Incredible, but true: the FT is abandoning its sports coverage from Saturday 14 February.
The paper is understood to be axing around 20 staff. The decision to cut sport comes as part of a strategy to focus on the paper’s “core strengths”.
It’s a sad day when any paper gives up sports reportage, let alone one as good as the FT. The full story comes from the Sports Journalists’ Association. Photo: SunShineTrue.
[...] poses of idleness (for how else does a sports hater pose?), the Financial Times will henceforth abandon its sports coverage. No doubt the credit crunch has played a significant part in this decision, with the FT opting to [...]
Curious times in the media; strange days at The Times.
Would ‘Dacre Cards‘ – the system of licensing journalists proposed by Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre – have prevented the embarrassment now palpable at the Times over the NightJack story?
Times editor James Harding’s evidence to the Leveson Inquiry seemed heartfelt and contrite, albeit that the paper’s former long-serving and much-respected lawyer, Alastair Brett, seems to have been, er, rather dropped in it. Clearly, mistakes were made with regard to NightJack by young reporter Patrick Foster who, once he had hacked into NightJack’s account and thus discovered his identity, then embarked on a quest to expose it via legitimate methods. This, as Inquiry counsel Robert Jay QC put it, was “rather like working from the inside of the maze out”.
But had Foster been licensed via a Dacre Card, would this unsavoury episode in the Times’s history have been avoided?
We suspect not. A raft of laws were in existence at precisely the time when many News of the World journalists seemed to believe that they were entitled to hack any phone they liked. Those laws forbade them from doing so, and yet made no difference. Aside from the obvious objection to them – that they will squeeze out freelancers and citizen journalists – Dacre Cards would simply amount to something to circumvent.
What is really required is an ethical shake-up, from top to bottom. Society generally – not just journalists – needs a sense that some things are just plain wrong.
Something remarkable happened today. Yes, the Supreme Court launched its Twitter feed. It even has a Twitter policy, one of caveats, disclaimers and little by way of illumination but regardless: who would have thought that the successor body to the House of Lords would stoop to engage with the world of tweets, hashtags and retweets?
We look forward to the day when court business will be conducted via Twitter. Meantime, check out this link for an excellent blog on the Supreme Court.
So Farewell, then, Sir Fred Goodwin.
Now you are just Fred.
Not Right Said Fred, but plain Fred.
The Forfeiture Committee did for you.
No one had heard of it before,
But Dave said it had to act, and it did.
Trouble is that no one knows what to think.
Is it ‘Alas, poor Fred‘,
Or ‘Hurray! Sir Fred is dead!’?
We don’t know.
Do you?
By A. Mob, aged 1,378 and a half.
Is there a geek inside all of us?
Excellent Nike ad
Memo to would-be hacks: good writing is no longer a tool of your trade
Released almost a year ago, Spada’s groundbreaking research report, British Professions Today, is available for free download
This bank is so well designed that many of its staff never go home (allegedly)
In the latest of our series of white papers, Spada Research examines trends in environmental reporting.
After a raft of phone-hacking admissions and allegations, we are no longer seen as the gruff but dependable watchdog. Neville Thurlbeck, formerly of the News of the World (part of his Damascene conversion; to be continued).