from Mexico had well over 150 dead in a few weeks of the discovery of the new strain.
Was this going to be the pandemic every national newspaper had been waiting for to take Jade Goody off the front page? Oh yes.
The word 'deadly' was attached to this pork-crackling of a cold and the world's end was comfortably predicted.
When reality bit and the actual death toll in Mexico - already renowned for its excellent health service - was revealed to be a more modest 17, who really cared?
By this time the snouty sniffle was already in Blighty.
Aaaagh the headlines screamed. We are all going to die!
Since the porcine version of the bubonic plague has been among us, 30 people have actually died. Most had 'underlying health problems' - a seemingly terminal diagnosis these days - and so the healthiest among us breathed a smallish sigh of relief.
However, when a GP and a young girl died without the prior sickness issues we were all vulnerable again.
Headlines declared us all dead. No hope for humanity, isolate yourself and keep away from the unclean lest you succumb!!
The doc, in reality, also suffered from heart disease and high blood pressure, and had viral pneumonia.
Today, we discover the young girl died from a septic shock complication due to tonsillitis.
The health authorities still do not know how many of the 30 deaths attributed to swine flu actually died from swine flu.
Normal, common or garden, get-it-once-a-year influenza kills 30,000 a year in this country.
So far swine flu has killed far less than it should. Even if it kills the predicted 65,000 that is still less than 0.1 per cent of the population.
Heart disease, is the UK's biggest killer. Based on 2005 data, there are some 227,000 heart attacks each year. More than 150,000 deaths. Do we close chippies or ban fat people from pizza restaurants. No. Are we surprised when unhealthy people die of a heart attack. No. Do we report every coronary episode. No.
So why are we all reporting on each pig flu case like it is the first time anyone caught a cold?
I don't often wear a tin foil hat, and most conspiracies are dismissed with contempt, but the stories being told around the country by every newspaper are fulfilling a great Governmental service.
Keep the state in fear and they won't ask any awkward questions about recessions, expenses, bad leadership etc.
Let's try to get this 'pandemic' into perspective.
Swine flu is a bad cold.
When the radio and television advertisements are suggesting the best cure is stay at home and take a Lemsip, you can rest assured it isn't as fatal as the newspapers are making out.

Flim flammery

2009-07-21T19:18:00.000+01:00

One of the biggest crimes in journalism is spinning a shit story into a headline grabbing story, in my humble opinion.
An even greater crime is to spin an already good story, in an attempt to make it better.
The first thing I teach my chaps (and chapesses) is to be honest in what you are writing. If the story isn't what you first thought, see if there is anything worth salvaging for a filler or nib, then walk away.
If you feel the need to spin a story then surely it's not that good a story in the first place. A great story tells itself.
It's too easy to fib a little to make the busted flush into a lead or, with an extra level of deceit, a splash.
But these stories will create journalists, editors and the paper so many problems, both short term and long ,they are very rarely worth the initial lies to get them into the news list.
Short term you are open to, at worst claims of defamation or PCC complaints, at best a snotty call to the editor who is forced to write a clarification, correction or, god forbid, a bloody apology.
Long term, your paper and staff lose all credibility. The trust of your readers is a hard won thing and all too easy to lose.
Recently I went away for a week to come back to the mother of all splash headlines. It wasn't technically wrong but it did give the wrong impression of what the story was about.
We had a serious PR problem that week (caused by my boss, so no heads rolled). As soon as I saw the level of vitriol towards us for what we had done, I apologised in an editorial with a front page trail.
It was the right thing to do but it didn't have to happen. The story was good enough without the extra splash of sauce my boss had added.
My rules are be fair and accurate and balanced.
If the quote you get from the council/cops doesn't fit the story question your original source. It may be that they or the press office are fibbing. It's your job to determine who is the bullshit merchant.
Get evidence. Documents, letters, emails or confessions written in blood. Make sure they are real. With these it is easy to see who is telling the truth.
Don't lie to your boss. It's easy to give the right answers in order to get your story into the paper but I would rather stop any problems getting in there in the first place.
I am far harder on a reporter who is rumbled for porkies after we have gone to press than I would be if they admit it's bollocks earlier on.
I don't mind reporters telling me they don't know, because I know they can find out. I hate to hear the words 'I think', 'I assume' or 'I'm 90 per cent sure' before a sentence.
Assumptions and thoughts are great for philosophers, beatniks and hippies. But we deal in facts. Hard, cold and impossible to challenge.
I know it's tempting to think you will be the one who won't get rumbled, but eventually you will.
I remember the tale of the reporter in Scotland who didn't want to travel down to the Borders at night on a doorknocking job (about 100 miles away). So he told the desk a couple of hours after being dispatched that no-one was in. Easy.
Except for the fact a snapper also dispatched by the desk found the house firmly ablaze half an hour later.
Another guy I knew made up stories to get at the top of the news list. He would be king of the conference and bullshit his way through the week until miraculously his brilliant exclusive evaporated into thin air.
He was only rumbled when, on one particularly tense Christmas Eve, the boss really needed his 'top tale' as the rest of the news list crumbled before him.
Editor demanded to meet the reporters source to crowbar the story out of him and after about half an hour of strong debate, the bullshitting hack admitted his lies.
His Christmas present was a P45.
The best I save until last. One hack was so desperate to see his name on the front page of his local rag he would sneak into his office in the dead of night on the deadline eve and spike the other reporters tales.
I shit you not.
Because of the way things worked, his tales would be the only ones ready for the tight morning deadlines and the splash was his.
After a few weeks of this nonsense the news editor and the hard-working reporter who had the majority of their stories binned hid in the office and discovered him at it.
Be fair, be accurate, be balanced. The only complaint they can have is they don't like the story.
Then you truly can tell them to go and fuck themselves.

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger

2009-07-20T21:05:00.000+01:00

This job is seriously stressful.
Deadlines, bosses, the pressure of having to do well, dealing with extraordinary situations, death knocks, over work, bad pay.
Everything adds up into a big bubble of chest tightening, stomach churning, jaw grinding, headache inducing, STRESS!
Stress can destroy you, if you let it. Some of the very best, strongest, hardcore hacks have crumbled under its relenting pressure.
Men have killed their wives through mental illness. Drink and drugs are connected with our industry like pastry in a pie company.
Nervous breakdowns and early death are a common trait. It's a business fraught with fuck ups, freaks and failures.
I have been there.
Sleeping tablets to get over insomnia; group therapy to combat panic attacks; betablockers for hypertension; alopecia; paranoia and anger issues.
All down to stress of the job.
To survive stress, you have to harness it.
As journalists, you have to learn to love it.
As a reporter, I used to feel physically sick when a tale my boss had earmarked for the splash bit the bullet.
I would dread conference when my news list was a collection of press releases, follow ups and lies.
Door knocks would often leave me in a state of utter terror at the unknown.
Who hasn't frozen while writing an intro, knowing full well it was needed five minutes ago; who can remember the times when you have a stand up row over the most minor thing as the pressure mounts ; or pretended to phone a particularly abrasive press officer/councillor with a sticky question then claiming they were out.
As a new boss I often awoke, slightly sweaty, at 4am on deadline day after a dream that my entire paper has come out with its pages blank. That particular nightmare comes, almost like clockwork, on a crap news week.
My other favourite is going to bed the night before deadline day and having a vivid minute-by-minute dream that it all went brilliantly, only to wake up at 6am with everything yet to come.
I have often wanted to scream out loud when stories fall flat on pages that subs need right now and sometimes, on very bad days, the thought of walking out and leaving it all to someone else
becomes so tempting I can taste it.
But I haven't cracked, choked or crumbled (yet) I use the stress to my advantage. Harness the energy it gives me to ask the questions or make the calls. Spend the day barking orders or fighting fires and relax when I get home - with a glass or two of wine.
Experience helps immensely, situations become more normal. Writing becomes easier and second guessing your boss and covering your arse becomes second nature.
But the stress will always be there.
Start learning to make it your friend, before it becomes your worst enemy.

Things I still love about journalism - part one

2009-07-20T19:53:00.000+01:00

It's easy to bitch and moan so I thought I would write about some things that keep me doing this job after nearly twenty years.
Stories - You cannot do this job for two decades if you don't still get a head-crackling, shivery-back thrill about tales, big or small.
I don't care if it's national or local, when a reporter comes in with THAT story which you instantly adore there is no better feeling. Give me pics and I am in hog heaven. It doesn't even have to be a splash.
It could be a great funny three with roller-skating, coffin-dodgers or a super, council bashing page nine that exposes its hypocrisy. As long as it has the elements that make a goodie I am made up.
I am fortunate to work in newspapers that give me that feeling - on a lesser scale - once a week, on a major scale once a month.
God loves a dress up with a fact file.
Being right - Second only to bringing in those stories is getting them spot-on right when everyone else says you are wrong. We have all been there when your splash is getting torn apart by other media, councillors, press officers, whatever.
How sweet is that feeling when the report/inquest/tribunal/court case proves you 100 per cent correct.
Hold fast. Be strong. And make sure you ram it up their arses when you get a result.
One of my oldest splashes was described by a council press officer on the front page of our rivals as 'the greatest work of fiction since Gone With the Wind'.
A week later the council had to finally admit their bullshit when our splash was the lead item on their planning agenda. Boo yah bitches!
That's the power of having a planning officer leaking us the good shit.
Colleagues - I absolutely love other hacks - even the ones I slag off because they are on rival papers.
I love getting drunk and whining and moaning and fighting with them. The one-upmanship when you meet other reporters can be incredible. I love their vanity and insecurity; their naivety and brilliance.
But most of all their commitment and enthusiasm for the job. A bunch of good hacks can sniff out the part-timer (wannabe press officer) and they are quickly shunned from the herd.
I am still in contact with a massive number of the people I have worked with. It's that sort of club. Whether I see them once a year or text them for a favour after five years we still remember the times we had.
Some of my very best friends came from the first job I ever had. I was best man at one of their weddings. I lived with two of them. I take the piss out of another about their former social habits on a regular basis.
Success - Back in the day I won some awards. It was fun at the time. But so what.
I get a far bigger thrill in seeing my troops doing well. Whether it be one of my former juniors ploughing a massive furrow in the nationals, my top reporter winning a national award or even one ex-scallywag getting a better job in the same company as me. (Damn him).
I get a buzz. I hope that my influence, in some tiny way, has got them to the position they are now (mainly shouting - no touching, honest).
Community correspondents write utter shite - I have never been so pleased to see the utter twaddle our new army of community correspondents has produced.
Thank fuck for the untrained idiot. Most of it is total undecipherable wank. The best is already a blogger which stories we are already nicking.
The reason for my relief? Your management and mine wanted community correspondents to replace most of you with these free 'reporters'.
Seriously.
I laughed my arse off when the MD blew a gasket when he discovered they were 'writing about their fucking holidays'. He was fit to shit when he realised plan A was reduced to a huge heap of utter toss.
Being a boss - It really does make life easier. There is nothing worse than being a trainee/minion and having demands placed upon you when you really don't feel like it due to illness/hangover/relationship breakdown or a general can't-be-fucked-attitude. Basically you have no choice. Do it or incur the wrath of your editor.
But being a boss means the majority of tasks can be delegated to the overworked or ignored (due to deadline). I have a massive in-tray that gets palmed off on a regular basis or binned if I think the person will also forget.
Don't get me wrong, I rarely sit around the office doing fuck all for long. But as the old saying goes - 'Why have a dog and bark yourself'.
Post bag - This should really be number one because without the justification of a letter box filled with hand-written notes telling you whether you are right, wrong, or racist this job isn't worthwhile.
Feedback is brilliant, even if it is telling you that you are shit.
Out of all the papers I bring out, one has a bag of letters you would not believe. Each week we have at least 15 genuine letters from real, unique people. Not charities, or political parties or the local green-crayon-scrawling nutbags (we get those on top).
My council press officer often asks me how many I make up. None, is the answer.
When we have a big issue the letter writers double. I love it.
It's so much better to know you had a person write out a three page letter, stick it in an envelope, pay for a stamp and post it within a day of reading your paper, than it is to read: 'Councilhater146' post 'Typical Labour Nonsense. Only UKIp has the answer. If only we were out of europe' (sic) on your website.
Variety - It truly is the spice of life. This is the job which can never get boring. While you know what your day entails in terms of copy flow and the basic structure, you never know what people are going to do to themselves.
While experience enables our papers to cover almost anything you can never predict when news wil happen or what it will be.
After all, do you think the local papers in Dunblane, Lockerbie, Hungerford or Soham sat there and predicted their small towns were about to become synonymous with major tragedies.
News can happen anywhere or anytime.
It's what gets me out of bed in the morning (or the middle of the night on occasion.)

You can't reinvent the wheel - unless you are a clown

2009-07-15T21:56:00.000+01:00

I try not to comment on other people's blogs, mainly because what they have to say is usually inane rubbish.
But I am a big fan of Fleet Street Blues and their recent blog about what journalism is actually all about - ie getting news stories and not creaming over the latest web 2.0 update - met with a predictable response from the 20-somethings who think they are the new pioneers of this ancient game.
What these techno fucks singularly fail to understand is that, without the actual news content needed to attract readers to a newspaper, website, twitter page, blog, or even a facebook page, what you have is nothing. An irrelevant self-aggrandising pile of cack.
What bloggers produce - mostly woeful, biased opinion and comment based on others' news stories - is not anything approaching news.
It's just shit. It's the equivalent of the pub bore crapping on over a pint of mild to anyone who will listen.
(And, yes, I certainly do include this vanity driven, executive wank of a project I am running within that description.)
Listen up fucktards, the web is just a method of delivery. Simple as that. Like paid fors, then frees, newsletters and fanzines. Fuck it, even graffiti.
You do realise that Google alerts are real stories which have to be written by an actual reporter before you get them?
Journalism is about getting news and telling others about it. Knowing your patch and going out with a notebook is how it is done.
The web is not the future of news gathering, it is just the paperboy.

A sad indictment

2009-07-15T21:02:00.000+01:00

I looked at a job advertisement recently.
It was looking for a boss for two paid for titles and I was interested. My background is frees and nationals, so I have never really had much scope to see if what I preach - news sells - actually can work in this day and age.
So I did a little research. The titles both weeklies were selling fairly well in this climate with 17k and 13k subs. Circulation was down 7.1 and 3.1 per cent year on year, so tragic but not yet terminal - if it can be stopped.
My juices flowing, I looked at the accompanying website to see what alleged 'nationals-follow-us-up' kind of stories they were running.
After five minutes I realised their idea of stories was very, very different to mine.
My idea of a local paper is one that even a stranger to the town would find something interesting in it to read ie it would contain good stories.
Their website was mainly 'community' toss. No real court work, no investigative stuff, in fact barely a news story at all. Most of it smelled like it had started out as a bad press release from an overpaid PR wanker.
My spider sense really started tingling when I looked at the staffing levels.
Four reporters, a sports guy, a deputy editor and, overseeing the empire, a group editor.
For two paid fors.
Allegedly, the company's jewel-in-the-crown, market-leading paid fors, to boot.
How can that be allowed to happen? Surely at the most basic level, each of these paid fors should have four reporters alone just to give them a sporting chance.
Four reporters, not allowing for sickness and holidays, writing for TWO paid fors, covering two areas.
So two each. Presumably producing just enough 'stories' to fill the largish news page sizes you would expect from a paid for title.
The ad said the job was 'very hard work'. It should have read 'impossibly hard' and should have advertised for a captain to pilot a sinking ship rather than an editor expected to boost sales.
If this is the way this company, which apparently starts with a J and ends with ohnstone, treats two of its top titles, then it is no wonder our industry is in such a perilous state.
People will buy newspapers if there is something in them that they want to read. FACT.
By investing in editorial, with real wages and realistic staffing levels, you can create a product people WILL buy. FACT
The thirst for knowledge has not diminished. But unfortunately neither has the greed of the newspaper whores that rule our worlds. FACT.
Cunts.

The advent of the modern age

2009-07-15T20:18:00.000+01:00

Email is one of the most useful tools in the modern world and, to journalists, it can be quite simply a lifesaver.
Pics and quotes in an instant, records of conversations saved. No more digging through notebooks to find a phone number or fact.
But it is also becoming massively overused.
One of my journalists barely picks up the phone. Instead of calling, he bangs out an email and pings it. Almost all of his stories are done using email back and forths.
This is clearly bullshit.
Firstly, how in fuck's name does he even know his email has been read? (OK, I realise you can ask for a response when it's picked up but you cannot guarantee the missive's recipient is actually the one who read it).
Secondly, what about the length of time all this takes? Most stories, especially the back of the bookers or downpage specials, can be cracked out after a couple of five minute phone calls. Emails are hit and miss. It is a presumption that every one of your contacts is sitting by a machine waiting for the ping ping sound of a new email.
Thirdly, what about building relationships, finding out who is useful and who is not. A two minute phone conversation can often be the start of a beautiful relationship. While you are on you can even - gasp - ask if anything else is going on.
But the worst thing about email is that PRs fucking love email. They demand a list of written questions 90 per cent of the time on tricky stories. It means replies can be sanitised, pored over, spun and signed off.
Responses to serious, important stories can be fully given the press office bullshit treatment rather than snatching the brilliant off the cuff comments journalists should be getting to expose these overpaid wankers.
Email is a useful tool, not a new way to do our job.
Talk to people. Get contacts. Write real stories. Not the ones they WANT you to write!
Pick up the fucking phone, you lazy cunts.

Leave me alone HR

2009-07-15T19:29:00.000+01:00

I hate form filling so, naturally, I fucking hate HR people.
I hate the whole concept of a department in a company which just deals with the employees. Isn't that the boss's job?
Why do we need another layer of bureaucracy to tell me that one of my reporters has used up all their holiday time. I know, HR bitch, I have a fucking wall planner and I can count.
I hate PC behaviour more than I hate HR, but HR breeds PC behaviour.
A journalist's job is not a normal one.
I will send my reporters on a regular basis on death knocks to, for example, ask the grieving mother of a dead tot how she is feeling on the same day her scumbag boyfriend's Rotty used little Terry, 1, as a dog chew. Oh, and don't forget the picture.
But if I call a colleague a 'cunt' for being a cunt by getting a name wrong in copy then I could, under HR's fucked up rules, face action.
I once had a job interview where a woman, and they are always women, from HR sat in and conducted the questioning with the editor sitting like a spare prick in the corner.
What the fuck! I had to explain to her what a splash was, she had no idea what the PCC stood for and when I talked about how I would develop the paper she all but glazed over.
But luckily she had a questionnaire for me. It had questions like 'Can you describe a time when you have resolved a problem between departments'.
My favourite - and the moment I knew I wasn't getting the job was 'Can you describe a time when there was a conflict with a peer and how it was resolved'
I told a graphic story of how a reporter in an old newsroom had hurled a chair at his editor after a very frank discussion of his - pathetic - news list that week.
HR bird looked appalled. 'How was it resolved,' she gasped. I told her there was an awful lot of shouting and threats and then we all went for a beer.
I got my coat.
But it illustrates my point. Our jobs are very stressful and in the course of one day I will have a row, often quite verbal, with one of my reporters. It can be because they have made a simple mistake that takes me precious minutes to resolve on deadline day. But mostly it's because their copy looks like a cat vomited a chewed-up dictionary on it.
Discussions in the office are often robust and rightly so. In a week I will hear lengthy conversations about murder, baby rape, normal rape, bestiality, mugging, paedophilia, assaults, bank robberies, racism, sexism, ageism, heightism, and cherubism .
The story about the autistic kids on a bus becomes the 'mental bus' story; the tale about the dead guy found chopped up in a freezer is now 'ice pop' or 'freezer geezer'; the nib about the fucking bullshit MD's mate's business puff as the 'cunt's mate's bullshit puff nib'.
HR would have a field day with my comments to reporters about their work or the language we all use to describe each other.
But without this release, without the ability to say what we like without fear of reprimand, we would become neutered.
There is nothing a journalist likes better than a discussion about 'what if' and the more gruesome or un -PC the better in my book.
HR also does not solve problems it creates them.
For instance I have dozens of work experience people begging for me to treat them like slaves for no money (some of them have actually given up real, proper paid jobs to try out at this game).
My usual MO was to email the lucky ones, ask when they want to come in and book them for a week or two. Then, when their day came, I would be pleasantly/unpleasantly surprised with a call from reception to announce the arrival of the work ex I had completely forgotten about.
On good weeks I would have triple booked so I would be forced to pimp them out to other desks.
NOW, however, the nosey cunts in HR have realised that we get unpaid labour in without telling them.
So in comes a new regime -or protocol as they call it - which means me having to inquire about silly things like their name, age, address, next of kin, medical conditions and suchlike.
This form must also go to the spods in IT so they can set them up with a temporary password for use on the 19th century steam powered computer reserved for the work ex to write nibs on.
(I used to let them use my sign-on because, as it's an INTRANET system, there is fuck all chance of them every doing anything remotely saboteurial with it as they would have to break into the building in the dead of night to do something crazy. Like steal my facepainting pic cap and sell it to the nationals or something!)
So, because I hate form filling, I would rather not bother with the work ex any more. So thanks HR for wrecking about 52 dreams a year you sticky-beaked mother fuckers.
HR stay the fuck out of the newsroom you cunts.
Without you life would not be any better or any worse.
Basically you have a non job.

The nationals part 1

2009-07-13T21:16:00.000+01:00

Almost any reporter can work on the nationals - for a week's work experience.
But to stay on the nationals for any length of time takes something more. Something special.
It's hard to define exactly what that 'more' is but most of it comes down to sacrifice, plain and simple.
Let's say, for arguments sake, reporting for the nationals is the very pinnacle of this profession.
(Now I know that isn't true. If us local boys had a quid for every one of our stories that had been ripped off word for word and appeared in the nationals a week later we would probably have a big pile of quids. But bear with me.)
I reckon about ten per cent of all people who start working as reporters end up working shifts on the nationals. (It may be higher but I am considering the drop out rate just from our own area.)
I further estimate that only ten percent of THOSE actually end up working for the nationals in either a long term contract position or as a staffer.
(I am limiting this to news - all other areas are merely professing to be reporters).
There has to be a reason for this enormous drop out rate and I think it comes down to the reporter realising they either do not have what it takes to do the job or they don't want what it comprises.
The first thing you learn when you become a news reporter for the nationals is that you now have NO life outside of news.
When I was a casual on a national, if I got out of work after 8.30pm it was considered a day off. A 12 hour day was the norm but 16 hours was more regular than it should be.
What you could almost always rely on was the call from the news desk with your tasks for the next day.
Now, this call could come at any time. Whether you were in the pub, cinema, theatre, shagging. Whatever, whenever. They did not care. The night desk attitude was 'if we are working so are you' regardless of the hours already spent in the office/on the road.
That dreaded call could send you anywhere and you always had to be there 'first thing' (before 8am). If you got the call you had a mixture of dread and excitement. If you didn't you often stayed up late wondering why not?
The last thing the desk shouted at you as you left the office was 'make sure your mobile is on'. It is very rarely off since. (Some hacks would even email the boss to let them know if they were going to be in a bar which had no mobile signal and reporters were actively encouraged to let the desk know where in the world they would be on holiday in case it kicked off nearby.)
I remember one job I was sent on (at 11pm) where I had to be up at 4.30am and, after it turned out to be bollocks at 5.30pm, the desk still asked me to 'pop in the office on your way home'. I was three hours from the office!
I often talk about being aware of what is going on around you and the importance of making and keeping contacts.
There is no greater reason to have these skills than going out on your own against the other national reporters.
Imagine story. Dog chews up nipper at granny's house. You have all seen it before or maybe even been sent out on the story.
Can you imagine the pressure of being called at 2pm to get to the house 50 miles away to a job you know every national paper either already knows about or - in the worst case - is already there.
Excuses don't matter here. If you don't have a family member, chat and a pic of said mauled kiddy by 5.30pm you are fucked.
Adrenaline courses through your veins and stress starts to suffocate your being. Until I got to the address and surveyed the scene I mainly just felt sick.
If you are aware and clued up you have already started making calls as you head to the patch. Local paper, freelance snapper, copper you met at that federation meeting, RSPCA, local plod, ambulance service, other national hacks who you know are the district men.
You become an information whore. Willing to sell your first born for a salient fact or snippet of gossip. Most of the time you only make these calls to find out how far behind you are. If you are lucky most hacks are the same as you - shitting themselves and wishing for the ability to teleport to the address. If you are unlucky, they are so smug you know they have the collect and the chat in the bag and are searching for more.
Regardless, you need to produce a lead and pic and the next few hours just pass in a blur of phone calls, door knocks and more phone calls.
If you know who has what, you can get it. If you know nothing you are the chump getting a strip torn off them the next day by the news ed.
By the way, this is the same every single day if you are on the road.
Still fancy it?
My missus (ex) used to ask why I put up with the incredibly rude phone calls from work at 11pm. It's just the way it is, I would say.
It was the same thing I said when weekends away were scuppered by Friday night murders or holidays in Greece were interrupted by sinking ferries. Dinners became suppers while hunting for case studies of cancer victims for a late breaking splash; drinks out with friends were ruined by a trilling mobile with subs questions; arguments were always about why I was never home.
And all the while I was hooked to it like a smack-crazed masochist with ink in my veins and a typewriter for a heart. The worse the request, the more I moaned. But once I had overcome any feeling of self sacrifice or loss I was back in the game. I loved it. Every story became 'The World's Biggest Story' and after I made it as a staffer it got more and more addictive.
It's fucked up my life in so many ways, but I wouldn't change it for the world.
Now ask yourself are you still game?

A brief history of (my) news

2009-07-10T21:06:00.001+01:00

I didn't always want to be a journalist.
In fact to tell the truth it never even crossed my mind.
It was only when I saw an ad in my local paper looking for someone who 'wouldn't mind stitching up their friends' I became remotely interested. I started as a three day a week trainee and, over a period of years, progressed from junior to senior to news ed to boss under a series of absolutely brilliant teachers and colleagues (and an even larger number of absolute shitbags!).
We weren't offered NCTJ training at that time mostly due to the fact that virtually no-one in the office had actually taken any official qualifications.
The newspaper company I worked for 'oop North' was relatively small and was one of quite a few independent set ups. Big companies had not yet started hoovering up everything in their sight.
Our grande fromage was a newsman through and through and he reflected that in his attitude to our newspapers.
Readers first, news, leisure, sport second, advertisers third.
An often disgruntled advertiser would pull a paid advertisement following a bad report about his company only to return a few months later because his ads weren't being read anywhere else.
Our papers were hard, investigative, confrontational and often shocking.
But they were a cracking read and every one of us loved them.
We all lived on the patch, we all went out on the patch. Night jobs weren't a chore, they were an excuse for us to arrive en masse and bleed the place dry of stories before hitting the pub.
We spent an inordinately long time in pubs.
I learned how to properly drink AND be a reporter - often writing snatched story tips down using the pub pen and a few sheets of receipt roll or a ripped beermat (I even, on occasions, was forced to use toilet paper).
Our network of contacts in the town we worked stretched across all walks of life.
Cops and solicitors, teachers and council workers, criminals and junkies, we met and befriended them all.
We worked as journalists and we lived as journalists and it was a brilliant time.
Our papers were great because of it - our personal lives and relationships maybe not so much!
We did undercover work, secret filming (before tiny video cameras), blags and stunts.
We forced executives to resign and put crooks in jail and held authority to account at every turn.
The readers loved it. When we mentioned who we worked for, some would make that 'oooooh' breathing-in sound. I kid you not.
(This may sound terribly rose tinted specs and all that and, I admit it mostly is. We also moaned like motherfuckers, put up with terrible management decisions, worked like slaves and were paid like shit. But we really did do some excellent work.)
I miss those days and I try to recreate them as much as I can. I try and have fun with this job as much as I can and let my troops do the same.
I refuse to stop swearing or use the word 'line manager' in the newsroom. I regularly let staff bunk off if they can make up a decent enough excuse. We flog our best stuff and keep the cash a secret.
I don't mind my best workers coming in when they like. And I reward good stories with half days. I hate HR and form filling, so tell them the best part of fuck all about what I do.
I only demand a few things. Bring me the best stories, work hard when you have to, destroy the opposition and don't whine.
But most of all enjoy it.

House of cards

2009-07-10T20:20:00.000+01:00

MPs must be loving the Guardian stories about NOTW phone hackers.
This shit will run and run and I am certain many news organisations will use future stories about some of the more dubious journalistic practices as an exercise in promoting their own bullshit moralities.
But once the full scale of lying, cheating, hacking and blagging starts to unravel, Fleet Street will truly earn its mantle of the Street of Shame again.
When I was working on the nationals, everyone was at it. (Disclaimer for any copppers - NOT ME OFFICER!). Using professional blaggers to get information out of official bodies was practically a weekly occurrence. Hotel bills, Friends and Family numbers, Car regs, addresses, phone numbers, even MPs expenses! Everything could be got - at a price.
The phone hacking lark was simplicity itself. Basically most idiots back in the day never reset their remote access passwords on their mobile phones so you just keyed in factory setting numbers like 0000 or 1234 when the ansaphone message kicked in and lo and behold...Every message on the phone revealed.
(I REPEAT, OFFICER, I NEVER ACTUALLY DID THIS NOR DO I KNOW ANYONE WHO DID).
It will be fun to watch this unfold and every major national paper is likely to get dragged into it but what actual purpose does it serve?
Journalists often lie, cheat, beg, borrow, and steal for a cracking story.
But is using subterfuge really that bad to expose the porkie pies of others, especially celebrities. Those vacuous arseholes who only want publicity when it serves their own purposes but, in the words of Dad's Army, 'don't like it up 'em'.
I agree that it may got out of hand over at News Int's factory farming of mobiles (ALLEGEDLY) but, Christ, good intel is still good intel wherever it comes from.
Many people say what gives us the right to appoint ourselves the moral bastions of this country. But I would argue that because most good journalists are essentially amoral - it goes beyond what we think is right or wrong.
It just comes down to providing readers the best possible range of stories using whatever methods are necessary. If the readers then get hot under the collar about the issue or subject then so be it - but at least they know.
It will be a sad day for the general public - our beloved readers - if journalists have to start telling only the truth to get hold of stories.

Treading water

2009-07-08T19:57:00.000+01:00

I feel like I am sitting at work learning nothing and doing nothing.
When I started here I got a real thrill about my position. New people, new patch, new experiences.
I have met a group of reporters who I really, really like. Who I consider my family. A real team now.
Since being here I believe I have made a real difference. Made a mark by bringing the news side of things up to a high standard. Settled old disputes by ensuring a fair, accurate and balanced approach, yet still being able to bring the hammer down on those who deserve it.
The paper's news content is certainly unsurpassed among the editions brought out in my little 'news hub' and we kick the paid for competition's arse on a weekly basis despite their overwhelming number of hacks.
I stripped out my papers of the past editor's furniture and ideas within a few weeks of settling in. It's ony natural to exorcise your editions.
Only those features that have commercial value or are my ober fuhrer's favourites remain.
In New Year my team of eight met to discuss future plans over the three papers. Full of hope and ideas, we came up with some pretty decent new sections.
(Yes, of course arrogance plays a factor in my assessment but have you ever met a good, humble boss?)
Any cunt can fill a newspapers with shit and quite a few in this industry do.
Creating a good balanced, interesting newspaper is a mixture of art, skill and bloody good luck. The few weeks a year I get it absolutely right, I leave with a massive natural high.
But recently I feel as if I am just passing time here.
With the recession, redundancies, and recruitment freezes we have been left slimmed down and with little hope over the last six months
Now my team slogs it out on a weekly basis. We fill our pages, but a lot of my early passion is gone. News stories I would normally get excited about and develop are just page leads.
Investigations or long term tales/campaigns are scrapped in favour of easy to write leads.
The sections we came up with are on hold. Our staffing levels, down to six, are dire. It's mainly pride, stupidity and masochism keeping me going. I didn't get into this job to be average. I want to be among the best.
In journalism the hours are lousy and the pay is shit. Accepted.
The only thing that keeps me going in this industry is the challenge.
Maybe it's time for another one.

Fuck facepainting.....

2009-07-08T19:21:00.000+01:00

I am having a real hard time with my understanding of 'community news'. Just what the fuck does it mean to be a community newspaper.
My idea of a community newspaper is one that tells people in the area stuff they don't know.
It should inform, educate, entertain and, at times, purposefully shock. Wake the fuckers up and provoke debate.
So what is the true value of traditional 'community' stories.
I am talking about kids at fetes with their faces painted; heads shaved; mountain climbers; marathon runners; walks for life, cancer, amnesia or AIDS; photo ops with the mayor, MPs or council leaders; self promoting crap from businesses 'who care'; school plays; fashion shows; fetes; galas; flowers shows and the hateful cheque presentation.
THIS IS NOT NEWS!!!!!! It is shit. Every day I get phone calls, emails, requests from people with these 'stories'. I sorely want to tell them to fuck off (sometimes I do).
Now, I clearly understand the commercial side. Kids pics in papers sell copies, sell photos. But this is not the point I am making about the news value.
Do readers who weren't involved or don't know the individuals really give a shit? Or do they flick across this tedious upchuck like I do every time I look at a local paper?
Who really cares about it except for the people who were actually there to witness it? (and presumably took their own pics to boot).
It strikes me as rather than serving the community, it is an exercise in self promotion for those involved. (Schools now NEED to attract new pupils thus explaining the increased numbers of 'great positive community stories'.)
If you want to raise cash for charity, just do it. Why do you need recognition for it?
If you want to get in the local paper for doing it try getting some originality.....monkey wrestling, naked sudoku, recreate the egg eating scene from Cool Hand Luke....I would even take a genuine bath of beans.
The worst thing, I am forced to run this dribble and I fucking hate it. If I see the word 'fun' in a headline or intro again this week I am liable to kill.
I only run this tosh in order to fill holes that can't be filled with real, meaningful stories because I don't have enough staff to produce the copy required.
Now, don't misunderstand what I am saying. A little of these events can lift a paper. A nice bit of balance. A great picture from one of these events can make a page sing.
But due to management cuts I am finding myself having less quality control over the events I cover.
Instead of a great pic of kids playing among bubbles or a genuinely interesting original charity event I am running the most pathetic, self taken out of focus shots of the dullest order.
We control the leads we run, why not the down pages and fillers too?
The only cheque presentation shot I want to see is when the over sized piece of cards slips out of the Mayor's hand and decapitates one of the simpering children.

Release the press release

2009-07-07T22:01:00.000+01:00

Information is everywhere. It's almost a total overload. With the advent of the internet I now get more than 200 emails a day and, after I junk the spam or the irrelevant shit, I still end up with dozens of potential 'stories'.

In reality very few emails are trouser tightening exclusives. Most are PR bull shit; others charity I've-climbed-a-mountain-shaved-my-head-presented-a-cheque-bathed-in-beans kind of nonsense you have seen a million times before; the rest crazies with baffling tales of council/police/hospital corruption.

Press releases should go in the bin without exception (let them pay for an ad if it's that important).
So where do we get our stories from?
We have to remember the basics. The more people you know, the more stories you know (or can stand up).

By relying on whatever comes through the door (or inbox) to fill your paper you are doing your readers a disservice.

You should be out in your communities finding out what real people are thinking, what is happening on the streets.

It is too easy to think you are writing a paper for the people by churning out endless police, council or heath authority releases which look like real stories.

If you really had your fingers on the pulse these releases should become a healthy string of nibs on page 8 rather than the page leads they often are.

And before you blame your workload or the fact you don't get out of your office, think about the reason why.

Could it be that you are too busy writing up the chod to go out and get the real stories?

Evolve or Die (But remember the basics)

2009-07-07T21:33:00.000+01:00

Evolve or die has been my motto since I started in this business.

Journalism and journalists have to move on. I accept this and, with some exceptions, I relish this.

Some of you young 'uns may not believe this but I advocated the use of the internet in my office when it was in its infancy.

My boss dismissed it as useless. "It's just for porn," he declared. This was in the early to mid 90s.
By the late 90s I was working on a major national daily and I was telling experienced hacks how to search online for the subjects of stories. I explained search engines as like a major extension of the cuts library. They had not a clue.

I still push the internet as one of journalism's greatest tools. I am Generation X. I had a mobile phone before any of my friends. It was a brick and had an actual aerial. I was cool.

Now I continually ask my reporters (and these are supposedly Generation Next reporters) if they have googled the subjects in the story. Flesh on the bones and all that malarkey. I normally get a response in the negative. Do you do it?

I like new technology and I embrace internet journalism because I know at some point in the future I will be uploading this blog into a node in my head so that your cranial nodes can read it.

But new technology cannot replace old skills.

Even I laughed when old hacks told how they typed out copy on a typewriter (non-electric) to be handed to their editor on a sheet of fullscap. He would make the relevant changes (on paper) or put it on an actual spike where it would remain forever more.

Hot metal and hundreds of production staff. Things have changed.

But the job really hasn't. Journalism is the obtaining, simplifying and spreading of information. However it is distributed.

Don't forget free papers are quite recent inventions. They are just a different method of distributing the product. Same with t'internet.

Embrace it, move with it, but don't get lost in it.

Why we are fucked......................

2009-07-01T22:20:00.000+01:00

Some of you may have already seen this, others should pay close attention.
The seven biggest media companies with most to lose set up an organisation called the Local Media Alliance.
It represents the worst of this business in the form of Trinity Mirror, Johnston Press Newsquest/Gannett, Northcliffe, Guardian Media Group, Archant, and DC Thomson (do they do the Beano?).
I imagine you either work or have worked for one of these newspaper companies. They represent all that is greedy and evil in this world.
They hired a chump called Roger Parry to head their bullshit cabal.
He wrote this: "Journalists are often busy doing things the audience no longer want. The traditional professional output is no longer valued by readers. Much, but not all, of local news gathering, feature production and photography are better done by enthusiastic amateurs for next to nothing.
"Want a critique of local rubbish collection policies? Ask a local resident for 500 words. It matters to them and they are more connected than a journalist sent over in a taxi. Want passionate reporting of local sports? Ask the fans. There will remain a vital role for trained journalists in investigations, analysis and quality control.
"But it will need fewer of them. They will need new skills of assembling user-generated content including video, digital pictures and audio."

So the head of a consortium of the companies that publish 72 per cent of all local newspapers in this country thinks -
a) journalists are out of touch, not valued and too busy
b) amateurs can do it better and cheaper
c) People actually watch the shitty videos we knock out
d) we travel around in taxis

Read his sentences again.
Then read the utter shit your online community correspondents spew out (if you haven't got 'em yet you will, I guarantee it)

This man represents seven of the largest organisations in this business.

This is why we are fucked.

ps We wouldn't need taxis (read public transport) if the arseholes hadn't decided that having offices outside the area was a fucking master stroke. I used to walk to jobs from my High Street offices Parry, you absolute cunt.

Questions

2009-07-01T21:27:00.000+01:00

What is about reporters and asking questions?
When I edit copy and notice there is no age/job/address for a person I naturally ask the reporter - why not?
Quick as a flash they come back with 'they didn't tell me'.
I respond 'But did you actually ask them?' and generally a bashful junior (sometimes senior) hacklet comes back with the answer 'umm....no'.
Our job is to ask questions. If you don't know something ask. If you struggle to hear an answer, ask again. Ask, ask, ask. The more you ask questions, the better you get at writing stories and thinking about what your tale needs.
Some questions seem too personal or too intrusive. Ask them anyway. The more natural your questions sound, the more likely the interviewee is to answer them.
I have asked some hideously insensitive questions. I remember live on Sky TV asking a senior politician's spin doctor whether the minister was going to make it through the night after an accident. The weeping PR was forced to admit it was unlikely thus giving the whole pack that night's headlines.
Did I feel bad? Of course not. It was the question everyone wanted to know the answer to.
But someone has to ask it.
Many times I have heard journalists interview over the phone and had to scribble furious notes to push under their nose when they pussy foot around the issues.
Most of it is experience, but you need to start asking those awkward questions now.
Start with checking the spelling of every name, age, address and occupation and work your way up from there....................

What it's like to be a real local reporter

2009-07-01T21:23:00.001+01:00

This man is a legend....and you know what, I have never met him. But this short piece says it all.....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8015245.stm

Feedback

2009-07-01T20:38:00.001+01:00

We gag for comments on our own newspaper web sites. We love it when you get a hot one. I am also a media whore and so if you agree, disagree or simply hate my guts and want to tell me to get fucked. Please leave a comment on any of the topics.
I'd love to hear your experiences in this golden age of media. Let it out. Let it all out. It's actually quite cathartic. (Look it up you simpletons)
I am also quite happy to tear you a new one if you fancy a ruck.

How journalism actually works

2009-07-01T19:42:00.000+01:00

It's a fairly simple concept our job really. We find out about shit, we prove said shit, we simplify it and write about it. We ain't psychics. We rely wholly on others telling us things or us literally falling over stories in the streets where we work.
I mentioned contacts in a previous post and there is no greater asset to a hack than a good contact.
It helps to live on the patch you report on. It really helps to have been born there and gone to school there and to have married and had kids there and ultimately to still live there 30 years on. But not everyone is perfect.
Newspaper companies however have a different idea. They think stories come packaged via email. That the general public will inform you when something major happens on the high street. That grieving parents are only too happy to drive 40 miles to give you a collect. That the courts cover themselves. Council meetings are all webcast. And basically who needs to be in the local area to call themselves a local paper.
A large number of newspaper companies have withdrawn their local offices to industrial estates to churn out dozens of papers. I am in one of them and it sucks hairy balls.
Every day I have to weigh up whether it is worth sending a reporter out to cover a job properly - and risk a one hour minimum journey time - or get them to do it over the phone in a third of the time.
I know what I would prefer, but this is news gathering in the noughties. Pardon me for thinking young journalists might be able to actually meet people face to face.
One of the worst examples of the news hub is Trinity Mirror and its disgraceful Fort Dunlop set up. It's like a vacuum sucking up every newspaper office in a hundred mile radius.
They actually think that they can fool the readers into producing umpteen local papers from a central 'warehouse' of news. I saw an ad recently for some sort of hybrid news ed/web mong/ page planner. This creature was expected to edit and place stories into one of the multitude titles they produce at this concentration camp of news without being in charge of one of them.
How can that work? I edit three papers. It took me two months to learn which area was covered by which paper. More than a year on I am still discovering what makes my readers really tick in each edition.
Each patch is totally different. And within each of my three patches there are a myriad of different wards all with separate identities. I struggle to get it right each week, and I actually visit all of my areas on a regular basis, in my own time, and live in one. It is important to understand how your readers live and what their towns are like.
So how can a TM Fort Dunlop news beast focus and get it right on a weekly basis?
I say they can't. I say the products they bring out will be starved of all the things their readers want.
A local knowledge. An idea of what is important. A sense of community within the pages. Some stories that reflect their area.
And once again the money grubbing whores that run the majority of newspapers in this country fuck it all again for cash.

ps if you are a Fort Dunlopite and you disagree get in touch. I welcome your take on it.

pps Your bosses call you a 'combined editorial content-gathering team'. They are basically calling you cunts.

Why do I do this?

2009-06-29T21:14:00.002+01:00

I often ask this question myself.
Why the long hours, crap relationships, flirtation with alcoholism and massive stress? Why put up with the fatigue, the sleepless nights dreaming of blank page and total lack of a meaningful social life? Why the hatred and loathing that poisons my life? Why, damn you, why??
Because I believe it is the most important thing to do with my life.
Scrape away the bull shit, the egos, the arrogance and lies, the cheap shots, the made up shit and the nonsense and we come to some kind of reality. A bizarre simple truth to it all.
Think about all the times you have written a story that you get thanks for. Not awards or plaudits from fellow journalists, not praise from PRs or officials for running their shit. But genuine heartfelt thanks.
From a pensioner for sorting out her meals on wheels problem; from a community group for saving their meeting room; from the parents of a ill child who needed help finding a donor.
These people are why I still do this job and it's not from some sort of bloated self importance. The public rely on us to use our newspaper's power, its respect, its influence and its anger to fight their corner. This is important at whatever level we do it. Whatever little we can do to help.
I am not trying to be pious about this. I am a stone cold, horrible selfish cunt most of the time. People who know me, know I love hard stories. The grittier the better. Mayhem and mutilation. I don't get excited by the thought of helping people nor do I crave it. I often underestimate the 'weak' leads and downplay their importance in the news list.
But regardless of how much I scoff at the 'community news' I recognise the massive impact it has on our local areas. A good local paper is its champion. Often it is the last port of call.
This is why I do this. And this is why what we do is worth more than the fuckers in charge will ever know.

Why I love Ray Tindle

2009-06-29T19:36:00.000+01:00

I've never worked for Ray Tindle, nor on any of his titles. I have never met the man or even read one of his papers.
So why do I love him (apart from his Werthers Originals grandad-like looks)?
I love his attitude.
He clearly has a massive love of print newspapers and believes in local papers. He set up the whole thing after the war and has worked and, more importantly, survived and thrived.
He doesn't strike me - and I could be utterly wrong, so apologies - as someone driven solely by profit.
His most recent statement about the recession made me want to cuddle him. He basically said that when this recession is over he will still be standing albeit in a different market. He has seen recessions before and he, and newspapers in general, have come out of them.
Just read this statement from the Tindle chief exec -
“I am sure we could have saved money across the group by having centralised subbing, editorial or whatever, but we’ve kept each title very local with local editors and subs and reporters as much as possible. They know most about the community they serve.”
Wow.
Now compare this attitude to our, and other, much bigger players in this industry who are so convinced we are doomed they currently are hacking and slashing their way out of business. They are so blinkered they STILL - after all these years of cuts - can't see what is going wrong.
Well let them reap the whirlwind. Let them fall flat on their arses. Many have warned them of the long term effect of their systematic genocide of journalism, but the short term arse-holes who are in control of our livelihoods think they know best. After all who needs news in a newspaper?
Let us hope it is someone with the vision and drive, love and passion of this 82-yearold that ends up buying my title when the twunterated cuntoids who own us inevitably go bust.

I would be apathetic but I can't be arsed

2009-06-29T19:00:00.000+01:00

It's easy to be not bothered.
I have tried to write on this topic twice and both times I have stopped because I couldn't be arsed. There was something else to do. A new email popped into my basket. Someone texted me. Eastenders came on. I tried to contract that piggy cold by licking bacon. Whatever.
Procrastination is one of a journalists worst habits. I recognise it as being mine.
In order to combat the art of time wasting you need to force two traits into your working day.
Enthusiasm and motivation are the greatest weapons in your arsenal. When I worked for a national paper the motto was 'walk the extra mile and make the extra call'. And it works.
(Their other motto was 'work the fuckers to death and see which ones survive' but that is for another day.)
Motivating yourself is massively important. I had to motivate myself every day when I was freelance and some days it was fucking hard. (Usually the days after a post commission session.)
But motivation doesn't just have to be about slogging your guts out.
It might be getting in and cracking on with your days work at your allotted start time not gazing at Facebook. (Didn't you already look at that before you went to bed, loser?).
Or actually spending the first couple of hours at work actually writing that lead or making those cals you you promised youself yesterday that you would do. Knock out the nibs early doors and you don't have to do them later. Same with pic caps, nibs, fillers, shorts, down pages or whatever you name the shit we have to write before we get to do real journalism.
Ring the boring councillor, he may have a tale this time.
Try getting to work half an hour before you should start. It will make a massive difference to your day.
Procrastination causes stress. You create an inflated sense of work load when you put stuff off in the morning. You stil have to do it all in the afternoon plus your news list is only likely to get longer - especially in this new internet weeklies-becoming-dailies age. Remember your boss wants the tales in your notebook and, once he/she knows about them, he/she will come after them with a vengeance.
Don't forget he/she has a job to do as well and time and deadlines wait for no man.
Give him what he wants and you will have plenty of time in the afternoon to Twitter your Facebook buddies while Beboing the fuck out of nonces.
Likewise having enthusiasm doesn't mean walking into the office with a fake grin stapled to your chops or going up to the boss every ten minutes asking for something to do. It can be as simple as not sighing when you get your fifth dull picture caption of the day to write around. It might be offering to help out when a big story is breaking without being asked. It certainly is avoiding curling your lip or muttering under your breath when you get asked to cover a council meeting at the last minute because the duty reporter is not ill. Get the fuck over yourself.
All a boss wants to do is give jobs to reporters and move on. He doesn't want a debate about its merits, he doesn't want to hear about why you don't want to do it and he definitely doesn't want to hear you bitch on about how you get all the crap jobs.
Pick up the baton and get on with it. Do a good job and he will give you more to do. Eventually that more will become the decent tales and not just fillers and down pages.
If you sit in the corner of the room muttering about shit jobs, I guarantee your boss will pile more shit upon you just to see the whining look on your face. I do. It makes me laugh.
Enthusiasm is infectious. If you are upbeat and game for it. You will find your colleagues attitude starts to change. Its morale boosting effects are evident. Who wants to hang around a news room full of moaning bitches crapping on about low pay, long hours and charity picture captions?
Save that for the pub.

Poachers turned gamekeepers

2009-06-29T18:38:00.000+01:00

It's easy to see why journalists turned press officers are so smug.
They earn a shit load more than us, they work less hours than us, they control the flow of information to the press, and they get a chance to get one over on us on a daily basis.
I would feel smug.
The one tiny piece of information that allows me to tolerate these useless, lying, toss merchants is that I know they couldn't hack it when it came to doing our jobs.
The majority became PRs because they were so feeble at being journalists they had no choice.
What other job can a useless hack do? (Except working for a politician).
However, when they enter the profession they suddenly become super hacks (especially when they move to a new area) lording it over the local press pack, telling tales of their days as a jobbing journo. And then proceeding to tell you how to do your job.
Make sure you google them. Or phone the paper they came from. Any information about past indiscretions pays dividends in the end.
Watch for them dropping anonymous comments on anti-establishment stories on your websites. We have caught a couple and that works wonders in the old blackmail department.
Why do I loathe press officers so much? Could it be their attitude? Their refusal to provide us with the basic details? Their failure to let us know when there are major events breaking until a day later? Could it be the idea they try and give that if we upset them they can punish us?
Or their inability to understand why we are reluctant to tell them all the details of the story in the fear they tell everyone else?
Just because they are the newsroom equivalent of the school kids who get their head flushed down the toilet, is that any reason to be so petty and bureaucratic?
Or maybe this is the reason they are perfect for the job in the first place.

Suicide ain't painless

2009-06-25T12:35:00.000+01:00

Today I witnessed the ultimate death of my newspapers.
The money hungry whores who pay themselves vastly inflated salaries to run this company have signed the death warrant and now it is just a matter of time before the advertisers carry out their wishes.
In their infinite wisdom, my so-called bosses decided to reduce pagination over summer in order to cut costs. So far so sensible. It is a season where newspapers are always likely to make a loss. I expected to lose a few editorial pages as part of this drop in size and was actually looking forward to taking the foot off the gas a little and having a bit of fun.
The plans for my new editions landed on my desk this morning and to be honest I felt like walking out there and then.
Instead of a few back of the book pages being dropped, the fucktards in charge have fundamentally destroyed the layout of my papers.
Full page ads are normally forbidden from the front of the book in order to give our dear readers the impression what we bring out is actually a newspaper. Now they litter my early pages.
Back of the book far from being pared down is obliterated.
I proudly boast a post bag that fills itself thrice-fold on a weekly basis, such is the debate and respect our newspapers hold among the public.
I could devote two full pages a week to them and often try to. Instead under our ‘new look’ streamlined edition I get a half. Barely enough for a quarter of my post bag......
A new ad appears on the front page as well just to add to my growing sense of fury.
I have about a quarter of the space I traditionally had with page shapes that look as though they have been put in as an afterthought to pad out the lovely advertisements.
It’s a fucking joke and it is taking all my composure to not walk in and smash the MDs head in with my lap top.
This is a sure fire way to destroy all of the hard work, respect, and kudos, my team and I have put into this paper making it, what I think is, a bloody good weekly read.
You may as well shut the fucker down today. These short term fuckers have no interest in newspapers or what they are actually for. They just care about the bottom line and making their monthly figures look good.
Over the last six months this company has instigated a raft of cost cutting measures which have all added to the intense pressure of this job. But we have coped but this latest initiative is one money grubbing policy too far.
I’m no commie and I understand times are hard and company’s have to make money but this is fucking ridiculous.
To have such little respect for our readers is what really makes me laugh. Do these utter fucking management idiots think readers won’t notice that it only takes them a few minutes to flick through the tiny amount of editorial we can give them as opposed to the 20+ good sized pages we spill blood each week packing full of news and features before.
The readers and advertisers found out about our 'cost-cutting' distribution cuts quick enough. Especially when paperboys got sacked by the dozen.
The cunts claim this is a short term measure. I think they are full of shit. I think they are lying rat faced weasels who should fucking kill themselves.
The paper will become a laughing stock in a few short weeks, just another free sheet chucked in the bin.
That really fucking hurts.
I pride myself on the papers I bring out. It’s a direct reflection of what I am capable of doing. And I used to hold my head up high in the towns my papers come out in because I was proud of what we do.
Now I just really want to cry.

Twatter

2009-06-23T22:24:00.000+01:00

I'm pretty much going out on a limb with this one but fuck it. What in the name of retarded Jesus is the fucking big deal about Twitter?
All the techno spazzes in our office are obsessed with it. Twatting this, retwatting that, sitting on your twat deck, twatterating. If I want to tell everyone when I have just taken a shit I generally announce it as I walk back in the office doing up my zipper. But telling strangers who slavishly follow your inane shat? Fuck that.
Twatter is the status update off Facebook you fucking moron sheep. It's not cool, it's not a new form of media. It's a pretentious wank machine for boring people with nothing to say.
Our newspaper's Twatter page (not set up by me I hasten to add) has 120 Twatters following it. We have a readership of more than 132,000 on one of our titles alone.
Fuck Twatter.
We saw a slight flurry of Twatter related stories in the press but nothing compared to the massive flood of Facebook, eBay and Friends Reunited stories. That is how much of a non event it is.
Twatter doesn't even have a picture function.
Even my mobile has that and my mobile is shit.

The web. Saviour or Satan

2009-06-23T21:38:00.001+01:00

I love the web. I use it every day. I am pretty much fucked if I don't get access to a lap top. It's a bit like when I first had a mobile and thought of something and could instantly call a mate and tell him about it.
With the web - think a thought and google it, brilliant.
But is it the future of journalism? Our retard bosses think so and I think I have earlier covered adequately why.
But think about the web. How many sites do you actually visit on a daily basis? Even on a weekly basis? Sure my favourites list is populated with at least 70-80 sites that I think I need to know about.
But daily I look at my newspaper websites, my opposition websites, Facebook (natch) BBC (shit hyperlocal by the way you over paid fuck hounds) HTFP, Fleet street blues, Press Gazette (although I wonder why I bother) Mediaguardian (get more local paper coverage you sandal wearing hippies) and clearly some porn.
Weekly even less. Sometimes I think about spring cleaning my favourites - but sometimes I think about cutting down on drinking too.
Google alerts fill my email basket with all the news I feel I need. The rest of my daily shit comes from whatever I google (or Bing if we really have to go down that copycatted soul sucking Microsoft thieving route - how much money do you need Bill Gates!!).
So, as a self confessed internet nut I visit less than a dozen sites daily. And, if they are not updated regularly, I spend less than half an hour doing it.
So how can the internet be the future?
Now clearly, if you are reading this, you read blogs. And if you like piss poor ones, you have found a home. But this ain't journalism. This is cant, rhetoric, drivel, rant. Opinion not fact. NOT NEWS.
Is this our future? I love news and I love getting and disseminating news and the internet can be the perfect tool.
My point - and I think I have one - is, with most web users looking at a handful of sites each day, will your news stories still mean the same as they do when you present it in a newspaper with the mix and balance and design we spend hours on each day?
Or will it become a google alert that a reader doesn't even bother to open because you aready read the first par.
More on the web another day.....my head is hurting thinking about it!

Epsiode IV..............Public relations

2009-06-22T21:04:00.000+01:00

There is a reason they call PR the Dark Side. Like Luke Skywalker was told by Yoda, the Dark Side is quick and tempting and easy.
And so is PR. Think about it. You are a trainee journalist on 14-16k a year. Your boss is screaming at you to tie up the story about a local crime/council dispute/health debacle and all you are waiting for is the 30k a year police/council/NHS fuckwit's quote. Basically you fucking hate them all.
However, you soon realise that said fuckwit's job is a piece of piss and so next time one of the retards climbs up the greasy pole you apply for their job.
The money is good and the job is easy.
This is the Dark Side.
Before long you become the same jobsworthy/pedantic/corporate shit-eating mother fucker you despised in those few short months you encountered them on the other side of the fence.
In the whole of my career, I have met two or three decent press officers who understood not only their own job, but the job of those people they serviced.
The rest are power crazy, bull shit artists who, not only convince themselves they were once great journalists, but now are wannabe media manipulators of the highest order. Forget the fact they work for Flangeshire Borough Council or Bellend Police Service.
The worst of their breed still claim to be hacks....always making the excuses or apologising for why they are bull shitting you. A few of them even throw a few titbits out to make you their friend. But ultimately they are all dogs. Lying for their masters because they decided to take the easy way out.
The only easy way out for these soul-sucking arse holes is the business end of a shot gun.

PS Yoda also said a lot of shit about fear and anger being the path to the Dark Side but he WAS a fucking muppet, so fuck him!

RAGE!!!

2009-06-22T19:31:00.001+01:00

You may think that I am a perpetually angry individual, but it is not the case. I admit to occasional bouts of apopletic rage but I find it healthy and often cathartic.
I use rage to do my job. I use it to clear my system. I use it to give a fuck.
In the job I do I get angry about anything that doesn't go my way - even if I don't care about the story. In fact, if I feel that someone is doing something they shouldn't, it often makes me give that little bit more of a shit about the tale.
I am angry when PRs refuse to tell me the basic facts. I fume when a story we had in the bag ends up in the rival. I am fit to kill when projects go tits up because someone (usually a PR) fucks up. Shit, if someone send me a stupid press release that has no relevance to my title I am known to phone them up and serve them an earful of diatribe.
I use and harness my anger so that officials, councillors, press officers and coroners clerks can't push their petty bureaucratic bullshit on me.
When the red mist comes down, I will spend hours, days or even weeks proving that a prick was wrong. I will write letters, legal challenges and fire off countless FOIs in a attempt to find out the truth.
I was once likened to a Rottweiler in my refusal to let go of a story. I spent six months on one story because I knew it to be true and officialdom continually denied it. (It made the splash).
But it is this anger that makes me, I think, a good journalist. This sense of rage can be used to defend the corner of those stories you have done a hundred times before.
Many would think the weekly battle with the council or police press office would grind you down. I love it.
I am happiest dealing with an inane complaint or a holier than thou press officer. Give me a jobsworth every day of the week. The best thing about these cancers-on-society is that if you know more about the rules than them they are wholly fucked.
Rage, however, is likely to be the cause of my early death, hence no pension provision, but I can accept that.
As long as they are more angry fuckers behind me.

Lies, damned lies and the management

2009-06-22T19:14:00.000+01:00

Do you know what I hate about newspaper managers? It's not that they are cunts. I can deal with nasty wankers - plenty of councillors fit this description. It's not even that they are liars, I deal with bullshit every day.
The reason why I hate newspaper managers is that they are lying cunts who think you do not KNOW that they are lying cunts.
Take my MD. To your face nice as pie. Behind your back snidey and sniping. So far so management arsehole.
But when he tells you that the newspaper you work for must make cuts to survive, ony to find out - three months and eight editorial redundancies down the line - that the paper is still making a healthy profit, albeit reduced from pre recession years, you are understandably angry.
Next we are told that cutting distribution will cut costs. Only by X per cent maximum you are told. Of course what they fail to tell you is that they had already cut distribution by X per cent so in reality you are XX papers down.
Who fields the calls? Certainy not the rat faced weasel who ordered the fucking thing!
Pagination must come down to save on printing. Fair enough you think until you realise its not just lost news pages at the back of the book but the cash hungry whores are changing the fundamental feel of the paper by selling everything that ain't nailed down. By this time, if it weren't for the copious amount of cheap grog you are necking, you are murderous in your rage for the short term attitude of the greatest bunch of newspaper murderers you have ever known.
Newspapers aren't dead - they are being slowly euthanised by the very companies that purport to care for the product.
Every cut in staff, every drop in promotion spend, every page lost or copy not delivered is slowly strangling the life out of newspapers.
It's not a public apathy that is killing the local paper - it is its own management's short termism to grab a few extra quid.
I am not advocating journalists running papers -for fuck's sake most of us can't run our own lives - but at least consult them.
We know what the readers - our customers, our advertisers - want and think. We live and breathe what we do. We ARE our newspapers.
Please stop systematically raping us you management cunts.

Why I love subs

2009-06-19T20:31:00.001+01:00

Since I began in this industry (before the internet and before mobile phones were affordable) newspaper companies have been trying to remove subs.
An extra layer of cost in a department that most executives already see as an unjustifiably expensive outlay. After all who cares if the news part of the newspaper is worth reading, right?
So far they have mostly failed.
Some idiotic fools have tried letting reporters write straight on to the page. Madness. Have you ever tried to sub your own work? I try to sub the dribble I write (honestly) and I still leave in major typos, badly constructed sentences and overwritten chod.
Plus, have you ever met a reporter who responds well to criticism. Every word most hacks write is worthy of an award in their eyes, so how are they supposed to be critical of it?
This is why I love subs. A good sub can humble the greatest news hack or editor. Many times has a sub comes up to me with copy I have supposedly, edited and passed on to a page, and asked a question so bleeding obvious I turn red.
I always blame it on the volume of copy I read. But in reality it's because I have read the intro, made sure it has an end and banged it on a page cos it's going in the back of the book and I can't be arsed.
I vow to myself to change my ways but this episode happens on a weekly basis.
A fresh pair of eyes on a story is a wonderful thing but when that fresh pair of eyes belongs to a pedantic, fussy, vindicative sub it is a godsend.

The Lord giveth...................

2009-06-19T20:19:00.000+01:00

................and the utter bastards taketh away.
I have been unseasonably jolly and upbeat in the last week. Mainly due to management buoying our spirits with uplifting news about 'investment' and 'new troops'. I have to admit I was fooled. I honestly thought they were going to start creating a new future for us downtrodden proles.
But, fuck me, if I wasn't wrong.
Without going into too much detail, instead of moving the products forwards they are taking a massive retrograde step which involves, among others, a drastic loss of the only thing that gets me out of bed in the morning - editorial space.
It is, they say, short term but I can't help feeling that these evil weasels and purveyors of false hope and mistruth are lying out of their puckered arses.
I can't help but think that once the bean counters see the revenues they are making from these 'news-lite' editions they will never go back.
With less edit space we can then look forward to a need for less reporters and subsequently less subs. Fuck it we could even drop a snapper or two.....why not combine a couple of desks and cut out a couple of bosses.
Look at all the lovely profits rolling in.
I could understand this approach - the redundancies, the cuts in pages and distribution and promotion if we were losing money.
Funny thing is we ain't. We just ain't making as much profit as last year and that really sucks balls.
It is funny how the very people bleating about the demise of this beautiful and valuable industry are the same ones destroying it with their short-sighted, profit-grabbing, greedy bullshit.
Only one good thing has come of this.
I'm feeling mean again.

Loss

2009-06-18T21:49:00.000+01:00

My best reporter told me he was leaving today. He is psychologically flawed in the extreme but, damn, he is a great reporter. Give him a tip off and a brief and within deadline comes back a perfectly written tale. He makes his own contacts, goes to meetings on his own volition and has a real understanding of what I need when the shite inevitably hits the fan.
I have to admit a sense of sadness, but he has outgrown our paper and needs new challenges. I wish him the very best.
But with his departure comes a sense of new adventure. I get to replace him with a fresh soul.
It may be an internal appointment within our very own news hub or from our vast media organisation but undoubtedly I will get a large number of candidates when we advertise.
I favour the internal choice. Firstly they will now what they are doing but more importantly they will already have been witness to my rage.
I am excited by an external candidate, however. New blood on our desk. New lives, new friends, new experiences. More important a sense of hope in our industry which has been blighted by so many cuts.
Just a few months ago thinking of replacing a departing colleague was unheard of, now it is a reality (not that they have much choice seeing how tight things are here).
I, personally, can't wait to see what happens.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder

2009-06-17T19:13:00.000+01:00

Or so they say! I was becoming a bit mental with the blog so I took some time off to calm down and take stock.
Things are looking up a little at work. No more redundancies lately and we are being told that staff will be replaced if they leave now. Needless to say we are massively overstretched at moment and just about getting a paper worth reading out each week.
No new resources clearly so its nose to the grindstone and try and get out as good a paper as we can.
With the recession over we now wait to see if editorial reinvestment is to come so we can start doing our jobs properly again!

You can't swot a fly with a laptop

2009-04-20T20:28:00.000+01:00

Been away a while not really sure what to write, upset that anger has clouded my judgement. But the title of this blog sums up my point. Newspapers are a great format, almost perfect in what they do.
Deliver information, opinion, analysis in a concise easy to manage way (maybe not broadsheet for the inexperienced),
Let's look at the evidence -
Accessible - on sale practically everywhere with no need for readers, laptops, phones, or other specialist equipment which in every case costs a significant amount to get hold of.
Marketable - It has everything from news to horoscopes, crosswords to recipes, columns to sport, business to cartoons and more. Consider a decent Sunday most of the time you are reading bits in the week because you didn't have time on Sunday. That is one hell of a package.
Hidden extras - When you search online you generally know what you are looking for. Admittedy you can trail off but most of the time you are online for a reason. Newspapers give you random knowledge. Stuff you didn't think was interesting but packaged attractively enough you wanted to read on.
Bug proof - It's aready written. It is in your hands. What can go wrong. No slow connections. No crashing while loading a picture. Jump from page to page as quickly as your hands will turn regardless of connection speed. Watch out for rain.
Practical - Pass on an article you wanted your mate to read. Online you woud email it to a friend. Newspaper you just simply tear the bugger out and hand it over. Similarly that recipe or the address for a good restaurant or clothes shop. A voucher for money off. A good headline you want to nail to a colleagues desk. No need to check an email account or print something out.
Have you ever taken a laptop to the toilet; wrapped up your plates and glasses while moving with a computer; shredded one for cat litter, washed your windows with a Dell; done a crossword or Sudoku on a lap top; drawn horns on a disliked celebrity; rolled it up and whacked a friend or enemy???
Don't discount print for online until we have truly weighed up why we want to see this format die and tell me it has anything other than to do with cost.

Indifference...........

2009-03-23T21:39:00.000Z

Another two people lose their jobs today. Two more not to be replaced. Editor to maker announcement about overstaffed desk. No doubt more shit to come. But I am beyond caring. I care not about my job or of those around me. Why? Because this disgusting bullshit is now inevitable. It is not a question of if, but when. Clearly, I am glad it was not me. But do I care when it is?
Probably not. Due to journalism (or my fucked up sensibilities) I have fuck all. No house, no wife, no kids, I am ultimately recession proof. I'll get another job out of the game and move out of my bedsit to a cheaper shit hole to survive.
Am I happy about this situation? No. The disgust and anger burns through me like a hot poker. It takes so much not to walk into the MD's office, take a shit in his drawer and call him a cowardly cunt.
These maggots intentions are clear.
Community correspondents instead of journalists. Let's call it hyperlocal to dress it up.
Internet's the future - only because it costs less than papers.
Who needs subs - because we will never write anything remotely contentious to need a second glance.
How about investment in editorial producing papers - either free or paid for - that are worth reading. You know why. It costs cash.

Despair

2009-03-07T18:19:00.000Z

"I’m not going to lie. I grew up not reading newspapers. I got into journalism even though newspapers were never my favorite medium because I liked to write and communicate with people. A lot of people my age don’t read newspapers regularly. (Many of those who do read them online, and others don’t read them at all.)"
This quote comes from a young journalist who can be arsed to write this toilet on a blog but can't be bothered to pick up a newspaper in the morning.
And you wonder why newspapers are in decline.
What a cunt. Come and work for me and I will probably arse rape you.

After care service

2009-03-07T14:26:00.001Z

I had a very interesting conversation with a household name who works for one of the nationals.
I will call it the 'dead-kid' concept. As a journalist we get to wade through life's grittier events. Not a week goes by without at least one (and in some cases more than a dozen) references to suicide, violence, rape, child abuse or just good old fashioned murder.
A crime reporter is forced to swallow this grief pill on a daily basis. So my point is this, how can a reporter get emotionally involved with every story they write. I say you can't, you would go insane. So if a kid dies, no matter how horrible the circumstances, can you really afford to give a shit?
Sure we empathise and symapthise with the family - in order to get collects and a chat mainly. But do we carry every dead kid with us? I don't. It's just another tale to me. Do it, write it up and move on. It has to be this way.
But my new friend became quite agitated as to my seemingly callous attitude. She had covered the Dunblane massacre many years ago. Seventeen dead - 16 of those children - and it had, and still does have, a profound effect on her.
This I can understand and so my 'dead-kid' concept fell a little flat in the face of such a momentuous fucked-up situation.
But she made an excellent point. All of the fire, police, medical services responding to events like this and others receive counselling to come to terms with what they have seen and done.
But what do our touchy-feely newspaper companies offer in terms of grief therapy.
That's right, absolutely nothing.
Just get on with it.
And lo, the 'dead-kid' concept is revived.

The future

2009-03-07T13:58:00.000Z

With all this misery at the moment about how this whole industry is doomed I started to think about the future of newspapers.
Undoubtedly newspapers can and still do make dosh. In some cases they are making a lot of dosh. No matter what the useless management tools tell you about how newspapers are dead and the web is the future, this is mainly bollocks.
People still want to know what is going on around them and many people still do not use the internet to get hold of that information.
But if you are producing a shoddy rag of a paper filled with press releases and cheque presentations from a central news centre 50 miles from the actual town, who will read or buy that?
Over time advertisers drop out the paper gets smaller and less people read it.
The title inevitably closes, ending sometimes a print run of more than one hundred years. This is scandalous but there is a very real reason behind it.
The internet has exceptionally low running fees, no print costs, low staffing levels, no need to distribute it or sell it in shops - essentially as long as your servers are big enough there is no stopping the size or scale of the site.
This is the real reason the big companies are paring newspapers to the bone and closing titles that were making profits as little as five years ago.
They want news print to die so they can make more money. Ask your MD when they are a bit drunk at the next Christmas do (like Christmas is not forever cancelled) they may just admit it.
But there is a way to carry on printing. I have come to the conclusion the only way newspapers will survive is to remove them from the hands of the big owners. Take them back from Newsquest, Trinity Mirror, Northcliffe et al. and get them back into independent hands. Remove the greed factor for starters, get rid of shareholders and fat cat directors who only look at the numbers and not the brilliant work we do.
As long as the title makes a profit - and believe it or not many of them still do - they are sustainable.
This way staff at the papers can pay themselves a half decent wage through a healthy profit share. We can have investment in editorial to create a product people want to read again rather than something fit for cat litter. Have the company run by its staff and not bean counters. If it's making a profit the newspaper and all those precious jobs are saved.
Journalism shouldn't be all about the money.
Bring it back to the area. Open a small office in the town centre, become a part of the community again, become relevant, become necessary, start setting the agenda again.
I am a firm believer in local newspapers and with a bit more thought about their role in the future - especially with the demise of the celebrity obsessed national media - we might just start saving our industry.
Let's lose the fat cat management arseholes first though.

Loyalty

2009-03-07T13:43:00.000Z

Loyalty- It's a funny term when used with newspapers. This situation with newspaper companies treating their often exceptionally , hardworking staff with little more than disdain is not new. For years the journalists drive to bring out quality newspapers has been exploited by the management idiots who run the papers into the ground through cutting staff, removing perks and slashing budgets to save a few quid in the short term.
These mongs - and I use this word with great venom - have not the first clue how to run a newspaper. Indeed, I doubt one of them could actually tell you how important the role of a local newspaper is within a community.
So I have this attitude. Fuck them and their company cars. Fuck them and their efficiency drives. Fuck them and their bloated wage packets. Fuck them and their memos, edicts, orders and ideas. They are all shit-eating mother fuckers and don't deserve your respect let alone your loyalty.
I work for the newspaper I bring out. The masthead, not the management. My loyalty is to my team of reporters, the photographers and subs, my colleagues working on other titles alongside me. My loyalty extends to the door to the newsroom. Anybody outside of that space deserves nothing more than contempt.
If everyone in the other departments worked as hard or took as much pride in their own jobs, as I know our band of hacks do, newspapers would not be in the state they are in.
Give loyalty in those you know are looking out for you, have pride in what they do, and fuck the rest of 'em.

Positive shizzle

2009-03-03T20:38:00.001Z

I consider myself a hard-nosed journalist, adept at shrugging off the nastiest shit life can throw at me (or at least I think I can). I laugh in the face of horror and cock-a-snook at death and its myriad of guises. But just recently I have become bored of the dead and want something a little more uplifting. Whether it's all the bullshit recession news or just too much grimness.
So today I am pleased to say we ran a very upbeat story on our front page.
A positive, nobody-died-everyone-lived sort of story. Not to say it was a load of shit either. It was genuinely a great scoop, a credit to my reporter for getting it. It doesn't mean to say I am turning into some kind of positive news bore, but after the year of hideous shit we have had to report on it's nice to have a front page you know people will get a lift from.

Drink drunk

2009-03-03T20:28:00.000Z

What is it about journalists and drink? What is it about journalists and being a fuck up?
We don't really see the grim reality of life. Not all of it. Cops do, firefighters do, ambulance men and doctors and nurses do. But we don't. No dead burned corpses, no murder victims, no drowned kids. So why does this thing inevitably fuck us up.
I think I know the reason. It's because we wallow in the clear up of the shit all the time. The chat with the grieving family, the tribute to the dead son, the front page about the murdered wife. We soak up all the bile and the hate and the suffering and filter it for the readers.
Many people outside of editorial think readers actually send in pictures of their dead loved ones. In the rare occasions it happens, I can count on one hand.
Instead it us up to us to go round often just a few hours after the death and not only get a full chat but a handful of collects as well.
Most journalists hate death knocks. I didn't care. They would always either say yes or no, on some occasions a mild threat. Maybe that is why I was never very successful. I could persuade and empathise but never sympathise. Just another story.
Maybe that is why I drink. To stop the stories becoming real.

Why journalism

2009-02-27T21:45:00.001Z

Many of my gang come into work like someone's shit in their cereals.
So they earn bad money, they work long hours, they are the lowest profession on the food chain (debatably drawn between estate agents, politicians and now wonderfully bankers) but, shit, it's a fucking great job.

Why journalism. It's simple, it's the only honest, dishonest job in the world. It's the only job you can still make your own.

Wannabe a scumbag? Writing for the nationals is good. Fancy an ethical do-good life? Write for a local paper. Want to write sniping, nasty articles about people you are never likely to meet? Celebrity feature writing works for you. Parasitical tendencies? Death knocks are the drug of choice. Standing up for the little man? Get involved in community reporting. Like watching footy. Sport (not a real job tbh)

Journalism. It's a great life!
Cheer the fuck up!

Logic problems

2009-02-27T21:29:00.000Z

I read recently that, despite a huge, ridiculous, almost criminal amount of sackings within our industry, the number of people signing up for journalism degrees rises by 24 per cent.
I have no idea what these wannabe journalists are being told, but surely they must read the three main web sites devoted to journalism. Redundancies, closures, gloom, doom and crap campaigns.
Surely they must realise the chances of getting a job have gone from fat chance to virtually fuck all.
So why do they still come?
Fuck knows. I can only think that either the NCTJ needs to keep making cash or we have another bunch of new journos who fail to pay attention to the outside world.
Read some shit about journalism jobs you mongs!

Old skool/new skool

2009-02-27T21:16:00.000Z

The old guys - and I am starting to become one - have rose tinted glasses. They were just as lazy, just as sneaky, just as unmotivated, as the young 'uns. In fact, more so. Don't forget these guys (I use the omnisexual version of the word) didn't have a web edition. A lot of them didn't have mobiles. No internet. No extra pressures. No money - admittedly, but only one real job. Write for the newspaper.
They also didn't have the same attitude to lunchtime drinking- or in some cases early morning drinking - as your bosses do now. Rolling in pissed as a fart after lunch (or not rolling in at all) was the norm.
Five decent stories a week, a few down pages, nibs and done. Week's work, roll on the weekend.
Except this doesn't really tell the whole story.
Without the web, without mobiles, without email, journalism changes.
No google alerts for every paper or media outlet that mentions your patch; no emails from charities, companies, sources, spies, press offices or pundits. No way of getting a steer from the desk on a job on your moby. No ability to ping pics from other areas by email. No real way of searching cuttings except for a trip to your own (or more likely) the local reference library.
You relied on three things - ring ins (unlikely) walk-ins (yeah, right) or contacts.
Contacts are king and something young reporters don't yet comprehend. This biz ain't what you know, it's who you know. The more contacts you have the more stories you will get. Full stop.
Someone gets run over? You know a man, who knows a guy, who knows the cousin. A murder? You find his best friend through a pub landlord you know. A guy wins £100k on the lottery? With enough good contacts you will find him/her and hopefully they will end up being a right criminal scrote.
Build up, cultivate and cherish your contacts. Never give them up easy, keep them tight, keep them secret. A good contact can last you a career - they get promotions too. A good PC can become a sublime DCI in a few short years. Councillors become MPs, become government ministers, teachers become heads, soldiers become colonels.
Build a relationship, burn only your bad ones and contacts become a journos greatest asset.
Old skool.

Standards slipping?

2009-02-27T20:24:00.000Z

It's hard to know what's really happening in the newsroom in terms of the quality of journalism and the trainees we are getting. So many journalists (I prefer reporters) of a certain age hark back to a golden age. An age of flawless reporting by three-week-in juniors, trainees bringing down the heads of councils, zero grammatical errors from a band of hardened 16-year-old news gatherers.
Obviously this is all a bag of absolute cock.
There has always been bad journalists, useless, lazy, greedy, spiteful, retarded journalists. This industry is and, I suspect, always will be populated by crap, stupid, idiotic reporters.
But will, oh ye of little faith, also be the home of earnest, honest, brave, determined, motivated, clever, sexy?, funny, smart and talented young hacks.
But the basics are missing.
I always ask (tell) my lot to have an awareness of the things that go on around them. The big stories nationally. The big issues locally. Who's shagging who in the office? It's all important. Information is power. No matter how small the snippet.
But most of the new guys have no idea what is in their own paper. They look at what they have written and how it looks and that's that. I see their eyes glaze over as soon as their own, often pitiful, news list are dragged out as conference. In an industry dominated by petty rivalry, jealousy and terrible, terrible bitterness, if juniors have little or no interest in what their own collegaues are doing, how, in the name of holy fuck, are they expected to know what is happening in the real world?
These young turks of journalism, these purveyors of truth, these bastions of all that is good in this dark, dark industry haven't even got the basic interest in what they actually do.
If they don't buy and read their own products why should anyone else?

Blog-a-doodle-doo

2009-02-27T19:58:00.000Z

I have been meaning to write this blog for some time.
Me, I am a jobbing hack, front line news man, boss and bitch and bully for some 20 years. I have worked on locals, regional dailies, nationals, agencies and for myself.
No ages (below 40) no names (call me Blunt) no pack drill (UK based).
Now I am back on the locals - a medium I have always had great respect for. The true coal face of truth, the place where nationals come for their tales.
I won't name the paper but we have a newsy patch and we cover many stories the nationals chase.
We have competition as well - another two papers in fact - something unheard of in many areas.
I have a great, committed staff of both juniors and experienced reporters. We work hard, we believe truly in what we do and the responsibility and powers we hold. I love my job but things ain't right in the world of news.
I want to use this blog to vent my spleen, to become my online therapist, my new best friend. A cathartic mix of bile, venom and hate. A written rant of disjointed drivel.
Just exactly the sort of great traditions the hack's night out were based on.
I hope you find something worth reading in here.
If you don't - fuck ya.