May 2007 | static squid

SCOOP!Credit to Iain Dale for being first to the news that Andy Coulson is the Tories' new spin-doctor. In general, I think journalists overvalue the importance of being first to a story (it matters a lot to them, but not that much to their readers) but you'd expect either a lobby correspondent or a News International employee to be first to the draw on this o...

BLOODY FOREIGNERSInteresting report from Comscore showing that the majority of traffic on British newspaper websites comes from abroad.The Daily Mail gets 69 per cent of its users from overseas, the FT 85 per cent, the Independent 73 per cent and the Guardian 58 per cent.It's encouraging news for British journalism that it has resonance around the world. As Comscore points out, some of this traffic doubtless comes from expats....

BAD VIBES AT THE BONNINGTONBonnington Square is a rather special part of south London, with an extraordinary atmosphere and a rare community spirit. I'm spending a fair amount of time wandering round there as I am trying to buy a house in the area, so far without any success.Anyway, Bonnington Square and Vauxhall Grove that runs off it are lovely. In Vauxhall Grove sits the Bonnington Cafe, a charming vegetarian cafe. I had a...

LIES AND LIE DETECTORSThe Portuguese police investigating the disappearance of Madeleine McCann say they have no grounds to arrest or charge Robert Murat. This has not deterred the British press from their dogged pursuit of the man who they have nominated as "prime suspect" in the case.Today the Sunday Express reports on its front page that Murat has refused to take a lie detector test. The inference many will draw is that he...

SWEATING ON"Hansen sweated on Lineker in 1986 but now they just want to talk a good game" is the headline from a piece in the sports section of today's Guardian. It made me think about this phrase "sweating on", which is generally used as a synonym for "being in a state of uncertainty and apprehension about" as in "City sweat on Weaver's fitness" or, I suppose, "Mourinho sweats on Terry's groin".It's quite new, I think - at least,...

SELF-INTERESTED, SECRETIVE MPsNothing seems to motivate MPs like self-interest - look at the pension arrangements they have awarded themselves, if you don't believe me. More evidence came today in a vote on a grubby little private members' bill to exempt MPs from the Freedom of Information Act, put forward by veteran Tory David McLean (who has refused to appear on radio or TV to debate the issue). The bill was passed by 96 votes...

MORE BBCRod Liddle in the Spectator wittily points up the BBC's unspoken cultural and political assumptio...

HEWITT AND THE SMOKING HOSTAGE"It was deplorable that the woman hostage should be shown smoking. This sends completely the wrong message to our young people," Patricia Hewitt was quoted as saying about the television coverage of the Marines captured in Iraq. It is a quotation that seems to sum up a kind of New Labour health-faddist bossiness and has been trotted out repeatedly since - by Simon Hoggart in the Guardian, by Jonah...

JOURNALISTS AS DETECTIVESRobert Murat, the Englishman currently under investigation over Madeleine McCann's abduction was dobbed in by a Sunday Mirror journalist, on grounds that seem vague, at best."He was very vague about his background. When I asked him he wouldn't give his surname or tell me where he lived. He wouldn't give me a phone number and he was vague about what he did for a living."Time will tell whether or not the...

BBC BIAS?Jane Garvey and Peter Allen lift the lid on the mood at Broadcasting House when Tony Blair was first elected ten years ago. Inevitably this has been grist to the mill of those who claim that the BBC is institutionally biased to the Left.For what it's worth, I think that's a highly simplistic view.1. Hard though it is to remember, the mood around the country was pretty euphoric, the morning of Blair's election. It would...

THE PRESS AND MADELEINE MCCANNFollowing the coverage of the Madeleine McCann case, it is hard to feel very proud of British press. There is something nauseating about the endless speculation, the conflicting theories, pored over by the press with unseemly relish. The stories about paedophile gangs are particularly distasteful, given that they seem to be little more than poorly-sourced speculation.Almost as unpleasant are the...

ANOTHER KIDNEY?A few years ago I wrote a piece in the Spectator, arguing that individuals should have the right to sell their kidneys, if they wanted to. There is a long waiting list for these organs, so why not offer incentives to individuals to donate?Since that time, the government has passed the Human Tissue Act 2004, making it unambiguously illegal for anyone to sell one of their organs and this week came the first successful...

ABCHere's the latest newspaper ABC circulation figures, as reported in Media Guardian. The accompanying story is headlined "Sales of all quality dailies down", a statement clearly borne out by the figures in the table, which shows, inter alia, the FT down 1.76 per cent month on month.Yet here's Press Gazette's take on the ABC figures, as far as they affect the Financial Times - circulation up for the sixth consecutive month, apparently....

SCOOPSI wasn't a reporter for very long, thankfully, since I wasn't very good at it but I've worked with a few people who really were. What they all had in common was being highly organised, obsessive about reading every document they could get their hands on, tenacious in following up leads and good at building rapport with useful contacts.These are not skills that are necessarily valued in modern journalism, which focusses increasingly...

ONLINE LIBELThe long-running scrap between Gina Ford, a parenting expert, and the website Mumsnet has finally come to a close. In brief, a group of people on the Mumsnet messageboards took agains Ford and posted a variety of disobliging comments about her. The comments could be read, apparently, as suggesting Ford has 'unpleasant or unhygienic' personal habits or that she 'straps babies to missiles and fires them into South Lebanon'.A...

NEW BUSINESS BOLLOCKS (1) and (2)(1) "Sit down with"People used to have meetings but nowadays they "sit down with" each other. "I need to sit down with you to understand...." is the contemporary version of "can we have a meeting about....". The phrase is supposed to invest the mundane activity of sitting in a conference room discussing performance figures with the ceremony and import of an international summit (see below). Whenever...

MICROSOFT, YAHOO! AND TAKEOVER TALKOn, then off again. Reports on Friday that Microsoft was seriously thinking about buying Yahoo! lasted a single day before being fully and authoritatively denied. However, that day was enough to see Yahoo! shares soar by 15 per cent or so, with billions of dollars changing hands. The New York Post claimed the 'credit' for the 'scoop'.Now this could simply be a case of a journalist taking a flyer...

RUSBRIDGER AND HIS SECRETARIESAlan Rusbridger, the editor of the Guardian, has attracted a fair amount of comment for the generous salary he is paid, and for the £175,000 bonus he received at a time when his paper is, frankly, struggling. The suggestion is that he is becoming a bit grand, rather too much the sort of fat cat that his paper likes to criticise.Now I notice that the Guardian is advertising for an 'assistant PA to...

BROWNE STUDYThe fact that Lord Browne is gay is not a matter of public interest and normally a newspaper would have no justification for revealing the fact. However, Lord Browne has been accused of lavishing BP shareholders' funds on his Canadian lover (allegations that he denies) and in order for this tale (which is clearly in the public interest) to be told, his sexuality had to be revealed.There are often calls for a privacy...

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