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.

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

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*

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!

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.....

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?

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......

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'

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

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

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.

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.