Posted by
Axegrinder on 28 May 2009 at 22:31
Tags: Daily Telegraph, Uncategorized
Just as the Telegraph is allowing us to look into hitherto hidden areas of MPs’ affairs, so this desire to reveal all is extending to its own website, right down to Home Affairs Editor Tom Whitehead asking publicly: “Can I say Baby P’s killer?”
Axegrinder feels this is perhaps taking glasnost too far.
And, no, you can’t say “killer”. But thanks for asking.
Posted by
Axegrinder on 4 April 2009 at 20:26
Tags: Catholic Herald, Daily Telegraph, Damian Thompson, George Pitcher, Jonathan Wynne-Jones, Ruth Gledhill, The Times, Uncategorized
Has the press secretary to the new Archbishop of Westminster been watching too many episodes of political satire The Thick Of It or its movie spin-off In The Loop?
Axegrinder only asks because Peter Jennings does seem to favour Malcolm Tucker’s approach to media relations.
Jennings has managed to spark an unholy row by offending Jonathan Wynne-Jones, religious affairs correspondent for The Sunday Telegraph. He introduced himself to Jennings, long-serving press secretary to Archbishop Vince Nichols, after the press conference confirming the appointment to succeed Cormac Murphy-O’Connor.
“You’re a total shit,” Jennings told the Telegraph man, apparently upset that he’d reported letters sent by two bishops complaining that Nichols would be a divisive choice.
For good measure, Jennings then suggested Wynne-Jones had made up the story, and was, in fact, lying.
He put it to Jennings that it was perhaps unwise and unfortunate to have this outburst with his boss only a few feet away, and press everywhere.
Says Wynne-Jones: “I also questioned whether ‘total’ was quite fair, arguing ‘irritating’ or ‘arrogant’ might have been more appropriate.
“Considering Peter should have been celebrating, given that his boss has just got the top job, I thought he might have been in a slightly better mood.
“To be fair though, he did calm down and came and apologised. He even admitted that he realised that Archbishop Nichols isn’t universally popular amongst his colleagues, and said that he didn’t doubt my story.
“I’ll forget about it. I hope the officials in Westminster will be as forgiving.”
Before forgetting about it, Wynne-Jones wisely wrote the entire thing up for his blog.
His fellow religious affairs correspondents seem to be greatly enjoying “total shitgate”.
Ruth Gledhill of The Times, who was sitting next to Wynne-Jones and witnessed the whole thing, has commented: “Press officers are generally taught at nursery school that they might think we are shits, they might think they know some of us are, they might even find a way to keep us in the dark and feed us on it, like mushrooms.
“But they should never, ever tell us this to our faces, especially when surrounded by bishops and archbishops of the Roman Catholic church, itself an institution only beginning to recover from a series of PR disasters.”
After Gledhill reported the row on her blog, she wrote that Jennings has reacted by threatening her “with all withdrawal of future cooperation”.
She adds: “Great isn’t it? Within hours of the appointment of the new Archbishop of Westminster, his press officer falls out with The Times and The Sunday Telegraph and makes a laughing stock of himself over at The Guardian.”
Damian Thompson, a Telegraph leader writer and editor-in-chief of the Catholic Herald, gave this reaction: “Peter really is his own worst enemy. Jonathan’s story was a proper scoop: some ghastly bishops tried to stab Vincent in the back by writing nastily to the Nuncio, and one of them (I have no idea which) decided to leak this to Jonathan.”
The Rev George Pitcher, religion editor of the Daily Telegraph, joked that “total shit” is “probably a badge to wear with pride, like ‘total football’ or ‘total war’. Better than being called ‘a bit of a shit’ surely, which doesn’t imply a satisfactory total evacuation.
“I think the religious press corps should hold a competition to find the most insulted journo — but only because I know I’d win it, hands down as it were.”
Posted by
Axegrinder on 30 March 2009 at 09:46
Tags: Daily Telegraph, Evan Davis, Urmee Khan
Axegrinder has spotted another gap in the knowledge of Urmee Khan, the Daily Telegraph’s digital and media correspondent who thought Salford was in the North-east.
While covering the recent Broadcasting Press Guild Awards, she provided an entertaining commentary on the event via Twitter. This included the following tweet: “Evan Davis wins broadcaster of the year. Don’t understand why they call him King of bling. He doesn’t have that many rings.”
Oh dear Urmee. What a sheletered life you have led. Today programme presenter Davis has acquired the nicknames King of Bling, Lord of the Rings and Tinsel Tits because he has consistently refused to confirm or deny rumours that he sports various piercings, including one popularly known as a ‘Prince Albert’!
Posted by
Axegrinder on 13 March 2009 at 09:53
Tags: Colin Randall, Daily Telegraph, Evening Despatch, Harrow Observer, Martin Newland, Northern Echo, The National
As it approaches its first anniversary, Abu Dhabi-based English language daily The National, edited by Martin Newland, is losing one of its most senior journalists, executive editor Colin Randall.
The former Daily Telegraph Paris bureau chief is quitting his £135,000-a-year tax free job to return to France, which he these days regards as home.
He will continue to write for The National as a contributing editor.
He told Axegrinder: “It is purely my choice. I have been writing more in recent months and wish to concentrate on that, chiefly for The National but also for my sites, which already attract large numbers of visitors but could, with time to devote to them, develop significantly.
“I would not have missed the past 17 months, and the thrill of being involved in the launch of a great newspaper, for anything and will always be deeply grateful to Martin Newland for wanting me to play a part.”
Randall is author of the newspaper’s Style Guide and two weekly columns: one on the use of English; the other offering reflections on life in the Middle East.
He began his career in the North East in 1967, as a reporter on the Evening Despatch and The Northern Echo. In 1973, he was appointed chief reporter of the bi-weekly Harrow Observer in London before joining the Press Association as a reporter.
From 1977 to 2006, he worked on the Daily Telegraph as regional reporter, head office reporter, chief reporter, executive news editor and Paris bureau chief, where he also gave lectures to French journalism students.
After being made redundant from the Telegraph, he worked as a freelance writer based in the south of France, and also developed the Salut! group of websites, which now cover life in France and the Middle East, as well as sporting and musical interests.
This week, Randall’s Salut! website celebrated its 200,000th hit since, as he describes it, “it staggered to its feet from the ashes of my Daily Telegraph career at the beginning of October 2006”.
Posted by
Axegrinder on 9 March 2009 at 10:11
Tags: Daily Telegraph, Peter Wilby, Simon Heffer, The Guardian
In his previous email to subs and reporters, Telegraph style guru Simon Heffer issued relatively mild rebukes for various misdemeanours, but this month he is clearly back to his usual angry self.
He points out that the Telegraph website is “habitually printing homophones of the words we intended to write because of writers’ failure to superintend the spell checker. Here are just a few: who’s for whose; plumb for plum; hyperthermia for hypothermia; diffuse for defuse; there for their; it’s for its; reign for rain; hole for whole; well-healed for well-heeled; and the misuse of each of pallet, palate and palette. “
Axegrinder suspects subs writing headlines about Holocaust-denying Bishop Richard Williamson will not be helped by Heffer’s advice on how to describe him. “He is not a Roman Catholic bishop; he is a bishop of the Society of St Pius who happens to be a Roman Catholic. His excommunication has been reversed but he is not yet in communion with the church.”
Heffer then lists a series of recent errors, including:
“Not all Tories are grandees; only very senior ones with established power and influence in the party.”
“A car cannot collide with a tree: the tree would have to be moving too, which it usually isn’t.”
“To refute something is not the same as to reject it. “
“Phenomena is a plural.”
“The plural of foot is feet: phrases like “six foot tall” are unacceptable.”
“Gotten is a word in the America language, but not the English one.”
“Going forward is banned: in the future is an acceptable substitute.”
And the award for the Telegraph’s factual error of the month would have to go to the following: “Most embarrassingly, we asserted that ‘dozens’ of men had died with Captain Scott at the South Pole. The latter was an error in a press release. It goes without saying that any fact encountered in a press release or in agency copy should not be considered as accurate until the writer has verified it is so.”
UPDATE: In his ‘On the press’ column in today’s Guardian, Peter Wilby takes Heffer to task for allowing the Telegraph to refer to “Lord Peter Goldsmith” rather than simply “Lord Goldsmith”. “[We] lefties don’t care for archaic titles and regard such rules as pettifogging detail. You’d expect the Telegraph to observe them scrupulously… Wake up, Heffer!”
In fact, Heffer’s latest email on style contains the following: “We had a reference to Lord Paul Myners. He isn’t. He is Lord Myners. He would be Lord Paul Myners only if he were the younger son of a duke or a marquess whose family name was Myners.”
Wilby, Heffer is wide awake.
Posted by
Axegrinder on 8 March 2009 at 21:54
Tags: Daily Telegraph, Uncategorized, Urmee Khan
The Daily Telegraph’s digital and media correspondent, Urmee Khan, can be relied upon to include in her copy the occasional eyebrow-raising gem. As a result, she has become essential reading in the Axegrinder household.
Her latest offering is no exception. In discussing the BBC’s plans to move 1,600 staff from West London to Salford in 2011, Khan writes:
Axegrinder understands that Khan, a Londoner, went to university in Leeds. Presumably someone was kind enough to give her a lift there and back as heaven knows where she’d end up relying on her own sense of geography.
Posted by
Axegrinder on 1 December 2008 at 16:27
Tags: Daily Telegraph, Simon Heffer, The Guardian
Keen Simon Heffer watchers will have greatly enjoyed reading the Daily Telegraph associate editor’s angry email to staff castigating them for a series of embarrassing spelling, style and grammatical errors.
But Axegrinder is surprised that Heffer hasn’t picked up on another example of his paper’s reporters and subs blatantly ignoring the Telegraph’s Style Book (author, Mr S Heffer).
The section covering “banned words” includes “iconic”, yet this appears almost daily. In the month of November alone, “iconic” has been used to describe the following:
Sydney Opera House
Mumbai landmarks
Mumbai’s Taj Mahal Hotel
Little Chef
Rugby League player Ian Roberts
Chanel No.5 perfume
Liverpool striker Fernando Torres
Luke Skywalker’s lightsabre
Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour
Guy Peellaert’s images of the rock and roll stars
the hotel Fairmount Chateau Lake Louise
Trafalgar Square
BBC Television Centre
Maradona
Maradona’a Hand of God goal
Trevor Brooking
the QE2 liner (three times)
QE2’s red funnel
a motorbike’s Smiths Chronometric speedo
Picos de Europa National Park in Spain
Lego brick
Beijing’s aquatics centre and Bird’s Nest stadium
a Bentley V8 engine
Cascades development in London’s Docklands
General Motors
Japanese fashion designer Rei Kawakubo and images by American photographer Steven Meisel (both used by Telegraph fashion director Hilary Alexander on November 11)
Life magazine photo of sailor in Times Square kissing a nurse on VJ Day 1945
Lloyds bank
Lech Walesa
Alton Towers’ Corkscrew ride
fashion designer Adriana Degreas’ men’s swimming trunks, women’s bikinis and one-piece costumes, gold and sepia silk kaftan printed with a life-size image of Christ the redeemer (yes, it’s Hilary Alexander again)
the iPod
New York’s Plaza building
the Tetley Brewery in Leeds
the Matterhorn
Beverly Wilshire hotel in Los Angeles
Hamilton Hall overlooking the 18th green of St Andrews Golf Club’s Old Course
photographer Karsh’s image of Winston Churchill
the red telephone box
Porsche 911 sports car and VW Beetle (in the same article, by Louise Armitstead)
Hillary Clinton crying in New Hampshire.
The Guardian took much pleasure in revealing Heffer’s email so perhaps now is the time to point out that the subs and writers at Farringdon Road are far from perfect. Let’s take the words “icon” and “iconic”. The Guardian style guide reminds staff that, as a result of overuse, these are “in danger of losing all meaning”.
The guide points out that the these words have been “employed to describe anything vaguely memorable or well-known – from Weetabix, Dr Martens boots and the Ferrero Rocher TV ads to Jimi Hendrix’s final gigs, a plinth in Trafalgar Square and drains”.
Despite the warning, the words keep appearing in The Guardian, “icon” popping up 38 times in November and “iconic” 35 times.
Posted by
Axegrinder on 26 November 2008 at 01:17
Tags: Catherine Ostler, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, Daily Telegraph, Evening Standard, Gary Farrow, Gordon Ramsay, Jane Moore, Liz Hunt, Sue Carroll, Tana Ramsay, The Independent, The Sun, Virginia Ironside
As expected, Fleet Street’s women columnists have leapt on the Gordon Ramsay ’scandal’ like a pack of vicious, sharp-tongued hyenas.
Leading the assault in recent days have been Allison Pearson in the Daily Mail (“As his monumental hypocrisy was revealed, the 42-year-old Celebrity Father of the Year could at least have shown some embarrassment, even a little shame”); Sue Carroll in the Daily Mirror (“Any man who doesn’t understand that a secret lover, left to simmer unattended, will one day finally explode like a toxic stew can only be described as totally naive or completely arrogant”); Liz Hunt in the Daily Telegraph (“If Gordon has strayed … then I hope, in private, that pots are being hurled, that a few kitchen knives have found their way out of the block, and the F-word is issuing from Tana’s mouth rather than his”); Catherine Ostler in the Evening Standard (“Somewhere in this sorry saga is a victim, but who? Surely it’s Tana Ramsay”) and Virginia Ironside in The Independent (“He’s been a complete wally, and no one would blame Tana for giving a bollocking rather more fiery than he would deliver in one of his restaurants”).
Meanwhile, over at The Sun, Jane Moore wrote in her column on Tuesday: “My local Woolworths has just closed down and now the entire chain is on sale for £1.”
Er, quite.
As readers of Axegrinder on Monday will know, Gordon Ramsay’s press spokesman is Gary Farrow, head of The Corporation PR agency. Farrow is also married to Jane Moore.
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