If you’re a journalist, life has never been better. Er, perhaps

December 6, 2011
oldfashion-journalism

Is it really “a glorious time to be a journalist”, as former Independent editor Simon Kelner would have us believe? Kelner’s assertion comes as he launches The Journalism Foundation, a new charitable organisation whose aim is to promote, develop and sustain free and independent journalism throughout the world.

Kelner is its CEO, and the Foundation has the support of many eminent figures, including Salman Rushdie, Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger and Times editor James Harding. Kelner’s contention about the joy unconfined in being a present-day journalist is as follows:

I know it may seem strange to say so, what with the Leveson inquiry and the decline of the regional newspaper industry, but I don’t think there’s ever been a better time to be a journalist. There is more access to information through the net and the means to disseminate it, cheaper and easier than ever before. As long as one can throw off the idea that journalism is about professionals in traditional media, it’s a glorious time to be a journalist.

Is he right? We would like to think so, but we’re not so sure. As Kelner allows, regional newspapers are dying, meaning that an awful lot of journalists are out of work. But cutbacks are endemic at the nationals, too. Sub-editors now do about five different jobs and where once upon a time a hack merely had to write tomorrow’s story, now he or she has to file another two or three pieces for the web, bang out a couple of podcasts and record a video interview too. It’s all in a day’s work – for a reduced wage, too. Freelancers can barely make a living given the number of staffers with better contacts who have recently been laid off. No one has yet figured out how to make money out of online publication and as the quest continues so too does the decline of advertising revenue. The typical parent who is lucky enough to retain a job on Fleet Street will be advising offspring to go into anything but journalism.

That said, there are people out there who are still making a living from professional writing. They do so by embracing new media and thinking laterally. Trouble is, there aren’t that many of them. We wish Kelner were right, but fear that it ain’t necessarily so.

Image courtesy of this rather good blog.

 

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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.