http://blogs.pressgazette.co.uk/greycardigan Dispatches from down table at the Evening Beast Thu, 18 Mar 2010 23:11:08 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en IT WOULD seem appropriate to start this piece with a cliché: You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.   (Let’s not argue about ‘till’. That’s how Joni Mitchell wrote it.)   The ongoing demise of local newspapers is manifesting itself in some strange ways. On his Holdthefrontpage blog, former Birmingham Mail editor ... http://blogs.pressgazette.co.uk/greycardigan/2010/03/grey-cardigan-extract-from-the-march-column/ I'm always quick to kick the BBC for lazy subbing, so it's only fair to hold our inky hands up when one of our own gets it horribly wrong. This, my friends, is the bag of shite that appeared on the Daily Mirror website this morning. See how many errors ... http://blogs.pressgazette.co.uk/greycardigan/2010/03/grey-cardigan-test-your-subbing-skills/ The latest Gordon Brown story gives the national columnists the chance to recall tales of brutal newsroom behaviour (although hardly shocking from my experience), notably from Rowan Pelling in the Daily Telegraph and Allison Pearson in the Daily Mail. Funnily enough, the doomed T2 supplement in The Times comes up with ... http://blogs.pressgazette.co.uk/greycardigan/2010/02/grey-cardigan-the-bullying-editors/ A pitiful slip in standards at the Daily Telegraph, where not only is it bad enough that they even bother to document the tawdry, tabloid Ashley and Cheryl split-up, but they then adorn this pile of steaming dog shit with a pathetic literal. "Cheryl stopped wearing her wedding ring and later ... http://blogs.pressgazette.co.uk/greycardigan/2010/02/grey-cardigan-ill-have-a-vowel-please-cheryl/ SO I’M in the Shivering Whippet for a couple of liveners with one of my predecessors as Editor of the Evening Beast – the last proper boss we had, if truth be told. I’m moaning at him about a budget meeting I’ve just sat through: the sheer penny-pinching misery of management ... http://blogs.pressgazette.co.uk/greycardigan/2010/02/grey-cardigan-extract-from-februarys-column/ Younger readers won't know what a sabbatical is. Derived from Greek or Hebrew, it is defined as "a rest from work, or a hiatus, often lasting from two months to a year". It used be be commonplace on some newspapers. My father, a hard-working hack, was granted a two-week sabbatical once he'd ... http://blogs.pressgazette.co.uk/greycardigan/2010/02/grey-cardigan-welcome-to-the-planet-guardian/ I'm taken aback by the report in The Guardian that the Daily Mail is to spend £10 million on an advertising campaign aimed at 35-year-old women. Ten million pounds? That's more than the profits of some regional newspaper groups. Ten million pounds on a single promotion? I sometimes can't find the ... http://blogs.pressgazette.co.uk/greycardigan/2010/01/so-print-is-dead-not-in-derry-street/ You might think that the lead item on the BBC evening news would be lovingly crafted, carefully checked, and be a tour de force of television reporting. Not so. Tonight's report on the Chilcot Inquiry had a whizzo graphic showing the calendar of Lord Goldsmith's shifting opinion on the legality of ... http://blogs.pressgazette.co.uk/greycardigan/2010/01/so-where-are-aunties-subs/ It is with great delight that I bring you news that the Framley Examiner has uploaded some new pages. And if you're struggling with staff shortages, rampant literals and work experience kids pretending to be trained reporters, boy, will they make you wince.   http://blogs.pressgazette.co.uk/greycardigan/2010/01/framley-examiner-brings-out-new-issue/ ON my travels the other week, I picked up a copy of what was once my favourite weekly newspaper, the Craven Herald. This used to be a magnificent throwback; a big anachronistic broadsheet with only classified ads on its front page.   Coach trips, jumble sales, pub music nights, farm auctions – ... http://blogs.pressgazette.co.uk/greycardigan/2009/12/a-craven-decision/