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In memory of Catherine Riley

26/8/2015

4 Comments

 
Biker girl
September 2 update: Catherine's funeral will be held at the crematorium in Exeter at 11.30am on Thursday 10 September.
It will be followed by a wake  at the Buckerell Lodge. 

Newspaper journalists love the internet because it makes their jobs easier - and fear it because it may make them superfluous. Anyone can go to the web to look for news whenever it suits them, so why wait for tomorrow's paper?
The same could be said about television, but what makes the internet unique is that the news can also come looking for you. Not only through alerts that you may have set up, but in the most unexpected way. And it can knock you down like a blow to the solar plexus.
On Monday evening I logged into Facebook for a game of Candy Crush Saga. There at the top of the news feed was a post from Catherine Fraser (Riley as was): 
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Catherine used to work for the Times, where she was much loved and admired. Our paths didn't cross often, but after we had both left the paper we developed a virtual friendship, swapping cat and dog pictures and Candy Crush requests on FB as you do. Hardly a close relationship, yet here - nearly 48 hours on - I can still think of nothing but her.
Another former colleague got in touch to ask if SubScribe was going to run anything and to offer a photograph. The response to the brief obit on the home page suggested that there was an appetite for something more; a page where people could share memories. Facebook is a closed society, this is a public website, so I contacted Catherine's partner Jamie Vittles and he gave the enterprise his blessing, so here it is. 
This is a far more personal blog post than anything else you will read on the site and I make no apologies for that. For a start, it will talk throughout about "Catherine", rather than "Riley" or "Fraser", as is the style elsewhere. And there will be a total lack of impartiality. Contributions from others are not merely welcome, but actively sought. So if you want to add your stories, memories, pictures, tributes, please feel free to do so either by email or by using the comment facility at the bottom. 
So much for the ground rules...let's get the ball rolling with screen grabs of the Facebook posts that briefly and poignantly tell the story that led to this page:
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No misery memoir here, no "my battle with cancer", no self-pity. But, sadly, a beautiful positive outlook was not enough. 
As that game of Candy Crush was loading the other night, a pop-up box invited me to "help your friends: send lives". Catherine's avatar - Ralph the pug - was at the top of the list.
If only, if only, it were as simple as a click on a name.
Time to hand over to others:
Pug
This is one of "five photographs that make me happy" shared by Catherine last year

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I worked with Catherine on the Sporting Life .. I was head of production and she was chief sub. It was a bloody awful project, interminable delays and politics and the chronic sense that it was all going to collapse any day soon (which it did, of course).
But Catherine was a bright light throughout it all – cheerful, funny, gobby and lovely - and I don’t recall her ever once moaning in circumstances that made moaning the default. And what made her all the more remarkable was that she was teetotal (in those days at least) long after the rest of us had been driven to drink. 

She tweeted me last Wednesday with a restaurant recommendation. Foolishly I assumed she was doing ok. She was a lovely woman. 
- Matt Kelly


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I first met Catherine in 1998 when we were both working on the Sporting Life relaunch, and she soon after became my boss as fitness editor on The Times when the Fit to Play pages were launched in the sports section. 
As well as being always a fair and friendly boss she very quickly became a friend, and was godmother to my second child born in 2000. Although we saw less of each other once she moved back to Devon she never forgot either my or my daughter's birthdays. Apart from this year, we each received cards annually. 
My abiding memories of Catherine will always be her sense of humour, apparent in much of what she wrote (I used to love reading her Gym Rat column), and often said. I was always in awe of her outward femininity, particularly her long blond hair, which belied her love of motorbikes, cars and football. And I don't think I ever say her happier than when she finally fell pregnant with Dulcie.
Catherine's stoical approach to her cancer treatment was humbling. Less than two weeks ago when updating us on Facebook she seemed to remain upbeat, reminding us that even in the darkest of situations, sparks of light can be found, and that by comparison, many of our complaints are trivial. 
And I will remember her warm, open, welcoming face, and smile that always invited you to join in on the positive way she looked on life. Can there be a more uplifting legacy?

- Jennai Cox


Express and Echo
The Express and Echo obit published on Tuesday

For Catherine by Lynette Carr

Stunningly beautiful person in every single way;
And a beautiful friend I would be proud to say.
Clever and funny with striking looks rolled into one;
Working in The Times sports department was busy and you made it even more 
fun.
Whether wrapped up in a deadline story or making me laugh;
A mischievous message would ping on my screen, making me check your 
composure through the glass.
Like naughty schoolgirls and your controlled sense of humour; 
You made me giggle whether it was true, gossip or rumour.
Through different directions in life, we always kept in touch;
Whether meeting, visiting, texting or phone it really meant so much.
Through thick and thin, through my treatment and yours;
We had time for each other between busy life and chores.
My life has been blessed with such an angel in my heart and soul;
But not seeing you will be felt like a poignant burning hole.
But your presence will always be here and in everything around;
On your early next adventure watching Dulcie and Jamie without making a 
sound.
And though I will be missing you my friend in person so much;
I know your next assignment will keep you close enough to touch.
Goodnight, Sleep tight on your next mission each day;
Knowing you are near and I will see you again one day.

Love You Lots 
Lynette xxx

Catherine and Nicola
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Catherine, (or Cathy as she was known back then) and I met at South Devon College in Torquay.  We both did A level performing Arts.  We soon became friends, bound by a similar acerbic sense 
of humour, taste in music and the need to constantly dye our hair a variety of colours and stick it up in the air. We were probably both at our most rebellious, nihilistic and mischievous back then, therefore, most of my anecdotes will have to remain untold. 
However, I have a few tales from 1985. Catherine and I shared a flat in Chelston during the year and had many adventures, here are a few of them:
We went to Glastonbury that year and were keen to see the Pogues, who were the first act on the Pyramid stage on the Friday afternoon. We always had to be in the thick of it so made our way down to the front of the stage. It had been raining all day and was getting pretty muddy. The band came on and we started dancing, Cathy threw some mud at me, I retaliated, Cathy ducked and the 
mud landed on the face of the person behind. In a blink of an eye, a full blown mud fight had erupted that continued all the way through New Model Army and well into the evening. We spent the rest of that Festival  caked head to toe in mud. 
Despite being fearless, as you are at that age, we sometimes came unstuck. We went to see the Ramones at the Lyceum and again, raced to the front. The style of dancing back then was to flail ones arms wildly and to deliberately push into people, Cathy and I were doyens of this particular style, especially at Monroes nightclub on a Monday evening, it was all good humoured and 
boisterous,  no one really got hurt. Not so the version that the 'London Psychobillies' meted out, Cathy and I had to beat a hasty retreat, battered and bruised.
One of my most enduring memories of that year however, was much less
rock 'n' roll . One evening Catherine and I went to Meadfoot Beach  and we sat outside gazing at the stars. We saw a shooting star, then another and another. It was one of those unique moments of complete happiness and contentment.
The following year Cathy moved to London, initially to work in a huge record store in Marble Arch and then for Virgin looking after bands. We stayed in touch, writing to each other I visited, she sent me lots of records of bands she was looking after.
By the early nineties our lives had taken different turns and we lost touch, but the advent of social media meant that we reconnected, then she moved down to Exeter, so we met up on a fairly regular basis. There we were:  our grown up selves, no pink hair or piercings, no wild nights out, but still that shared wit and view of the world. I feel privileged to have met Catherine again, but mostly I am glad to have shared my rebellious teenage years with her.

- Nicola Glassbrook


Keith's video still
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When we appointed Catherine to the sports desk she was joining a small but distinguished group of women sports journalists. Alyson Rudd, Alison Kervin, and Alix Ramsay were already there, soon to be joined by, among others, Ashling O’Connor, Juanita Greville and Sue Connolly. 
In common with the others, Catherine asked for no special concessions for her gender. She was a sports fan first and foremost, with a regrettable passion for Arsenal, and could more than hold her own in the sometimes boisterous world of Times Sport, never fearing to  tell her various editors what she really thought. 
Catherine was a serious and talented journalist and a born organizer, swiftly demonstrating the skills that led her to become deputy football editor, motoring correspondent and editor of Bricks&Mortar. But what she really brought to us all was fun -  a thought that is all the more heartbreaking now.
When Robert Thomson whimsically decided – in afternoon conference -  that what our Wimbledon coverage really needed was a guide for readers to make a DIY sunhat from the sports pages of that day’s paper, there was only one person to whom I could turn. As far as I know, Catherine had no training in origami, but she delivered the hat in time for the first edition and even modelled it (being highly photogenic was another of her many assets).
When I wanted someone to write a piece on what it was like being in the cockpit of a formula one car, it was naturally Catherine who obliged, and her likening the experience to being strapped to a washing machine on heavy cycle still brings a sad smile to my lips even as I write this.
And then there was Krystal Balls. One of my less defensible ideas, Krystal’s job was to predict the outcome of the weekend’s football results according to the stars. Somehow Catherine managed to conceal -  just - her contempt for this ludicrous proposition and make it funny.
Whenever lunacy or fun was in the air, Catherine was our first stop. She never complained (or not much anyway) and always delivered.
Her courage and determination during her illness will have come as no surprise to anyone who ever had an argument with her - just about all of us at one time or another, I’d guess. But my abiding memory is of a lovely, clever, talented woman with a will of iron, who could make me laugh at the drop of a DIY hat.
- Keith Blackmore



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I am heartbroken at this sudden loss and it keeps catching me off guard, when I think it may not be true. I loved her so very much. Odd knowing her for over 16 years. We married a week apart and were godparents to each other's children. When I think of Dulcie, my heart breaks into a million pieces. We shared a love of Earl Grey tea, and she a love of football with my husband, Caine. 
We ran a 5k race and she convinced me to run the London Marathon with her. Oh, the pain, but I would never have applied without her. 
She was there for the laughs and good times and also for the great advice during the tough moments, especially during my IVF treatment. She supported me during the deaths of both of my parents, and we likewise in the death of her beloved Dad. My only consolation in all of this is that she is with him. I just cannot believe I will now be at her funeral, when this was the happiest time of her life. I promise to play a bigger part in Dulcie's life and get to know this amazing girl as she grows into a wonderful woman, like her mother. I feel so numb with grief, like so many others, I will miss her so much.
- Denise Stringer


Krystal Balls
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Catherine was a brilliant, hugely talented journalist with a wonderful sense of humour, whom I was lucky enough to click with the very first time we met. She became a close colleague and dear friend who always - ALWAYS - looked out for me. 
We had this joke about my supposed latent sexism, which she happily played up to one evening when I realised I hadn't ironed my dress shirt ahead of the football writers' annual dinner. Sourcing an iron from the fashion department, she set up the board in Keith Blackmore's office and got rid of all my creases so I could look smart, while she had the slightly less glamorous job of putting the pages to bed. It sounds a bit Gene Hunt, but she and I were just having a laugh, as we did pretty much every day we worked together. 
We launched and edited The Game, under KB's stewardship; she also became a footballing 'Mystic Meg' with a predictions column that carried a byline picture she absolutely HATED (odd, for someone so clearly an absolute stunner); she recounted me with tales of sportsmen who'd tried (unsuccessfully) to chat her up over the years, and when she came to my wedding, just a few days short of giving birth to Dulcie, she was only too happy to pose for an hilarious 'belly-out' picture that summed up her fun-loving personality. 
I used to call her my 'work wife', and she was happy enough to allow me to be her 'work husband'. But Catherine wore the trousers. And I love her still
- Jeremy Griffin


Ralph's birthday cake
Catherine was the soul of indiscretion when it came to Ralph
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When I first met Riley, I sort of looked at her and then felt a warm glow of satisfaction.
She can't be that pretty and know the offside rule, I thought. 
I'll drag out the tommy sauce and the salt 'n' pepper and explain very slowly to her, as I have done many a time for my female comrades who attempt to work in sports departments. Should see her off in a month I reckon...
But I'd got it all wrong. She knew her game, she knew her football and, by Christ, she knew how to write.
Catherine went by many names, including Catweasel and Krystal Balls, mainly because she could turn her hand to anything. From making hats, predicting scores on the doors, riding massive motorbikes, smelling petrol from 200 ft and selling houses.  Multi-talented, quirky, extremely pretty and my best buddy for over 15 years.
As you have probably read from other tributes, Riley worked on many newspapers and in many departments, but as a friend she was always there and always had your back.
She had some very strange habits too. Watching Catherine eat was a  terrifying experience -  never go out to a restaurant with her. Things had to be in a certain order, she only drank from a certain cup or glass and God forbid anyone who moved it from her desk.  When she lived in London, she had her groceries  delivered by some weird posh nosh bloke every Wednesday and always complained loudly that there wasn't any kelp or somesuch as ordered -  like you get that by the bucketload in East London? 
She swore like a navvy under her breath, which made her sound like Julie Andrews, had some very strange piercings and, for her sins, supported Arsenal.
Her grab of social media was something to behold. Random tweets would appear overnight including  'great to see the bats this evening', 'River looks bare down there' and 'I had Spain'. 
No me neither.
She shamed her poor dog Ralph into admitting on Facebook that he ate her underwear and  posted images of him in every possible pose  I told her he would need therapy.
I could go on and on about her and our amazing friendship, we have laughed till we wet ourselves, literally;  we have cried together, lost parents together, lost pets together. We have shared every event that life throws at you. She was always there for her friends.
Riley battled her cancer with such force and determination. After the breast cancer op, she rang me  to say she had ordered a pair of 'south-facing boobs', as you would a garden on a new house. 'I told the doctor, I said I want them pert and south whether I'm lying down or standing up'.
Catherine leaves her Mum, her loving partner  Jamie and  her beloved adored daughter Dulcie who is turning into the spitting image of her mother. Maybe it's time I took my salt and pepper pots down to Devon to  run her  through the offside rule -  but I bet mum has already.
I love you Riley and miss you bud xx 
- Sue Connolly


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I had a good cheery effective jolly bantering superficial colleague 
relationship with Catherine for some years while we both worked on The Times sports desk. Like many other people. But for a single week we were intimates and we talked of love. 
We were in Tokyo. Both covering the 2002 World Cup. It was the last long week of the tournament. We had both been away from our dear ones too long, and were both running on empty. Neither of us knew anyone else in town. We were stuck with each other. 
Days were spent working, obviously. Evenings we spent together. 
“If you want to eat anything other than curry you organise it and I’ll come 
along happily,” I said. “Otherwise I’ll organise a curry.” 
So each evening we met in the bar and then went off for a curry. And talked. And talked. Because there was no one else. This wasn’t a flirtation: it was much more intimate. We both needed to get home far too badly. So we spoke much more candidly than we would normally: talked about the problems and contradictions of our lives and yes, the love and the loves that made them possible. 
We became each other’s support network. She listened, she talked, and so did I. We laughed a lot too. On our last evening she ordered a ghastly girly champagne cocktail, so forever after I called the Peach Princess; she called me Curry King. I also sometimes addressed her as Mrs Slocombe, for her love of cats. 
The madness of newspaper life can throw up some odd situations. 
This was one. It was a week I shall always value, and always be grateful 
for. And a person.

- Simon Barnes


Storm














This is Storm the kitten, a new addition to the family. 
Catherine posted this picture on Dulcie's 11th birthday last month. 

...and this is Catherine at the same age
with her own kitten 
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I don't know Catherine as well as some of you, nor have I known her for as long as most of you. 
I first met her just over two years ago in her office at Exeter City FC, just before running a workshop as part of Jamie's Kickstart Football in the Community programme. I then met her by coincidence, on most days, on our school runs, often twice. Ralph was usually there, our daughters sometimes. 
We talked for a few minutes, sometimes longer. I always felt better after meeting her... much better. Catherine was hugely witty, profoundly compassionate, very intelligent and incredibly generous and perceptive. She knew me much better than I know myself. I liked that. 
I feel honoured to have known her and will miss her hugely. 
Dulcie, Jamie... Catherine loved you so very much... you were everything for her, always will be.

- Gabriella Giannachi


Dulcie, Jamie and Ralph
Another of the "happy five" pictures

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I was aware of Catherine when she was a sports reporter for The Times, writing about football and motor racing and doing a general fitness column, but I got to know her when she was appointed editor of Bricks&Mortar, in 2005, where I was a features writer at the time. It must have been tough to follow the formidable Anne Spackman, who had created the supplement and was acknowledged as the best property writer in the country, but she quickly stamped her own mark. 
She always believed that property supplements are fundamentally about people and encouraged her team to find out interesting stories about the owners, past and present, and the community in which a house sat. As a new mother, whose daughter Dulcie was born the year before she took on the job, she understood and played to the aspirations of home-builders, focusing on possessions as much as square footage. She also got TV names like Kirstie Allsopp and Kevin McCloud involved.
Catherine was tremendously fun to work with, encouraging her writers but also giving them a lot of free rein. I think it baffled her how much hand-holding we seemed to need when she first took over, since Anne had been quite an autocrat (I say that with great affection for her). Catherine didn't understand why people couldn't just get on and do things rather than wait for orders each step of the way. Weekly team meetings were a bit haphazard, but also more democratic. She asked for ideas, somehow a schedule and flatplan emerged and then we just got on with filling it. She seemed to be more of a colleague than a boss.
Of course, you remember the silly things when a friend dies, such as the time when she was at pains to tell a PR firm that her name was spelled as "Catherine, with a C, Riley". The letter duly arrived addressed to "Catherine Withersea-Riley". 
No one who worked with her could ever forget the sneeze, either. A sort of semi-stifled squeak that sounded like an Eastern European tennis player - "wiii-cheee". It was said that even in the pit lane at a grand prix, a Riley "wiii-cheee" could cut through the noise of any engine.
- Patrick Kidd

PS: 
I have a recollection that Catherine once dated Edward Tudor-Pole, the former punk rocker with Tenpole Tudor who went on to present The Crystal Maze. She was quite a biker chick and think she got to know him through that.



Times obit pic
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Catherine Riley, as she was, began her career in journalism at The Sporting Life and The Independent before moving to The Times. Hired as a Jill-of-all-trades, she could turn her hand to most sports and took on whatever tasks were thrown at her with good grace, even if through gritted teeth. They included passing herself off as Krystal Balls, a football astronomer.
Her main loves were motorsport and football, particularly as an Arsenal season-ticket holder. Promoted to deputy football editor, she helped to launch The Game, the Monday supplement, and reported on the 2002 World Cup from Japan and South Korea. Her normally meticulous organisation let her down when the birth of her daughter, Dulcie, coincided with the climax of the 2004 European championships, an error of timing compounded by the football editor having been allowed to go on honeymoon the same week.
- The Times obituary

For the full obit, please click here (£)


Cat cartoon
Catherine on Catherine:
Catherine was a great Facebook "sharer". The cartoon above made me laugh out loud. Here is her response to the challenge to list "seven things you don't know about me", her "religious and political" philosophies, and, finally, a cautionary tale she shared during the election campaign

  1. I can wiggle my nose like Samantha in Bewitched
  2. I passed my motorcycle test first time
  3. I was the product manager for the Liverpool FC single "The Anfield Rap"
  4. I always wanted to be an astronaut 
  5. The pronunciation of the letter H as "haitch" drives me to distraction
  6. I can dive backwards
  7. I have a total fear of frogs and toads

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Another of Catherine's "happy five" (she cheated because there are four here!)
Philosophy
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While walking down the street one day a Member of Parliament is hit by a truck and dies.
His soul arrives in heaven and is met by St. Peter at the entrance.
'Welcome to heaven,' says St. Peter. 'Before you settle in, it seems there is a problem. We seldom see someone like you around these parts, you see, so we're not sure what to do with you.'
'No problem, just let me in,' says the man.
'Well, I'd like to, but I have orders from higher up. What we'll do is have you spend one day in hell and one in heaven. Then you can choose where to spend eternity.'
'Really, I've made up my mind. I want to be in heaven,' says the MP.
'I'm sorry, but we have our rules.'
And with that, St. Peter escorts him to the elevator and he went down, down, down to hell. The doors open and he found himself in the middle of a green golf course. In the distance is a clubhouse and standing in front of it are all his friends and other politicians who had worked with him.
Everyone is very happy and dressed in evening dress. They run to greet him, shake his hand, and reminisce about the good times they had while getting rich at the expense of the people.
They played a friendly game of golf and then dined on lobster, caviar and champagne.
Also present is the devil, who really is a very friendly & nice guy who has a good time dancing and telling jokes. They are having such a good time that before he realizes it, it's time to go.
Everyone gives him a hearty farewell and wave whilst the elevator rises....
The elevator rises and the door opens in heaven where St. Peter is waiting for him.
'Now it's time to visit heaven.'
So, 24 hours pass with the MP joining a group of contented souls moving from cloud to cloud, playing the harp and singing. They have a good time and, before he realizes it, the 24 hours have gone by and St. Peter returns.
'Well, then, you've spent a day in hell and another in heaven. Now choose your eternity.'
The MP reflects for a minute, then he answers: 'Well, I would never have said it before, I mean heaven has been delightful, but I think I would be better off in hell.'
So St. Peter escorts him to the elevator and he goes down, down down to hell.
When the doors open he's in the middle of a barren land covered with waste and garbage.
He sees all his friends, dressed in rags, picking up the trash and putting it in black bags as more trash falls from above.
The devil comes over to him and puts his arm around his shoulder. 
' I don't understand,' stammers the MP. 'Yesterday I was here and there was a golf course and clubhouse, and we ate lobster and caviar, drank champagne, danced and had a great time. Now there's just a wasteland full of garbage and my friends look miserable. What happened? '
The devil looks at him, smiles and says, ' Yesterday we were campaigning... Today you voted."



Catherine Fraser
4 Comments

Publish and be damned? Absolutely

21/7/2015

1 Comment

 
Times
The Sun
To publish or not to publish? Mr Murdoch's papers have been getting it in the neck this weekend for their insensitivity. (So what's new?)
The Times carried this follow up to the sad news of Arthur Cave's death on page 19 on Friday. It is based on an interview with an Australian literary magazine called Kill Your Darlings in which he said:
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Have you ever watched a child approach a terrifying situation, where they must face down or be consumed by their own fear? It is one of the most moving things an adult, particularly a parent, can witness. Although it's almost impossible to bear, we must stand back and let the child decide. We share the child's terror.
The first thing to point out here is that the magazine's title is not about subjecting children to trauma. It's a vehicle for "feisty new writing" and it takes its name from the advice to aspiring writers variously attributed to Oscar Wilde, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, William Faulkner, Allen Ginsberg and others. Stephen King also used the phrase in his brilliant book On Writing: "Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.”
Next, let's consider what Cave is saying. That you have to let your children go, even though your heart may be in your mouth. And to do so, to watch them tackle a difficult situation, is a moving experience for a parent. That is not the same as encouraging them to be reckless or foolhardy. 
So many people took exception to this story that the Times has removed it from its website.  
But is it not relevant - and even in the public interest - to have Nick Cave's recent thoughts on this subject, since the interview was published only the week before his son's death? 
Where the story falls down is not in reporting his words about watching a child's terror, but in the bits that go round that quote; the assertion that Cave is known as the Prince of Darkness "because of his obsession with death and violence". 
Umm... I may be wrong here, but I believe Cave is known as the Prince of Darkness because his work often deals with death and violence (Murder Ballads is a brilliant album). That doesn't mean that he is personally obsessed with them. The aforementioned Stephen King has written at least two dozen terrifying books, does that make him personaly obsessed with horror?
Further suggestions of bad parenting come with the disclosure that a documentary showed him watching Scarface (hardly the most terrifying film) with Arthur and his twin brother Earl and that he had once said - we aren't told when - that he had watched "a lot of super-violent stuff with his teenage sons". 
Well, isn't that much better parenting - to sit alongside them and discuss - than to leave them in their bedrooms watching who knows what?
The story also points out that police were saying that they were not linking the boy's death with a photograph of teenagers sitting with their legs dangling over a 300ft cliff ten miles away - a link the Mail was swift to make in its initial report of Arthur's fall. (The paper had given over page 3 to the earlier photograph the previous day.)
The problem with the Times story was not in the fact that it was written, but in the way it was written, and I think it's a shame that the editorial team weren't brave enough to re-edit and leave it up online.
And so to the royal "Nazi salute". Should the Sun have published its still from an 80-year-old film? Of course it should. Why not? 
No one is going to think any better or worse of the Queen -  or any differently about her mother and uncle - because of this, but it is a valid piece of history. No, we don't know the context, but we can be pretty sure (a) that the little Princess wasn't being taught to show allegience to the new German Chancellor and (b) that she hadn't the faintest idea of the significance of the gesture.
So if Her Majesty (not HRH as the Mirror's tortuous head calls her) is livid, she is not the woman we've come to think of her as being. She may be dismayed, but she'll get over it.
What is far more disappointing is the Express's desperation in declaring "She was waving" and the Independent on Sunday's leader saying that it wouldn't have published. The Indie has since its inception avoided royal stories, so we'd have expected it not to have gone for the story. But not out of misplaced delicacy.
As journalists we should often be more sensitive than we are. But there is no reason to be censorious about either of these Murdoch stories. 
And the Sun's heading was inspired.
1 Comment

'Legend' Nick Cave not famous enough for the Mirror

17/7/2015

0 Comments

 

View image | gettyimages.com
Daily Mirror
How famous do you have to be to be a legend?
I ask because of this morning's Mirror front page.
The paper splashed on the death of Nick Cave's 15-year-old son  
The main heading described Cave as a "Rock star" - about the same count as "Nick Cave" - and the strapline called him a legend. Only in the third head at the foot of the page was his name mentioned.
This seemed a little odd and Gameoldgirl tweeted as much, setting in train this little conversation with @dailymirrorstyle 

@gameoldgirl In all honesty he's not a household name for most of our readers.

— Mirror Style Guide (@TheMirrorStyle) July 16, 2015

So which musicians SHOULD Mirror readers have heard of? Where to draw line? Any 'star' bigger than Rick Witter of Shed Seven?! @gameoldgirl

— Mirror Style Guide (@TheMirrorStyle) July 16, 2015
My response was (a) anyone worth a splash and (b) anyone capable of being described as a legend. 
The death of a 15-year-old boy in a cliff fall in Brighton at the start of the school holidays would probably be worth a slot in the nationals anyway. But it was obviously the celebrity link that led to its prominence. 
Whether it was worth a splash is another matter. It's a fair point that the Bad Seeds may not be in every Mirror reader's CD collection. So why lead on the story? To trick people into buying the paper by holding out the possibility that the star might be someone they like? 
Surely not. Let's try to get this straight. This is a splash because The boy's father is famous. But, even though the father's a "legend", the Mirror doesn't think he's famous enough for its readers to have heard of him.
Oh heavens! We're going round in circles.
What did everyone else do?

Nick Cave coverage

The story was a page lead for everyone except the Independent and i -  which gave it short singles - and the Star, which used it as a downpage picture story. All except the Telegraph and Mail put the name in their headings. 
The Mail preferred a bit of implied victim-blaming in the sub-deck, telling us that the lad fell "close to where teens diced with death". 
The Telegraph, with four decks to fill, started with the convoluted "Teenage son of...", and gave us the location and the distance of the fall, but still couldn't manage the name of the famous person.
Equally bonkers was the Guardian, which went to the other extreme, assuming that "Cave" was identification enough, using valuable characters on the superfluous "injuries" rather than the more helpful "Nick".
Am I going mad here? Isn't the obvious heading the one the Sun used?
But that's drifting from the point that perplexes me most: why did the Mirror splash on this story if they thought readers wouldn't know - and therefore care about - who they were on about?
Your thoughts please.

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Farewell without fanfare for Profanasaurus Rog

2/6/2015

9 Comments

 
Roger Alton
Relaxed about the job: Alton in his Observer office in 2000. Photograph: Daily Telegraph
A distinguished Scott Trust editor departed the journalistic stage this weekend after glittering career punctuated by controversy and congratulation.
No, not that one.
Alan Rusbridger's extended farewell from the Guardian was marked with magazine interviews, retrospectives, Twitter tributes, and instagram and Vine shots of his final editorial conference and ritual banging out. His face was everywhere, including above the masthead of his own paper, puffing a valedictory letter to readers. 
Roger Alton's exit from the Times was the complete opposite: at his insistence there were no presentations, no speeches, no banging, no cake, no toasts.  He did not even pause to collect the souvenir front page prepared by colleagues. That will most likely be handed to him at a quiet dinner in a few weeks' time.
The contrast between the simultaneous departures is the more piquant because the two men worked alongside each other as editors of the Guardian and Observer for nearly a decade - and because of a "feud" over the Iraq war that some blamed for Alton's decision to leave the Scott stable after more than thirty years.
Alton joined the Guardian as a sub five years after graduating from Oxford (Rusbridger went to Cambridge) and was promoted to arts editor, features editor and Weekend magazine editor. He was running G2 when he was invited to move upstairs and take over from Will Hutton as Observer editor in 1998.

View image | gettyimages.com
Like Rusbridger, Alton picked up plenty of prizes along the way. He was twice GQ's editor of the year (there he is, pictured with his booty in 2005), and his Observer was named Newspaper of the Year at the 2007 Press Awards.
He left the paper that year and went on to spend two years as editor of the Independent, stepping down from that job when the paper was sold to Alexander and Evgeny Lebedev. 
In 2010 he moved to his final berth as executive editor of the Times. The timing was excruciating: the paper was going through a traumatic redundancy programme to cut costs and stem "unsustainable" losses, so the arrival of another chief on a six-figure salary when more lowly-paid indians were being 
shown the door did not go down well. It is therefore testament to the man's personality and professionalism (and potty mouth) that he swiftly became such a popular addition to the newsroom. And while the deserved plaudits of Rusbridger's two decades running the Guardian have been full of admiration, the tone of those talking about Alton is rather one of affection.

That 'feud' and the parting of the ways
Flat Earth NEws
Alton announced in October 2007 that he would be leaving the Observer by the end of the year. His executive editor and friend Kamal Ahmed also left the paper, to take up a post with the Equality and Human Rights Commission. 
Their departures coincided with reports that  a forthcoming book by the Guardian writer Nick Davies, would allege that Ahmed had helped to "sex up" the "dodgy dossier" about Iraq's so-called weapons of mass destruction in 2003.
In fact, Flat Earth News did no such thing, but it did include a chapter about the Observer's support for the war, portraying Alton as a naive editor with little political savvy who came to depend on the equally politically inexperienced Ahmed.
"Roger Alton has never claimed to be a political animal," Davies wrote. "His style is too intense, bordering on manic, at best full of charm, at worst eye-wateringly clumsy. His passions are far from government, much closer to sport and women, both of which he pursues with obsessive energy. In newspaper terms, he is a desk man, a brilliant sub-editor who can project stories on a page, a good commissioner of interesting tales. But not political." 
Davies continued with an anecdote about Alton's response to an invitation to meet Tony Blair for a quiet chat in Downing Street shortly after he became editor in 1998: 
"Fuck," said Alton, who swears when he breathes. "I can't meet the Prime Minister. I'm just a fucking sub."
By Davies's account, Alton took political editor Patrick Wintour with him, and while they were waiting outside Blair's study, David Miliband walked by. Wintour introduced his new editor:
"So what sort of changes do you plan to make to the paper?" asked Miliband, who was evidently looking for some kind of political insight.
Totally bereft of an answer, Alton reverted to type, stammering: "Bit more sex on the front page. More sport. That kind of thing,"
It is for the reader to judge whether this page of the book reflects more kindly on the author or his subject.

The chapter goes on to recount how Wintour  left the Observer for the Guardian and how his deputy Andy McSmith resigned after being overlooked for the vacant post, which went to Ahmed.  It worries Davies that the paper is in the hands of people he sees as political know-nothings. 
Over the next few years, Ahmed and Alton built up a relationship with Blair and Alastair Campbell. Davies clearly disapproves - he thinks the Observer was used, and even floats the notion that Alton submitted bits of Campbell emails to be included in leaders. He also suggests that Alton contrived to be absent from a key leader writers' conference to thwart any attempt to override his decision to back military action against Saddam Hussein. The Guardian opposed it.

Daily Mail
Fast forward to the autumn of 2007 and Alton's resignation.Geoffrey Levy notes in the Daily Mail that while Liz Forgan, chair of the Scott Trust, praises Alton's passion and commitment, there is no tribute from group editor-in-chief Rusbridger.
Levy sees this as evidence of the "civil war" that had been "raging" between the two papers and the two editors because Rusbridger could not forgive Alton for supporting the American invasion. Hostilities had reached such a pitch, Levy writes, that the Guardian had taken to openly rubbishing Observer news stories. (One of these was about the suggested link between MMR and autism, which has been denounced by most science reporters. In this case the rubbishing was done by Ben Goldacre, now renowned for his Bad Science book.)
Turning to the yet-to-be-published Flat Earth News, Levy writes:
"Conspiracy theories abound that the book was a ploy by the Guardian to undermine the Observer. What is clear is that the Guardian's sandals-and-beard brigade have been up in arms as what they see as a 'neo-con' takeover of the Observer."
Evidence for this came with publication of books by Observer writers Andrew Anthony and Nick Cohen in which they "stuck up two fingers" towards Rusbridger by "making a show of shedding their liberal-Left credentials".
Levy goes on to describe Rusbridger as "a man of considerable achievement, a brilliant journalist...a rather aloof bookish figure who sees himself as an intellectual".  Alton, by contrast, is a maverick, "a passionately, deeply creative journalist and superb technician... a sporting fanatic who goes mountain climbing and spends hours in the gym."
But, Levy continues, the root of the "fear and loathing in Farringdon Road" was the papers' impending move to King's Cross that would see a switch to seven-day working with staff serving both titles and the website. 

The Guardian media commentator Roy Greenslade had written in his Evening Standard column the previous day that there was definitely no feud, but he was also of the opinion that the digital revolution and the merging of sections of the two papers had "undoubtedly spooked" Alton. 
"He is not a digital dinosaur, as I have called him in the past, but he remains convinced of the primacy of printed papers. So is he about to jump ship? 'Sooner or later' he says. It's not a job for life'."
Alton's resignation was announced that afternoon.

Davies subsequently denied suggestions that he had written his chapter about the Observer at Rusbridger's request to undermine Alton; and Alton was in turn equally firm in his denial that he had resigned because of the Davies book or any dispute with Rusbridger over the integration plans. 
"I've never had a conflict with anybody," he told Press Gazette. "Kamal is one of the best journalists I have ever worked with and of the highest integrity, so if anybody impinges his integrity I'll go and punch his fucking face in."


Don't hold back, Rog, tell us what you think
Hack attack: Alton blames Mumsnet for the closure of the News of the World
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I have had a fantastic ability to miss stories...you chuck away stories and then see them on the 10 o'clock news and think 'Jesus, how do I get out of that?' So you shift the blame on to someone or say it was a foul-up by the Press Association and try to cover your tracks as best you can...
I remember when we got the scoop linking Peter Mandelson to the passport applications. It should have been our lead, but I wasn't sure quite how good the story was and ran it as a basement on page one, leading with Bush's inauguration as President....The Mail on Sunday led with the story.  When old Mandy resigned on the following Wednesday I certainly thought "That was a killer basement."
- My biggest mistake interview with the Independent, 2002
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Our magazine was running the 100 greatest ideas of the past 100 years. The masthead had just one word - BRILLIANT - in black on red and yellow. The Queen Mum died on the Saturday, so we had to pull the whole thing back. However, for technical reasons I couldn't alter the masthead, which was rather unfortunate: "BRILLIANT" in large bold letters right above "Queen Mother dies".
- Another big mistake from that Independent interview
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What about Sunday night’s telly? Personally, I can’t stand the BBC – I think it is bloated, bureaucratic, ripe for partial privatisation, and astonishingly inept at handling its own problems. But crikey, it does show fantastic TV.
- a one-off blog post for the Independent, 2008
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We're under attack from clapped out academics, coked-up celebs, loved up lawyers and vengeful politicians – bastards all of them!
- British Press Awards, 2013
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 A malign conspiracy of sanctimonious do-gooders, vengeful politicians, hypocritical celebrities and hatchet-faced lefties has brought about the biggest threat to press freedom since Uncle Adolf started on his European adventures. 
- Spectator column, 2013
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You can accuse me of incompetence, of being a shitty journalist or a shallow halfwit, but to say I would deliberately lie about stuff and manipulate information - nothing could be further from the truth. It can't co-exist with your role in journalism. All one is trying to do is tell the truth. You are not deliberately trying to deceive, and once you do that you don't have a right to be a journalist.
- on Flat Earth News, interview with the Guardian, 2008
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Pictures of semi-naked women basically make the world a better place
- on criticisms of too much celebrity news, 2008
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I feel a terrible personal failure, it's very chastening. I feel like I've let down all the staff - and it's a tight, lean staff, who work fantastically hard. I feel like I haven't been able to deliver either to them or the senior management.
I don't want to sound like I'm about to put a bullet in my head - but it's not nice, it's very discouraging.

- on Independent job cuts, 2008
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If you can't see that Britney shaving her own hair off matters, just as the Budget matters, or Bono -  though not necessarily in the same way - you aren't going to enjoy working in newspapers.
- interview with The Word, 2009
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Journalists should be involved with everything and everyone around them, but not necessarily sleep with them... Right now some of the connections between the News International papers and Cameron's inner circle are too close for comfort...Journalists like to think we're on the main stage: but we're not. we're in the audience.
- more from that Word interview - two years before the hacking scandal
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Some newspapers ... the default position is: the world is shit, and here are some bad stories about it. And I don’t think that’s what papers should do. You should feel better when you read your paper rather than worse.
- interview with Press Gazette, 2015
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 Newspapers can do things that basically nobody else can
- more from the Press Gazette interview, 2015
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My biggest mistake of all is probably that of being a terrible old right-winger trying to look after one of Britain's premier liberal papers.
- more from that Independent interview from 2002
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I have never heard such a piece of horseshit. It's utter bollocks. Never look back. 
- on suggestions he took the Independent job to spite the Guardian
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Christ almighty....I tell you what though, one thinks one is a bit of an asshole, but some of those quotes aren't too bad are they?
- on reading this blogpost

Roger Alton
Alton in his Times cubby-hole office. Photograph: Martin Godwin/Guardian
Goodbye and good luck 
Roger Alton's final "all Times users" email arrived in inboxes with the clickbait subject "Free Ashes and Rugby World Cup tickets". Inside was disappointment:
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..... Are I'm afraid very hard to come by these days, which is a great sadness. Though not nearly as big  a sadness for me  as the fact  that I will be leaving the Times this evening. It  has been a hugely exciting and fascinating time to have worked here. A wonderful period, with some truly fantastic and really talented  people, true  friends, from whom I have learned a great deal. 
The Times is a quite remarkable paper, brilliantly edited and written and designed, and unique in the modern world really, in being easily the most 
contemporary paper, certainly in this country, with a quite amazing legacy and back story too.  Nothing else like it.  I think maybe until you work elsewhere, and come in, you don't quite realise how unbelievably strong the Times  is. It is a great privilege for me to have worked here: I think it is a privilege for anyone to work here.
Anyway, thank you all very much for making my time here such a blast, and thank you also for the nice things that many of you have said. It has been emotional.In the meantime don't forget me: always available for functions and weddings.
Pip pip
Rog

Roger Alton
...some thoughts from former colleagues
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RA was invited on a ski trip to Wengen many years ago. Missed the flight. Heathrow echoed to the tannoy: "Would passenger Alton please report...last call for Passenger Alton." He had been up most of the night mixing a tape which featured Paul Simon's Graceland rather heavily. Needless to say, to a small group of ski hacks he was always known as Passenger Alton.
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Rog's entertainment value can never be doubted. He hates being spotlighted via personal tributes, so much so that he chose to slip out last week with just one fond farewell and no fanfare. 
But, on that front, I feel duty bound to say how modest he is about his own achievements in the trade, which dwarf those of more than 99 per cent of the people he worked with. 
With such experience comes unsurprisingly good judgment and wise counsel, both of which I've relied on and am grateful for. He is a brilliant, instinctive journalist and a very, very funny man.
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For all the joking about his swearing and his obsession with sport and totty, he was a remarkably good journalist, a superb judge of what made a good story and how best to present it. He was brought in as a vital grown-up for Harding and of course Witherow doesn't have the same need. He was also very encouraging to the young and a great personality.
One story that sums up Roger and Harding best was an afternoon conference during the student riots when someone had shoved a metal pole through the back windscreen of a car in which the Prince of Wales was a passenger. 
Harding, as was his wont, was keen on having a splash to do with Ai Weiwei or Ashtiani, the Iranian democracy campaigner. It took an incredulous Roger to explain forcefully that the heir to the throne had been attacked on the streets of London and that this was the obvious splash
...and some Twitter tributes
One of my fav editors - Ian Kirby

Working with Roger Alton was one of the most amazing experiences he is truly unique – Richard Thompson

I loved working for Roger Alton, a true treat and an education – Emily Bell

 Sad that my old Observer editor Roger Alton leaving The Times. Never agreed with Rog on everything but always inspired immense loyalty - Paul Harris

I remember being stunned on a Saturday just hours before press time to spot Rog in the bookies in Exmouth Market – Paul Harris

Fave Roger email to staff began 'there was so much swearing in the paper on Sunday I didn't know where to fucking put myself' – Emily Bell

The only person I have ever met who swears more than I. Fucking Brilliant.
 – Charlotte Gooch

Glad I had the chance to work with him - he's a legend – Mike Hills

Some love for newspaper legend Roger Alton, who has left The Times. Such a good editor. And a fun climbing partner – Ed Douglas

A tyro among hacks, also noted for employing c-word as adjective, verb, adverb & noun - Janice Turner

 So long Roger Alton - a great editor and champion of press freedom – Sarah Baxter

One of my favourite former bosses – Murad Ahmed

Roger Alton, the fantastically sweary, downright lovely Times exec editor who just retired – Alice Ross

Feel sad he was a top bloke to work for. Sweary tho. Terrific editor – Polly Phillips

He was always lovely to subs (said as a former news & sports sub for the Observer)… I will always love him for it. He was wonderful to work for – Sarah Hughes

I loved working under him & will always remember his impassioned four letter defence of Hotel Babylon fondly – Sarah Hughes

They don't make them like him any more. Sadly –
Ashling O’Connor



I do hope others will feel inspired by the above to add their two-penn'rth.
SubScribe is honoured to have sight of Alton's farewell front page and respects the request not to quote directly from it, since the recipient has yet to see it. Safe to say, its language almost matches Alton's - with half a dozen f-words, a couple of greater profanities and a spattering of bloodys. The opening quote, however, is in the public domain and seems a fitting epitaph to a dazzling journalistic career: 
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Don't you have a skateboarding llama or something? I fucking love a skateboarding llama.
9 Comments

What a paper bill tells us about the BBC and the Mail

27/5/2015

3 Comments

 
Mail-Press Gazette
On March 26th this year, a web developer called Nick Fitzsimons sent a Freedom of Information request to the BBC. He asked how many copies of each national paper it had bought in the most recent year for which figures were available.
The corporation response went beyond the brief and also listed the amount spent on each title in 2014. The BBC had bought more copies of the Mail than any other paper, and its Guardian order had fallen behind those for Times, Independent, Telegraph, Sun and Mirror to a total of 45,672 at a cost of £63,061. 
The numbers made a lead for the Press Gazette website and a diary note for the Guardian's Media Monkey, but generated little coverage beyond that.
That seemed about right - fascinating for media wonks, but hardly general interest news.
Unfortunately, however, the Beeb got its figures for one title wrong - and for an organisation constantly accused of being a leftwing hotbed, it couldn't have chosen a more slippery banana skin. It understated its Guardian consumption by almost 50%.

While the Mail found no interest last month in the fact that the BBC had bought 78,463 copies of its own product, the corrected information reinstating the Guardian as the most-purchased title (80,679 copies) is today page-lead material. 
This indulgence cost the BBC £127,643 - or 900 licence fees as a Freedom Association dial-a-quote described it - making "the Left-leaning newspaper" the "most popular title in its offices by far", media and technology editor Katherine Rushton reports.
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The startling figure is nearly 45 per cent higher than its bill for any other title, despite the Guardian accounting for a tiny fraction of Britain's newspaper sales. It sells just 176,000 copies a day, according to official circulation figures.
By contrast, the BBC spent £40,482 on the Daily Mail, which sells an average of 1.63 million copies daily.
The "only" is implied in that last sentence - which might equally well have said "By contrast, the BBC spent £22,730 on the Sun, the country's best-selling paper with an average circulation of 1.86 million".   
The story goes on to dissect the BBC's Guardian habit in terms of copies and cost per week. It also lists the annual totals for the Sunday titles, but it doesn't mention how many Mails the BBC bought. Or that the Times and Telegraph were also in the same ballpark. 
Nor does it consider cover prices. The Guardian cost £1.60 on weekdays and £2.50 on Saturdays last year, compared with 60p and 90p for the Mail. And the profligate BBC didn't spend even that much on the Mail - had it paid the full cover price, its bill for the paper (at 1,509 copies per week, against 1,551 of the Guardian) would have been more than £50,000.
That's still a long way short of its spending on the Guardian, but does anyone believe that our public service broadcaster should allocate its newspaper budget on the basis of circulation (in which case it isn't buying enough copies of the Sun), cost (in which case it isn't buying enough copies of the Star) or both (in which case it is shamefully neglecting the i and over-indulging in the Independent)?
At the foot of its original FoI response, the BBC asked publishers and broadcasters using its statistics to include the following statement:
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The largest number of newspapers delivered come from News UK. As an impartial international news broadcaster with 3 rolling TV news channels, 28 foreign language services, daily paper reviews as well as various radio and TV current affairs programmes our viewers rightly expect our presenters, journalists and expert contributors to be across all the day’s stories in all the UK newspapers.
The Mail duly obliges. But there was a further sentence in the statement that got lost - a sub cutting from the bottom would be the kind interpretation:
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The BBC has secured a discount through its service contract ensuring value for money.
This may all sound very nit-picky, but when you omit relevant facts such as  the numbers of other daily papers bought, the different cover prices and discounts, then insert red herrings such as circulation figures, you turn straightforward information into a propaganda tool. 

So here, without comment or spin, is the detail of the BBC's annual trip to the newsagent:
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Well, maybe one question - who gets the Sunday Sport?
3 Comments

Shit happens.                                                             And we can rely on the Mail to tell us all about it

4/4/2015

0 Comments

 
Mail puff
It's Easter, the unofficial start to the dilettante's gardening season, and here's a free bag of compost to help you along.
Perhaps a bag of manure would have been more appropriate, for the Mail has been finding ordure everywhere this week.
A diligent series has uncovered how details of almost every aspect of our lives, including what should be confidential information about our finances, families and health, are sold for a few coppers and then used by cold-calling pests.
It's one thing for information supplied in questionnaires to be passed to the spammers and cold callers (two key lessons: never fill in marketing questionnaires and always untick the 'we may pass your details to carefully selected third parties' box), but we don't expect pharmacists and financial services to be trading in our personal information.
So while there was nothing very new in this week's series, well done to the Mail for hammering the message home.
Mail wordle
But don't you  wish sometimes that the paper could get out of the habit of finding demons and feckless ne'er-do-wells at every turn? Does it always have to play the misanthrope viewing the world through thorn-encrusted spectacles? 
Does it have to spit out every message using the lexicon of disgust (the wordle above is a selection of this week's most popular headline words)? 
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Take the death of Cynthia Lennon. Several papers chose to run a photograph of John and Cynthia on their front pages, most with the simple fact of her death in Majorca. But for the Mail, it had to be "Dead at 75, wife Lennon treated so cruelly". She doesn't even get a name. She's just a wife. And a victim. 
Then there's the obsession with "the Left" - and specifically the Guardian. On Wednesday the Guardian splashed on Liberal Democrat proposals for the media, including the establishment of a "public interest" defence for journalists, along the lines of America's First Amendment  - and plans to revisit Press regulation. 
Clegg is quoted as saying that current laws are too opaque. "Exactly what is the strength and nature of a public interest defence? I would like to see that clarified in law...The fact that prosecutors are relying on 13th-century laws, that we don't have an up-to-date definition of what a public interest defence is, shows the need for a proper review and a proper reform of the law."
The Mail took exception to this idea, publishing a "thanks, but no thanks" leader the next day. The last thing any true freedom-lover wanted, it wrote, was "self-interested and often self-enriching MPs" deciding what was in the public interest. 
Quite right. That should be for juries. Was that what Clegg really meant? It's what he said, but does he really want Parliament to define boundaries of public interest - or simply to create a public interest defence where none exists?
The Mail is in no doubt. It was Clegg's stitch-up, the leader continues, that "led to the disgraceful post-Leveson clampdown on newspapers".
And then, for good measure, the leader puts the boot into the Guardian for having the temerity to run the story.

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How significant his latest idea was floated in the Guardian, whose ability to lose eye-watering sums of money is matched only by its almost psychotic hatred of the commercially viable Press
Psychotic Guardian or paranoid Mail?
Maybe, in a week of scandalous data sales and the start of the general election campaign proper, the most telling piece to be published in the Mail was a tiny story at the foot of page 9 on Tuesday:
Mail cutting
0 Comments

Oops! Slick slip is quick fix for eclipse pix lapse

21/3/2015

1 Comment

 
Times first
Times 2nd
More picture desk travails at The Times. An awful lot of folk have been tweeting and texting GoG in glee at this first edition front pager, which shows a pair of moppets eclipse gazing not in Wales as the caption asserts, but in Japan three years ago.
The credit - Twitter - should have rung a million alarm bells, but somehow the page got as far as the first TV paper reviews. 
This post is not to mock, though, but to commend Sam Stewart for calling in and for the swift turnaround that meant that the version on the right was up and running in time to make the Newsnight run-through half an hour later.
That doesn't mean all is well at the Thunderer though. It's a mite worrying when desk staff asked for a Nicola Sturgeon pic reply: "Is she a freelance snapper?"

Meanwhile witty, mischievous folk who trust the Baby Shard dishwasher and fancy a sip from Alex Spence's poison chalice may be interested in the Gorkana ad below.
Gorkana ad
1 Comment

It may be true - but it's not the truth

20/3/2015

0 Comments

 
Telegraph
Mirror
The new generation of internet communicators quickly learnt an important lesson: don't deceive your readers or they won't come back. 
The newspaper generation still hasn't grasped this. Not only do the old-timers indulge in clickbait headline writing that fails to deliver, they continue the sleight of hand in print. 
In a few minutes those whose skies are not as grey as those over SubScribe Towers will be out there with their cardboard specs and pinhole cameras. The Telegraph, however, seems to have got ahead of the game - for there on its front page is a picture of people watching the eclipse. Only trouble is, the people are in Australia and that particular eclipse was 13 years ago.
Mirror 2nd edition
The Mirror, too, is pretending to be ahead of the game with its "Clarkson shown the door" splash. The BBC will announce the results of its inquiry into the cold meat fracas next week; the Mirror's heading suggests that it has inside information on the verdict. But the door Clarkson was shown was that of the producer at the receiving end of the alleged punch. Apparently Clarkson went to his house to apologise, but was denied entry. A good story, an accurate heading - but not quite what the reader expects.
As it happens, the Mirror changed up from that to an account of a charity auction in which the Top Gear presenter sold a passenger-seat ride in his "last ever lap" for £100,000. That in the process of so doing he is reported to have called BBC chiefs f****** bastards seems par for the course and probably what his audience expected to hear.
The original splash now appears on an inside spread with a much better main heading and context for the strapline - although by all accounts to call the producer a "victim" is laying it on a bit thick. 
Victims are murdered or raped. They also have the phones hacked or are mis-sold PPI policies. We need to find a new word to differentiate between levels of suffering.

Mirror spread
0 Comments

'Crufts murder' mystery moves to the Continent

17/3/2015

0 Comments

 
Times
Well there's a thing. Jagger the Irish setter murdered by someone who knew their dogs with a slow-release poison at Crufts turns out to have been killed by a fast-acting pesticide at home in Belgium.
Congratulations to the Times for putting this piece of intellgence on the front page, coupled with a reasonably prominent right-hand page lead.
Last Monday the Times found itself in the sole company of the Daily Star in declining to use Jagger's photograph on the front page. Today it is the only paper to give him the prime slot. 
Everyone had a lot to say about the death of Jagger last week, as well they might, given that it was supposed to have been precipitated at the world's premier dog show. The story made the splash for the Mirror and Sun and while the Times preferred Paloma Faith for its front-page picture, there was plenty of room for Jagger's demise inside.
Mirror
times page 3
Sun
The Guardian and Telegraph put the story on page three, the Independent and Express on five, and the Mail gave it a spread on 4 and 5.
Guardian
Telegraph
Expres
Mail
Independent
The Mirror and Mail, below, were so enamoured of the story that they gave it more big licks the next day - reporting that up to six dogs may have been poisoned and that Jagger may not have been the only one to die. The Telegraph, which had been the first to report that two other dogs had been taken ill, also put it on the front on day two.
Mirror
Mail
There's no doubt that the death of a Crufts competitor the day after the show was a good story and a serious story. There was nothing wrong with the scale of the coverage, only with the lack of scepticism. The two sheepdogs who were supposed to have been taken ill sounded a bit like bandwagon jumping. The idea that a mad poisoner was going round targeting dogs willy-nilly stretched credulity, but if it were true, it was an even more serious story. 
But, as Gameoldgirl noted last week, something didn't feel right. There were too many contradictory theories being bandied about by the owners and breeders - even allowing for their understandable distress. As an onlooker it seems as though they were desperately firing scattershot in search of an explanation that would not point to any negligence on their part and Crufts got caught in the crossfire.
So now we know that Jagger could not have been poisoned at the show, how have the papers reported it today? Here are the cuttings:
Crufts followup
Not bad really. Apart from the Independent, most gave the story some prominence, albeit further back in the book than the original, as you'd expect. But there are no comments from the owners or breeders. There is also a cutting missing from the collection above. Mail Online put the story up live yesterday evening. I've been through the paper several times but am blowed if I can find it in the print edition. Can anyone help me on that?

And while we're talking dogs, whatever happened to that petition about the supreme champion?
Gameoldgirl: Red setters and red herrings
0 Comments

Déjà vu?

16/3/2015

0 Comments

 
Mail on Sunday
Daily Star
The Mail on Sunday yesterday and today's Daily Star. Nothing more to say, really. Just thought someone might be interested.
Oh, and that "Jihadi John hell" story in column one...I think we might have seen that one before, too...
Sunday Times
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