Axegrinder has seen a memo sent to all reporters by Scott Armstrong, head of content. He writes that:

[L]evels of creativity and productivity being displayed at this current time need to be improved. By way of example, the prospects for tomorrow’s paper have all, but a couple, been sourced by the newsdesk (including the splash) or are ring-ins handed out by the desk. Very little is being brought in or created by yourselves.

This is not the standard we as a professional newsroom should be reaching. We should be more than simple press releases and ring-ins. You have all been given patch days and FoI Fridays,  which should have helped bring in exclusives,  but I have seen little result from patch days, and FoI Fridays just seem to have been forgotton [sic] weeks ago.

I know these are challenging times but I urge you to remember that finding your own exclusive material has to be more satisfying than turning around something handed out by the newsdesk. That isn’t journalism – it is the so-called churnalism.

But is that still the case? What are school-leavers to make of this lead item in a recent column by The Daily Mirror’s Polly Hudson: “I’m not exactly up on current affairs. I never watch the news because it’s far too depressing and the clothes are awful.”

Does this mean Trinity Mirror is now more interested in finding the next Polly than the next Pilger?

Axegrinder contacted Geoff at his Dartmoor home, only to be told: “It’s mega busy here. Seth’s album Poor Man’s Heaven has just entered the charts at No. 8, which means he’s sandwiched between Amy Winehouse and Rihanna.”

The following morning, Geoff – who started out as a 16-year-old cub reporter on The Cornishman in Penzance, and has also worked for PA, The Daily Telegraph and Independent Radio News – tells me that his son has been surrounded by journalists all his life, “so he’s probably learned by a process of osmosis how to handle the media. When Seth was a lad, a regular visitor to our house on Dartmoor was Alastair Campbell, who I helped to train. He’s a big fan”.

But with his growing fame, might Seth become the focus of unwanted attention?

Dad, who is retired but now freelances for the nationals, says: “You won’t read about him in the showbiz columns because he doesn’t fit into that ‘kiss ‘n’ tell’ world. He doesn’t hang around London clubs and parties with wannabes and models hanging off him.

“There’s nothing to talk or write about other than his passion, his music.”

Sounds to me like a “hands-off” warning to The Sun’s Bizarre and the Mirror’s 3am columns.

Well, no Caitlin, you can’t be the first – 28 years ago you were beaten to it by a clumsy (or mischievous) typist in the classified ads department of… The Times.

The advert was placed by impresario Cameron Mackintosh and was meant to announce a new production of the famous musical Oklahoma! at the Palace Theatre.

Thanks to the new Times archive, the advert can be seen in all its, er, glory, as can a letter to the paper days later from Mackintosh, in which he writes: “I wish to reassure your readers that things are not too up-to-date in Kansas City, and that the farmer and the cowhand are still only friends.”

Now Axegrinder has been forwarded an email from a reader irate at a recent correspondence from Mail Online editorial director Martin Clarke.

Clarke sent the same email to all the hundreds of people who have sent in feedback about the new-look site – and CC’d them all in, so they now all know each others’ email addresses. Perhaps some were secret Mail readers? Most did not expect the fact that they had written in to be broadcast so widely.

Clarke said in his email to those who have criticised the new look site:

All I can ask is that you persevere with us a little longer to see if you grow more accustomed to the new environment and, hopefully, come to appreciate all that it has to offer.  And, please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any further observations.

Said my unimpressed source: “My email address is compromised, and I am left with the impression that the online version of the Mail is in the hands of Media Muppets”.

On Friday, the Brighton-based scribbler penned an article defending singer Amy Winehouse, but it may have left readers experiencing a strange sense of déjà vu. Huge sections of Burchill’s latest piece bear a striking similarity to her Sun article of January 2, headlined: “Give me Amy over Sadie.”

On Friday, she told readers: “…we are so used to/conned by female singers who are AMBITION-LED rather than TALENT-DRIVEN that we seem to have forgotten how truly gifted singers behave.
“Edith Piaf, Judy Garland, Billie Holiday – for some reason women who have a great talent for singing also have a great capacity for reckless behaviour. Whereas if your talent is an itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny sickly little thing – see Madonna – then you have to behave the very opposite of reckless in order to preserve it.”

Back in January, Burchill wrote: “We’ve been used for such a long time to singers who are ambition-led (Madonna and her hordes of pop-tart imitators) that we have forgotten how singers who are talent-led behave.

“Edith Piaf, Judy Garland, Billie Holiday – for some reason, and it would take a genetic scientist to explain it, women who have a great talent for singing also have a great capacity for reckless behaviour.

“Whereas if your talent is a teeny-weeny sickly little thing – see Madonna and mates – then you have to behave the very opposite of recklessly in order to preserve it.”

After a few paragraphs of new stuff, Burchill’s latest piece continues: “However self-destructively she appears to behave, at the end of the day the self-esteem such extraordinary talent must bestow will pull her through in the end.”

It’s good to see Burchill hasn’t changed her opinion since January, when she told Sun readers: “…I feel that however self-destructively Amy appears to be behaving, at the end of the day the self-esteem – however deeply buried – that such extraordinary talent must bestow will pull her through.”

One mustn’t be too harsh on the Bristol-born scribbler. There is some new material, in particular her attack on the “agony aunts and sob sisters of the press giving yet more of their more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger advice” to Winehouse. Warming to her task, she calls these fellow hackettes ” the worry-warts, seat-sniffers and bed-wetters whose half-lives are so boring that they get their sad kicks from criticising the REAL lives of others”.

Perhaps she is thinking of the “sob sister” who has written of the need to “hammer into [Winehouse's] thick skull that she’s lucky enough to have a healthy body and mind that she’s wilfully choosing to destroy”. Which bed-wetter was this? Why, fellow Sun columnist Jane Moore.

Visitors to the paper’s website will find the lead story in Oliver Marre’s Pendennis column begins with the following words: “Has His Holiness Gordon Brown…”. Axegrinder went to the hard-copy version in search of an explanation. It appears part of a headline from another story, about the Dalai Lama, has somehow been transposed. At least Gordon has done better than Tony Blair, who was a mere vicar in Private Eye’s St Albion Parish News.

Axegrinder scans the list to see whose star is in the ascendant. Leaping up from last year’s 66 to this year’s 39 is fearsome young columnist Johann Hari. Clearly he must be writing for one of the nation’s top-selling dailies to be so high in the list. Maybe not. Hari actually writes for The Independent (ABC circulation of 240,503 in May, down 2.02 per cent year on year).

Bizarrely, he is deemed to be far more influential than Matthew Parris (78 in the list, down from 64), who writes a regular column in The Times (latest circulation 626,401) and Andrew Pierce (a new entry at 80), who, as well as being deputy editor of the even more widely read Daily Telegraph, regularly appears on Question Time.

In fact, the Pink List this year must not have gone down very well at all in the Parris household. His partner Julian Glover fails to make his debut in the chart, despite being chief leader writer at The Guardian. The Pink List committee at the Indy has more time for feckless party animal/club promoter Henry Conway (chart debutant at 99) than Guardian hacks.

Glover appeared far from downhearted when contacted by Axegrinder, but said he had no theories to explain his absence from the list, nor was he surprised. “I guess I just don’t have Henry Conway’s looks,” he told me.

But Axegrinder has most sympathy for newspaper columnist Philip Hensher. Three years ago he was at number 20 in the list; last year he slumped to 82, and this year he fails to make the list at all. Whatever has gone wrong? Hensher writes regularly for The Independent. In his shoes, I think I would be worried man.

Axegrinder understands the Hampstead Village Voice magazine has been transformed for one edition only into the Himm Und Heil Express, complete with Ham & High-style fonts and layout.

A source at Archant tells me: “It features an article talking about “ze freedom of speech ist gut…” and also has an aerial shot of the offices Photoshopped to look like a swastika. It’s very funny, but the management here are not amused.” Archant cited freedom of speech as justification for accepting the adds, but later agreed to give the profits to charity.

First off the mark was homofactual.com, which in a section called “Hot Stuff”, has a chap called Andrew declaring: “Unlikely I know, but our Potential New Boyfriend has been getting us all hot and bothered on Supersizers… Sexy little fucker.” Andrew then kindly uploaded a series of photos of Coren, including one of him baring his midriff while playing tennis.

Meanwhile over at Famous Male Forums (fmforums.co.uk), one finds a selection of admirers declaring their, er lust, for the brother of poker-playing ex-porn movie producer Victoria. “It’s unexpected but I fancy the fuck out of this guy,” says owenaj.

Axegrinder certainly hopes Coren comes across these admirers next time he is surfing in search of online entertainment.