Press Gazette July edition: Digital Britain, Rebekah, MPs’ expenses, scoops…

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 26 June 2009 at 11:59
Tags: Press Gazette

The plates have been cast, the presses are whirring and the July edition of Press Gazette will be with subscribers early next week.

A year’s subscription to Press Gazette now costs £90 (old price £115) and you also get a free 2gb USB stick – call 01858 438872.

Here’s a selection of the highlights from the next issue:

Digital Britain

Communications minister Stephen Carter was pretty cross with the dismissive way many journalists covered his long-awaited report.
“I think 90 per cent of the people that are writing these articles have not read the report,” he said.
(Press Gazette notes that if he had really wanted journalists to publish considered responses on 16 June he would have given them more than a 90-minute headstart on the embargo in which to read all 238 pages and then file their online stories).
But any ho, Press Gazette has read Digital Britain – and we think its proposals to siphon off up to £130m a year from the BBC licence fee into the independent sector could be the salvation of regional news.
We find out how it could pay for more than 350 new ultra-local TV stations and speak to potential players in future regional news consortia: MEN editor Paul Horrocks, video news guru Michael Rosenblum, PA editor-in-chief Tony Watson and chief executive of Ten Alps Alex Connock.
Describing the current regional TV news structure, Connock tells us: “It’s as relevant a structure for delivering information to the average 20-year-old today as York Minster is a suitable venue for staging premiership football.”

Regional press mergers

Meanwhile our media money watcher Peter Kirwan has studied the Office of Fair Trading report on regional newspaper mergers, released in tandem with Digital Britain, and believes it may have given the giants of the industry carte blanche to trample over smaller competitors.

MPs’ expenses

The inside story of the Telegraph’s historic scoop.

Scoop search

We publish part one of our search for the top fifty British journalism scoops of the modern era – taking us from The Times and Tutenkhamen in 1922 to World in Action and Jonathan of Arabia in 1995.

Future of news

Ciar Byrne has bagged an exclusive preview of Value Added News, the new technology project backed by internet inventor Tim Berners-Lee which could transform online news.

The rise and rise of Rebekah

Author of “Stick it up your punter” Chris Horrie reflects on Rebekah Wade’s six-year editorship of The Sun as she is promoted to become chief executive of News International.

Print is king

Editor of the Aberdeen-based Press and Journal, Derek Tucker, explains how the Regional Press Awards newspaper of the year has protected its print circulation and avoided job cuts with a strategy that has seen it invest almost no editorial resources in online.

Shadow Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt

An exclusive interview with the man who is odds-on to take over the Culture, Media and Sport brief if the Conservatives take power next summer.
Jeremy Hunt tells Press Gazette: “If we do nothing the local newspaper industry is just going to die on its feet.”

Also in the July issue: Grey Cardigan, Axegrinder, Simon Singh, Ben Brown, Camilla Wright, David Banks, Ben Goldacre, Simon Singh, David Hooper on media law, Ian Reeves on new ways of funding journalism…and much more.

To subscribe, that number again is 01858 438872.

Journalism job vacancy: Online news editor for Press Gazette

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 24 June 2009 at 09:36
Tags: Press Gazette

Press Gazette’s hard-working online news editor Paul McNally is leaving us - meaning we have a rare job vacancy.

Over the last year Paul has helped beef up our online news output increasing the number of unique users to as many as 150,000 a month.

He’s accepted a job working as a reporter and sub-editor on an English language newspaper based in the south of France called The Connexion which is a monthly title with a circulation of 58,000. I wish him well and I’m sure he has a great future in journalism ahead of him.

The person who replaces him should:

• Have a minimum of two years experience working in a high-pressure news environment.
• Be NCTJ trained (or equivalent).
• Have 100 words a minute shorthand.
• Be able to prove that they can use blogging and social networking to expand Press Gazette’s online reach.
• Be adept at monitoring a plethora of online news sources to ensure the Press Gazette website is always up to date.
• Also find the time to produce their own off-diary web exclusives.
• Be happy to work almost exclusively online in a quick-turnaround news environment.

This is all a pretty tall order so this job requires an exceptional and hard-working journalist.

But as well as being hard work, this job should be fun and extremely worthwhile.

Press Gazette, online and in print, is about fighting for press freedom and giving the British journalism industry the information it needs to ensure it weathers the current economic and technological storm and has a great future.

Press Gazette is under new ownership after being bought by Progressive Media in April - and there are big plans to expand what we are doing online.

We are currently based in Paddington in London but are planning to relocate to new offices in Fleet Street later this summer.

The salary range for this job is £25,000-£29,000.

To apply, write to me: dominicp@pressgazette.co.uk with a CV and a brief covering letter explaining why you are the right person for this job in no more than 200 words.

The deadline for applications is the end of next week (3 July). And anyone who is shortlisted for interview will need to be available in the week of 13-17 July.

Last call for best scoops ever: Pilger, pigs and Profumo

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 12 June 2009 at 12:42
Tags: Journalism, Press Gazette

Time is running out to send in your nominations for Press Gazette’s search for the best British journalism scoops of all time.

It looks like we are going to have a cracking list for the July issue as voted for by Press Gazette readers.

Inspired by the Telegraph’s great MPs’ expenses revelations we are asking readers to name their favourite scoops. I think the furthest we are likely to go back is The Times breaking news of the Conquest of Everest in 1953.

The deadline to get your nominations in is the end of play today (or Monday at the latest).

Thanks to Revel Barker (no mean scoop-getter himself) for putting the word out on his website for old Fleet Street hands Gentleman Ranters.

He suggested the Daily Mail’s 1998 pig-escape story on the Tamworth Two as a good contender, thanks for that Revel.

Former Press Gazette chief reporter Jean Morgan MBE has suggested the News of the World’s cracking 1994 story about Tory MP Alan Clark’s affair with a judge’s wife and her two daughters as well as the Daily Mirror’s 2002 exclusive: Intruder at the Palace, when Ryan Parry went undercover as a royal footman.

The Daily Mirror has sent in a flood of nominations including John Pilger’s report on the Cambodian genocide from 1979, Death of a Nation; Profumo Quits from 1963 and Cocaine Kate from 2005.

We are hoping to publish a top 50 - but limited space may mean going for rather fewer - in the July edition.

So once again - please send in your scoop nominations to dominicp@pressgazette.co.uk.

Press Gazette scoop search: Kruschev, Aitken, Diana, Ronnie Biggs and Northern Rock

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 9 June 2009 at 10:59
Tags: Journalism, Journalists, Press Gazette

Press Gazette’s hunt for best British journalism scoops of the modern era is hotting up.

Here are some of the most popular suggestions so far in no particular order:

• Reuters (1956): John Rettie - Kruschev’s speech denouncing Stalin.
• The Guardian/World in Action (1995): David Leigh - Jonathan of Arabia (Jonathan Aitken’s dealings with Saudi arms dealers)
• BBC Panorama (1995): Martin Bashir - Diana interview
• Daily Express (1974): Finding Ronnie Biggs in Rio
• BBC (2008): Robert Peston - Northern Rock bail out
• Daily Express (1982): Norman Luck - Intruder in the Queen’s Bedroom
• Daily Mirror (2006): John Prescott’s affair with Tracey Temple

These are just a few of the nominations we have had in so far. The Telegraph expenses scoop has also featured in the voting.

But there have also been concerns raised that chequebook journalism is not as worthwhile as scoops acheived through other means.

My view is that a scoop is a scoop - and should be judged by the waves it makes and the follow-up it gets. But what do you think?

Press Gazette will be publishing a list of the top 50 best British journalism scoops ever in the July issue. To get your nomination in please email me - dominicp@pressgazette.co.uk.

These are tough times for journalists and the idea behind this journo-list (and some others in the pipeline) is to celebrate the best of British journalism, and provide a reminder of the great stories which inspired us to become journalists in the first place.

The deadline for nominations is end of play Friday.

Press Gazette magazine: Inside the June edition

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 3 June 2009 at 07:00
Tags: Press Gazette

The June issue of Press Gazette should be with subscribers now and is packed with the best independent features, analysis, tips, training and in-depth news about British journalism that you will find anywhere.

The new price for a year’s subscription is £90 – that’s £25 off the old price. Those subscribing now will also receive a free 2GB USB memory stick. Quote offer code: JU06.

For students Press Gazette has introduced a new discounted annual rate of £60 (please state your college/year).

To subscribe call 01858 438 872 .

What’s in this month’s mag:

• Our cover feature looks at rebuilding internet paywalls for journalism-based websites – as suggested by Rupert Murdoch, Carolyn McCall and others. If it feels like we’ve been here before it’s because we have, explains Peter Kirwan. He digs behind the rhetoric and crunches the numbers to see if there is a way forward for paid editorial content online.

• We also have an exclusive in-depth interview with Culture Secretary Andy Burnham speaking on the eve of the publication of the government’s much-anticipated Digital Britain report. He explains why he is determined to take action to save Britain’s under-threat regional print and broadcast journalists.
• Ciar Byrne has a look under the bonnet of Geordie Greig’s relaunched Evening Standard to find out what journalists there really think of the Lebedev regime:

• Launch editor of Love It! Karen Pasquali-Jones has ten great ways to “lick your magazine into shape” and ensure it survives the recession.

• Political journalism veteran David Rose reports on the Telegraph’s MPs’ expenses scoop explaining why it is the biggest political story of his 41-year-career in the Lobby and why journalists aren’t mourning the exit of speaker Michael Martin.

The June issue also includes:

• All the best ideas and most incisive quotes from the World Magazine Congress.
• News and pictures from the regional press awards.
  
• A report on what the newsroom of the future will look like:

• A rundown of the latest and best voice recorders for journalists.

• A career-retrospective interview and feature spread on design legend David Hillman:

And exclusive mag-only columns by David Banks, The Grey Cardigan, Axegrinder, Peter Kirwan, Camilla Wright and Peter Sands.

Press Gazette launches search for biggest scoops ever

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 2 June 2009 at 10:21
Tags: National Newspapers, Press Gazette, newspapers

Writing in the new issue of Press Gazette (out this week) parliamentary correspondent David Rose describes the Telegraph MPs expenses story as the biggest scoop he can remember - and after 41 years reporting on politics that’s saying something.

With 13 MPs, including the Speaker of the House of Commons, all having fallen on their swords (so far) the political fallout has been massive. And the opinion polls suggest it is a story which has resulted in a major shift in the way the public views the mainstream political parties.

But is it the biggest Fleet Street scoop ever?

For the July edition of Press Gazette we are putting together a list of the biggest British journalism scoops of the modern era. The Telegraph is sure to feature on it, but what other great scoops deserve recognition?

I’ve already put a tweet out to Press Gazette’s 3,416 Twitter followers and had a couple of interesting nominations: The Times’ 1922 exclusive on the discovery of Tutankamen’s tomb and BBC journalist John Simpson’s report on the 1982 massacre of Palestinians in the Shatila refugee camp in Lebanon by Christian militiamen.

Scoops of the year from the British Press Awards which might make it on to the final list could include the Daily Mirror’s “Intruder at the Palace” revelations, from 2004, in which Ryan Parry went undercover as a royal footmen and revealed the Queen’s penchant for tupperware and Radio Two.

Tom Newton-Dunn’s revelation of a video showing US pilots killing a British soldier in a “friendly fire” incident from 2008 is another strong contender from recent years.

A more controversial nominee for our all-time best scoops list would be former BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan’s 2003 report on the “dodgy dossier” on weapons of mass desttruction in Iraq. The Hutton report showed that some of Gilligan’s methods may have been flawed - but many argue that the essential point of his story, that the dossier was “sexed up”, was correct.

Going a little further back, the Daily Star’s revelation in 1987 that Jeffrey Archer slept with prostitute Monica Coghlan is another classic scoop. Archer successfully sued for libel at the time, but later went to jail for perjury over the affair.

To nominate your favourite scoops email me - dominicp@pressgazette.co.uk.

If you want to nominate more than one can you please put them in order of preference and if possible, give a few words explaining what is so good about your favourite.

NUJ says Newsquest is shameful to take BNP advertising

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 19 May 2009 at 14:59
Tags: BNP, regional newspapers

The NUJ has condenned Newsquest’s local papers for taking adverts from the BNP.

Numerous Newsquest titles have been running BNP adverts, as discussed in my previous blog post.

NUJ General Secretary Jeremy Dear said in a statement this afternoon: “Newsquest should be ashamed of itself for taking money from an organisation that advocates racist policies that would directly discriminate against the communities these websites serve.

“This disgraceful decision not only damages the reputation of the company’s online and print titles. Journalists will also find their ability to win the trust and confidence of their communities undermined by this decision.”

Chairman of the NUJ’s Newsquest group chapel Bob Smith said: “Accepting the tainted cash of the British National Party shows unbelievably bad judgement on the part of Newsquest’s management.

“The BNP is not like other political parties. It only allows ‘indigenous caucasian’ people to join its misguided membership. Accepting advertising from this organisation shows bad faith with readers of Newsquest websites, which report on some of the most ethnically diverse areas in Britain.

“One has to ask, too, what message Newsquest’s many minority ethnic employees get from their company’s acceptance of this party’s money.

“Paul Davidson should accept that his greedy management has made a massive blunder in taking the BNP shilling, apologise and make sure it never happens again.”

Ethical debate sparked by BNP ads in Newsquest weeklies

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 19 May 2009 at 09:38
Tags: BNP, Press freedom, regional newspapers

With the European elections fast approaching a perennial ethical issue has cropped up again for local media - whether or not they should take advertising from the British National Party.

While journalists on papers often abhor the disruptive influence the BNP has in the communities they serve, commercial departments will argue that it is not their job to make ethical judgments about the people who advertise provided the ads themselves are within guidelines.

Last year there was a row at Archant’s London titles, including the Ham & High, over their taking adverts from the BNP ahead of the local elections.

This time Jon Slattery has highlighted the fact that Newsquest is taking BNP ads on many of its local newspaper websites in and around London.

One Newsquest journalist has spoken out against the ad placements, telling Slattery: “It’s difficult enough keeping the extremists off your messageboards with our policy to only remove comments when reported - allowing the BNP an even more legitimate platform like this undermines the credibility of the paper.
“There’s already calls to boycott Newsquest papers on Twitter.”

But the editorial director of The Echo in Essex, Martin McNeill, has robustly defended taking the BNP’s cash, saying:

“The Echo has consistently opposed the BNP in our Comment column and will continue to do so. As editor, I have twice been taken to court, unsuccessfully, by a BNP activist who did not like my editorial stance. I also regularly receive BNP hate mail.

“Despite this, I feel I must defend the right of all parties to take out paid-for advertising in support of their election candidates.”

The problem is highlighted by this story in the Newsquest-owned Kidderminster Shuttle:

Which was juxtaposed with this advert:

This is a case where journalists are justified in getting involved with a commercial decision. They are the ones with their feet on the ground in the communities they serve and have to make a call on whether taking such adverts damages the good name of their newspaper title.

While I sympathise with Martin McNeill’s free speech argument, I would argue that it is not worth taking the BNP’s money for the damage it does your newspaper’s image.

Having a BNP advert appearing alongside journalism which highlights the damage they do to communities does not look good.

Local newspapers are about binding communities together and the BNP, with its policy of repatriating foreign immigrants, stands for the opposite of that.

Gutsy Telegraph expenses scoops prompt major political fallout

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 18 May 2009 at 10:42
Tags: Journalism, Journalists, National Newspapers

The Telegraph today publishes its eighth consecutive front page almost exclusively devoted to its MPs expenses investigation.

It has been a long week not just for politics – but for journalism too.

I can’t remember the last time a single news organisation has dominated the news agenda so thoroughly for so long.

While the genesis of the story may have been chequebook journalism and the handing over of a sum of money for a computer hard-drive, the way the Telegraph has handled the story since then has been exemplary. It has used every square inch of its big broadsheet pages to deliver maximum impact on the front, and then excruciating, jaw-dropping and riveting detail inside.

While it took cash to get the hard-drive, it also took guts to run the story.

This was stolen information and much of it was undoubtedly private.

Political journalism, like all specialist areas of reporting, is largely reliant on access to people in power. This is a story which has left politicians from all the major parties feeling badly burned.

According to the Mail on Sunday the Telegraph paid £70,000 for the MPs’ expenses data.

Even if the true figure was double that, the Telegraph can count it as money well spent. The circulation boost on day one alone was reported to be 100,000 – easily enough to cover that £70,000.

Last month the Telegraph editorial team will have been left feeling fairly miffed after picking up only one prize – for cartoonist of the year – at the British Press Awards.

The last week will have more than made up for that reverse.

Journalists at The Times and The Sun will be kicking themselves that they didn’t offer more cash to secure the MPs’ expenses files when they were offered to them weeks ago.

Big scoops beget more big scoops as tipsters will see the Telegraph as the place to go with their tales of corruption in high places. Momentum counts for much in journalism, just like politics, and the Telegraph editorial team currently has bucketloads of it.

The fallout from this story provides a welcome reminder of the undiminished power of the fourth estate.

The Labour party has suspended two MPs – Elliot Morley and David Chaytor; justice minister Shahid Malik has been forced to resign, as has David Cameron aide Andrew Mackay; and House of Commons speaker Michael Martin looks like he has been fatally wounded by the affair.

The latest opinion polls suggest the revelations may even prompt a wholesale review of our electoral system, as the voting public turns away in disgust from the three main parties.

While Telegraph editor Will Lewis and his team should rightfully be enjoying their moment in the sun this week.

The real glory should go to freelance journalist Heather Brooke whose dogged pursuit of Freedom of Information requests first filed nearly five years ago prompted the expenses information to be collated in the first place.

Dash or semi-colon? Ban them both

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 5 May 2009 at 07:00
Tags: Subbing, newspapers

Never mind the debate over the future of the regional press and public service broadcasting. The latest issue of Standpoint magazine has tackled an issue which we journalists can really get stuck into.

It’s the dash versus the semi-colon.

Citing an example from the Sunday Telegraph of the increasing use in journalism of the em-dash, Lionel Shriver writes that it is “a punctuation mark that is raging through contemporary prose as rapaciously as clostridium difficile is contaminating our hospitals…The em-dash is eating semicolons for breakfast.”

And she has a point. I’ve been guilty myself. But no more.

As for the semi-colon, I have to say that I am with Kurt Vonnegut on that one. As he said:

“Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.”

While I have absolutely nothing against hermaphrodites, I do agree that semi-colons are neither fish nor fowl. And what’s more they are ugly.

They have absolutely no place in a news story, and very little place in a news feature.

Journalists should keep it simple. Commas and full-stops should suffice. Sometimes semi-colons are unavoidable, such as when you are writing complicated lists, but overall they are to be avoided. Especially in, God forbid, intros.

Over-use of the em-dash does encourage a sloppy approach to grammar, so let’s ban them too. Or at least use them a lot less.