FT Readers to Write Leaders. Sort of

April 29, 2009

In times in crisis, there are innovations which help your business to survive, and there are daft ideas which simply create more work for everyone. In which category is the FT’s plan to involve readers in the creation of its Monday leader column?

Here’s the deal. The FT’s new Arena blog is billed as recreating “a virtual editorial conference” by allowing readers to take part in debates which shape next Monday’s leaders. If the venture is successful, it’ll become a regular thing. It all seems rather bold, and if you check out this post from the Press Gazette, you’ll see that the headline writer was sufficiently moved to suggest that the FT was actively asking readers to write the leader column.

Needless to say, this isn’t what is happening. Even the FT’s readers, astute and intelligent as they are, might struggle over the peculiar craft of writing leaders, a skill best left to those who know exactly what they’re doing.

What, then, is the FT up to? Well, a closer look reveals that it’s engaging in a good old fashioned bit of Web 2.0 engagement with its audience, via the simple mechanism of a dedicated blog. Citizen journalism hasn’t taken over Fleet Street just yet. Praise be to those at the FT willing to put in the extra hours entailed by the Arena blog.

 

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The Sea: A Holy Hush?

July 25, 2010

For a certain poet, an unspoiled stretch of seaside was like “the holy hush there is in the land on Christmas morning. The roads fairly empty, the sky almost free of aeroplanes and you begin to hear and see and smell once more”.

But who uttered these lines?

(It’s a Monday, and this is your starter for 10 – and yes, we’re fresh to the metropolis, from a coastal sojourn.)

Alastair Brett: Certainly Not Certifiably Insane

July 23, 2010

The following words appeared in a Times article in 2003, about the paper’s recently departed Head of Legal, Alastair Brett. They’ve been doing the rounds in the wake of Brett’s sudden exit last week, though without attribution. Who, we wonder, wrote them? Two suspects present themselves – our own occasional scribe, Alex Wade, and Dominic Carman, son of the late, great George (an old mucker of Brett’s). Or was someone else the author? Whatever: the fact remains that Brett was a fearless, tenacious and excellent newspaper lawyer, a man whose commitment to press freedom coursed through every vein in his body. We don’t know the precise reasons for his departure, but he will be missed.

“[He] is known for his impassioned commitment to press freedom – so impassioned that he has been described as “certifiably insane”. Capable of an intimidatory snarl or two, and prepared to be stubborn, Brett is far from mad. He is erudite, charming (so the ladies say), and not known for sitting on the fence. If his sanity has, tongue firmly in cheek, been questioned, one thing not open to doubt is that Brett epitomises the old school Fleet Street lawyer”.

Pictured: Fleet Street -  not the same as it used to be.

Black in the black if he wants to sue for libel

July 23, 2010

A curious observation leaps at us from Roy Greenslade’s piece about whether Conrad Black, shortly to roam the high-class hotels of the world again as a free man, will return to the UK and carry out his threat to sue his biographer, Tom Bower, for libel:

I somehow doubt that he would have the appetite, or the funds, to pursue a libel action, but Black marches to the sound of his own drummer, so he might just do that. Even if he did, my money would still be on Bower winning.

Hang on, Roy – what about suing via a no win, no fee deal? Funds or no funds, a CFA would see Conrad through – though maybe he’ll remember what happened to the last press baron who sued Bower. Anyone for Richard Desmond’s curious dalliance with libel?

Pictured: the kind of place in which Conrad Black may be spotted (if not at the Royal Courts of Justice).