Sign of the times part 3

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

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

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

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

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

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)

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.