Why PRs should die

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

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?

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

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?

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

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.

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?

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

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

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......."

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?

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

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

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

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?

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

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

Sustainable journalism

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

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

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.