Mike Glover's Media Blog

Reflections on Media regulation

2011-11-17T11:21:00.000-08:00

THE annual conference of the Society of Editors was held this week at Runnymede on Thames.
The event is always on the home turf of the outgoing President, whose term runs from conference to conference. So Robin Esser, executive managing editor of the Daily Mail, must live in the leafy suburbs of Surrey.
But of course the venue, near where that iconic historical document Magna Carta was signed, gave the Society, true to their hyperbolic trade, the excuse to call the conference Magna Carta II, as if it was starring Sylvester Stallone, said one wag.
The name was also the target of extreme Mickey-taking by Justice Minister Kenneth Clarke, one of the guest speakers. He pointed out that the original had nothing to do with freedom of speech, but was rather a stitch up of the king by land-owning barons. The resonance to Press barons was too much of a temptation for Sir Kenneth to ignore.
He was undoubtedly the star turn, not only using his natural charm and wit to seduce a potentially hostile audience, but also getting his message across with maximum effect.
This was that the Government had no intention of introducing statutory regulation of the media, policed by some “ghastly Quango” as he put it.
But the media in general, and tabloid national newspapers in particular, had to be seen to put their own house in order. The public would not allow politicians to let them off the hook over the recent mobile phone hacking scandal without significant reforms.
Hugely enjoyable as the conference was, the over-riding feeling I had was one of déjà vu, followed swiftly by nemesis of the National press.
As Editor of the Bradford Telegraph & Argus I was appointed to the Newspaper Society Editorial committee and served on the Parliamentary and Legal Committee of the Guild of Editors, the Society’s forbears, back in 1990.
As such I was appointed to the original code committee of an organization called PressBof, a sort of media owners’ cabal which paid for and organized the setting up of the Press Complaints Commission. The committee also wrote the code.
It has been added to considerably since, but it was designed to assure the public that journalists and their employers took very seriously their own ethics and standards, which the regional and local media already did.
There was such a difference in attitude that there were many times that representatives of the local press argued that they should split away from the Nationals, so as not to be tarnished by the same brush.
This opinion was resurrected at this year’s conference, but as 21 years before, it falls flat because of the impossibility of deciding where the dividing line should be. What about big regional newspapers or Scottish, Irish or Welsh quasi-national ones?
Another resonance was self-righteous back slapping for the Daily Mail’s new corrections and clarifications column on its page 2. I introduced such a column on the T&A when deputy Editor back in 1988. When I commended it to the distinguished Editors on the code committee, including Sir David English then Editor of the Daily Mail, a couple of years later they looked at me as if I was mad.
They were mystified as to why on earth they should draw attention to their mistakes in such a way? Well they seem to have finally realized that a smidgeon of humility and putting the record straight indeed helps cement a relationship with the reader.
Whether the public will be satisfied by such gestures is doubtful. Other suggestions included only keeping VAT-exemption on newspapers which complied with the code; a regulated kitemark; and only giving recognition of audited circulation figures, the benchmark for advertising rates, to newspapers which comply.
One idea that received no support, even from another guest speaker Chris Patten the new chairman of the BBC Trust, was giving newspapers’ regulation to the broadcasting authorities.
Mr Patten said that newspapers, unlike broadcasters, did not have to be impartial. And, besides, broadcasters had to have more sensitive rules because of the power of moving live images.
The complexities of deciding how to police the media, without imposing any elements of state control, are truly daunting. The fact that the conference coincided with the opening of the Leveson Inquiry into the behavior of the media just underlined the sensitivities.
It was canny of the organizers to also issue the first draft of a report entitled The Test of Democracy by the Commonwealth Press Union at the conference. It highlighted many abuses around the world of Press freedom. It also included a chart that revealed that the United Kingdom is just 19th in a league tale of free media, even as things stand now. Top is Finland.
One striking difference between now and 1990 is that then the old Guild of Editors was completely dominated by regional and local Press representatives. They were no broadcasters and a tiny smattering of National Press delegates.
Now that is completely overturned. A rough count showed that of 175 delegates, just 37 were from the local Press; 47 were academics and secretariats of organizations allied to the media; 45 National newspaper delegates attended; there were more than 20 broadcasters and the rest were New Media, public relations and representatives of organizations like probation and police with a vested interest in the media.
That underlined a point by former Editor Neil Fowler that the whole hacking inquiry was a diversion from the real threat to the media, financial instability.
The truth is that the Internet, social media and other innovations have left the Press in a pretty parlous state. Advertising has migrated on-line to such an extent that, not only can the local and regional press not afford to send delegates to such an important conference, but also can’t afford to recruit or train journalists.
Arguably the most striking contribution of all was from a young lady who had started as an unpaid intern on a national magazine, progressed to national newspapers and ended up on an important Quango. She said she had never been trained as a journalist and had never even seen the Press Complaints Commission Code of Conduct.
Good Grief! Now you know what I mean by the media industry reaching Nemesis.

Heavy burden of claims for Sir Jimmy

2011-10-30T09:49:00.000-07:00

There have been an awful lot of claims for Sir Jimmy Savile, since he died yesterday.
It is claimed he was the first Disc Jockey to realize you could run a dance to records, as opposed to live bands which had been the normal until he came along.
I doubt this. Surely the American clubs had already invented this. David Jacobs played records, as did Pete Murray and others before Sir Jimmy made the big time.
Sir Jimmy himself said in interviews that he invented the double deck, allowing DJs to play one record while lining up the next one. That was in the dance halls where he learnt his trade.
That has more authenticity and indeed laid the foundations for the current club DJs.
I heard someone say he persuaded the man who ran Mecca to bring bingo to this country. Whether this was a good thing, they didn’t say. But again I have my doubts.
He was the first celebrity to run marathons for good causes, said some. This was indeed an amazing claim if true, considering the billions of pounds that have been raised for charity since.
And he wore his shell-suits and bling jewellery so setting the template for all those fancy-dress fun runs that have also benefitted mankind.
But whatever claims were true, Sir Jimmy was indeed a one-off.
I met the former miner and wrestler several times, the first time being when I was about 10, around 1960 when my father discovered him in the Glasgow dance halls and brought him to Tyne Tees Television to front a live popular music programme. He had tartan hair at the time, so later hair-styles seemed tame to me.
I then heard him on Radio Luxemburg and saw him as launch host on Top of The Pops before went on to front the very successful Jim’ll Fix It for 20 years. This show really set the template for bucket lists, or wish fulfillment for children.
It was while he was recording this show that I was sent by the Daily Star news desk – it would have been 1973 or 74 - to persuade him to sign a Christmas card I had also had to buy and dedicate it to a terminally ill girl who had written to the paper.
I had to wait outside his dressing room at the BBC’s Shepherd’s Bush studios for a couple of hours before he would see me. He then took the mickey unmercifully about the card I had bought and kept me on tenterhooks for another hour before signing as asked.
It was typical of the man that he could be awkward and wary.
But he could not be faulted for his devotion to fun and good causes. Not only did he raise £40 million for Stoke Mandeville hospital unit for spinally injured patients, he turned up frequently to give morale support.
Less publicly he also spent a day or two a week as an unpaid porter at St James’s hospital in his home town of Leeds.
There was so much to admire about the man, it doesn’t matter if some of the tales were garnished in the telling on his death at 84 years old: RIP Sir Jimmy.

Serendipity triumphs

2011-10-22T08:17:00.001-07:00

This is a sneak preview of an article written for Friends of Brewery Arts Newsletter in November:

SERENDIPITY is my favourite word in the English language. Not only does it have a lovely sound, but it also has such a positive meaning: “the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.”
Since I left The Westmorland Gazette, where I was Editor for ten years, I have been running a media consultancy, Lakes & Bay Communications, which keeps me in touch with many friends and contacts in this part of the world. I now have the time and freedom to make links that would not otherwise be made, and hopefully benefit all those involved.
Such a series of coincidences certainly came into play recently for The Friends of Brewery Arts.
When still Editor I got to know Mike Pennington, owner of Burgundy’s Wine Bar in Lowther Street, which hosted a micro-beer festival the newspaper sponsored.
Several years later, in autumn 2010, I went to interview the principals of Littoral Arts who own the Cylinders estate at Langdale, which was the site of the last installation by the German emigree artist Kurt Schwitters. I was preparing an article for Independent on Sunday about the proposed rebuilding of the Cumbrian barn that housed the artwork, at an exhibition of 20th Century Sculpture at the Royal Academy off Piccadilly in London early this year.
Ian Hunter of Littoral asked me to find a local film-maker to record the events, which I did. I was then asked to help develop the script for the film, arrange interviews and raise funds. So I went to see Mike at Burgundy’s and he kindly agreed to partly sponsor the film.
As a result I found out he was building an extension to Burgundy’s, to include a micro-brewery, and had obtained the recipe for the legendary Auld Kendal beer, originally brewed by Whitwell and Mark, whose brewery became the home of Brewery Arts.
In a completely separate sphere of influence I had met Hilary Claxton while being touted to help set up a new branch of the Rotary in Kendal, a venture that didn’t get off the ground. But Hilary and I had kept in touch and she had proposed I get involved in Friends of Brewery Arts, which I was happy to do as a long-term supporter of the venue.
I attended the fund-raising night, reacquainted myself with Ian Hoyle, who I had known years earlier through the Talking Newspapers charity, and he kindly invited me to attend a couple of Friends committee meetings as an observer.
At the first meeting I attended, I found out for the first time that Margaret Thomas and the Friends were planning a Brewery Story evening, including a talk by historian John Coopey on the building’s time as a brewery.
And what is more, by an amazing coincidence, the date of the event was the same week that Mike planned to produce the resurrected Auld Kendal.
Without my fortuitous intervention no-one would have made that link. It was then just a matter of persuading Mike to bring the new brew down to the Brewery Story evening so the audience could sample it. Very well it seemed to go down, too.
Serendipity triumphed. Perhaps that is what I should have called my company.

Saving the reporter

2011-09-03T09:02:00.000-07:00

THERE is a fascinating conference being held on Tuesday morning (September 6) in London. It is being organized by Westminster Forum an organization which puts key figures of the media industry in touch with law-makers and other interested parties to inform legislation. It is entitled Media Forum Keynote Seminar: News now.
Its stated focus is to discuss key issues in the provision of news, from standards, ethics and trust to plurality and media ownership.
Its stated context is: “An early opportunity to examine the future policy and regulatory framework for the news industry, ahead of the wide-ranging inquiries into the culture and practices in journalism.”
A very impressive group of speakers includes: Professor Natalie Fenton, Co-Director, Goldsmiths Leverhulme Media Research Centre, University of London; Martin Fewell, Deputy Editor, Channel 4 News; Will Gore, Public Affairs Director, Press Complaints Commission; Mary Hockaday, Head, Newsroom, BBC; Tom Kent, Deputy Managing Editor and Standards Editor, Associated Press; Jim Latham, Secretary, Broadcast Journalism Training Council; Mark Lewis, Partner, Taylor Hampton Solicitors; John McAndrew, Associate Editor, Sky News; Martin Moore, Director, Media Standards Trust; Nic Newman, Visiting Fellow, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Oxford University and former World Editor, BBC News Website; Bob Satchwell, Executive Director, Society of Editors and Michelle Stanistreet, General Secretary, National Union of Journalists.
In the chair will be Rt. Hon. the Lord Fowler and Lord Inglewood, Chairman, House of Lords Select Committee on Communications.
Attendees will include: Parliamentarians from the House of Lords, officials from Department for Culture, Media and Sport; European Commission Representation in the UK; and the Competition Commission as well as representatives from 3 Monkeys Communications; African Media Investments; Al Jazeera; Arqiva; Associated Press; BBC; BBC Trust; Bloomberg TV; Cardiff University; Channel 4; Channel 5; Free TV Australia; Guardian Media Group; International Broadcasting Trust (IBT); ITN Consulting; ITV; KPMG; Leeds Trinity University College; Reporters Without Borders; Reuters; Schillings; The Guardian; The Times; Thomson Media Foundation; University of Kent; Warner Bros et alia.
With such an august audience I didn’t think they would miss me and besides I cannot afford the cost or time to attend the conference, which is a shame as it is a subject about which I care passionately. Instead I submitted the following in the hope that it can influence contributions, or be logged in the records of the conference:
My main concerns are:
The impact that social media and internet-driven agendas, allied to a desire by politicians and others to manage the media and a spiralling obsession with celebrities are having on reporting standards;
Profit driven news organisations, owned by large corporations whose primary aim is to please shareholders, are cutting back on reporting staff;
Easy regurgitation of press releases is being used to fill column inches in the regional newspapers and inexperienced interns are being used by Nationals;
User-generated material is seen as an easy way of filling space, whether stories, pictures or comment;
Stories are cut and pasted from one web-site to another without any attempt to check their veracity;
Court cases are widely reported by news organisations who were not present and therefore cannot guarantee the reports are fair and balanced - the courts seem unable or unwilling to police this abuse;
The tendency of readers to click on celebrity stories is being used to unduly influence news values on the grounds that “that is what the public is interested in” without appreciation that expectations of what appears in main bulletins or printed products may differ from on-line offerings;
Reporting of real events involving real people are being squeezed out of the news agenda so increasing the gulf between the media and their customers, which may partly explain the plummeting sales of all newspaper types, and perhaps the explosion of use of social media.
The illegal, defamatory and prejudicial nature of comments on the bottom of stories on web-sites is undermining all the traditional safeguards that made free speech reliant on responsibility.
The end result of all these trends is that the role of the reporter is being undermined, undervalued and risks being destined for the scrap heap.
Who then will produce the truthful, challenging, illuminating material for whatever medium?
I offered these possible solutions:
Ask the Government’s investigations into media standards to include these issues;
Empower the courts (of all kinds) to fine organisations for contempt if they report without representation, forcing them to pay reporters who do attend for any material used;
Proceed with plans to make it easier to give independent non-profit making local newspapers charity status;
Find a mechanic to police protecting the intellectual copyright of news reports, to encourage investigative, pain-staking journalism;
Campaign to raise awareness of the importance of the skills and training of reporters to the wider public, so they appreciate the vital role they play in a democracy.
Some of the above seem daunting and even verging on hopeless, but the hacking scandal and its aftermath may just give a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to address these important issues.

Norway massacres expose media shortcomings

2011-07-24T02:13:00.000-07:00

After all the mobile telephone hacking coverage over the last month, the media really need no more calamities. Newspapers in particular need to show level-headed awareness of the public’s mistrust, show they are responsible and get it right.
So what happens when a major news story comes along to divert us all from the navel-gazing, self-destructive hacking coverage? The media make a complete lash up.
The Norwegian bomb and shooting tragedy not only exposed the limitations of newspaper deadlines, it also exposed the degree to which speculation and downright guesses have replaced real news coverage. But worst of all it highlighted Islam-phobia of the crudest kind.
The worst performance came from the Sun, just the publication which had the most to gain from showing restraint in the wake of the News International scandal. Their headline on Saturday was Norway’s 9/11. It wasn’t September 11th, or even November 9th. There were not 3,000 dead. No plane flew into a building.
But of course the message they wanted to portray was that Muslim terrorists had struck in Europe. In this respect the Sun was no worse than the BBC who for hours on Friday afternoon and evening was parading expert after expert to say the bomb attack showed all the signs of Al-Quaeda.
Then when the shootings on Utoya became apparent, we were all reminded of Mumbai. There was much speculation about the attacks being Libyan revenge on the Norwegians for that country’s support of the rebels trying to overthrow General Gaddafi. This all turned out to be nonsense, as we now know.
It wasn’t that late on Friday night that it started to dawn on everyone that the man responsible for the two massacres was a lone, Nordic-looking man in a police uniform. But that didn’t stop the Northern Editions of the National newspapers getting it horribly wrong on Saturday morning, by which time their readers knew the awful truth.
The BBC spent most of Saturday trying to repair the damage to its credibility, with justified examination of Anders Behring Breivik’s Christian fundamentalism and right-wing views.
Fundamental Christians is not a phrase that crops up often in media coverage of terrorism, in marked contrast to the phrase fundamental Muslims.
I have had many challenging discussions with Muslim friends over the years about the way the Media seizes upon the fact that terrorists are labelled with the Islamic soubriquet.
“Why does the media always revel in calling terrorists Muslim when most followers of the religion are decent, law abiding citizens who find terrorism abhorrent?” they ask. It is a hard question to answer, especially when Irish terrorists were rarely labelled Catholic or Protestant, or Christian for that matter.
So when Sunday’s newspapers came out it was interesting to see how the newspapers would approach the story now they had the whole picture.
Well Norway’s disaster was displaced as the lead by Amy Winehouse’s death or Daniella Westbrook’s newly found Christian beliefs. The comprehensive coverage of the events of Oslo and Utoya was largely taken up with detailed descriptions to show the full horror of the events.
But there was very little examination of Breivik’s motives and background. The Guardian web-site was a notable exception, going for a line about his links with British right wing groups, the obvious follow-up in my view. But even they down-played the Christian angle.
The media was probably right not to labour his Christian beliefs, as no right-minded follower of the teachings of Jesus Christ would do what Breivik did, just as most Muslims would be horrified by the actions of fundamental terrorism by people who follow their religion.
It is no wonder so many young Muslims feel alienated by the British media. Let’s hope the headline writers remember Norway’s example when the next outrage is executed by a mentally-deranged loner or small group. I wouldn’t bet on it though.

Hugh Grant takes moral high ground

2011-07-06T03:02:00.000-07:00

NOW that the BBC and The Guardian have forced the rest of the media to wake up to the hacking scandal, it is time to return to this subject.
I have written before that an Editor ought to know the strength of the source of a story that is being considered for publication.
That is why Andy Coulson had to resign from the News of the World. Either an Editor knows that a story is based on hacking mobile phones, in which he or she is complicit in breaking the law, or not, in which case the Editor is not doing the job properly.
At first sight, Rebecca Brooks, or Ward as she was when she edited The News of the World before Coulson, and later The Sun, seems to be in an untenable position.
As chief executive of News International, the publishing overlords of the two Murdock red-tops, she has now sent an e-mail to all staff saying how appalled she is that murder victim Milly Dowler’s mobile phone was hacked by a private detective working for The News of The World. She pledged that every effort would be made to get to the bottom of this allegation.
Her move comes the same day that it was revealed that the families of the Soham murders may also have had their mobiles hacked, when Ms Wade was editor.
Roy Greenslade, a leading media commentator, and himself a former red-top Editor, has called this e-mail disingenuous.
It is difficult to disagree with his analysis. Whether she knew of such activities or not, she was culpable.
The British Press is one of the most competitive industries in the world. Dirty tricks have become endemic in its fierce culture. A former Sun journalist once told me the only editorial policy worth telling journalists to remember was: Get it first, but first get it right. He might have added the adverb: Legally.
The absence of this qualifying word from the culture of national newspapers has led to subterfuge, bullying and bribery becoming common practice to lesser or greater degrees, depending on which newspaper journalists work for.
Actor Hugh Grant was on 24-hour television last night arguing for a public inquiry not just into the actions of journalists, but also the police for failed previous investigations and politicians for being too buddy with newspapers, particularly Rupert Murdoch’s. He called it a cosy cabal.
He has long led a campaign for protection of privacy, which until recently has been largely restricted to celebrities like entertainers, footballers and politicians.
It is interesting to see where this shift in public opinion may go, with England footballer Rio Ferdinand’s legal action against the Sunday Mirror for reporting his alleged affairs being a good yardstick. It comes to something when Hugh Grant comes to represent the moral compass of the nation. But now that ordinary people are seen to be victims of the phone-hacking scandal, I suspect he represented the views of most of the public. We live in interesting times.

Protesters mingle with shoppers

2011-07-03T05:12:00.000-07:00

THE sun shone and the heat of the midday sun made sun cream advisable as the protestors marched down the main shopping mall.
But this was not Syntagma Square, the focus of the Athens riots against austerity measures by the Greek government.
It was the charming market town of Kendal, on the fringe of the English Lake District. Being shire country, petrol bombs and stone throwing were replaced by whistles and slogans shouted over loud-speakers.
There were just two unarmed police officers to ensure the health and safety of the marchers.
But no-one should mistake the civility for lack of passion or underestimate the resolve of the people giving up their Saturday lunch-time to make known their anger.
The marchers were protesting at thousands of teaching assistants and other council employees having their pay cut by up to 30 per cent in an equal pay exercise.
Most of the affected workers are women.
A total of 8,000 workers, employed by one of the smallest counties in Britain, have been given notice of being dismissed and re-employed on new terms and conditions to which they object. That represents half of the total Cumbria County Council workforce, including everyone from social workers to cleaners.
Westmorland and Lonsdale MP, Tim Farron, who joined the march, has warned that the council faces a tidal wave of employment tribunals over the plan for force through a new pay matrix under the single status scheme.
Single Status is the title given to a national agreement between the Labour Government and trade unions back in 1997, which aimed to harmonise terms and conditions of service for public employees, removing any unfairness in pay and rewards arrangements.
The council has already paid out £40m in back-pay, compensation and legal fees, as a result of the exercise.
Teaching assistants from across the county handed over a petition signed by over 1100 local residents to the county council asking them to think again about the single status plans. But the petition was ignored by the Conservative-Labour coalition that runs Cumbria.
Children’s Services cabinet representative, Liz Mallison, said their roles were being reviewed by head teachers, but the dismissal letters would stand.
MPs from across the county decided to write to every other English local authority to ask them for details of their implementation of single status. To date around fifty replies have been received – all indicating that there were either no pay cuts or only minor pay cuts to teaching assistants salaries.
Mr Farron, Liberal-Democrat national president, has written to the leader of Cumbria County Council asking him to call off the deeply controversial and unpopular single status programme.
“I’m sure that this shows that single status is supposed to be a rigorous exercise that harmonises job roles, terms and conditions. It is clear after the conclusion of stage three appeals that there is widespread confusion and dismay amongst county council employees and each section of the process has been rushed, conflicting information has been sent out by your authority,” he wrote.
Most of the staff affected are represented by the public services union Unison, which helped organise yesterday’s march, even though they did not join Thursday’s day of action.
It says it may ballot members for industrial action over Cumbria County Council’s controversial single-status pay review. It says the job-families approach used by Cumbria County Council, which groups together people doing different jobs, is “inherently unfair”.
The average reduction to salaries of the exercise is £3,390 a year. Cumbria’s 3,500 teaching assistants are among the losers. Full-time teaching assistants currently earn between £14,700 and £16,800 a year. The typical salary is likely to fall to £12,500 once single status is implemented.
Employees subject to national agreements like teachers and fire-fighters are not affected.
The teaching assistants have struck an emotional chord with the public because in Cumbria they have been given particular responsibility for children with special needs, meeting parents out-of-hours, adapting curricula to suit their charges and preparing for Ofsted inspections, some working up to 50 hours a week to do so.
A Cumbria County Council spokesman was unrepentant at the letter saying that it was the correct procedure.
“Under single status everyone was reassessed on the same basis in a matrix of jobs, so that there can be no unequal pay claims, which previously cost the county £40 million.
“Everyone is then offered new terms and conditions. If people sign the new contract, that’s fine and it becomes active on October 1, 2011.
“Those staff who haven’t signed, for whatever reason, then we have to give them 90 days notice, which is why the letters are going out now.
“If they turn up for work on October 1, whether they have signed or not, then by default they are accepting the new terms and conditions.”
Human Resources experts warn this strategy could lead to claims of constructive dismissal by those who quit instead of accepting the changes.
One of the affected teaching assistants at the march of around 80 people in Kendal was Sue Ireland of Burneside, who has worked at Sandgate School for 18 years.
“The way Cumbria has implemented single status has been an absolute farce,” she said. “We were all asked to provide evidence of why teaching assistants should be one a higher level of pay, but then we weren’t allowed to attend our own appeals.
“We are not militants. We love our jobs and being there for the children. Cumbria is just devaluing our jobs and professionalism after years of training.”
Mr Farron and the speakers pledged that their fight would go on.

Making radio waves

2011-06-21T06:02:00.000-07:00

THE LOCAL MP is expending more of his considerable energy trying to save BBC Radio Cumbria from the cuts that the corporation is having to make.
He says the BBC has suggested in its ‘Delivering Quality First’ document that many local programmes could be replaced and only a skeleton local service be maintained.
The BBC is already running pilot schemes for this kind of programme-sharing service in the south-east of England (for drive time on Radio Surrey, Radio Kent and Radio Sussex) and Yorkshire (for mid-afternoon on Radio Sheffield, Radio York and Radio Leeds).
Mr Farron, the Liberal-Democrat member for Westmorland and Lonsdale, argues that BBC Radio Cumbria has a unique role in providing news and information county-wide and has been an extremely important source of information for Cumbrian’s during times of crisis such as the 2001 Foot and Mouth outbreak and 2009 Cumbrian floods.
Unfortunately that assumes that Cumbria needs a county-wide service. Despite almost 40 years of propaganda there is still little evidence that people in Barrow want to know what’s going on in Carlisle, or people in Kendal care about what happens in Workington.
Of course there are examples, like the two cited by Mr Farron, of wider interest, but when that happens the national and regional services are adequate. The rest of the time, Radio Cumbria trots out a never-ending stream of trivial tittle-tattle, more often than not based on national magazines and surveys, and parochial news.
Mr Farron recently wrote to the Chairman of the BBC Trust, Lord Patten, to express his concern about the proposals. He is now asking local residents to email the Director General of the BBC, Mark Thompson, to let him know their views about the plans to axe Radio Cumbria.
A composite service provided for the old county of Cumberland, lumped in with Newcastle and Durham; and for the old county of Westmorland and Lancashire North of the Sands, based in Preston, would far better reflect the actual loyalties and interests of the population.

Campaign reaches climax

2011-06-21T05:28:00.001-07:00

At the risk of sounding like actress Meg Ryan in the film When Harry met Sally when she demonstrates in a crowded cafe how women fake orgasm, I wanted to scream Yes, Yes, Yes on reading reports of a speech by a Government minister this week.
Shadow culture secretary Ivan Lewis was giving a speech at a conference on the impact of MediaCity in Manchester, when he said opponents of the BBC’s decision to relocate parts of its television and radio output to Salford were living in the dark ages and should drop their outdated prejudices against the North of England. Yes.
He said the corporation would be strengthened by employing a more diverse talent pool and viewing events not solely through a London-centric prism. Yes.
Detractors he said should stop seeing Britain as London plus the rest. Yes.
As a freelance based in the Lake District, which attracts 15 million visitors a year, it is so frustrating trying to convince London-based news organisations that events in Britain’s playground are of any interest to their readers, viewers and listeners.
As newspapers have shed jobs, they have less staff based in the North; and they have become totally reliant on the same homogenous diet of politics, celebrity and economy.
They increasingly ignore the lives of real people, and wonder why their sales have plummeted. This trend may not be wiped out by a move to Manchester, but it will break the stranglehold on their imaginations caused by the obsessions of the Capital.

Proto-feminist remembered

2011-06-16T05:11:00.000-07:00

AFTER my story was butchered by the Daily Telegraph in-paper and rewritten on-line, I thought I would publish what I actually wrote.

AN historic picture commissioned to mark the inheritance of five castles by a prototype feminist has been reunited for the first time in its new home.
Lady Anne Clifford defied her father, husband and the first King of England and Scotland for decades to inherit an estate of five great castles across the North of England.
Known as The Great Picture, a remarkable triptych or three-sectioned format typically reserved for religious works, it was commissioned by Lady Anne in 1646 to mark her final succession to the inheritance that she had always felt was rightfully hers.
The redoubtable and determined Lady Anne, countess of Pembroke, Dorset and Montgomery (1590-1676), spent much of her life in a long and complex legal battle to obtain the rights of her inheritance.

Anne Clifford was born at Skipton Castle, the daughter of George Clifford, 3rd earl of Cumberland and his wife Margaret. Her father was an extravagant courtier and naval admiral who had risen to fame within Queen Elizabeth's court as a skilled jouster.

Anne's two brothers died young, leaving her as the only surviving child of the family. She was educated by her mother and by her tutor Samuel Daniel, developing a love of literature, history, the classics and religious works.

When Anne was 15, her father died. She was upset to find that she did not inherit her father's vast estates - the Clifford family lands were extensive and included the great castles of Skipton, Brougham, Brough, Pendragon and Appleby.

George had left these lands and titles to his brother Francis Clifford, leaving Anne £15,000 in compensation, in direct breach of an entail which stated that the Clifford estates should descend lineally to the eldest heir, whether male or female, dating back to the time of King Edward II.

The earl of Cumberland had not recognised the strength and determination of his daughter. From that moment, Anne's mission in life was to regain what she viewed as her rightful inheritance.

Her mother Margaret, as her guardian, initiated claims on Anne's behalf to both the Clifford's baronial titles and the estates, but the earl marshal's court refused the claims in 1606. Margaret's archival researches demolished Earl Francis's case for all the estates in the court of wards in 1607, the judges deciding that the Skipton properties were rightfully Anne's. Her uncle, however, refused to yield up the estates.

In 1609 Anne married Richard Sackville, third earl of Dorset (1589-1624). Her husband took charge of her lawsuits and in 1615 the court of common pleas decided that he and Anne could chose between two different halves of the estates, but could not have all of them. Anne refused to comply - she wanted all of the estates.

Defying the pleas of her husband, and even pleas from King James, she continued to fight and against their wishes, in 1616 she travelled north to see 'her' estates and visit her mother at Brougham Castle, the only person left who supported Anne's claims.

Margaret died a month later. With her death, Anne lost the only person who was prepared to help her fight for her inheritance. She later erected a monument at Brougham, today known as the Countess Pillar, in memory of her mother.
After her mother's death in May 1616 Anne was isolated, but she refused to yield her claim on the estates despite unpleasantness from her husband and incessant pressure from James I's courtiers.

Despite ill health, she refused to accept a settlement of the dispute in February 1617 whereby all the estates were given to Earl Francis and his male heirs, and £17,000 was given in compensation to Anne. Her husband quickly pocketed the money and Anne was left with nothing.

Only in 1643, after the struggle of a lifetime, did Anne regain the Clifford family's lands after the death of her cousin.

After the Civil War, in 1649, when she was 60 years old, Anne moved back to the north. She spent the next 26 years of her life restoring the mostly ruinous family castles to their former glory (Skipton, Pendragon, Appleby, Brough and Brougham Castles). She also built some almshouses for poor widows in Appleby and restored several churches in the area. Anne died in 1676 at Brougham Castle, in the room where her father had been born.
The Lakeland Arts Trust acquired The Great Picture in 1981 to keep it in the North West where Lady Anne had ruled over her estates, and the triptych hung in her castle at Appleby until the late 1990s.
When Appleby Castle closed to the public, the two side panels were installed at Abbot Hall. The central panel, however, posed difficulties for display: it was too large to fit into the Georgian-proportioned building by conventional means.
Apart from a brief period of display at the Tate Gallery in 2004, it has remained in store ever since.

The left side panel of the triptych depicts Lady Anne Clifford at the age of fifteen, when she was disinherited. Portraits of Lady Anne’s governess, Mrs. Anne Taylor, and her tutor, the poet Samuel Daniel, are placed above the shelves of books, which include titles by Ovid, Chaucer, and Cervantes’ Don Quixote. These elements of the composition highlight Lady Anne’s education and refined upbringing.

The right side panel shows Lady Anne in late middle age, when she finally regained the Clifford estates. Portraits of Lady Anne’s two husbands hang behind her: Richard Sackville, third Earl of
Dorset, who died in 1624, and Philip Herbert, fourth Earl of Pembroke and first Earl of Montgomery, died in 1650.

The central panel depicts Lady Anne’s parents, Margaret Russell and George Clifford, third Earl of Cumberland, with her older brothers who did not survive to adulthood: Francis (1584-1589) and
Robert (1585-1591). On the walls behind the family group hang portraits of Lady Anne’s four aunts.
As Lady Anne was not born until 1590, she does not appear in the central panel, but Lady Margaret’s gesture hints that the daughter who would ultimately become the Clifford heir had already been conceived at the time of the original painting.
The triptych has been attributed to Jan van Belcamp (1610-1653), a Dutch artist active in England who was a specialist in this genre.
In order to reunite the three sections, the central panel, which measures over 2.5 metres (9ft) x 2.5 metres, was yesterday (Tuesday) carefully lifted through an exterior window and installed in the refurbished display area at Abbot Hall Art Gallery in Kendal. A team of ten curators, technicians and joiners were on hand to ease it through the window with inches to spare.
New interpretation of the triptych and information on Lady Anne Clifford will set the stage for this magnificent painting to be enjoyed by the public in its complete state, as it was meant to be seen.
A spokesman for Lakeland Arts Trust said: “The triptych contains a wealth of fascinating symbols and references which provide unique insights into the culture of the seventeenth century. The Trust is delighted that this extraordinary painting will be displayed as a whole at Abbot Hall for the first time in its history.”
The costs are being met by author and historian Mary Burkett, who was director of the Trust when they acquired the picture.
She said: “Lady Anne Clifford was a woman of so many qualities with a huge historical influence on literature, art and archaeology. She set an example in how she looked after her staff and properties. She was a real star.”

Cricket through transatlantic eyes

2011-05-31T08:18:00.000-07:00

THE news that seasoned criminal George Davis has had his conviction for a bank robber y back in 1974 finally quashed by the High Court as unsafe, 37 years later, reminds me of one of the best pieces of journalism I ever read.
In 1975, at the height of the George Davis is Innocent campaign, I was taking a career break and bumming around Europe when I saw a headline in a newspaper on a stand saying something like “English Media’s obsession with dug field”.
Being obsessed with cricket and journalism I had to buy a copy with the few francs I had left.
The newspaper was the International Herald Tribune, a joint venture by American newspaper publishers to produce a newspaper for its ex-pats and travellers in Europe. It had its own office in Paris and told of World events from an American point of view.
The headline referred to the digging up of Headingley’s wicket in the middle of an Ashes cricket Test between England and Australia, thus ruining the match and the series.
Responsibility was claimed by the Free George Davis campaign, otherwise knows for putting graffiti on bridges throughout London and elsewhere.
Not unnaturally this received blitz-style coverage on all the front pages of the newspapers of the day.
The Tribune article was making the point that with all the events going on in the world, including the Labour party’s corruption nemesis at the end of the Poulson affair, English newspapers were somehow strangely obsessed with a cricket “wicket”.
And here is the best bit: the Tribune piece was aimed at Americans, who play baseball not cricket. In baseball the state of the ground between bowler (or pitcher) and batsman (or hitter) is completely meaningless, as long as the pitcher is on a mound.
So to explain the fuss, the article had to go into detail about why the digging up of the wicket mattered, explaining that in cricket the ball usually bounced, what this meant to the trajectory, and so forth.
The story was in that page one anchor slot many serious newspapers use for the off-beat, whimsical tale. But the explanation had to go on for so long the article had to be turned inside.
It was priceless and I often wished I had kept the article as an example of good journalism. Nothing was assumed as known by readers. Everything was explained.
It also provided the ultimate proof that not only are England and America two countries divided by use of the same language, they are also two countries divided by their shared loved of Sport.
Cricket th

Cheryl pet had nay chance

2011-05-31T06:31:00.000-07:00

(Sorry this was due to be posted in May but Blogspot’s problems intervened)
No one should be surprised by the decision to drop Cheryl Cole as judge on the US version of The X Factor.
The Geordie songbird may have been taken to the hearts of the fans of the British version of the programme, but reports suggest that not only is she not glamorous enough for Fox TV, she is also unintelligible to American audiences.
If the Americans needed sub-titles for the film The Full Monty, which they did even though that featured the relatively mild accent of South Yorkshire, then they would have had no chance with the Tyneside version of English.
By a strange co-incidence the news broke almost exactly a year after the tragic killing spree in the Whitehaven district of West Cumbria by crazed gunman Derrick Bird.
I was employed by the National Broadcasting Corporation to mind and support their TV crew when they came up to the port on the day after the deaths.
They charged me with finding eye-witnesses willing to be interviewed.
Imagine how pleased I was when I found a taxi driver who not only knew Bird well, but also saw some of the shootings, and was willing to be interviewed on camera.
I rushed back to the reporter and crew, dragged them to the rank where he was sitting in his cab and cameras rolled as he gave a blow by blow account.
After about five minutes the Americans called wrap and wandered off. I proudly asked if they were pleased only to be told that no, the interview was useless.
“Why?” I asked in disbelief. “Because no one in America would have understood a word he said,” I was told, “and we don’t do sub-titles on news reports.”
If the West Cumbrian burr was beyond our transatlantic cousins, then Cheryl would have nay chance.

Where's the attribution?

2011-05-03T07:12:00.000-07:00

I WAS beginning to think I was the only person troubled by the unquestioning reportage of the assumed assassination of Osama Bin Laden and four of his supporters, wives or bodyguards.
Thank goodness for the Independent, for whom at least two correspondents were willing to doubt the version of events being put out by US President Barack Obama and his acolytes.
The cry of American journalism used to be “attribution, attribution, attribution.” Reporters were taught to take care that they made it clear when they were communicating someone else’s version of events, unless they had witnessed them directly.
Sometimes this was taken to ridiculous extremes, as in “President Kennedy was shot dead in Dallas today, according to police” when the event had been seen by millions on television.
But at least that mind-set would have prevented the outrageous gullibility of the media in the wake of the Bin Laden incident. Here are some of the statements made by the media in Britain, particularly the BBC, with the required attribution in italics.
Osama Bin Laden was shot dead today, according to US President Barack Obama. None of the news agencies witnessed the shootings, nor can they be sure the dead man is Bin Laden.
There was a fire fight when Bin Laden refused to surrender, according to American sources. Again no impartial members of the media saw what happened and shouldn’t have reported the official line as fact. He could have been shot in the head, or in the back, or both.
Bin Laden’s body was buried at sea to prevent his grave becoming a shrine, alleged the White House. Even if the dead man was Bin Laden, how do we know he was buried at sea, and even if he was, how do we know the motive was to prevent his grave becoming a shrine? We don’t. Bin Laden, or his double’s body, could be laying on a slab in an American laboratory for all the media knows.
Even the supposed DNA testing of the deceased was just too glibly accepted as evidence by the media.
Geoffrey Robertson QC in The Independent points out that Justice, the word used by Obama to describe the death, used to mean arrest, trial and sentence after due process. Yet no other correspondent I saw, with one notable exception, questioned the wisdom of the President’s use of words. Robertson also argued cogently why it would have been wiser to capture Bin Laden alive and put him before a tribunal.
The other exception was The Independent’s peerless correspondent Robert Fisk who, in a brilliant personalised news report, bemoaned the triumphal references to resounding victories. He also pointed out that if the dead man from Abbottabad turn out not to have been Bin Laden, Obama will lose the next US election.
His shame will be no greater than that of the media who so slavishly reported events they couldn’t possibly verify as facts.
These events unfolded just days after similar unquestioning coverage of the bombing of a so-called command centre in Tripoli, that turned out to be a mansion in which President Gaddafi’s youngest son and grand-children were killed.
There is unlikely to be any independent analysis of those cold-blooded killings now they have been overtaken by the Bin Laden story, but both cases show how our view of these momentous times are being manipulated with the complicity of a lazy and unprofessional media.

Gone but not missed

2011-04-02T07:07:00.000-07:00

I AM strangely elated by the news that the owner of the Daily Sport and Sunday Sport newspapers has said that it is to enter administration after failing to pay off its debts.
I have lots of reasons to hate the publications. They were obscene and an anathema to real journalism, in that truth and accuracy played no part in decisions to publish.
Their attempts at humour, like Lancaster bomber found on the Moon or Elvis Presley is alive and well and living wherever, were mainly just stupid.
Most seriously they fuelled the calls for regulation on the Press.
When the media was trying to fend off active political campaigns to have them censored by politicians and their appointees, The Daily Star sent a reporter under cover into a hospital to photograph and interview the ‘Allo ‘Allo actor Gorden Kaye who had a terrible head injury from a freak road accident.
This was portrayed as proof of need for regulation, when no legitimate newspaper or broadcast medium would have dreamed of such an intrusion.
The trouble was that the Daily Sport wanted it both ways. They wanted to join the club of the media but didn’t want to obey any of its rules.
Sport Media Group (SMG), which in 2009 was saved from going out of business by former owner David Sullivan, has ceased trading with immediate effect.
The announcement came after the group warned it had experienced "an insufficient recovery" in trading since the adverse weather in December last year. This was as truthful as their stories.
The fact is that the Daily Sport filled a very narrow niche market, for a few years, and was now obsolete. Its place has been taken by the Internet.
That’s where people look for irresponsible, unregulated, frivolous, celebrity-driven news. If they want serious information and responsible reporting they turn to the traditional media.
Daily Sport, which specialises in celebrity news and soft porn stories and images, and was launched in 1991 by Mr Sullivan, had had its day.
I feel sorry for the 130-odd staff it employed, but its demise has been on the cards for some time. At its peak Daily Sport circulation, in 2005, was 189,473, the Saturday edition at 110,785 and the Sunday Sport at 167,473.
SMG withdrew its titles from the official newspaper industry monthly circulation audit after sales plunged and left each title at around a third of peak levels.
The company confirmed on Friday it had ceased trading - meaning its papers will not appear on news-stands - and it is set to appoint an administrator.
The chosen firm will seek to sell or close the operation. If shut down, it will be the first national newspaper to fold since Today in November 1995.
If any newspaper had to close, I am glad it was the Daily Sport.

Silence on regime change

2011-03-28T12:04:00.000-07:00

THE BBC’s reporting of events in Libya, already outrageously slanted, hit new depths of journalism tonight. The other media are nearly as bad.
The military action by America, the UK and France, from bases in Italy, was sanctioned by the United Nations on the understanding that it was to be confined to protecting Libyan citizens from attack and slaughter by the forces of dictator, Colonel Gaddafi.
They were specifically told that they were not to aspire to regime change.
This was very lucidly and eloquently explained by Penrith and Border MP, Rory Stewart, on Question Time last Thursday, when the unconventional Conservative MP warned of mission creep, as the Americans call it.
So what has happened? After bombing forces loyal to Gaddafi as they were said to be about to attack the rebels’ base city of Benghazi, the allies have been laying a trail of destruction across the North East coastline of Libya, clearing the way for the rebels to follow.
This is an obvious and blatant contravention of the UN resolution. It is not protecting Libya’s people from attack. It is giving the rebels clear military support.
That is interference in a civil war. Earlier today the Russians, who were so sceptical about the UN vote they abstained, pointed out this deception.
But what do the British media do? They ignore the Russian comments and blithely continue reporting the allied action without any analysis.
This evening the BBC and national newspaper web-sites were still lauding the “untrained” rebels for defeating Libya’s professional army, as they closed in on Colonel Gaddafi’s home town of Sirte.
Upbeat jingoistic language, like “the rebels have made lightning advances west from their stronghold in Benghazi”, litter the news channels.
But it is obvious that Gaddafi’s loyal troops dare not fight back, otherwise they will be bombed out of existence by the missiles from warships and aeroplanes. Some of the eye-witness reportage, notably in the Independent on Sunday, showed just how brutal and horrific these attacks on Gaddafi’s soldiers had been.
If this is not engineering regime change, I don’t know what is.
This issue ought to be right up there at the top of the BBC’s news agenda, not ignored as it was on the main news bulletins.
The public may support David Cameron’s decision to send troops and machines of war to Libya , but opinion polls would suggest the opposite.
It was not comforting to realise that he was only now starting to make contact with these rebels and find out what sort of people they are and what their aims are.
It is not the media’s job to decide what is right or wrong. But it is their job to highlight inconsistencies between what the Government says is the policy it supports and the reality on the ground. That is why licence fee payers pay for reporters to travel to these foreign trouble spots.
For reporters and camera crews to meekly follow the military line without putting it in political context is a betrayal of their profession.

County name in a pickle

2011-03-18T12:22:00.000-07:00

CAN there be a more ridiculous demonstration of the nonsense surrounding the non-county of Cumbria than today’s ruling that Cumberland sausage has been granted Protected Geographical Indication status under European law.
It says that Cumberland sausage has been successful in its bid to be made only in Cumbria.
Why? Cumberland means the traditional county North and West of Orton Scar.
Cumberland doesn’t mean Cumbria, which was an administrative county invented in 1974. It doesn’t include Westmorland, Lancashire North of the Sands or those bits of Yorkshire North Riding, like Sedbergh, that were nicked, to make Cumbria.
The Cumberland Sausage now ranks alongside the likes of Champagne, Parma ham and Greek feta cheese in having Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) status under EU law. Other protected UK food and drink products include Cornish clotted cream and Stilton cheese.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said the move would guarantee its heritage and be a major boost for Cumbria's butchers.
To display the PGI mark, the sausage must be produced, processed and prepared in Cumbria and have a meat content of at least 80%. Recipes vary from butcher to butcher, but must include seasoning and be sold in a long coil.
That may be good news for the customer, but it has nothing to do with geographical origin.
If any proof was needed, it comes in the distinctive shape of Peter Gott, of the Cumberland Sausage Association, who said: "This is a great milestone for the county and a well deserved place in England's food history for a truly sensational, diverse food product."
Peter of course is Westmorland through and through, with his farm near Endmoor south of Kendal.
Food minister Jim Paice carried on the confusion when he said: "We're justly proud of British food and I'm delighted to welcome traditional Cumberland sausage as the first of our many fine sausages to win protected status.
"This should be a significant boost to Cumbrian producers, who will now be able to prove that their product is the real thing."
He obviously cannot tell Cumberland from Cumbria, either.
Westmorland Sausages are just as good, if slightly different from, Cumberland Sausages. But today’s ruling makes no mention of them.
Now if someone wants to use a recipe for Cumbrian sausages, then they could be said to come from Cumbria. But Cumberland Sausages can’t come from Westmorland, Lancashire or Yorkshire.

Bad law proposal

2011-01-31T11:58:00.000-08:00

Oh no, not again! MPs are planning to introduce yet another law to interfere with freedom of speech, when it is completely unnecessary.
Granted, politicians often use leaks to the Sunday newspapers to test out public opinion. If their latest wheeze meets a hostile reception, then they can abandon the promised legislation and blame the journalist for making it up.
But the article in the Sunday Times saying the media face a ban on naming criminal suspects had the stamp of official approval. Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke and Dominic Grieve, the Attorney-general, no less are said to be supporting the idea.
It comes in a bill tabled by Conservative MP Anna Soubry in the wake of the publicity surrounding the arrest of the retired Bristol schoolmaster Chris Jeffries, who came under the spotlight while being questioned by police investigating the death of Joanna Yeates. Another man has since been charged with her murder.
Now I have blogged before on how disgracefully Mr Jeffries was treated particularly by the tabloid national Press, although the BBC and other electronic media were nearly as bad.
But we don’t need new laws that are almost certain to be interpreted in such a way as to inhibit perfectly legitimate reporting. Just use the laws we already have.
Ms Soubry was reported as saying that the law as it stands means an innocent person can be vilified, have their lives dismantled and their reputation sullied with complete disregard to his or her right to privacy.
That is just wrong. Broadly defamation and contempt of court ought to have the media in a completely water-tight pincer movement once an arrest has been made.
If they vilify someone who is arrested and later proved to be guilty, then the courts can and should prosecute for contempt. If the person is later proved to be innocent, like Mr Jeffries, then he or she can take the media to the cleaners through this country’s draconian libel laws.
The problem is not lack of legislation, but both individuals’ and the authorities’ lack of determination to implement those restrictions which already exist.
Interestingly Ms Soubry worked as a newspaper and television reporter before becoming a barrister and then an MP. She should know better.

Barn befuddles critic

2011-01-31T08:58:00.000-08:00

THE Sunday Times’ formidable art critic Waldermar Januszczak went way too far in his scathing attack on the current Royal Academy of Arts exhibition of 20th Century Sculpture at the weekend.
Even though his newspaper was supposed to be the media partner of the RA for the exhibition which is the largest of its kind for 30 years and runs until April, he is entitled to have a negative view.
He has every right to criticize, as he did, the omission from the artists exhibited of the likes of Anish Kapoor, Rachel Whiteread, Richard Deacon or Antony Gormley.
He is paid to be perceptive enough to point out that the preponderance of ancient artefacts, many of which are superior to the modern sculptures they inspired, rather confuses the point of the exhibition.
But he was not entitled to be downright rude to the curators Dr Penelope Curtis and Keith Wilson, calling them dunces, when he entirely missed the point of the Kurt Schwitters barn in the forecourt.
If he had bothered to ask them, as other newspapers did, he would have been told that the barn was designed to shock viewers into expecting the unexpected.
The barn was a symbol of dark and lonely places that artists work. It represented the artists who are ignored when they toil in unfashionable parts of the country away from the cultural capital. Its inclusion was designed to be a thorn in the side of Metropolitan establishment.
He ignored completely the fact that without Kurt Schwitters, who invented Merz and pioneered Collage and other art using the detritus of modern society, that there would probably have been no Richard Hamilton or Peter Blake in the 60s and 70s and no Tracy Emin or Damien Hirst, whose work Mr Janunszczak obviously admires, in the 21st century.
He claimed that Schwitters was not British. This is disputed as his citizenship papers arrived the day before he died in Kendal in 1948. But his only surviving Merz installation was made in that barn and can be seen to this day in the Hatton Gallery in Newcastle upon Tyne. He also influenced hugely British art in the second half of the 20th century.
Far from being dunces, the curators of the exhibition demonstrated a knowledge and emotional understanding of their subject that rather dwarf those of Mr Januszczak. Goodness knows what he would have written if his newspaper hadn’t had a vested interest in this brave and thought-provoking exhibition.

A job application

2011-01-24T06:13:00.000-08:00

Dear Mr Cameron,
I would like to be considered for your current vacancy for a communications director.
Now that nice Mr Coulson has fallen on his sword over those annoying mobile phone tapping allegations when he was in his previous employment as Editor of the News of the World, I believe the time is ripe for you to go for a different type of replacement.
It would be wise of you to distance yourself from Mr Coulson’s former boss, media magnate Rupert Murdoch. If you go for another employee of his, there will be considerable concern in the wider political community. If you go for an employee of a rival, you risk the wrath of the Murdoch clan.
Although I have experience of working for the national Press, most of my 40 years in journalism have been with the regional Press, 25 of them as a manager.
The regional Press routinely sells more copies in their circulation area than all the National Press put together, so in a sense they are more successful.
They are also nearer to the communities that they serve, so that they are used to having to be held responsible for what they say, unlike the Nationals.
You have espoused a new strategy of Localism, so it would fit to have a communications director who understands how Localism works.
We have met when you were still just the leader of the Conservative Party and came to the offices of The Westmorland Gazette, of which I was Editor at the time, to support your local candidate Gareth McKeever against the sitting local Liberal Democrat MP Tim Farron.
The fact that Mr Farron had the second largest swing to Liberal Democrats in the country in the subsequent general election was no reflection on your performance that day, as you were clearly well briefed on the issues affecting a largely rural constituency. Your answers were articulate and straight-forward.
It is rather ironic that your party has ended up in a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, but my knowledge of both sides could also be seen as an advantage.
There are two possible obstacles to my appointment. But obstacles are there to be leaped.
The first is I wouldn’t dream of moving from the Lake District to London, so I wouldn’t be able to join you daily in the bunker in 10, Downing Street. However in these days of new technology, that shouldn’t be a problem. E-mail, Twitter, Facebook and Skype could all be used to improve communications, albeit at a distance.
Second, your policies on the National Health Service, Education, economic deficit et alia seem ill-thought out and are abhorrent to me. But it is reported that you like a Communications Director who is prone to argue with you and give you a dose of reality, so even that could be seen as an advantage.
I look forward to hearing from you soon,
Regards,
Mike Glover

Communication breakdown

2011-01-12T09:11:00.000-08:00

NOW that the weather has returned to just normal winter rather than the extremes, it is time to reflect on all the disruption. One lesson needs to be learned by major companies everywhere: the importance of communication.
Recalling the disruption to flights, car and train journeys and facilities supplies, the same message came from customers everywhere: why couldn’t we be told what was going on?
Whether it was passengers stranded at Gatwick, trains abandoned in Peterborough (and elsewhere), or the good people of Ulster unable to have water delivered, it wasn’t so much the interruption to normal service which upset people, it was the inability of the companies to keep a good stream of information flowing.
When heads eventually rolled, it was usually for the short-comings in informing customers, rather than for the interruptions themselves.
It is amazing that in the 21st century, business has still failed to grasp how important good communication is.
It’s not as if it is hard to prepare for these emergencies. Most firms have a business continuity plan, or disaster recovery plan, or whatever else they call it.
They just forget to build in a section to deal with telling customers what is going on.
All they need are lists of clients to hand; staff on standby to man a communication centre and a good supply of the latest information.
There may be issues over mobile phone reception, which is particularly important in real life-threatening circumstances, but these can be overcome with the right planning.
There may be issues about accurate weather forecasts, but an open and honest admission of when this is likely to be the case will overcome these.
In short, there is a lack of commitment to put resources into communication. It would be cheaper to prepare than face frustrated, angry and litigious customers after the event.

Media outside the law

2011-01-06T11:34:00.000-08:00

THERE is nothing new about national news organisations working beyond the law.
When I was a reporter on Fleet Street in the 1980s news rooms routinely had clandestine copies of what were known as reverse directories.
These were compiled for telephone companies to trace faults quickly. They were listed by addresses, with the names and numbers of every household and company phone identifyable by address, and listed alphabetically by streets.
They were strictly controlled, but newspapers got hold of them by bribing telephone engineers and they were hugely useful.
If an incident happened at an address, reporters could look up the addresses nearby and then phone the people who lived there to get eye-witness accounts.
This was in direct contravention of telecommunications legislation. But who was going to know?
The new technology opens up all sorts of potential transgressions of the law as demonstrated by the News of the World mobile phone tapping saga, which just won’t go away despite former Editor Andy Coulson’s resignation in the wake of jailings three years ago.
It has now been revealed that one of their senior executives has been suspended over phone hacking claims involving the actress Sienna Miller.
News of the World executive Ian Edmondson was suspended after the new claims emerged.
A document lodged in the High Court links Edmondson with the interception of voicemail messages from the phones of Miller and Jude Law.
Solicitor Mark Thomson has said paperwork and other records seized by police from private investigator Glenn Mulcaire implied Edmondson was linked to the hacking.
Mulcaire and former News of the World reporter Clive Goodman were jailed at the Old Bailey in January 2007 after they admitted intercepting messages.
A News of the World spokeswoman said: 'A serious allegation has been made about the conduct of a member of the News of the World staff. We have followed our internal procedures and we can confirm that this person was suspended from active duties just before Christmas. The News of the World has a zero tolerance approach to any wrong-doing.'
Miller is suing the News of the World's parent company, News Group, and Mulcaire, accusing them of breaching her privacy and of harassment.
This is highly embarrassing to the newspaper world in general and Rupert Murdoch’s empire in particular. The fact that Mr Coulson now works for the Conservative hierarchy as a communications director adds spice.
If he didn’t know that intercepted mobile phone calls were the source and justification for running news stories, then he wasn’t much of an Editor. How else could their veracity be ensured?

Murder hunt reveals strained relations

2011-01-06T08:37:00.000-08:00

Joanna Yeates's landlord, who was arrested over the disappearance of the landscape architect and later released, may yet be compensated generously for his public humiliation and ridicule.
Former English master Chris Jefferies has already announced that he is considering suing police for wrongful arrest. But far more lucrative will be the writs he could issue for libel against practically every media outlet in the land.
The rawest trainee reporter is taught that you don’t imply guilt against anyone until arrest and trial are over. Otherwise you can be at risk of contempt of court and defamation.
But hardly had he been questioned by police than TV, radio and newspapers were calling him Mr Weird, reporting alleged instances of alleged bullying against pupils at schools at which he taught, and even suggesting he might have been involved in another death of a young woman a generation previously.
If he gets his hands on a decent lawyer, he could have pay-outs that would dwarf a national lottery rollover.
Many nationals have been quick to try to minimise the damage, quoting friends as saying he expects to be cleared of any involvement in the death 'within days'.
The 65-year-old, who was questioned by detectives for three days before being released on bail, wrote in an e-mail that 'the ordeal is almost over'. The ordeal may only just be starting for Editors and their minions who allowed such prejudicial reporting in the first place.
This no doubt adds to the stresses in the relationship between police and the media, which culminated in officers investigating the murder of Jo Yeates to ban ITV News from a press conference.
The move came after reporter Geraint Vincent suggested detectives were not carrying out routine inquiries properly during last night's News at Ten.
Bristol and Avon police hit back by complaining to Ofcom for what it called 'unfair, naïve and irresponsible reporting' during the piece to camera.
Detective Chief Inspector Phil Jones - who is described as a highly experienced officer -has come under increasing pressure to make a breakthrough in the 'complex' investigation.
During the contentious report, a former murder squad detective suggested that 'certain routine inquiries' such as a new painstaking search of the scene where the body was found had not been carried out.
Meanwhile, the police officer in charge of the investigation took an apparent side swipe at a national newspaper by rubbishing the significance of CCTV pictures published in The Daily Mirror.
Days after her body was found, Miss Yeates' father David claimed his family were being kept in the dark by police investigating the killing.
It is all very unsavoury and unhelpful to the investigation. Behind the rows lie around quarter of a century of worsening relations between police and the media.
Ever since the Human Rights Convention was adopted by Britain and Data Protection laws were introduced, police have tried to control what the media report and filter information through media departments instead of letting officers form relationships with journalists they believe they can trust.
A generation of police officers treats the media as untrustworthy, unscrupulous and intrusive. A generation of journalists treats the police as obstructive, unhelpful and hostile.
It is no wonder they fall out so spectacularly.

Time for Greater Westmorland

2010-12-23T08:44:00.000-08:00

ANOTHER step will be taken in the New Year to create Greater Westmorland. It’s about time too.
The disastrous local government reorganisation by the Conservatives back in 1974 has been damaging for democracy and the standing of Town and County Halls throughout the land.
Now that we have a Conservative-led coalition, which also includes those champions of local democracy, the Liberal Democrats, there is some hope that traditional boundaries and the authorities that matched them can be restored.
There is already a grassroots movement behind the installation of traditional county boundary signs. The politicians need to catch up with this band wagon.
Two days before Christmas South Lakeland District Council crowed that its Cabinet has given the go-ahead to plans for a second shared service with Eden District Council.
Councillors backed the creation of a business plan for a shared Revenues and Benefits System following a successful trial of a shared IT service between the two councils.
Eden’s IT Manager was officially appointed as the shared IT Services Manager earlier this month in a move that will save SLDC £54,000 per year.
The full shared IT service will officially launch on 1 April 2011 saving an estimated £378,000 over the next seven years.
Brought together under the one manager the shared service will offer a more efficient, resilient and improved service both internally and externally. Staffing costs will be reduced with staff able to share their skills and knowledge across both authorities, said a statement.
Although this decision was driven by the Government’s cost-cutting agenda, it actually should be seen as a step towards the merger of the two authorities.
Eden’s Chief Executive is coming up for retirement so the obvious move is to appoint a joint chief officer for Eden and South Lakeland who will drive forward the merger.
There would be no need for new redundancies. Natural waste and retirements should do the job. There would be massive savings on back-room services and buildings, so that front line services could be protected.
Better still the old Westmorland County can be reinvented. By the time that is ready, say in five years time, all links with the Carlisle-centred Cumbria County Council can by severed and we can be back with a single-tier local authority which matches the loyalties and connections of the people who live there.
What a great thought to take into the New Year.

Why police keep media in the dark

2010-11-26T06:42:00.000-08:00

ANYONE who wonders why newspaper sales are declining and why the public believe crime rates have risen, when they demonstrably have gone down, should have a look at a tremendous story on Hold the Front Page.
Here is the relevant link: http://www.holdthefrontpage.co.uk/foi/101123incidents.shtml
First credit where it is due to the Yorkshire Evening Post who used Freedom of Information legislation to find that police had responded to more than 2,000 incidents over the weekend of England’s departure from the football World Cup Finals, yet gave out just three statements to the media.
The story quoted the police as saying it was not their job to provide a news release service and they evaluated every incident before deciding whether to give it publicity.
The comments below the story are even more interesting, lifting the lid on years of frustration and anger from the media about how police attitudes have changed over the years.
Icons of the regional press, like former Editor Barrie Williams, joins the debate pointing out that in a democratic society police do indeed have a duty to inform the public through the media what they are asked to get involved in.
He is largely supported on a media-targeted web-site, but there are contributions from those who say it is the fault of the Media that they have come to rely on press offices and have run their own staff down so far that they couldn’t find their stories by more traditional direct means.
They are all right, of course.
For twenty years or more there has been a campaign among human rights lawyers and data protection zealots to stop the police and other authorities from giving to the media personal details of accident and crime victims and everyone else involved in public incidents. Largely the police have caved in to this pressure.
All they needed to do was say that releasing details helped them solve crimes and helped them winkle out information crucial to the background of accidents. These considerations should over-ride all bogus claims of privacy.
Instead careerist officers preferred to play the anti-media card and join in the pursuit of the individual’s rights. Never mind the rights or benefits of the community.
One day society will learn that the latter are more important than the former. Until then the media have no chance of being told what the authorities decide in their wisdom to keep to themselves.

Powerless in the world-wide web

2010-11-20T11:00:00.000-08:00

TECHNOLOGY is great when it works. When it doesn’t, it is a mind-numbing, business killing, debilitating nightmare.
None of these thoughts is very original, but I am prompted to utter them because of a chain of telecommunications challenges that have dominated my week.
First the landline in and out of our house went dead, overnight Monday to Tuesday. I used my mobile to telephone BT who supply the service and found myself talking to a nice young lady, by the sound of her, in Bangalore.
I pointed out I was paying for the phone call, so she agreed to ring me back. When she did, and while she had me on the phone, she did a diagnostic and found that BT had an “underground” problem. It could not be fixed straight away as a contractor had to be called in.
I had no choice but to accept this, forgetting that the internet line on which both my, and my wife’s, businesses depend used the BT lines. So that jacked up the scale of the problem.
I phoned Bangalore again. They repeated there was no hope of repair until Friday. Then we started getting phone calls on the landline. But when we tried to ring out the line was so crackly that it was impossible to conduct a conversation.
The internet was lost most of the time, although flickered on tantalisingly now and then.
On Wednesday morning my mobile stopped sending SMS messages, commonly known as texts. All attempts met with the little red cross that means a message has not been sent.
I couldn’t use BT to phone the company which supplies my mobile service, Vodafone, as recommended, so had to ring on the mobile. That meant they had to talk me through the procedure, then ring off and then ring me back to see if it worked.
The SMS had apparently lost network connection, although how it could do this and still make calls was beyond me and the nice young man, from Cairo in Egypt this time, who talked me through the process. We ended up shouting at each other, in an entirely friendly way, across the world’s airwaves down my crackly BT line.
The solution worked, although the Vodafone signal continued to be weak and remains so.
On Thursday the telephone man arrived and used all his clever gizmos to find the fault, which turned out to be a tree interfering with the line 60 metres from my property. It was too high for his ladders so he, and we, had to wait for a cherry picker from another job.
This finally arrived Thursday tea-time and the BT line was restored, along with the Internet and no more crackly phone calls.
Two hours later the electricity went off all together, so the family stumbled around in the dark with torches, making frantic phone calls and being updated on the fault, which turned out to be caused by a fire in a sub-station. Electricity was restored two hours later.
By then I had given up all hope of getting any work done. From Bangalore to Cairo to Britain there were people tried to solve my telecommunications problems.
I lost three days all together. I couldn’t even post this blog until BT had sorted the “underground” cable, which turned out to be so over-ground they couldn’t reach it.
Before rural England gets too uptight about broadband speeds, perhaps it should insist that fundamental modern services, like mobiles, telephones, Internet and even electricity actually work at all.

The real threat to BBC journalists

2010-11-08T09:08:00.000-08:00

THERE is something about being employed by the BBC which shields employees from the real world. That sort of naive idealism is part of its charm and also why it sometimes has a head-on confrontation with the Government, whichever party is in power.
But I fear that its journalists are about to get a rude awakening. The National Union of Journalists has warned the BBC it faces a fresh wave of disruption to news broadcasts that could affect programmes over Christmas.
But in this household at least we actually preferred the presentation of the news by bosses as they battled over the weekend to keep programmes on air during a 48-hour strike organised by the NUJ in a row over pensions.
Perhaps that was because high-profile presenters such as Nicky Campbell, Fiona Bruce, Bill Turnbull and Huw Edwards supported the walkout, leaving the way for less histrionic replacements. Perhaps it was because the facts were given without the endless verbiage of one journalist interviewing another.
The next 48-hour strike, is planned to take place on November 15 and 16. But the NUJ really needs to warn its members what would happen if the BBC was run as a commercial organisation.
The bean counters would be saying to the editorial managers: “Well you managed quite well without those journalists. Why do you need so many?”
Someone in accounts would be measuring the number of stories filed without the journalists and comparing the number with what happens when the journalists are at work.
Quality would be out of the equation. The time taken to research or interview contacts or monitor sources would be ignored.
And next budget time, the head count would be queried and the number of journalist jobs would be cut.
There would be no redundancies, no announcements, no high-profile confrontations. Vacancies would be left unfilled. Journalists would be allowed to retire early.
Particularly vulnerable will be the producers and desk heads who monitor reports to ensure they are accurate and relevant.
Already the war of words has started. BBC chiefs said only one in six employees had joined the strike and that its output was not as badly affected as it feared.
In an email to staff, director general Mark Thompson said: ‘No BBC services have been blacked out or gone off air. However, a few programmes have been lost and our ability to deliver the normal scale and quality of news and journalism to our audiences here and around the world has been impaired.’
Mr Thompson knows that if he doesn’t admit some impact during the strike, he will be undermining his own case when he goes into battle with the bean-counters.
But in austerity Britain with a Government bent on cutting costs, the journalists will not be sure of him winning those battles in the wake of their own strike.
If the BBC doesn’t tackle a £1.5billion pension deficit by putting a cap on rises in pensionable pay at one per cent after April they will have to cut costs elsewhere. It will not have escaped those who hold the purse strings that a deal had been agreed with the other major union, BECTU, which represents camera crew and technicians.
It is only human nature that when the cuts come, the journalists will be in the front line.

Waking up to impact of cuts

2010-10-27T02:37:00.000-07:00

I fear that the country is still not waking up to the implications of the Coalition government’s plans to cut back on state intervention. This applies particularly to its own supporters.
While all the headlines, quite rightly, are about major issues like housing, jobs, defence, student fees and the like, it is the relatively minor victims of the cut backs that best illustrate their impact. It is in the minutiae of daily life that the pain will be felt.
Arts organisations everywhere in the North West were today having to come to terms with reduced funding. If we cannot afford homes, public services or aircraft carriers, then how on earth can luxuries like festivals expect to get away scot-free.
A good example is South Lakes MP Tim Farron calling on the police to meet to discuss the future of Kendal Torchlight Carnival.
He says the annual event has recently come under threat, with cuts in the Cumbria Police budget pressuring the local constabulary to consider charging for their support on the night.
Apparently the event organisers may be forced to find £15,000 to secure a police presence for the evening, which helps with crowd and traffic management throughout the town. Such a cost burden would almost certainly jeopardise the future of Kendal Torchlight, an event which is organised and managed entirely by local volunteers, said Mr Farron’s statement.
He goes to say: “Kendal Torchlight is a fantastic event for people of all ages across the South Lakes and has become a cherished tradition in the town after 41 years.
“The carnival plays a major role in instilling a sense of community and culture in our area. I, therefore, urge Cumbria Police to consider these merits when finalising their decisions on cut backs. It would be a significant loss to our area and something I will not let go of without a fight.”
Mr Farron is to be commended for pledging to fight student fee hikes, but he cannot expect every organisation in his Westmorland and Lonsdale constituency to escape the effect of the cuts. His party signed up to a Government that thinks it is necessary to reduce police funding. There are bound to be repercussions.
The police have to decide their own priorities. They cannot be blamed if they think Bobbies on the beat and tackling burglaries and violence have precedence over festivals.
Football clubs have for years had to pay the policing of match days, so why should a carnival be any different?
A far better case can be made to events such as the Mintfest International Street Arts Festival, which has been shown to generated £1.6m for the Cumbrian economy. The festival, also in Kendal, attracted thousands of visitors who watched performances by artists, comedians, acrobats, dancers and musicians.
The ESRC Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC) at Manchester University into the impact of the Lakes Alive events in Cumbria showed that Mintfest makes a very important contribution to the local economy. That is the sort of cost effective event that deserves to escape the cuts. And not a policeman was in sight.

Confessions of a Sunday newspaper reader

2010-10-18T04:43:00.000-07:00

I HAVE a confession. For the first time I chose my Sunday newspaper yesterday on the basis of an advertisement for a free CD offer.
My preferred option is The Sunday Times, which has cleverly adopted the slogan “THE Sunday newspapers” and indeed has the most comprehensive and intelligent coverage of politics, sport, culture and all other subjects which interest me.
I occasionally replace it with a joint purchase of the Mail on Sunday and Independent on Sunday, partly because they give a different insight and partly as they are my best customers as a freelance journalist. Interestingly the Sunday Times has recently raised its cover price to £2.20p, which has confused customers and newsagents, but is still incredible value for money.
The Mail shouts it is 70p less expensive than the Sunday Times but this wasn’t why I chose my other selection. The reason I opted for the alternative was that The Mail on Sunday gave away a CD of Atlantic Crossing by Rod Stewart, my favourite singer. I have a vinyl version of this album but the CD would be good to have for the car.
My only reservation was that the Mail over-egged its promotion by saying it was Rod the Mod’s “Greatest Album.”
It should have been as he travelled to all the great studios in America to record it, using icons of American popular music, such as the remnants of Booker T and the MGs, including guitarist Steve Cropper, and The Memphis Horns.
But unfortunately the songs were bland, commercial and poor compared with the great tunes and interpretations of Rod’s previous masterpieces: An Old Raincoat Will Never Let You Down; Every Picture Tells a Story; and Never a Dull Moment.
There was a run of compositions by Rod which put him up there with the greatest. Raincoat had the premier version of Handbags and Gladrags, copied so successfully by Stereophonics decades later. Just listen to the title track of Every Picture, especially the duet with Maggie Bell from Stone the Crows, or Mandolin Wind or Maggie May. Or examine the popular poetic brilliance of You Wear It Well, off Never a Dull Moment.
In comparison Atlantic Crossing is a pale shadow. The track everyone has heard of is Sailing, which is a poor attempt to create a football crowd pleasing Anthem. A rock classic worthy of an acolyte of Sam Cooke it isn’t.
Still, I suppose “Rod Stewart’s fourth or fifth best album” wouldn’t have had the same promotional appeal.

Historical gaffe

2010-10-08T09:25:00.000-07:00

THE fact that Tullie House Museum tried to play the geography card to “keep the £2 million bronze relic Roman helmet in Cumbria” should have been ridiculed from the start. But no, the media went along with it.
Cumbria, as we were all told in 1974 when it was created by the Conservative government as part of its disastrous local government reorganisation, was purely an administrative area and not an attempt to roll away 2,000 years of history.
The helmet was found, by a student from the North East of England, on farmland near Crosby Garrett, near Kirkby Stephen, which is in Westmorland.
Tullie House Museum is in Cumberland. So how can it get away with playing the “keep it local” card? It is like the British Museum trying to keep the Elgin Marbles because London is in the European Union, so hard luck Athens.
The answer is that the media have forgotten that the traditional counties still exist, on opposite sides of the Orton Scar, with a great big mountain range between them. Cumberland looks to Newcastle for its soul mates. Westmorland looks to Lancaster, Preston, Blackpool and the rest of Lancashire.
So there is no foundation for the helmet going to Carlisle. And the buyer of the helmet needs pay no attention to the emotional blackmail Tullie House is still trying to apply even now to be able to show it.
Even Radio Cumbria, the very name and existence of which is part of the attempt to re-write history, tried to point out this anomaly to a Tullie House spokesman. But to no avail. The spokesman didn’t even seem to understand the question.
There are so many officials, politicians and bureaucrats who have a vested interest in perpetuating the myth of Cumbria, mainly to play the game of grabbing funds from the European Union regional policy, that they don’t even know there are two distinct counties.
If the helmet belongs anywhere it is probably in the Museum of Lakeland Life in Kendal.
But that seems unlikely, unless the anonymous purchaser was a Westmerian who actually understand history and intends to put it on public show in the county to which it really belongs.

Cry for freedom

2010-10-06T00:27:00.000-07:00

THERE are healthy signs that the judiciary is waking up to the very real threats to society’s basic freedoms from the flood of political interference on the media through new laws and case precedents.
Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, in a speech to the Commonwealth Magistrates' and Judges' Association Conference, said judges could not afford to be divorced from the modern media because of the media's "impact on public thinking and public perception".
He said: "One of my constant refrains is that our judicial independence and the existence of an independent press are mutually self supporting.
"I ask you to find me a society or state in which you have an independent judiciary and a subservient media, or a subservient judiciary and an independent media.
"The short answer is that the pressures that would remove the independence of the judiciary are identical to the same pressures that would remove the independence of the media."
According to Solicitor Nigel Hanson, a member of Foot Anstey's media team writing on the excellent HoldtheFrontPage web-site, he continued by endorsing the right of reporters to challenge inappropriate reporting restrictions themselves in court.
Judge Patrick Moloney QC, a circuit judge who used to be a top libel barrister, expressed concern about the lack of open reporting of the courts.
In a speech he gave to a media law conference, he said: "The time-honoured old art of court reporting, even in the Crown Court, let alone of course the County Court, is dying away."
He was subsequently reported as saying there was no point in judges making lofty pronouncements in court for the benefit of society if no one "ever hears about it because there is nobody in court to hear us say it".
Judges can always arrange for their clerks to ring the local freelance or news desk of the local media if he wants to say something of wider interest to the public and have it reported.
But the judges' comments are valid and bring to mind a string of recent judgments that have highlighted the desirability for court reports and journalism in general to contain real names and personal details so as to be interesting and readable.
In a Supreme Court ruling earlier this year Lord Rodger said: "A requirement to report in some austere, abstract form, devoid of much of its human interest could well mean that the report would not be read and the information would not be passed on.
"Ultimately, such an approach could threaten the viability of newspapers and magazines, which can only inform the public if they attract enough readers and make enough money to survive."
This was a rare recognition of the realities of the commercial media world and welcome. But it is even worse during the current inquest into the death of a barrister by “suicide by police” in an armed siege in London.
Judges, coroners and others in the judiciary need to push back far harder against misguided legislation, which can be complicated, unhelpful and badly drafted.
They need to organise the court system, and this is particularly true of magistrates, so that cases happen when scheduled and are seen through to completion so that there is a final outcome for the media to report on.
Too often lawyers, social workers, the CPS, police and others treat the courts with scant respect by not having their cases prepared in time. Delays for background reports are a further obstacle to timely and topical justice.
Justice needs to be seen to be done as well as done. In the modern world the public at large find it virtually impossible to turn up in courts to see cases for themselves. The media should be enabled to act as their eyes and ears.
This means courts and the media working together for complete mutual benefit. The real winners would be society. Police contacts used to tell me the best crime prevention of all is the fear of publicity.

TV local news plan doomed

2010-09-28T07:34:00.000-07:00

THE new coalition government is not too busy slashing public services and cutting budgets to interfere in the commercial viability of the media, despite numerous warnings of how it is doomed to failure.
The last Labour Government got in a dreadful mess trying to save local independent television news from the bean-counters who run ITV.
In the old days ITV was run by regionally based stations who were obliged by conditions in their licences to provide local news programmes.
Since the internet stole what little remains in advertisement revenues in the lingering recession, independent television has gone down the route of economies of scale so there is in effect just the one national station. When it wants to squeeze costs, then local news in which it has no interest is an easy target.
Labour’s answer was the concisely-named Independently Funded News Consortia. These were conglomerate of current media companies who thought they could provide a service for local TV.
Trinity Mirror's bid to run regional TV news in the North-East and Borders region was joined by The CN Group, publishers of the News and Star, Carlisle, and the North West Evening Mail, in Barrow, joining the Press Association and production company Ten Alps.
It geared up to do battle for the right to broadcast regional TV news on Channel 3 with a rival team featuring Newsquest, publishers of the Northern Echo, and Johnston Press, which owns the Sunderland Echo and Hartlepool Mail. Johnston Press and Newsquest have joined forces with ITN, Metro Radio and the University of Sunderland to form a consortium to provide broadcast news in Border and Tyne Tees.
The groups were seeking to win the public funding which was to have been made available for one of three broadcasting pilot projects to replace ITV news in Wales, Scotland and this English region. If the pilots had been successful, Independently Funded News Consortia could be rolled out across the UK.
Luckily for all concerned this idea bit the dust in the lead up to the election.
Now the new Culture secretary Jeremy Hunt is believed to be pressing ahead with plans for local TV stations despite a critical report on the idea.
A panel set up under investment banker Nicholas Shott to look into the idea has cast further doubt on its viability in an interim report published today. It says advertising alone will not be enough to pay for the network of new stations and that it may need a big corporate sponsor to get off the ground.
He cites Barclays Bank’s sponsorship of the London cycle scheme to the tune of £25 million as a role model. But cycles do not have sensitive issues like freedom of expression.
Would the likes of Barclays want to sponsor a news outlet that may ridicule the record of its new chief executive, or attack the closure of local bank branches for example?
Mr Hunt told the Today Programme on BBC Radio Four this morning that the absense of a city TV sector in the UK represented a "market failure." Well the virtual closure of Manchester Evening News’s M Channel, despite that city’s vibrant economy is not a good omen.
Mr Hunt thinks the answer is to life restrictions on cross-media ownership to allow newspaper publishers who already own big city titles to also control TV stations. But regional publisher Trinity Mirror, which owns the major newspaper titles in Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle and Cardiff, has previously expressed strong reservations about the business model.
In a letter to Mr Hunt today, Mr Shott said the stations were more likely to succeed in urban areas, despite the Manchester experience, although he did accept that even there "the economics of a TV business funded mainly by advertising will still be challenging" and "additional revenue sources" would have to be explored, hence the sponsorship idea.
He added that stations could be hosted by existing channels and that discussions had started with "senior management" at the BBC which were showing "early promise". Well we all know what BBC managers know about viability and value for money.
Mr Hunt will argue the case for more local television in a speech to the Royal Television Society at the Barbican Centre in London.
He will say that an expansion of superfast broadband and the removal of cross-media rules preventing companies controlling newspapers, television and radio stations will all help make the plan more likely to succeed.
Still the old media and their supporters flail around in the post-Internet world. If broadband is to continue to improve then the obvious source of local news is web-based local providers.
These can be existing local media companies, like Newsquest or Trinity Mirror, or new independent entrepreneurs like the excellent Lakes TV. Keep television out of it.
And better still, keep the Government out of it. They have other more important issues to focus on than worrying about who provides your local TV news.

Plummeting sales explained

2010-08-28T06:01:00.000-07:00

IF you want to know why newspaper and magazine sales are plummeting, as shown by the release of Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) figures this week, you could do worse than go and talk to your local newsagent.
One of the victims of the bean-counter regime that bedevils publishing companies these days is the department responsible for maximising copy sales (as opposed to advertisement sales).
They have been stripped of all power and influence in most companies, and in one memorable period during the demise of Westminster Press, closed down all together.
The accountants’ thinking was that it was a waste of time selling more papers, as that only cost more money than it raised in revenue. The ideal scenario seemed to be to sell as few copies as possible, then you would keep delivery, merchandising and newsprint costs down to a minimum.
The fact that advertisement sales, not to mention the confidence and morale of the whole industry, depended on a healthy vibrant copy sale seemed to escape them.
To be fair, most companies drew back from the most draconian of cuts to circulation departments, but the muddles and self-destructive thinking continue, as illustrated by two examples from my newsagent today.
I needed to buy a copy of the weekly Lancaster Guardian, part of the national group, Johnston Press, which was this week crowing about growing its profits (if not its revenues) last year, for the first time for years.
The Guardian says it comes out on Thursday, but on Thursday morning I was told it doesn’t reach the newsagent until some fluctuating time on Thursday afternoon.
Friday I was away from its circulation area, so I went first thing Saturday morning only to be told it had sold out. I remonstrated with the newsagent, to be told that the Guardian had just changed its returns policy so the agent is only allowed to claim for 12% of its returns.
Because newspapers have such a short shelf life and such unpredictable sales, outlet by outlet, most publishers allow agents full sale or return, otherwise the agents have no incentive to stock enough copies to satisfy high demand weeks. Some offer 50% returns to encourage sensible ordering policies by the agents. But 12% is unusually low.
The previous week this agent had been left with ten unsold copies, only one of which she was able to claim back the wholesale price for. So she cut the order by five, and sold out within 24 hours. Because it was the Bank Holiday it was going to be next Tuesday before she could order more. I told her to forget it.
The paper used to sell 40 copies a week at this outlet on the fringes of its circulation area. Now it sells 28, a 30 percent drop. ABC shows the Guardian selling an average of 14,517 copies a week from January to June 2010, a decline of 2.9% on the same period last year. Now you know why.
It’s got nothing to do with the quality of material, even though it has recently lost its editor and news editor without apparently replacing them. It’s the curse of the bean-counters.
At the same newsagent’s shop there was a magnificent display of Cumbria Life, a monthly magazine produced by Carlisle-based Cumbria Media Group. This is one of those quaint family-owned independent firms, usually much more in tune with sustainable products and less obsessed with lining shareholders’ pockets than the big groups. But even they are not immune.
The September issue of Cumbria Life has a splendidly written feature on the village in which the newsagent is based. But had the publisher seen the opportunity? Not a bit of it. They hadn’t even told the newsagent.
He spotted it by accident, mounted the display, and consequently expects to sell ten times as many copies as usual, and sure enough the whole village has been talking about the article and therefore the magazine.
What a brilliant sampling opportunity. But if the newsagent hadn’t been on the ball that opportunity would have been lost. It seems even Cumbrian Media Group has forgotten the basic skills of selling and marketing its products. No doubt the bean-counters would be proud of them.

Punch drunk media turn reckless

2010-08-20T01:38:00.000-07:00

MY FREELANCE business has been at the centre this week of a fascinating episode highlighting the way the media works these days.
I received a tip off that a run-of-the-mill assault case at South Lakeland Magistrates court might be of interest as the victim of the alleged attack was Coronation Street actor Simon Gregson, who plays bad boy Steve McDonald in the long-running TV soap.
So I rang one of the tabloids obsessed with this type of celebrity case and they immediately ordered it as an exclusive, which saved me the bother of ringing round the other eight or nine news desks and guaranteed a pretty healthy payment, or so I thought.
Of course this all depended on the tip being true, and on the case going ahead. Amazingly it was and it did.
The only other journalist in court was from the locally-based Westmorland Gazette.
The defendant was a Windermere trainee dry-stone waller, Reece Barnes, aged 18, who admitted the battery of Gregson (also known as Gregory, which made for confusing evidence, as his name changed every few minutes).
It was something of nothing really. The two of them had been drinking separately in Bowness, ended up in the Wheelhouse, argued over seating arrangements, had a quick bundle, during which Barnes got in the first punch.
Gregson ended up with a badly bruised nose, scratches and dignity hurt enough to shout abusively at Barnes as he was evicted and banned from the club for six months.
The whole case was over in little over an hour and the bench gave Barnes a conditional discharge, a severe warning about his future conduct and ordered hime to pay £100 compensation to Gregson, as if he needed it.
Because of the guilty plea Gregson didn’t have to attend. Outside court Barnes’s photograph was taken. He said he didn’t even know that the man he struck was a Corrie actor.
Within another hour the tabloid had the copy. This was Tuesday. For reasons of their own they decided to hold it for 24 hours for use on Thursday.
However on Wednesday morning I got a call from the tabloid’s representative saying that the story was all over the web, had appeared in a rival tabloid, courtesy of a news agency called Northern News, based in Newcastle and with an office in Carlisle.
At first I was bemused as they certainly weren’t represented in court. The inference was that I had ratted on the exclusive and flogged the story, ruining the exclusive deal. This I denied as it wasn’t true. But how had the story got out?
The answer was simple. The Westmorland Gazette has a “web first” policy which means they put everything up on-line. The agency must just have cut and pasted it then put it out on the wire.
The tabloid I had the agreement with never used the story, which was even more infuriating as my own host web-site MSN had it as its most used story in its Editor’s Pick on its home page all day.
This raises several interesting issues: Why does The Westmorland Gazette give away material on the web that can be plundered by the world’s media and used by all and sundry before the newspaper that actually raises its revenues uses it?
How can freelance agencies plunder and sell as their own court cases they didn’t even attend? What would be their defence if The Westmorland Gazette got it wrong (if Mr Gregory was not Mr Gregson after all, for instance?) and someone decided to sue?
The only winners are the internet search engines and site hosts who ruthlessly exploit the absence of any copyright protection on news. It seems that Mr Barnes is not the only one to be flailing in the dark. The punch drunk media routinely behave recklessly these days, too.

Moving on from toxic words

2010-07-29T06:41:00.000-07:00

THERE’s nothing as entertaining as politicians wriggling over interpretation of their words.
Many years ago there was this Newcastle City councillor who could barely string two words together. Think John Prescott, then quadruple the inarticulacy.
For years the Evening Chronicle had to tidy up his words for publication, until he actually had the cheek to complain about being misquoted.
So the paper sent their ex-Hansard, 200-words-a-minute shorthand expert to report to the letter what the councillor actually said, complete with non-sequiturs, appalling grammar and grunts. His speech was quoted in full, with explanation, and he never complained again.
I was reminded of this episode as two of Cumbria’s Coalition MPs have been caught in the glare of national publicity this week for tripping over their own words. Cries of “taken out of context” and “misinterpretation” were uttered. There’s nothing like blaming the messenger.
First out of the blocks was Rory Stewart. The newly elected Tory member for Penrith and the Borders, was accused of calling his constituents primitive, as evidenced by their proneness to wearing string to hold up their trousers.
This was seized upon by the Scottish Sun and then more sensationally by the Sunday Mirror.
Mr Stewart, a devotee of Lawrence of Arabia, and who once walked from Iraq to Bangladesh to get to know the Arab and Indian sub-continent peoples, knows a thing or two about primitive living.
He has also walked his new constituency to get a feel for the people of the Eden valley and surrounding hills. He was trying to say that rural poverty and remoteness meant that some aspects of lifestyle in the Pennines would seem primitive to urban dwellers, not that the rural folk are per se primitive.
Mr Stewart, who is now issuing apologies and threatening to take the Sunday Mirror to the Press Complaints Commission, should calm down.
When he has been around a little longer he will realise that rural folk love to fool city slickers into thinking they are poor by wearing string round their mid-riff. Some of the wealthiest farmers I know like to look like Worzel Gummidge on a bad hair day.
String may be the poor man’s friend, but don’t equate using string for sartorial support with poverty.
At least Mr Stewart had the intervention of newspaper journalists to blame for his apparent gaffe. His Liberal Democrat neighbour and colleague Tim Farron was live on Radio 4’s World at One when he referred to his party’s coalition partners as toxic Tories.
He explained that he was referring to the Tory brand having some toxic hangover from its last period in power. He actually thinks the coalition is doing well.
In the hurly-burly of debate and 24/7 scrutiny of the media, politicians are bound to say things that are quoted out of context or open to interpretation.
The worst thing they can do is apologise or, worse, try to explain what they meant to say. Being in holes, digging their way out is not the answer. Ignoring the furore and moving on is a better tactic. John Prescott got away with it for years.

Community policing

2010-07-21T05:45:00.000-07:00

THE media is struggling to explain to its audience, viewers and readers exactly what new austerity Britain really means to services the public has become used to over the good years.
Consequently organisations just seem to want to carry on doing what they have always done.
There is no service that seems immune to this Ostrich-style syndrome. Heads are firmly fixed in the sand.
Take the police. Only this week the dire warnings have been emanating from chief constables about how the threatened cuts will bite.
It is claimed that just one in ten of police officers is on the street at any one time. Actually that is not so surprising when you take into account the 24-hours, seven days a week operation, holidays, sickness, back office functions, paperwork, court appearances, surveillance, victim support and traffic duties etc.
Yet here in Cumbria the Constabulary is vowing to toughen its stance on drink drivers after the number of people caught over the limit rose for the second year running.
They say they know this as every June, the Constabulary runs a summer drink drive campaign from 00:01 on the 1st June to 23:59 on the 30th.
This year, 95 people were arrested after officers conducted 952 breath tests during the campaign, meaning 10 percent of those tested were either over the limit or failed to provide a test.
In 2009, 88 arrests were made after 1434 breath tests, meaning six percent of those tested were either over the limit or failed to provide a test.
In 2008, 49 arrests were made after 1341 breath tests, meaning less than four percent of those tested were either over the limit or failed to provide a test.
But the reason for this apparent increase could also be better value for money policing. During the 2010 campaign, officers conducted fewer stop checks and breath tests than last year, but concentrated their efforts on areas where intelligence suggested people were more likely to be drink-driving. This tactic worked, with a higher percentage of drink drivers being caught.
But this was ignored by the force’s own press release which said: “The figures reveal an alarming reality - a significant number of people in Cumbria continue to think it is acceptable to get behind the wheel while they are over the drink drive limit.
“We work incredibly hard with our partners to get the message around the dangers of drink driving through to people but it seems that to some, the message falls on deaf ears.
“Our positive efforts to target and educate irresponsible drivers will continue but we need the help of the community to make drink driving socially unacceptable. We need individuals to realise that neither police or the communities in Cumbria will tolerate those who needlessly put the lives of innocent road users at risk. I would urge any member of the public with information about a drink-driver to contact the police, or Crimestoppers anonymously, in the same way they would about any other crime.”
If police do indeed face the cuts being mooted by the Home Secretary, they will have to rely ever more on the public to curb drink-drive offenders. This could give a new meaning to community policing.

Dumb and dumber BBC

2010-06-17T01:50:00.000-07:00

SOMEONE really needs to get a grip on standards at the BBC.
In an increasingly complex and multi-faceted media world there is surely a place for a state-sponsored (but not controlled) broadcaster which is not totally focussed on commercial considerations.
Without the profit imperative, the BBC ought to focus on its Unique Selling Point: Quality. Instead it just gets dumber.
What evidence do I present? I will give just three examples: The World Cup, Springwatch and the News.
The quality of football at the World Cup has been a little disappointing, but that is nothing to the standard of the reporting. We sort of expect ITV and the satellite channels to be riddled with hyperbole.
But the BBC is just as guilty of talking up the latest genius of the beautiful game, who turns out to be incapable of kicking a ball, or catching one if a goalkeeper.
This interpretation relies on being able to understand what the pundits are saying. Over the years I have just about learned to translate the Scottish burr of Alan Hansen. But his English is crystal clear compared to Emmanuel Adebayor, the Togolese professional footballer who plays as a striker for Manchester City in the Premier League.
I am lost in admiration for the fact that he can babble on about a specialist subject like football in what is probably his third language. I couldn’t begin to match this feat.
But that is not the point. The point is that his accent is indecipherable.
In a desperate bid to get away from the World Cup, I switched over this week to watch Springwatch, which ought to be full of fluffy, cute creatures battling with tooth and claw to get a grip on life.
Instead it is full of the ridiculous twitterings and obscene gestures of Kate Humble and Chris Packham. When Packham first took over from Bill Odie he appeared quiet, knowledgeable and very much the junior partner to the veteran presenter Humble.
How the roles have reversed. She has gone from alpha female to whimpering, eye-lash fluttering, and archetype dumb blonde. He has become domineering, intrusive and outlandishly arrogant. He was actually massaging Kate’s thighs when I switched over. If I was Mr Humble I would be very concerned.
We were promised an explanation of the wonderful variety of flies and instead were given a token, short and largely uninstructive couple of minutes on flies, with large chunks of the hour-long show devoted to inane padding.
Even the normally worthy Simon King, who was undersea off Dorset, was reduced to buying crustaceans off the local fisherman to justify his expensive scuba-diving. Local sea creatures seemed to be keeping well away from the BBC cameras. How wise of them.
The BBC news, once so respected round the world, just goes from bad to worse. There was a headline introduction this week saying President Obama had compared the BP oil spill off Florida to the 9-11 attack on the World Trade Centre twin towers.
I was just un-dropping my jaw about his stupidity at mixing up a tragic accident which killed 11 people with a deliberate act of sabotage that wiped out more than 3,000, when the story started.
Of course he did no such thing. He said that the oil spill was to the environment what 9-11 was to terrorism, in that it was a multi-site event that would take a long time to deal with. That is not the same thing at all.
So BBC, when the cuts come your way, stop worrying about technology, and ratings, and hyperbole. Instead focus on standards, and accuracy, and helping the nation wise up, not dumb down.

Unholy trinity: Public, police and the media

2010-06-07T10:43:00.000-07:00

NEWS today that Derrick Bird was followed by three police officers as he pursued his trail of death through the streets of Whitehaven and surrounding villages will no doubt ensure that media interest will continue.
Together with the opening of inquests into the thirteen deaths, there will be renewed impetus to the coverage, which will upset those residents of West Cumbria who want an end to the focus on such a distressing and negative view of their beloved area.
The three-way relationship between the local population, the police and the media is always a strained and complex one.
When the rampage started last Wednesday, there was a very real need for the media to pass on the message from the police that a dangerous gunman was on the loose. Great swathes of the Lake District were warned to take cover, which in such a large area in such a short time, could only be achieved with the help of professional communicators.
After Mr Bird was found dead at Boot, the media interest was roused by the scale and sheer bemusement at his awful deeds.
The speculation by the national dailies was about his parents’ will; his relationship with the more successful twin who was best friends with the family solicitor; his resentment at taking the Lion’s share of the care of his ailing mother; and his strained relationship with certain fellow cabbies.
The speed with which the media picked up on these details and reported them in an even-handed and amazingly accurate manner were all to the credit of the standard of reporting.
It was aided by the people of West Cumbria who are largely a helpful and uncynical bunch. They shared the need to know what on earth had happened to the psyche of one of their own.
This was obvious on the day after the events when I was helping a team from the National Broadcasting Corporation to understand and interpret what had happened for their American audience.
They had sent a team of five to Whitehaven and spent half a day compiling their one-minute report for breakfast TV, updating for lunch and knowing that by the evening news it would be swamped by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
They had two challenges. The first was the need to sub-title the West Cumbrian accents. The second was the lack, as they saw it, of help from the police.
In the land of the first amendment they have come to expect total and immediate co-operation from the law enforcers. Why wouldn’t the police confirm names? Why wouldn’t they give interviews outlining the innermost details of Bird’s life? Why no CCTV film or photographs of the actual shootings to broadcast live?
It has been a feature of the events of the last five days that the media has seemed to be at least one step ahead of the police.
But this isn’t really fair. The police have different priorities: gathering cast iron evidence; care for the victims; ensuring health and safety of the public to name just a few.
The media just wanted news, although their part in helping the wider community come to terms with what had happened was no less valuable.
By the time the Sunday newspapers came out, it was difficult to know what they could add to the story. But there were several genuine exclusive angles: Notably the Sunday People’s exposure of Bird’s failed relationship with a Thai girlfriend; and the Sunday Telegraph’s revelation that he had spent the night before his rampage watching a violent film and wondering about his own mental condition.
And so it goes on. Whitehaven and the rest of the area probably wish it was all over and they could return to carry on their lives.
But Derrick Bird’s actions were so extreme, morbid fascination with why he flipped so spectacularly is unlikely to end any time soon.

Future imperfect for media

2010-05-24T12:45:00.000-07:00

FOR some strange reason I was invited to a very high-brow conference in London.
It was convened by the Westminster Media Forum, which aims to provide an environment for policy makers in Parliament, government departments and agencies to engage with media professionals.
The subject was the Future of the News Media, an obsession with all the stakeholders in the media world as it struggles to cope with the threat, and opportunity of fast-developing technologies.
The scene was set by Channel 4 News anchor Jon Snow, who set off at a ridiculously optimistic pace.
His theme was that this was the golden age of journalism.
He said that different media forms were fusing, creating “intersections of interest” and that TV companies needed to do more to harness the potential of the internet.
The development of new technologies he added, had led journalism to be in a “better place than it had ever been”.
He said: “Welcome to the golden age of journalism. This is the best time to be a journalist, without a doubt…because we can do a job that is both a pivotal element of the society in which we live and the political life in which that society functions.
“There is a greater degree of democracy in journalism than there has ever been. There are still many challenges ahead but at least there is something of a conversation going on that means there is no longer any dictatorial capacity.
“You can complain about ownership and dominance but you can’t complain that the citizen can’t rock the boat.
“The citizens are rocking the media’s boat every day. The idiots are falling off the deck, the incapable ones are being drowned but the good ones are surfacing and thriving.”
He was followed by Bob Satchwell, Executive Director of the Society of Editors, who endorsed the view that this was the best time to be a journalist, with endless opportunities. The traditional media had to accept that journalism was an expensive necessity.
And so it went on. Peter Bale, Executive Producer of MSN UK, complained that his usual role as supreme optimist had been usurped by Peter Snow, then went on about the proliferation of high quality journalism.
Steve Folwell, Director of Strategy at Guardian Media Group, said the Guardian had gone from 9th largest print medium in Britain to the largest in the world by reach, via the internet. That enabled a multi-platform approach with 20 revenue streams.
I was absolutely dumb-founded by this torrent of well-being. The Guardian, after all, had just sold the Manchester Evening News and its associated weekly newspapers for a derisory £7 million to Trinity Mirror.
As I prepared to leap to my feet to play the part of the little boy watching the parade of the Emperor in his new clothes, I was saved from my embarrassment by Dr Natalie Fenton, Professor of Media and Communications with Goldsmiths, University of London.
She pointed out that this stated democratic panacea was not what it seemed. A survey of 200 working journalists had shown fewer asked to do ever more work.
They had become desk-bound, hide-bound by administration, and reduced to cutting and pasting words they laid their hands on, in what she described as creative cannibalism.
Relying on market forces meant that the commercial imperative would produce journalism that was cheap and far from what the people entering the profession wanted to do.
There followed a separate debate about the future of training, and maintaining standards in a world of citizen journalism.
My clumsy attempt to ask the point of training journalists when bloggers and commentators on mainstream web-site stories were allowed to be racist, homophobic, contemptuous and prejudicial, was misunderstood or ignored by the panel.
A third debate about the future shape of news degenerated into an entertaining but not very illuminating spat between Matt Kelly, Digital Content Editor of Trinity Mirror Group, and Struan Bartlett, chairman and chief executive of NewsNow. Kelly accused Barlett, whose site aggregates links to other news organisations, of being a parasite. You could say the same about any web company, from Google down, that gleans material from other web-sites without employing front line journalists who actually go out and get the news.
Anyway, this exchange even embarrassed the combative chairman Ray Snoddy who challenged the panel to explain how they could maintain standards when it was the most dumb-downed content that drew the most downloads on YouTube.
May Hockaday, Head of Newsroom at the BBC, totally ignored the plummeting standards of her own organisation, and tried to defend 24/7 news with its analysis, niche content and engagement with its audience.
Overall the day proved that the media had no real answers to the impact of new technology on their financial models, established products or even standards of journalism. Dr Fenton was the only one who even came close to understanding the threats, rather than being dazzled by the opportunities.
See Dr Fenton's article on her survey here: http://www.opendemocracy.net/natalie-fenton/future-of-news

Soggy swan song

2010-05-21T07:34:00.000-07:00

On a remnant of the old Lancaster to Kendal canal, near Crooklands hotel, is a pair of swans who breed every year and are superbly successful parents. Last year they brought six out of six to maturity.
This year they had eight signets which they took for their first swim earlier this week, just at the time I pass by the nest, over the other side of the canal from the tow path, while on the early dog walk.
Today the adults were hanging around a culvert that takes overflow from the canal underneath the M6 near a huge 24-hour garage. The signets were nowhere to be seen.
On inspection I heard a forlorn tweeting and saw one of the signets trapped in the culvert, of the other seven, there was no sign.
I ran to the garage to call the RSPCA who said they would do what they could. As I went back to the culvert I was joined by the garage’s night mechanic Steve.
Together we managed to lift the lid off the culvert and retrieve the one signet which seemed surprisingly well. We lobbed it back to the parents who were predictably furious hissing and flapping at their attempted benefactors.
Steve and I walked round the other side of the M6, where there is another stretch of canal, to see if the signets were being flushed clear through, but there was no sign. So we went back and started delving deep into the water channel. We found one body of a dead signet, but two were just about breathing, although they had collapsed and were like drowned rats.
We got them onto dry ground and Steve gave them mouth-to-mouth by blowing into their beaks. They responded and we tried drying them with tissues.
When we returned them to the canal however they just flopped over onto their backs and head went beneath the surface. They were obviously water-logged and had lost their buoyancy.
So we carried them to the warm of the garage, put them in a box and surrounded them with garage kitchen roll to help them dry off. They improved quickly, started preening themselves, and by the time the RSPCA inspector arrived after two hours from Carlisle, they looked right as rain.
So we took them back to the canal and popped them into the canal opposite the swans’ nest, where rescued signet one was happily nesting with its parents. One of the two was quick to swim over the canal to join the family. The third was still too weak and flopped over, so the RSPCA man and I took it round to the council depot over the canal and put him through the fence as near to the nest as we could.
Last I saw the dad was calling to it to return to the family fold. So, that made three saved out of eight.
I persuaded the RSPCA inspector to try to convince British Waterways that they need to put a guard over the sluice, as apparently ducklings and signets disappear down there every year.
After spending the previous two days in London, it was back to rural Cumbria with a vengeance.

Caesar sparks war of words

2010-05-18T08:28:00.000-07:00

A WAR of words has broken out in the blogosphere over an article in The Sunday Times magazine over why tens of thousands of journalism hopefuls graduate every year and then find themselves clamouring for increasingly rare jobs.
The article http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article7119993.ece was by Ed Caesar, a feature writer and reviewer for the Sunday Times. He is 30, was educated at Wellington College, Edinburgh University and The Independent newspaper. In 2007, he won the Press Gazette British Young Journalist of the Year award.
His point was well argued if a little contradictory, in that he was obviously happy with his own career, yet worried that the decline in the printed media means that unpaid posts as work experience could lead to lowly paid staff positions. How he started in fact.
Adam Tinworth on his blog http://www.onemanandhisblog.com/ has a go for Caesar’s article being totally London-centric and focussing on the national media, while there are far more journalists employed by the regional press.
Roy Gleenslade sprang to Caesar’s defence (see http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade) by pointing out that journalism students he met were only interested in the nationals.
Well they would say that to Greenslade as he is in the same London goldfish world as Caesar.
Adam Westbrook had a far better point. See http://adamwestbrook.wordpress.com/ He is a distinguished advocate of what he calls New Age Journalism.
He objected that Caesar had totally ignored the opportunities of the new technologies, arguing that it was better to work for yourself than one of the old dinosaur media corporations.
There are opportunities for entrepreneurs to create their own niche markets, invent applications on their chosen subjects for mobile phones and then make money directly.
Well, up to a point. First that ignores the fact that the attraction for many journalism students is working for printed products, whether local or national.
Furthermore, if 30,000 journalism students a year set up their own businesses, the market may become saturated rather quickly.
My beef with the article was its incestuous nature: London-centric, yes; national media obsessed, undoubtedly; old media thinking, absolutely.
Would the Sunday Times use its precious space publishing a similar analysis on apprenticeships in the building trades or even the pressures of trying to start a career in accounting, banking, teaching, nursing or any other trade or profession?
The national press is getting further away from its markets, partly because of its obsessive London bias. Just because a few Hampstead media folk have to subsidise their over-educated offspring during their work experience in the media, is this really worth four pages in a Sunday magazine? I don’t think so.

Sneaky media beat the count

2010-05-07T08:52:00.000-07:00

THE Media turned out in force to witness the remarkable feat by the Liberal Democrats when they not only held on to the Westmorland and Lonsdale seat on a disappointing night for the party but actually increased their majority significantly.
For those that missed it the sitting MP Tim Farron (Lib/Dem) polled 30,896 (60 per cent of the vote); John Mander (UKIP) – 801 (1.5%); Gareth McKeever (Conservative) - 18,632 (36%); Jonathan Todd (Labour) - 1,158 (2%). With 82 spoils there was a 77% turn-out overall.
Mr Farron narrowly gained the seat in 2005, with 22,569 votes and a majority of 267 (0.5%), over the then Conservative Education spokesman Tim Collins. It had previously been a Conservative seat for almost 100 years.
In this election, the Conservatives put the seat at 14 on its list of those they would have to win if they were to have a chance of regaining power.
Mr Collins had resigned after his defeat and after a false start with another prospective candidate, who also resigned, the Tories finally found former financier Gareth McKeever, an Ulsterman from a farming family.
He was seen by some as a bit of a Tim Farron clone. He is a charming, sincere and hard-working man. The local Tory party shook off its lethargy and got behind him with a vigorous and noticeable campaign. The national big guns arrived for support.
But it was swiftly clear to the party members who witnessed the count at Lakes Leisure Centre that it was going to be Mr Farron’s day.
The constituency was one of those with a huge rural area for whom the geography and the burden of sorting postal votes was too great to manage the usual Thursday overnight count. Instead the army of counters gathered at a civilised 9.30 a.m.
It took three hours to validate that the votes matched the numbers recorded at each polling station.
During this process the army of party faithful who witness procedures can tell which party is doing well.
The count proper had hardly started when Liberal Democrats started clapping each other on the back and the Conservatives descended into doom and gloom. Mr McKeever, who had given up his job in the city and moved home to Kendal to fight the seat, seemed close to tears.
His bid to regain the seat had been hit when computer and paper records of membership, voting intentions and leaflets were destroyed in an intense blaze that ripped through the offices and roof of Kendal Conservative Club on February 19 this year.
Mr McKeever described the fire as devastating, and the election campaign headquarters had to be moved to an edge-of-town business park. Two men were arrested by detectives investigating the fire and they are due to respond to police bail later this month. A political motive is not suspected.
But there was no attempt to blame the fire for Mr McKeever’s apparently appalling performance. His party colleagues said they just couldn’t break through the tremendous personal following Mr Farron had built up during his five years as MP.
When acting returning officer, Debbie Storr, finally put the other three parties out of their misery, Mr Farron said “blimey” and then after the usual platitudes warned his party supporters that he would work as hard to protect his majority of 12,000 as he had with just more than 200.
This was all played out in front of BBC radio and television, with Nick Higham who usually reports on media and cultural affairs in London, independent radio and local, regional and national print journalists.
It was fascinating to see how busy the reporters were on twitter, blogs and web-site updates, even when there was nothing to say. See www.thewestmorlandgazette.co.uk. Another media guest was well-known Lakes-based cartoonist, Colin Shelbourn, who twittered away. See http://twitter.com/colinshelbourn and http://radiocartoonist.blogspot.
But the most remarkable media moment was seeing the BBC going apoplectic when Ms Storr refused to give them the result when it was known five minutes before the announcement.
Mr Higham cried it was the only constituency in the country where this was the rule. When asked why it mattered he said that it was to help provide instant graphics for the viewers.
Anyway Ms Storr relented and the BBC got their way. A few other sneaky journalists looked over shoulders at the slip of paper that gave the information, which is why some media outlets actually had the results before the people at the count.
Such is the power of the media in a modern democracy.

Election Classic

2010-04-22T09:33:00.000-07:00

MOST observers seem to agree that this general election is more exciting than most: A combination of global recession, the Government’s massive debts, the faltering starts by Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Tory leader David Cameron, and the surprisingly good impression by Liberal/Democrat leader Nick Clegg have all combined to give the hustings impetus.
The national excitement is reflected here in Westmorland and Lonsdale which has the added dimension of it being a tight marginal won, just, by the Lib/Dem Tim Farron from the Conservatives back in 2005.
Inevitably the BBC North West Tonight team decided to feature the constituency this week and decided they needed an “independent observer”. Less inevitably, they chose me.
They had wanted to explore the Nick Clegg factor, only to find that what people in the constituency wanted to talk about was the Tim Farron factor.
I managed to say that in all elections the best the local constituency party hopes for is that the national leaders and central offices don’t muck up their chances. In this case Nick Clegg has done the reverse for Mr Farron.
He has made an impression as a likeable, energetic and very effective local MP. The Tories, however, have found an equally likeable, energetic and effective candidate in Gareth McKeever.
The UKIP and Labour candidates, by contrast, stand less than no chance. Embarrassingly I forgot their names on camera (John Mander and Jonathan Todd, respectively). But I suppose my loss of memory reflected the fact that this really is a two-horse race.
All four runners were at a lunch question time organised by the Cumbria Chamber of Commerce at The Riverside Hotel in Kendal today.
Hotel owner Jonathan Denby made the most insightful contribution, pointing out to UKIP’s Mr Mander that in 2005 his party polled more votes than the margin of Mr Farron’s win. So, in effect, they had handed the seat to the Liberal Democrats.
In view of the Lib/Dems pro-Europe stance, wouldn’t the best tactic be for him to withdraw and support Mr McKeever? Mr Mander, who made a poor impression generally, was completely flummoxed by this.
The other outsider, Mr Todd, and the two main men performed better, although Mr McKeever made the mistake of attacking the spending of public money on the Kirkgate entrance to Kendal, especially as the main protagonist, formidable businesswoman Mandy Dixon, was in the audience.
The debate lurched between Europe, the Economy (especially the impact of a 1% increase in National Insurance contributions), Immigration, Crime, Education and Pensions, to the more prosaic New Road free car park in Kendal.
But the debate as always in Westmorland & Lonsdale boils down to whether a hung Parliament, facilitated by a victory for Mr Farron, would make decisive Government impossible, or whether it was better for a rural constituency to vote for Mr McKeever to help ensure a Conservative government committed to change.
A photo-finish is ensured.

Story finally takes off

2010-04-19T01:52:00.000-07:00

THE Media was dreadfully slow to wake up to the implications and opportunities in the story about the volcanic ash grounding all flights in or out of the UK.
The BBC in particular kept telling the same story illustrated by the same graphics: Volcano erupts, plume of ash might get in engines, flights grounded, airports quiet. For several days, Heathrow and Manchester airports hosted reporters giving an exercise in déjà vu.
The first real human interest angle I heard was actually on good old Radio Cumbria which featured a lady from Barrow who had her trip to Penang and on to her daughter in Australia cancelled. What was really interesting was the knock on impact on the lives of all the people she knew.
If there were 150,000 Britons trapped abroad, there would be that many fascinating stories to tell on how people were coping.
By later on Saturday it was the plight of celebrities that was obsessing the national media.
First there was former Monty Python and Fawlty Towers star John Cleese who took a £3,000 taxi ride from Oslo in Norway to the Belgian capital Brussels after becoming stranded.
The 943-mile journey is due to take him more than 15 hours. He is being driven by a total of three taxi drivers who are taking turns at the wheel.
But Match of the Day presenter Gary Lineker wasn't far behind. He made sure he was available for Saturday night's programme by making a marathon trip across Europe.
Lineker was holidaying in Tenerife when the flight ban took effect. So he booked a flight to Madrid, hired a car at the airport and drove through the night to Paris where he caught the Eurostar to London.
Clare Balding drove back from Switzerland to present the fourth-round rugby league Challenge Cup tie between Hull and Leeds. And Jonathan Pierce drove from northern France to commentate on football this afternoon.
Singer Whitney Houston, who was due to perform in Dublin as part of her Nothing But Love world tour, was forced to take to the Irish Sea on a less-than-glamorous car ferry.
The 46-year-old star opted for the boat after the flight ban threatened to cause another cancellation on her tour, which has already suffered several cancelled dates due to her respiratory infection earlier this month.
By the time I had bought my Sunday papers, they were full of journeys of daring-so by staff trapped abroad (which says something about the lifestyle of these national media types).
One Independent on Sunday writer wrote glowingly about his adventure getting from near Rome back home, the travel editor of course was stranded in the Algarve, and Janet Street-Porter, God Bless Her, filed her copy from Italy, saying: You’re Stranded – Get Over It. She would say that, wouldn’t she.
But if you want real Dunkirk spirit, TV presenter Dan Snow had been planning on ferrying people back to Dover throughout Sunday. Each round trip was expected to take two hours. He filled three rigid inflatable boats with 25 people but was told by officials in Calais that he would not be able to return. A spokesperson for the group said they did not know the reason why.
It’s a good job there were no health and safety inspectors around in 1940.

Gene Hunt image is Labour's own goal

2010-04-03T05:26:00.000-07:00

POSTERS are a much maligned medium. I am surprised more use is not made of their ability to get across messages.
If you need convincing on the potential power of the images on bill-boards plastered on hoardings then remember the Labour isn’t working slogan which helped Margaret Thatcher lead the Conservatives back to electoral victory back in 1979.
But Labour may well have shot themselves in the foot by trying to repeat that success, ironically using the same advertising agency responsible for that Tory coup.
According to web-sites today, Labour will portray David Cameron as politically-incorrect TV detective Gene Hunt in a poster campaign designed to revive memories of 1980s social unrest and youth unemployment.
The poster - the winner of a public competition - shows the Tory leader sat on the bonnet of an Audi Quattro like that driven by Hunt in the Life on Mars and Ashes To Ashes series.
And it appeals to voters: "Don't let him take Britain back to the 1980s."
Apparently cash-strapped Labour launched a poster competition in a bid to save money on design by tapping into public creativity after a slew of parodies of Tory ads swept the internet.
The Gene Hunt theme was the brainchild of 24-year-old activist Jacob Quagliozzi and was worked up by Labour's ad agency Saatchi and Saatchi. Cabinet minister brothers David and Ed Miliband are due to officially launch the election poster.
Foreign Secretary David said he and his brother first got into politics in the 1980s and that the poster was a "powerful reminder of the damage which the Tories did to Britain in the 80s and the threat which they pose to the country should they win the election".
The pair is expected to make several campaigning appearances together with the aim of securing the support of under-25s for a fourth Labour term.
But my own reaction that Labour may have seriously misunderstood the mood of the nation was borne out by comments on the story.
“This could be a campaign that could backfire very badly for Labour. Labour could actually manage to do what the Tories can't and make Cameron seem cool, this campaign couldn't have been timed better”...”The 1980s... I wish, how kind and gentle they now seem, please, please take us back!”... “Labour has totally missed the point of Gene Hunt? Gene Hunt is cool, women want to sleep with him and straight British males want to be him, own goal”...“Labour so genuinely out of touch that they don’t realise Gene Hunt is pretty much exactly what people want? Someone who kicks the bejeezus out of criminals and doesn’t respect 'political correctness' is something people would vote for” ...these are typical of reaction.
It depends on which image of the 80s you share: the horrors of the Falklands war, the 4 million unemployed, and the destruction of mining communities; or the glorious victory over the Argentinians, the property boom and putting the unions in their place.
Like Gene Hunt, the 80s polarised public opinion. I suppose that is what elections do, too.

Icy blast for old media

2010-03-09T06:49:00.000-08:00

THIRTY years ago some bright spark had a great idea for a freebie give-away to promote sales of an aerosol de-icer spray for motor car windscreens.
It was a neat little scraper with three surfaces, one sponge for water, one soft edge for mist and one hard edge for ice.
It worked a treat, so well, in fact that I still have the scraper and never had to buy any spray again, which was good news for the environment, good news for my pocket, but terrible news for the de-icer manufacturer.
I often laughed at the thought of such a self-destructive promotion. Who would be stupid enough to give something away free that worked so well that no-one wanted to buy the main product?
And who would have guessed that my own beloved media industry would make exactly the same mistake?
For de-icer spray, think newspapers. For scraper, think internet.
For ten years or so newspapers have been giving away content for free on the internet, and wandering why their newspaper sales figures have been plummeting.
Even worse, the old media companies have been incapable of raising any revenues from the Internet, despite what they may say.
The new kids on the block, notably Google, have none of the expense of producing newspapers or bulletins, nor any editorial staff who have to find stories.
Instead they trawl the Internet with their spiders and pinch all the material, whether it be advertising or editorial content, from the sites of the traditional media.
Then to top it all, they coin in cash from their own advertising revenue streams. Google alone now garners more cash from advertising than the whole of ITV.
It would be as amusing as the de-icer gaffe, if it had not been for the thousands of staff in newspaper, radio and television offices up and down the country who have lost their jobs as a result, including yours truly.
Not that it has been an easy conundrum for the traditional media industry to solve. How could they have protected themselves from the new wave of technology?
Well, they could have ignored the world-wide web, which would have robbed the search engines of their content and meant that the local media at least could have remained a unique source of news and advertisements.
But that smacks of head-in-the-sand mentality. And it wouldn’t have stopped house, jobs and motors advertisements stampeding to the new platforms.
Alternatively the old media could have invested in ensuring their own web developments stayed ahead of the competition and then charged customers for their internet offering.
This is what Rupert Murdoch is beginning to do. And the regional press is also giving it a try.
Two North West dailies are spearheading the latest experiment in paid-for online content by launching new subscription-only e-editions of their titles.
The Bolton News and Lancashire Telegraph, both owned by Newsquest, are currently advertising electronic versions of the paper costing 10p a copy - compared to the 40p cover price for the print versions.
The papers are marketing the move as a chance for readers to get the news earlier and save money at the same time.
The e-editions will use the 'page-turning' software run by PageSuite which is becoming increasingly popular with many local press companies now using it.
Reaction to the news, on Hold The Front Page, was typical: “Interesting marketing strategy - don't buy our product which costs more - buy this one which comes out first and is cheaper” was one comment. “Surely it’s only going to further affect sales of the printed product?” said another.
But another thought it was the only way to go. “For once I have to agree with Murdoch that ALL newspapers should have paid-for online versions. People are decreasing buying newspapers because you can get the same news more quickly and for free online. Online advertising hasn't proved to be the cash cow it was once thought. It may sound harsh on readers but to stop the endless cuts and decrease in quality of journalism we all need to follow the above examples.”
So even with the benefit of hindsight, professionals in the industry do not agree as to what the answer is.
My suspicion is that the old-style media companies are responding far too late to the threat, and still haven’t worked out how to capitalise on the opportunity.
The intriguing question is: When the traditional media and its journalists have all disappeared, from where will the web-sites get their content?

First ship jobs dominate list

2010-03-02T06:42:00.000-08:00

THE Sunday Times this weekend had a fascinating extra supplement, as if it needed any more.
Its annual 100 Best Small Companies To Work For was inspiring.
Here were organisations which, according to surveys of their own staffs, engaged in meaningful consultation with workers, promoted their well-being, demonstrated a willingness to give back to the communities they served, and cared about personal development.
A lot were run by self-confessed weird and eccentric entrepreneurs; some didn’t even judge their performance by how much money they made.
But their satisfaction ratings for employees went up to a staggering 96%.
So what could possibly be wrong with all that? Well, nothing as it happens.
Except there was something else revealed by the list of 100 best performers out of the 571 which put themselves up for scrutiny.
That something probably says more about the state of the British economy, and its prospects for the future, than any surveys or dry Government statistics.
Practically none of the companies made anything.
The winner offered what it called IT Solutions. Next came a charity. Then there was a marketing consultancy.
And so on: Professional services, public relations, property management, software development, human resources and management consultancy were the names of the games featuring in the top twenty.
A contractor sneaked in at 21 and a retirement home construction company at 25, but largely the roll-call read like a description of all the jobs described by Douglas Adams in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy as the sort of professions pursued by occupants of the first ship sent into space from a doomed planet before its destruction by an intergalactic goat.
The idea was, of course, that no such goat existed and it was a ruse to get rid of non-productive people. They ended up colonising Earth.
Well, I wouldn’t advocate going quite that far. But it must be of huge concern that so few primary industries (miners or growers), secondary (manufacturers) or even tertiary (retailers) made the grade.
That means either such firms don’t exist, or that they are run by bad employers who care not a jot for the people who work for them.
To extend the system used in my children’s geography classes, the companies who dominated the Sunday Times list could be described as quaternary (marketing, PR and Training) or even quintenary, if there is such a word, for consultants.
As a consultant, I don’t mind admitting that this is scary, and explains why this country’s economy is in such a rut and is taking so long to recover from recession.

Rat gnaws quiche tale

2010-02-04T09:24:00.000-08:00

REGULAR readers of this blog (that’s both of you) will know that I have previously highlighted the strange news values of the national press and how they feed off each other. See the Taffy Thomas tale in the archive.
Well a similar nonsense has been exposed by the story about a young woman being asked for ID to buy quiche in her local branch of Tesco.
The Leamington Observer story about 24-year-old Christine Cuddihy being forced to show her driving licence to staff languished almost unnoticed on its website for almost a week.
However after an agency repackaged the story after tracking down the woman involved, it quickly became national headline news.
The Daily Mail made it top story on its website on Tuesday with most of the rest of the national media swiftly folllowing suit.
Six days later it had become a top talking-point in BBC radio phone-ins while the Mail's online story had attracted more than 800 reader comments.
The Observer's deputy editor Kevin Unitt, who wrote the original story, told Hold The Front Page: “I knew it was a good story, and hoped it would be picked up by the national press, but none seemed particularly interested at first.
“The Sun ran just three lines on it on page 25 last week and the Daily Mail rejected it altogether because The Sun had already covered it, a bizarre decision given they would lead their own website with the story just a few days later.
“How our story – which had been printed for almost a week and for all that time had been visible to all on our website leamingtonobserver.co.uk – finally grew legs nationally was the introduction of a press agency, who tracked down the woman involved, slightly re-packaged the story, and sold it on to their national newspaper contacts.
“On Tuesday, almost a week after we'd ran the piece, the Daily Mail finally screamed it from their website, making it the top story as it generated more than 600 comments from readers across the world in just 12 hours.
Unfortunately a lot of the comments on the HTFP story slag off agencies for picking up and exploiting local journalists’ stories.
“Agencies leech on to the local press, trawl through their websites and do little work and get great rewards,” was typical.
It was ever thus. Besides just try selling stories to the Nationals and you will see what a time-consuming, frustrating and fairly unrewarding exercise it is.
But I was more interested in why this was a story in the first place. One self-confessed cynical hack told HTFP: “google the name of the woman involved and you find she is on Saatchi's graduate scheme. One of the criteria to win a place on Saatchi is to get extensive media coverage. I smell a rat."
Another said: “Is the story true? The comment from Tesco was a bit non-committal. Did they confirm that it actually happened?”
And there lies the rub. If Tesco, also currently famous for its dress policy (no pyjamas and no bare feet), did ask for id before selling a quiche, then it is a story.
If they didn’t, it isn’t.

Verdict on inquests

2010-02-01T05:59:00.000-08:00

AFICIANADOS of Agatha Christie or similar period detective novels will be accustomed to the all-powerful figure of the coroner.
The man, and yes it always was a man in those days, with joint qualifications in medicine and law held his investigations with the help of supplicant police officers and anyone else he called upon, within days of the suspicious death.
And if he thought he got to the bottom of nefarious deeds he would order the arrest of the person deemed responsible for the heinous crime.
That is not the case now. Coroners come right at the end of the procedural pecking order. The police have to investigate, the facts have to examined by the Crown Prosecution Service, the case has to be heard by magistrates and, more likely than not, the Crown Court, all before the coroner is allowed to have his say.
Take the case of Gordon Park, the convicted killer of his wife Carol thirty years ago, who then hid the body in a bag in Coniston Water. He was found dead in his prison cell at Garth prison, Leyland, last week.
He always denied the murder and campaigners maintained that his death, widely reported as suicide, was proof that he was so tormented by frustration at not being able to prove his innocence that he took his own life. Others said it was proof of his guilt.
The media was full of speculation as to which version was more likely. Yet the matter could have been resolved almost instantly by a confident coroner immune from litigation from aggrieved parties.
If it was suicide, and that is really for the coroner’s inquest to decide, then Park would more than likely have left a note. That note could clear up the mystery once and for all.
But because it was a prison death, the prison and probation ombudsman will have to complete inquiries and report before the inquest is held. So the warring branches of Park’s families are unlikely to get the peace they deserve for a year or more.
In the days when coroners ruled the roost, he wouldn’t have waited for the ombudsman. Even if he did, then he could quite easily have revealed whether a note was left and what it said at the inquest opening, held within days of the death.
The Government could save itself millions of pounds in public inquiries and statutory investigations if it just handed powers back to the coroners.
Nearly every disaster and high profile death is followed by calls for inquiries. Independent and thorough inquests would achieve the same result for a fraction of the cost.
There would be a price to pay in insisting that coroners reaffirmed their priority of getting to the whole truth and stopped giving verdicts designed to protect families from emotional upset and financial penalties imposed by life insurance policies. But that would be a small price and one well worth paying to restore coroners to the status and influence they once held.

Media landscape transformed

2010-01-18T01:41:00.000-08:00

HERE is an article that illustrates perfectly how the Internet has led to seismic changes to the media landscape and why traditional television, radio, magazine and newspaper companies are struggling to maintain their previous monopolies.
A former finance adviser, with no experience of publishing, has set up a magazine aimed at people aged 65 years or more.
Over65 Magazine was launched this month (January 2010) on-line. But the publisher, Paul Rodman, intends to roll it out as a printed version when it has become established.
Mr Rodman, aged 49, of Heron Hill, Kendal, Cumbria, says that he saw the opportunity while in his previous roles of financial adviser and will-maker.
“I dealt a lot with older people and got an understanding for their requirements. It struck me that there wasn’t a lot out there on the world-wide web for them.
“There are organisations that target the over 50s, but for some reason they seem frightened to target the older age group, which is surprising as they are increasingly computer literate.
“It is more than likely that they will have worked with computers at work, and are likely have a home PC as well.”
The web-site www.over65magazine.co.uk is deliberately designed to look like a traditional printed magazine, with single PDF pages.
This makes it easier to read and follow on screen and also easy to print out and read like a traditional paper product.
“There is a lot of information on the Internet, but it is often designed for the Internet generation and older people can quickly get turned off by the dazzling displays,” said Mr Rodman.
“I wanted to create a publishable environment with attractive photographs and interesting articles which are easy to follow.”
“Older people have more time on their hands and it is great if they can access items that help pass the time and stimulate them.”
Among the subjects the monthly magazine plans to cover are health and welfare, finances, food, pets, holidays, nostalgia, motoring and travel, all aimed at the target market.
“Its tone will be ethical and wholesome, although I won’t be afraid of a bit of controversy,” said Mr Rodman, who plans plenty of surveys, feedback and other user generated content.
Mr Rodman is disarmingly honest about his lack of publishing background and is open about his dependence on support from professionals in the field.
Among the experts he has recruited are Robin Pritchard from Kirkby Lonsdale for graphic design, Julian Healey a business consultant from Morecambe and yours truoly, Mike Glover of Milnthorpe for campaigns, content and marketing.
Although all these people are based in the North West of England, the magazine is deliberately national in tone and content.
Despite his lack of experience, Mr Rodman has hit upon a business model that would have been unthinkable before the Internet.
Magazines traditionally depend on two sources of revenue: cover price and advertisements.
Over65magazine is totally free to the user, although there will be a charge for subscriptions to the printed version if the demand is there. This is possible because there is no printing and paper costs, no distribution network and no commission for retailers.
As for advertisements the magazine relies on an Internet-specific service, where 800 leading companies put linked banners out there on the web for use by anyone, in exchange for a commission for business they generate.
The internet means that all data is traceable, so the companies can tell from whose sites business comes, and pay a commission.
Over65magazine will, however, ask readers for name and e-mail address only to avoid fears of their personal details being passed on.
The technology also means that all copies and articles can be archived for search by subject. This also has a benefit for advertisers who know that readers may explore purchase options weeks, months or even years after they feature in the publication and still seek out the relevant information.
“This is a really exciting project and I am confident that if enough people look at the site they are going to like it and come back in enough numbers to make the business viable,” said Mr Rodman.

Media battalions in TV war

2010-01-14T02:09:00.000-08:00

IT is more than half a century since Lord Thomson of Fleet’s famous remark that ITV was a licence to print money.
How things have changed. Lord Thomson was head of the famous media family that owned the Times and several of the larger regional newspapers, as well as Thomson Directory, Thomson Holidays and other world brands.
When the company decided to ditch its regional newspaper interests back in the 1990s most of them were bought by what was to become Trinity Mirror. Others gravitated to the ownership of Johnston Press.
Now these two groups are on opposite sides in a bid to save independent regional TV news services.
Licences for the pilot projects will be handed out in March with the eventual aim of them taking over the running of all Channel 3 regional news services from 2013 when the ITV licence expires.
Preferred bidders in each of the three pilot regions are due to be selected by the Government in March and the final contracts are set to be awarded in May.
Another ironic twist of fate means that former Trinity Mirror Birmingham Post editor Marc Reeves will help oversee the award of licences for a pilot TV news project.
The Department for Culture Media and Sport has appointed five other senior media figures on the panel to decide which groups will be allowed to run the independently funded news consortia to provide regional news in Scotland, Wales and the Tyne Tees and Borders area of England.
The panel will be chaired by Richard Hooper who is a former deputy chairman of Ofcom and was awarded a CBE in 2005 for services to the communications industry.
The others are Val Atkinson, who spent 27 years at BBC Scotland; Fru Hazlitt, former chief executive of GCap Media and Virgin Radio; Glyn Mathias former political editor for ITN at Westminster; and William Perrin, former civil service policy advisor on technology, culture, media and sport to Tony Blair.
Former editor of Channel 4 News Stewart Purvis will act as an advisor to the panel.
Trinity Mirror's bid to run regional TV news in the North-East and Borders region has been joined by The CN Group, publishers of the News and Star, Carlisle, and the North West Evening Mail, in Barrow, joining the Press Association and production company Ten Alps.
It will do battle for the right to broadcast regional TV news on Channel 3 with a rival team featuring Newsquest, publishers of the Northern Echo, and Johnston Press, which owns the Sunderland Echo and Hartlepool Mail.
Johnston Press and Newsquest have joined forces with ITN, Metro Radio and the University of Sunderland to form a consortium to provide broadcast news in Border and Tyne Tees.
The group is together seeking to win the public funding which is had been made available for one of three broadcasting pilot projects to replace ITV news in Wales, Scotland and this English region. If the pilots are successful, Independently Funded News Consortia could be rolled out across the UK.
Staff involved in the current ITV service in the regional will also be involved in the bid. And broadcaster Melvyn Bragg is acting as a special adviser to the consortium.
ITN chief executive John Hardie said: "We’re excited to bring together this compelling consortium which combines the very best of commercial journalism in the region, spanning television, print, online and radio.
"This unprecedented alliance will act as a catalyst to revolutionise local news, delivering a ground-breaking new service for viewers. Using the considerable skills and capabilities of our partners combined with ITN’s proven journalistic and creative pedigree, we will offer an unparalleled strength in regional and local news coverage available across all platforms."
Current ITV head of news in the area Lucy West represents the existing ITV staff who are involved in the consortium.
She said: "We will aim to build on our strengths and deliver a first class news service to viewers across the North East, Cumbria and the Scottish Borders. We are looking forward to developing new, exciting and ambitious ideas with our partners to provide the best local news service to audiences across all platforms in the Tyne Tees and Border region."
Johnston Press chief executive John Fry said: "Johnston Press boasts an army of journalists on the ground, embedded at a grass-roots level and very much part of their communities. We look forward to playing a central role in this new era for local news to best serve readers, surfers and viewers in the area."
The question is why these major battalions of the regional press want to run a TV news service which the current ITV bosses just see as a drain on resources they cannot sustain.
Convergence of media means that journalists currently employed by the regional press have been trained on podcasts and video for the internet, so will probably be expected to film for TV at the same time as taking notes for their newspaper versions of stories.
Whether they are really willing and able, while being paid in most cases less than £20,000 per year, is yet to be seen.
For the major newspaper owners to be battling to run local television news services shows just what a traumatic change there has been in the media industry since the advent of the internet.
Lord Thomson’s words now seem an age away, which in today’s fast moving world they are.

Taxing time at New Year

2010-01-04T08:59:00.000-08:00

WELCOME to the New Year, and I sincerely hope you have had a better start to 2010 than my family and I have.
First the sickness: The least said about this, the best. A form of novo-virus, or Winter Vomiting disease as it is more descriptively called, has swept through at least three branches of the family, meaning festivities had to be cancelled, presents remain unopened and mountains of food and drink remain unconsumed.
A couple of family members have actually had the lurgy twice, once at Christmas and once at New Year, which I think is taking a devotion to Scrooge a little too far.
But the question here is what are we, as victims of disease, supposed to do? Suspecting that novo-virus was one of the growing number of conditions, like swine flu, which doctors don’t want to know about, we contacted NHS direct.
Sure enough, it said get on with the vomiting, take plenty of liquids to re-hydrate yourself, take Paracetamol if you have aches and pains and stay away from your GP.
Second the refuse collection: or what are we supposed to do with all the food, drink, Christmas wrapping and unwanted presents (when they are finally opened)?
We have actually been giving unwanted food to various animals: wild birds, supposedly tame rabbits and the dog is having a wow of a time. The rest of the food is being put on the compost heap, which is now so large I expect to be told I need planning permission for it. We are burning most of the rest of the rubbish, no doubt breaching some public health directive.
But there has been no bin collection for four weeks and our two bins are now full to the brim despite our best efforts, as are the blue boxes. Sadly the bottle one is full of Lucozade empties and the tins one full of soda cans, which says everything about our Christmas.
So I politely phoned South Lakeland District Council where the most charming, disarming Mrs Cannyboddy is on the switchboard.
The gist of her message is: “I know pet. They are doing the best they can. I haven’t had mine collected for weeks. Just put out bags.”
When I point out the threat of vermin, she gets extra cute, laughingly referring to rats in woolly jumpers.
This neatly brings us to the weather or specifically its impact on transport. In this part of the frozen North the highways authority, Cumbria County Council, has been quite brazen about its policy, which is to keep the main highways between centres of commerce open and forget the rest.
Consequently no one in our family has been able to leave their country lanes or town centre estates to get to the main roads.
The struggle to get to work has become a daily dice with death. So the policy is obviously aimed at saving grit for a rainy day, so to speak, or saving money, rather than keeping society on the move.
So, to summarise: if you get sick don’t bother the NHS; if your bins need emptying don’t bother the district council; and if the roads are impassable, don’t tell the highways authority. So remind me just what do we pay our taxes for?

College needs saviour

2009-12-17T09:11:00.000-08:00

WHEN Cumbria University launched in 2007, the motley collection of former colleges had one jewel in the crown, the world famous former Charlotte Mason College in Ambleside.
Named after its founder, the pioneer of modern child-centred education, the college maintained its reputation with generations of teachers. It was also the only campus Cumbria had in the Lake District, with the fells and lakes featuring prominently in the promotional campaign: “Bring your dreams.
So when Cumbria University realised it had a cash crisis, with its deficit now standing at £28 million according to leaked briefing papers, and the axe was sharpened there was only one choice for the chop: Ambleside campus.
Vice Chancellor, Peter McCaffery, appointed this Spring with a brief to sort out the finances, has unsurprisingly been overwhelmed with shrieks of protest from educationalists, students and the local community, when he made the shock announcement that the campus was to be “moth-balled.”
There has been an on-line petition with 4,000 signatures, lecturers have threatened to strike, councils and MPs have launched campaigns.
Students are seeking legal advice after they were told they would have to move to other campuses, even though they only came to Cumbria University because of the Charlotte Mason connection. Nor had they budgeted to travel to Penrith, Carlisle or Lancaster (and certainly not the university’s other teacher training centre – in Tower Hamlets). Some have two-year contracts with Ambleside landlords.
When this was pointed out to Mr McCaffery at a stormy meeting he had no help or advice.
On-line petitions, protest meetings and demands from the local MP, Tim Farron, that the Government intervene had come to nought when, at a meeting at the House of Commons this week (Dec14) Mr McCaffery told Cumbria’s MPs just how deeply in the mire the university’s finances are.
Not only did the amalgamation of the former colleges fail to take advantage of any rationalisation of back office functions, it guaranteed employment to so many staff that the wages bill is out of control.
Worse, the Higher Education Funding Council for England neglected to tell the new University that the former Newton Rigg Agricultural College at Penrith needed £25 million spending on its infra-structure.
Mr Farron is calling on the HEFCE to provide stop-gap funding given that they were partly responsible for the current financial situation at the university.
He is also working with the university to launch an endowment fund for Ambleside, after he secured a six-figure donation to the campaign. But even the energetic Mr Farron accepts this appeal would fall at the first hurdle if the university were to remove undergraduate students from the campus.
Mr Farron said: “Ambleside has proven to be the most successful campus in terms of recruitment. To effectively close the campus is madness as well as a huge blow to staff, students and the whole local community.”
Vice Chancellor Professor Peter McCaffery said: “We are living in difficult times, and like many other organisations, have tough decisions to make. “
The mothballing of the Ambleside campus is expected to save the University £1.75 million pounds a year, a third of what the 600 students and 200 staff are believed to contribute to the local economy, and peanuts compared to the University’s deficit.
In fact many students fear being moved to Newton Rigg, as they believe that it will be the next campus for the chop.
The best hope for the Ambleside campus may yet be a traditional link with the Church of England, which ran St Martin’s College including the Charlotte Mason complex, before Cumbria University’s exciting takeover.
The Chancellor of Cumbria University is the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu.
The Board of Governors will consider the proposals in February 2010, although the academic board, as expected rubber-stamped the plan at a meeting last night (Wednesday, Dec 16).
• An edited version of this blog will appear in next week’s pre-Christmas Private Eye.

Floods lessons to be learned

2009-11-23T08:51:00.000-08:00

ENVIRONMENT secretary Hilary Benn was due to brief the House of Commons today (Monday) on the weather that brought chaos to the West of Britain over the last four days.
He may have expected an easy ride as the natural sympathies of MPs to the plight of hundreds of displaced families may have blunted their critical faculties.
But the representatives of the traumatised constituencies may be in angrier mood than he expected.
No doubt one hand will be clutching the begging bowl which may make it difficult to throw punches with the other.
But they will have been doing less than their duty if Mr Benn is not forced to listen to some of the very important lessons that need to be learned from the experiences.
It is tempting to think that the circumstances were exceptional. For a weather front to linger long enough for more than a foot of rain to fall in one area, as it did over the Lake District last Thursday, may be a once in a thousand year event.
But it may not. As Phil Rothwell, head of flood strategy at the Environment Agency, points out:
“The exceptional may become the norm with climate change. The evidence is that these energetic weather systems will happen more frequently.
“Climate change scientists say that very heavy rainfall in a very short time can happen almost anywhere in the country and we should expect more of them in the future.”
So it is important that the statistical novelty of the floods that still afflict Cumbria does not blind the Government to the need for its strategy to take into account the likelihood of more extreme weather.
The first obvious re-think is the propensity to build on flood plains. In nearly all less spectacular floods across the country it is the flood plains that get it worse.
This was a factor in the more dramatic floods on Humberside and in Gloucestershire in recent years.
Insurance companies are now refusing to provide cover for some properties built on them.
Local knowledge warns where they are, yet local authorities are under pressure to provide land for industry and land for affordable housing. This is true of developments around Cockermouth and Workington near the junctions of the rivers Derwent and Cocker. It was also true of Burneside outside Kendal which was a flood victim a day earlier.
So what is Mr Benn to do? Just ban building on flood plains.
Make sure the Environment Agency keeps a central register of all land with a proven track record of routinely filling with excess water in wet weather and give it the power to veto building on those areas.
Authorities will then be forced to seek alternatives and clean up brown, dilapidated and even poisoned sites, which will have a double benefit for the environment and wildlife.
Second, be more questioning of imposed protection status for waterways.
Local residents are convinced that the floods, the second in Cockermouth in four years, were at least partly due to the designation of the twin rivers as of special scientific interest by the European Union, in order to protect salmon spawning grounds.
Local Cumbria County councillor Eric Nicholson said: “That allowed English Nature to forbid the removal of gravel, which is all right in open country, but is no good near town centres.
“They said let the rivers find their own course, well it found its own course all right – right down Main Street. It is outrageous that people have had to suffer because of this useless legislation.”
Mr Rothwell said that no amount of dredging would have prevented the flooding at Cockermouth.
The agency has upgraded the flood defences for Cockermouth since the 2005 flood, which famously devastated Carlisle, but these were over-topped by the sheer amount of water, he said.
Third, there needs to be more strategic thinking about providing places for water to go before it reaches towns.
Coun Nicholson was angry at United Utilities for keeping nearby Thirlmere reservoir, which supplies water to Manchester, brim full since the end of August.
“If they had opened the sluice gates and let water out earlier then it would have had capacity to take some of the flood water when we needed it to,” he said.
Mr Rothwell had more sympathy with this idea, saying that up-country reservoirs or flood plains were being actively explored as an alternative to disfiguring towns and villages with ever more concrete flood defences.
Anyone foolhardy enough to venture into Cockermouth at the weekend would have seen the evidence of the sheer volume of water that flowed into the town.
It may well be that major flooding was inevitable. From the height of the debris, the Cocker was about 15 feet above normal, 20 yards wide moving at 25 mph - impossible to stop. On this occasion dredging the Derwent might not have made much difference.
But stopping to dredge rivers at the same time as allowing building on flood plains looks like a recipe for disaster as the good folk of Cockermouth discovered.
But there are optimistic signs that the authorities, notably the Environment Agency, are able to learn lessons from these disasters.
Mr Rothwell pointed out that the £38 million defences put into Carlisle after 2005 were one of the positive signs of last week’s floods, in that they had done their job. Carlisle escaped the worst of the damage this time.
This was despite the fact that the defence system was still not finished. Construction workers were actually diverted to plug gaps during the worst of last week’s weather.
He also said drain management by local authorities had improved, with constant clearing of blocked surface water paying dividends. This was a particular factor in Humberside’s floods.
Communication and warning tactics had also improved. It was noticeable that residents of Cockermouth who had to be rescued from flooded houses in 2005 say that this time they were moved before the waters struck.
The Environment Agency, however, needs to be wary of having too much reliance on new technology.
There were 46,000 text messages sent to people living in areas under threat and who had registered for the flood watch scheme, and the Agency claimed that 86% of messaged got through.
However in Burneside and Kendal, both of which were flooded before the deluge reached further north, said they had either not received the texts, or were told to expect the flooding six hours after it actually happened.
Mr Rothwell said that he would be investigating short falls in this system.
So, as well as the tributes and undoubtedly deserved praise for rescue workers and community spirit, there is plenty for Mr Benn to address in his speech to the Commons today of practical significance to the whole of Britain.

BBC needs good lawyers

2009-11-17T02:39:00.000-08:00

LET’s hope that the BBC had its best team of lawyers on duty on Monday (November 16) when its early evening main news bulletin broke every rule in the book.
Three of its first four items grossly overstepped the guidelines to media outlets and ran roughshod over every basic principle of media law.
Fist up was the arrest of a man, who had already been charged with five rapes and six indecent assaults.
This was expanded to a long piece about a police investigation going back 19 years and featuring a violent and predatory criminal labelled the Night Stalker.
The law says that when someone has been arrested then the media is restricted to basic information like the name of the accused and the alleged offences. The idea is that any further detail could prejudice a fair trial. Once charges have been laid the restrictions are even tighter.
It is natural for the police to go into “we’ve got our man” mode after such a long investigation, but the media is supposed to be more circumspect than this.
Not only did the BBC imply that the man was guilty, it also ran the risk of giving the accused a possible defence at any subsequent trial that the jury and witnesses had been unduly swayed by the report.
For the BBC to repeat the history and scope of the inquiry, and use words like “horrific” attacks, as it did, is a dreadful abuse of the system.
The next report was an allegation from a soldier who had been convicted by court martial of abusing Iraqi prisoners, that his commanding officer was gung-ho in attitude and somehow to blame for what went wrong.
The commanding officer named by the BBC would have had very good grounds for a libel action, remembering of course that under British law it is the media who have to prove statements are true. How could they possibly justify such a damning claim?
Similarly a report on the re-selection of South West Norfolk Tory prospective parliamentary candidate, Liz Truss, cheerfully stated as fact that she had had an affair with a named Tory MP. If he felt so inclined he could probably take the BBC to the cleaners.
The news reporter said that the affair was documented on the Internet. But legitimate news outlets like the BBC surely cannot rely on the Internet to prove stories to be true. At the very least this should have been an alleged affair.
Whether any of these stories had been run past the lawyers we shall never know. Perhaps the BBC, fortified by the routine flouting of legal restrictions by Crimewatch, thinks it is immune to guidelines the rest of the media has to obey.
But quite apart from the risks that the BBC ran of legal action against itself, it must have had anyone interested in the training of journalists and the upholding of the laws of defamation and contempt of court tearing their hair out.

Santa's snail mail

2009-11-11T02:19:00.000-08:00

IT is the time of year to be thinking about Christmas cards and being in the marketing business, I wanted to impress clients with a company card, to thank all those who had supported my new venture.
New technology would surely help my search for an appropriate design. So I started trawling the internet. Could I find the right message? No I couldn’t. And even if I had the ordering and payment systems were far from straight forward.
And then I had a brainwave. How about buying my cards, from a shop, on the High Street, and paying over the counter, with cash? Quaint old-fashioned thing that I am.
All I have to do now is write them all out, long-hand, with a pen, then put them in envelopes, with addresses, put on a stamp and take them to a post box.
Then a man can come in the middle of the night, in the freezing cold, to take them to Preston, to be sorted, so another man can come round delivering them, by hand (if he's not on strike, that is).
This old technology makes no sense at all and will never catch on. But it still suits me.

Strange story of national media

2009-11-02T08:38:00.000-08:00

News values of national newspapers and broadcasters still manage to bemuse. Even after 40 years in the business, I get taken by surprise at their fixations with each other.
Around a month ago I sent a piece about Lake District's own Taffy Thomas accepting the post as Britain's first Story-Teller Laureate.
As a national first, I naiively expected the national media to have some interest. Alas, neither a line nor a sound-bite appeared.
Locally there was some coverage. The Westmorland Gazette was naturally interested in Grasmere resident done good. Radio Cumbria followed up by interviewing Taffy on its prime drive-time slot.
But despite every news desk in the national media being given a prompt, reaction was there none.
Then I happened to mention this lack of response to the news editor of The Independent on Sunday, while discussing other matters.
He asked to look at the story and said he thought it was really interesting. It duly appeared pominently, as a page 7 lead, in Sunday's edition. As the Independent on Sunday has such a restricted circulation, you can view the article at: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/laureate-to-help-storytelling-live-happily-ever-after-1812920.html
It even carried a photograph of Taffy, which was taken by Eileen Wise and not the writer of the article as mistakenly indicated.
Which is all fine and good, but it is what happened next which shows how the national media feed off each other.
On Monday morning, Radio 4's Today programme suddenly became interested, even though they had ignored their own BBC cousins at Cumbria, and there was the full glory of a James McNaughtie interview, during which Taffy told a tremendous tale, The Clever Wish.
Cut and paste this youtube link to re-listen to Taffy's national recognition: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSE5uu3bvUE
Stranger still the Telegraph suddenly woke up to a story they had nearly a month before and ignored, this time deciding to put it on its web-site, giving credit to The Independent web version! See: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/6478957/Britains-first-storytelling-laureate-named-as-Cumbrian-Taffy-Thomas.html
How about that, indeed. You couldn't make it up, Taffy.

Iconic move raises stink

2009-10-22T01:26:00.000-07:00

THEY say smells evoke memories. But one story this week evoked an avalanche of memories for me, including a pungent stink.
Strangely the smell was foul: vomit, stale bar towels and sickly sweet beer. But the memories were mostly pleasurable.
The story was the announcement by Scottish & Newcastle (S&N) that it wants to close the Federation Brewery, Dunston, Gateshead, with the loss of 63 jobs by the middle of next year, because of falling beer sales in the UK.
More poignantly that means switching the production of Newcastle Brown Ale nearly 90 miles down the A1 to Tadcaster and the same brewery where John Smiths is produced.
Having been brought up in Newcastle, and weaned on Broon’s sister brew, Amber Ale, the first time I ever got drunk was by quaffing three bottles of the real thing.
It was at a party where the only record was the Beach Boys’ greatest hits album, when they were just a fun surfing band, before the pretentious and over-rated Pet Sounds.
Later associations with Pop music included a Lindisfarne LP, and memorably Bonnie Bramlett, of Delaney and Bonnie (in the days when Eric Clapton was a heroin befuddled second guitarist), staggering off Newcastle City Hall, unable to cope with the effects of drinking Brown Ale on stage.
The famous bottled beer, with its iconic blue star label, first went on sale in 1927. The day after ''Broon's'' launch, it was said the local police appealed to the brewery to make it weaker because the cells were full of drunks.
The ale was also dubbed ''dog'' by drinkers, as they would make the excuse of going to ''walk the dog'' when nipping to the pub.
Like many Geordies, which I am not, I still remember with affection the sweet yeasty smell rolling across the city from the plant in Gallowgate where it was brewed next to St James's Park football ground until 2005.
In the mid-1970s, when I was resting between jobs as my theatrical family taught me to say, I actually worked behind the bar at the working men’s club owned by the brewery workers.
It was opposite the plant, and I remember with a mixture of emotions the huge draymen coming in with bottles of Brown Ale secreted in their dungarees and obviously nicked from the assembly line.
They handed these in as “payment” for their pints of Scotch or Exhibition Bitter. The club steward was delighted with this corrupt arrangement as the Brown Ale was worth more than the keg beers, although what it did to his stock-taking is hard to imagine.
Years later Newcastle Brown won Protected Geographical Indication status from the EU, meaning the Ale had to be brewed in the city, but that became a meaningless gesture with the shift a couple of miles across the River Tyne to Dunstan in 2005.
Now, Federation Ale and Dunstan, where the River Tyne was so polluted in those bad old days that anyone falling in was dead in seconds, conjured another set of memories, again accompanied by a none too pleasant smell. But that's another story.
The Gallowgate plant was finally demolished last year to make way for a science park.
The brand continues to be popular abroad, particularly in the US, but S&N say the decision was forced by falling beer sales, which have created general over capacity in the UK brewing sector.
This smacks of big business making decisions to please the stock market and financial institutions rather than customers and workers.
But then we are so used to this mind-set that it doesn’t even raise a stink these days.

Compare the comedies

2009-10-21T07:39:00.000-07:00

I actually remember tuning into BBC’s comedy panel show Mock The Week back in August 2008.
I don’t normally have such good recall of the pap that passes as entertainment on television, but this time I did as I was shocked and outraged by panellist Frankie Boyle's personal comments about Olympic swimmer Rebecca Adlington.
As a media pundit and aficionado I had been missing the brilliant and always amusing Have I Got News For You. In its absence I thought I would try out Mock The Week.
It is billed as satire, but I found the whole programme little more than juvenile insults about people who had no chance to answer back or defend themselves.
Well it seems that I wasn’t the only one. The BBC received 75 complaints from viewers. I am surprised there weren’t more.
Now, finally, the BBC Trust has ruled that the game show breached guidelines over the comments broadcast on Adlington.
Panellist Frankie Boyle's remarks were branded "humiliating" and "risked offending the audience" by the body. Too little and too late is the phrase that comes to mind.
It followed the Olympic champion's success at the Beijing Olympics.
The ruling repeats the remarks, which I won’t except to say that Boyle said that Adlington looks pretty weird. Worse, because Boyle judged that her boyfriend was really attractive, he, Boyle that is, made completely unfounded assumptions about Adlington’s behaviour.
Mock the Week’s producer has apologised, admitting: "The ribbing may have gone a tad too far on this occasion".
That just isn’t good enough. Apologies don’t come much more grudging than that.
Well it may have taken the BBC Trust more than a year to come to the obvious conclusion. I acted a mite faster.
I switched off and never again have I bothered to tune in.
Regulation of the Media is always a complex and contentious issue, with Freedom of Speech, sense of humour, defamation, and people’s sensibilities and privacy just some of the conflicting factors in constant tension.
The off switch, however, and to quote a certain Meerkat, is simples.

Lakes inspire ethics charter

2009-10-12T02:55:00.000-07:00

THE man who tried to warn the financial world that it needed to clean up its act years before it crashed has now jointly launched a new movement to put ethics at the front of public debate.
A new “Twenty First Century Charter” was launched at the House of Commons on Tuesday, October 13.
The authors are Professor David Jackman, formerly head of ethics and education at the Financial Standards Authority, and Cameron Butland, Rector of Grasmere, in the Lake District, where Prof Jackman now lives.
They say the new Charter draws its inspiration from the Chartists of 1848 who sought to effect change in society through a popular movement.
The Chartist movement was one of the most influential mass political movements of nineteenth century Britain and helped create modern parliamentary democracy.
The new Charter is born out of a belief that there is a need for a new debate as a society about its ethical base for this new century, say the authors.
The hope is that when launched the Charter might be adopted by individuals who will use it to govern how they behave in a number of ways.
First, as a personal discipline, so it may be carried on credit card size sheet in a wallet or in a purse, and used to help make everyday choices in the light of a universal set of values. It is to be hoped decisions based on common values might produce a more harmonious and less divided society.
Second, each statement on the Charter can be a focus of discussion and as part of the launch there will be a web site with the facility to provide a forum of discussion.
Third, it is hoped that the Charter will be applied to many different aspects of community life and by organisations. It will probably provoke further specific charters perhaps in the areas of politics, spirituality, education etc.
The authors say it aims to wrestle with significant over-riding themes: financial responsibility, sustainability, continuing inequality, globalisation and demographic pressure – and to see new ways forward in everyday situations and in building community.
The Charter is divided into ten commitments. The first five relate to individual actions – face, stand, recognize, match and see; and the second five apply these actions in a communal way – belong, risk, give, turn and search.
The co-founders will introduce the Charter to members of the press and an invited audience in Committee Room No.5 of the House of Commons on Tuesday (October 13) from when The Twenty First Century Charter is for everyone to sign on the internet: www.21charter.com.
Cameron Butland said: “The Twenty First Century Charter stands in the tradition of the great 19th century Charter and the social organisations that developed from it, reinterpreted to meet the challenges of today. The Charter is a grass-roots movement committed to engagement in community life and our common future.”
Prof Jackman said: ‘The Charter offers a framework to find our shared values and common ground. This will be vital to deal with the significant challenges ahead. We invite everyone to consider The Charter carefully and to involve others in finding ethical ways forward.’
They say the Charter is independent and not aligned to any political party, cause, creed or interest, but it will strike a chord with those who heard Conservative Party leader David Cameron call for people to confront the culture of irresponsibility at the party’s annual conference at Manchester.
The House of Commons was booked before the recent MPs’ expenses scandal and was more to do with resonance with the Chartists movement than making any political point, said Professor Jackman.
In 2002, in the wake of the crisis at Enron, Professor Jackman wrote a 20-page discussion document, calling for ethics to be accepted as a driving force in the financial sector.
In a section ominously prescient for the more recent crisis, he wrote: “The pressure of short-term gain could be seen to encourage undesirable behaviour. Staff bonus payments may often seem to be geared to pure bottom line success. ..
“Some individuals behave unethically because they think it is worth the risk. This may be related to a short-term agenda, or may be simply personally selfish. People weigh up the pros and cons and take a chance.”
Despite the support of the then chairman of the Financial Services Authority, Howard Davies, not much changed as a result of the report, but Prof Jackman is already taking action to make sure the new charter has an immediate effect.
In a related development he and Mr Butland have set up Grasmere Crucible Community Interest Company to pilot a British Standards Institute standard for a sustainable community.
The community project, with 28 members, will develop a range of sustainable activities, including a community market, employing underused land for a market garden and creating craft workshops, linked to affordable housing for rent.
If the pilot is successful such communities will qualify for a BSI kite mark.

Debate trips up pc brigade

2009-09-25T02:59:00.000-07:00

Oh joy! Question Time is back on BBC1. The political debating programme chaired by David Dimbleby is a marvellous show-case for what politicians and the parties are really like and the best entertainment on the telly by far.
It slid back into form with ease, as it would after 30 years of practice.
The most fun is usually provided by the old guard and the same was true last night with Tory grandee Michael Heseltine providing the sort of edgy contribution that only those with little ambition left dare to give.
The most illuminating debates often come from the most unlikely questions from the audience, and again this was the case.
The so-called silly question at the end was whether Arlene Phillips should be given a news readers’ job.
There were of course two separate issues that this was supposed to tease out.
One was the continuing row over whether more mature ladies should be allowed to front up news programmes, with various rows over the demise of the likes of Selina Scott and Moira Stuart, while male counterparts survive into their dotage.
In response to this row BBC director general Mark Thompson has apparently charged his managers with finding a female news reader aged more than 50 years.
Then there is the sacking of 66-year-old Arlene Phillips as a judge on Strictly Come Dancing, to be replaced by the younger previous winner Alesha Dixon, aged 30.
And of course all the panellists on Question Time tried to join in the fun by making silly suggestions, including the deputy Labour Leader Harriet Harman pointing out that it was always a male Dimbleby who fronted BBC political shows, and never their sister, although it wasn’t made clear if they have one.
Even in jest, this answer revealed just how blinkered Ms Harman and her all-male fellow panellists are by political correctness.
No one made the obvious reply.
Arlene Phillips has decades of experience as an expert choreographer and therefore was the ideal judge on Strictly, but not a journalist and therefore totally wrong for news reading. So the right answer was no.
Modern politicians cannot see wood, in the shape of common sense judgement, for trees, such as ageism, sexism or any other species of right-on doctrine.
Neither age, gender, sexual orientation nor similar are the right criteria for making decisions about employability. Experience, training and ability to do the job are.
Trust Question Time to highlight the absurdity of politicians’ muddle-headed thinking.

Editors incorporated

2009-09-22T06:32:00.000-07:00

Yesterday’s ramblings about all these former Editors becoming media consultants had two immediate and unexpected sequels.
First Paul Horrocks has today announced he is quitting as editor of the Manchester Evening News after 12 years (according to that brilliant web-site www.holdthefrontpage.co.uk)
After 34 years with MEN Media, guess what? Paul has decided to set up his own media and communications consultancy next year.
The MEN is probably the best editorship on the UK regional newspaper market but the announcement follows a turbulent few months for MEN Media, with more than 100 job losses and the relocation of all the company's weekly journalists to the MEN newsroom.
Joining the MEN from the Daily Mail in April 1975, Paul worked as a reporter, crime correspondent, news editor, assistant editor and deputy editor before being appointed editor in 1997.
One of the longest-serving regional editors in the UK, he was president of the Society of Editors in 2007, served on the Press Complaints Commission from 2002 to 2006, and is a current member of the Defence, Press and Broadcasting Advisory Committee.
He also sits on the appeals board for Royal Manchester Children's Hospital and is a non-executive director of MIDAS, which promotes business investment in Greater Manchester. So he’s no slouch.
With him in Manchester and Charles McGhee in Glasgow, I feel like the filling in a Lake District sandwich.
And no doubt Paul will soon be joining the ranks of former editors, including yours truly, on www.editorsinc.co.uk a new web-site advertising the wealth of talent available to organisations wanting advice on media matters, training and associated activities.
Although it is a bit sad that these former titans of the local press are now touting their wares on a web-site set up by the Society of Editors, their professional association.
Talking of former editors, Paul’s predecessor and former boss at MEN, Mike Ungar, popped up in another story on HTFP. He is apparently the editorial director of his son’s internet property site, which has just been bought by that irrepressible North West entrepreneur, Nick Jaspan.
The site Place North West, and set up by Ungar junior, also called Paul, has been acquired by How-Do, which specialises in news, information, features and events for the creative and media industries of the North West.
It is the brainchild of entrepreneur Nick Jaspan, whose regional weekly newspaper the North West Enquirer unsurprisingly folded after just five months in 2006. It must have had the worst business plan of any of the ill-fated launches of recent years, trying to attract advertisements with a copy sales penetration of less than one per cent.
Place North West will now become a free-to-access site having been subscription-only since its launch in 2007.
How-Do told HTFP its greater resources would "enhance Place’s established market position while the lifting of the subscription barrier will increase the site's traffic significantly."
Paul Unger, who has won several awards for property journalism, will retain a minority stake in the new business and will remain as editor.
He will be supported by reporter Michael Hunt and his father, editorial director Mike Unger, formerly editor of the Liverpool Daily Post, Liverpool Echo and Manchester Evening News.

Room for media experts

2009-09-21T07:16:00.000-07:00

Nice to see the experienced and talented former Editor Charles McGhee has found a new niche in life, even if it is almost identical to my own (www.lakesandbaycomms.co.uk).
The former editor of the Scottish daily, The Herald, has launched his own media consultancy firm.
Charles McGhee was in charge of Glasgow Herald for three years and prior to that was editor of its sister title the Evening Times for six.
Charles' press career spanned three decades during which time he also held senior roles on the Daily Record, Sunday Mail, Scotland on Sunday and the Sunday Times as well as a stint with the BBC.
He is also a former president of the Society of Editors and past member of the Press Complaints Commission.
According to his company web-site www.mcgheemedia.com, Charles offers organisations "a pragmatic approach to developing and improving media products and services".
He is performing consultancy work on external and internal communications and crisis management along with training and development.
In my darker moments I wonder if he, and I, is rather missing the point about the decline of regional and local newspapers.
I was at a Cumbria Chamber of Commerce luncheon on Friday, where all the talk was about internet-based social media being the way to reach customers.
Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Delicious, Blogging, YouTube and others were trotted out as ways of getting your company known through word of mouth, enhancing your reputation and engaging with customers.
If everyone thinks the web is the way to market his or her organisation, then newspapers, radio, television and old-style media experts may be surplus to requirements.
But I think the game was given away when the presenters agreed that there were now so many videos on YouTube, the trick was getting anyone to look at yours.
In other words, on what Clive James used to call the hyperspace super highway, chaos reigns.
My own experience is that the web is all right if you know exactly what you are looking for, but if there is any element of browsing or wanting to weigh up different options it is a waste of time.
So the traditional media may still have a role to play, after all. But which, when and how?
That is where the experts come in.

Load of balls

2009-09-14T02:57:00.000-07:00

THERE is no doubt of the media event of the last seven days: Darren Brown’s so called prediction of the National Lottery numbers.
However before we all get carried away, let’s get one thing clear. He didn’t. Predict the Lottery numbers, that is.
What he did was show the numbers after the event. If he had predicted them, he would have revealed them in advance, which is of course impossible.
If he could do that then the Lottery would be dead as an event.
When it came to his programme on Friday, explaining “how he did it”, it was difficult to decide whether to be annoyed that he would insult our intelligence with the complete baloney, or admire his bare-faced cheek.
The whole explanation was nonsense.
First he demonstrated how people’s behaviour could be predicted when fear was involved. The demonstrations involved a woman scared of mice putting her hand into four boxes, one of which was supposed to contain said rodent.
All that demonstrated was a schoolboy standard sleight of hand with the card showing a mouse. Whichever was the last box, the card would have been revealed next to it.
The man asked to stamp on polystyrene cups, one of which supposedly contained a knife to sever his foot, was even more irrelevant. No cup had the dagger.
Darren Brown had correctly predicted which six cups the man would leave to last by writing their numbers on the back of a cheque for half a million pounds that was supposed to compensate the man for his disability if the trick had gone wrong.
That was a classier sleight of hand. But it was irrelevant to the lottery prediction, especially when Darren later explained that the emotion of a group thinking they had predicted the lottery numbers was interfering in their psychic ability! Either emotion helps or it doesn’t. He can’t have it both ways.
By then Darren had moved on to the theory of crowd wisdom, based on the ability of a number of people to predict the weight on a bull at a country fare if an average was taken of their guesses.
This is quite different to predicting lottery numbers, as country folk do have knowledge of the weight of animals and it is a fixed fact they are guessing.
This is not the same as predicting random numbers.
So the whole experiment of getting a room of 24 people to use averages to guess the lottery numbers was bogus.
The real trick was to get the guinea pigs to believe they were actually having an impact.
Even this was undermined by Darren Brown doing the calculations himself on the actual live lottery attempt and then not even telling the assembled 24 what their guesses had been until he allegedly revealed them on the live broadcast. P-lease!
There are many theories to what Darren Brown’s trick really was. My own favourite was the use of the white board to write down the numbers after the draw. This was completely unnecessary to the visual appreciation of what he was trying to demonstrate and therefore probably holds the clue.
Any modern teacher will tell you that white boards do some pretty clever things. Transferring his scribbles onto the still hidden balls would be my best guess.
None of this reduces my appreciation of Darren Brown.
His great skills are as an entertainer, his showmanship, his cheek if you like.
He can get enormous publicity for his new series. He can enthral a nation. He can get 24 apparently intelligent people to believe they were collectively predicting the lottery numbers when they weren’t.
And nor did he.

Sunshine, thousands of visitors, but poor Media

2009-09-11T05:24:00.000-07:00

THE sun does shine on the righteous after all!
Westmorland County Show, one of Britain’s oldest and Cumbria's biggest livestock shows, attracted a record 29,000 visitors who bathed in wall to wall sunshine – not a cloud in the sky – yesterday (Thursday 10th of September 2009), at Lane Farm, Crooklands, Kendal, Cumbria.
The formidable Christine Knipe, chief executive of Westmorland County Agricultural Society, which hosts and organises the show, and her army of helpers made a magnificent job of it.
For once there were no major distractions. There was no animal horror disease, the sun shone and even the visiting government minister knew something about agriculture.
Huw Iranca-Davies is the first Labour agriculture minister for many years who actually has farms in his constituency, in Wales.
He made predictably positive noises about locally produced food and knew enough about less positive aspects of farming, like milk prices, to fend off the odd probing questions. He will have gone back south with his ears ringing with the farmers’ vested interests, however.
Highlights included the Cumbria Axemen, a chainsaw gang attacking huge logs, and, following their highly successful first visit last year, the Sheep Show was again on hand to entertain and educate visitors.
Livestock included Cattle, Sheep, pigs, Goats, Horses, Poultry, Hounds, Dogs and Rare Breeds, together with Alpaca classes making their second appearance in 2009.
The bizarrely garbed Cumberland and Westmorland Wrestling and birds of prey graced the display rings.
Women’s Institute, Learning for Life and Craft Marquees did a roaring trade, and with more than 350 trade stands, and the area’s largest local products Food Hall with special demonstrators and Celebrity Chefs, there was plenty to keep the visitors entertained.
Indeed as most of the visitors left the show-ground they sang the praises of the “fantastic” show, with many of the early starters staggering out at lunch-time, flushed with the heat and staggering under the weight of their purchases.
The trade stands which invested in staff to woo the punters seemed to do extremely well, so it is not just the day’s sales that count, but also the leads and long-term marketing opportunities.
The only black spots were the traffic, with some visitors, particularly those from Lancashire and further South complaining of two-hour waits on the Motorway, and the media coverage.
National media don’t bother or even understand. Local Radio Cumbria had a scaled down presence. Regional TV were noticeable by their absence. And most strangely of all The Westmorland Gazette, which now comes out on a Thursday completely ignored the show in that day's edition, even though it had a stand hoping to sell hundreds of copies.
And the internet coverage was even worse. By lunch time on Friday there was not one word of narrative or one single result on the web-sites of Radio Cumbria, The Westmorland Gazette or even the Westmorland County Agricultural Society. First up was The Gazette at 1.36 pm on Friday.
When the Gazette printed on a Friday it managed to get the full results in the pages of the paper on sale from 4 a.m. on the day after the show (Friday).
The faster the technology, the slower the service, it seems.
Never mind the media, if the County Show could guarantee the sort of weather it had in 2009, it could guarentee the title of best show in the North, and possibly with the demise of the Royal Show, the best show in England.

Lord, Lady, Vicar but no sticky fingers

2009-09-06T09:19:00.000-07:00

I had a charming evening this week at a well-attended and lively launch of Cartmel Sticky Toffee Puddings re-branding.
Cartmel itself is the most attractive of villages on the southern fringes of The Lake District. It has a disproportionate number of successful attractions for such a small settlement.
Sticky Toffee Pudding promises to be the most famous of all.
Although there have been sticky toffee puddings before, notably at Ullswater’s Sharrow Bay and Windermere’s Miller Howe hotels, it is the Cartmel variety which has conquered the world.
Howard and Jean Johns who had a restaurant in nearby Grange moved to Cartmel Village Shop 20 years ago and started making puddings to take away, in a kitchen on the premises.
In winter when the number of visitors declined, they started exporting them by piggy-backing on the distribution network of Woodalls of Waberthwaite, of Cumberland sausage fame.
Soon the likes of Booths, Selfridges, Waitrose, Harvey Nichols and Fortnum & Mason stocked the puddings, made from ingredients such as cane sugar, sticky dates, free-range eggs, fresh local cream and butter.
Now 35 people are employed in a converted warehouse down the coast at Flookburgh, making more than one million puddings a year.
But in true Cartmel fashion the pudding people know they need to keep moving forward and it was re-branded with new packaging and a new web-site this week. Rest assured the recipe remains unchanged.
The re-launch included a re-attachment of apron strings to the village shop, with links to other businesses.
I was invited as I was in the village doing a feature for Lancashire Life. It is going in the November issue, which, confusingly comes out in the middle of October.
Among the other guests were Lord and Lady Cavendish from up the road at Holker Hall, and Cartmel Priory Church team vicar Father Robert Bailey.
After canapés there was an interesting speech from Sticky Toffee Pudding managing director Charlotte White who explained that although the recession had helped the firm, with eating in being the new eating out, nevertheless the brand had decided to reconnect with the place of its origin.
Then tiny puddings were served on the sort of spoons you get to eat Chinese soups, so no-one had to suffer sticky fingers.
Mike Glover
www.lakesandbaycomms.co.uk
Other useful web links:
www.cartmelvillage.com
www.cartmelpriory.org.uk
www.stickytoffeepudding.co.uk
www.blackhorses.co.uk
www.thecavendisharms.co.uk

Introduction

2009-09-05T09:15:00.000-07:00

WELCOME to the first blog by Mike Glover, ex-Editor of The Westmorland Gazette, Yorkshire on Sunday and the Bradford Telegraph & Argus.
During 40 years in journalism, I have also been a trainee and qualified journalist at the Evening Chronicle in Newcastle-upon-Tyne; reporter, sub-editor and news Editor at the Evening Post and Echo in Hemel Hempstead, Watford and Luton; freelance reporter on Fleet Street, when it still was Fleet Street, mainly on the Daily Mail, Daily Star and Sunday Telegraph; researcher on Thames Television; and the Editor in Chief of York & County Press.
So you could say I’ve been around the block a few times.
I now run a media consultancy based under junction 36 of the M6, just outside the English Lake District.
Services include media training, media campaigns, media relations and freelance journalism. You can find more on www.lakesandbaycomms.co.uk
The idea of this blog is to explain why various media cover certain news in certain ways, and to track trends and quirks of the media.
There will also be occasional reports of interesting events or developments.
So if you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to post them on this blog.