A journalist says ‘no’ to the institution

June 30, 2010
summer surfing coke

“I have two small children and it’s an hour’s commute and I feel you have only one life and there is more to it than working 16-hour days in an airless office in Wapping. After two years at News Review I feel I don’t have to prove myself. It is the centre of so much in journalism and much of what is important in journalism passes over your desk but I have had enough. There is a danger on this paper of working here for too long and becoming institutionalised and I didn’t want that.”

That’s some quote. Its author is Susannah Herbert who, as you might have gathered, is leaving her job as editor of the Sunday Times News Review. The odds seem short indeed on her replacement being Eleanor Mills, back at the ST as a columnist and associate editor after a short stint at the Times, but aside from saying she has a new “project” (and declaring that she intends to have a memorable leaving party) Herbert’s next move is unclear.

We wish Herbert luck, but fear her depiction of life within Fortress Wapping errs on the heretical. Surely no one becomes institutionalised by virtue of working 16-hour days in an airless office, least of all one in Wapping? But if they do, what are the defining characteristics of the institutionalised Wapping employee?

We cannot say, not being institutionalised, but will be talking to our Wapping sources who might, or might not, prove illuminating.

Meanwhile, pictured courtesy of Limited Fun, is evidence of summer fun – from an institution.

 

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If you’re Joey Barton, attack is not the best form of defence

May 17, 2012

Interesting times, these, in the life of Joey Barton.

If the violence displayed by the QPR captain at Manchester City last Sunday was remarkable, his subsequent conduct on Twitter has been astonishing. Barton appears to have radically reinterpreted the notion that attack is the best form of defence, lashing out at all and sundry via a series of tweets whose ultimate effect is entirely self-destructive.

In the past 24 hours, Barton has accepted one charge of violent conduct at the Etihad Stadium but denied another. The FA seems set to throw the book at him, and his club has declared that it will deal with the matter after the result of the FA investigation. Conspiracy theorists might conclude that QPR’s management team and board hope that the FA ban Barton for so long a period (four months and more) that their reported desire to rip up his contract can only be bolstered.

What, then, should Barton do? Should he:

(a) Keep his head down and say nothing, or

(b) Issue a sensible statement in which he acknowledges that both his conduct at the Etihad and subsequent tweets have brought QPR into disrepute, and

(c) Add an apology to said statement, or

(d) Go to Portugal, log onto Twitter and tweet that the world is against him but that he doesn’t care because everyone is a moron and he’s worked really hard to get where he is and if anyone is nasty to him again he is going to expose their secrets.

The answer is not (d).

The moral of the story is that if you’re a loose cannon, when you turn attack into defence there is a danger that you will blow yourself up.

Gunning foglessly for clarity

May 15, 2012

A fine piece, this, on Winston Churchill’s gift for language and the obscurantism that goes with so much corporate communication.

But wait, what’s this? Could this injunction have been phrased rather more successfully:

Be concrete, not abstract. Use metaphors to get your message across.

Metaphors are, by definition, not exactly concrete. But be that as it may: there is a lot of sound advice in Clare Lynch’s piece and a revelation, too. We had never heard of the Gunning Fog Index.  But it exists, and reveals the age at which someone would have to leave full-time education to understand given text.

We’re pleased to display our own Gunning Fog rating for the above words. That of the Churchill speech cited by Ms Lynch was 9.698.

The Gunning Fog index is 9.585

Spin at the Leveson Inquiry

May 9, 2012
Leveson witch hunt

The idea that Lord Justice Leveson and his Inquiry’s QC, Robert Jay, are in need of PR advice is intriguing.

Surely their respective tasks ought to be immune from spin? Then again, perhaps the way in which they execute them is deserving of some communications advice. Either way, times have changed. A similar inquiry from yesteryear (and such do exist) would surely not have been accompanied, albeit informally, by communications advice.

Pictured courtesy of this Flickr user: a portrait of the Leveson Inquiry.