@pedant–
Very interesting this, but I suspect we’ll have @Shazzbot on our case telling us to get a room any second now…
Exactly once in all my time in news, a press officer somewhere took the time and trouble to think carefully about what the story was worth
But it’s not their job, is it? They’re trying to get as much of their shit in the paper as they can. It’s up to the journos to decide what it’s worth and act accordingly. (Actually what they’re meant to do is evaluate if there’s anything interesting to the release at all, go back to source and create their own story out of it. And that happens almost never these days.) I tend to think of it as the PR guff being a virus and the newsdesk/subs being the antibodies trying to stop as much of it getting into the paper as possible.
It isn’t time or resources – it is training
Actually, it’s all three. I know a lot of good reporters who don’t get the chance to chase good stories because they’re having to top and tail press releases and churn out nibs and fillers all day. They’re good journalists, or would be if they were given the chance. They’re just being squeezed by newsdesks who won’t (or can’t) hire enough reporters. But there’s definitely an issue with a lack of resources. I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve spiked a story because it was a load of old corporate shit and then been forced to use it anyway because there was nothing else.
Your point about undergraduate courses is a good one though. Myself, I’ve never had what you’d call any academic journalistic training. Put through in-house law courses and then dumped out there and left to get on with it. It’s how it always used to be done and I think it produces better journos than sitting in a lecture hall for four years.
Apple
Don’t agree in the slightest. Apple gets an embarrassingly easy ride. Just look at the Guardian’s tech coverage, for one. Front page, soft coverage of every cough and spit from Apple. (And quietly downgrading the little issue of workers’ rights in the factories etc. on many occasions.) Not that Samsung etc are much better but I’d say Apple has an incredibly tame press.
What he wanted was to pursue a vendetta against Lord Mountbatten for shagging his wife
Doesn’t matter. And I’d definitely not be the first one to defend him. But on the point I/he made earlier, I think he’s right enough.
What’s always shocking is seeing the number of journalists who meekly fall in line, unable to grasp that their own and their bosses interests are rarely aligned.
Actually, I think they do. It has, after all, never really been any different. At least not since Roy Thompson passed away. It’s just that they have to be professional and put that to one side. For example, I dislike the Daily Mail with a fiery passion but know quite a few people who work on it and know that they’re not Blimpish monsters you would think them to be (and have indeed done shifts on it myself). A great many of them don’t remotely share the values of the paper itself but they just knuckle down and get on with it. They know what Dacre wants them to produce and that’s what they do.
Times/Sunday Times
I did a few shifts on The Times relatively recently and I was shocked at the lack of quality control these days so what you say is probably true. It was setting a lot of business stuff on Fridays but news was/is done on Sundays and the kind of stories I’m thinking of (‘More people are buying life insurance, a survey by an insurance company has found.’) tend to be filed by PA early on Sunday on the general wire and are shovelled into pages as fillers and nibs without a second glance being paid to them.
But I have now more or less washed my hands of the whole grubby business now and am now trying to figure out what the hell I’m going to do with the rest of my working life….
Anonymous @
