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My experience on local newspapers is it was always the advertising, commercial, sales people who rose up the ladder to be the overall MD, CEO, DOF people controlling the whole company, never the editorial. Which is how and why your local newspaper's website ended up looking the way they do now. Cost of everything, value of nothing.
My experience on local newspapers is it was always the advertising, commercial, sales people who rose up the ladder to be the overall MD, CEO, DOF people controlling the whole company, never the editorial. Which is how and why your local newspaper's website ended up looking the way they do now. Cost of everything, value of nothing.
'Client journalism' another term that gets thrown around. If it's depressing for you, imagine when it's your profession. Watching the whole thing descend into the mud. Disgusting, grim, wrong, enormously damaging to society.
Serious question Clive - why do you think journalism, in general, and its a bit if a lazy statement I admit, HAS gone downhill since the proliferation of on line outlets?
I'm old enough to remember children of friends trying to get a job in the mainstream media - TV, Printed press - but ending up in on line jobs as a theoretical stepping stone.
My own theory, for what its worth, is there is now too much 'space' to fill, so the void is filled with nonsense stories and the workforce required is just not strong enough either through lack of experience or training or both.
Serious question Clive - why do you think journalism, in general, and its a bit if a lazy statement I admit, HAS gone downhill since the proliferation of on line outlets?
I'm old enough to remember children of friends trying to get a job in the mainstream media - TV, Printed press - but ending up in on line jobs as a theoretical stepping stone.
My own theory, for what its worth, is there is now too much 'space' to fill, so the void is filled with nonsense stories and the workforce required is just not strong enough either through lack of experience or training or both.
Fair or utter drivel?
Mate to answer that I could 30,000 words.
I'll do some initial thoughts based on my career and experience and maybe come back to it because there's so much and different journos would think different things...
1 - My background and why I believe in the model
I always wanted to do it, so all my work experience through secondary school and college was at newspapers, and I did a three-year journalism degree which was a very practical course teaching news and feature writing, page lay out, working a patch, developing contacts and sources, audio and video editing stuff like that and crucially a year of media law thrown in there as well. Then I went to work on a weekly local newspaper, and then a daily local newspaper.
That model gives you such a great platform to go on with the career. As well as all the practical skills you get a proper knowledge of what you legally can and can't say or do, libel law, contempt of court and all of that. On my local weekly newspapers there were two reporters for the town, so each week two of you sat down and stared at 36 blank pages and you had to fill it over the next six days, by working the patch, talking to sources, doing courts and council. Pick up the phone. Talk to people. Make friends with a copper. Find out who the town gossip is. Make sure you're visible, and known, and liked. 36 pages of news out of Belper, or Ripley, or Heanor is fcking tough.
You got to do everything - cricket reports, entertainment pages, murder trial, inquest. It was just you two for everything, so you had all these skills and knowledge to take on into the rest of your career and specialise. Belper had a top flight hockey team while I was on that paper - I'd never been to a fcking hockey game, suddenly I'm writing a back page lead with a turn inside on some game I'm going to tonight, apparently. It meant that later in my career I went into business reporting and although I didn't know anything about the business I was covering, I did know the basic principals of working a patch and an area - get yourself out there, get yourself known and liked, get a contacts book built up, find the gossips, and stick to the who, what, where, when, how, why principals. Double source everything at least, and make sure it's fcking accurate.
If you got something wrong, or you didn't report something fairly and accurately, and it went into print, you soon found out about it, because the news room was on the high street, and they'd come in and see you. Sometimes they'd come in mob handed and see you. Sometimes they'd wait out the back at closing time to see you. So you'd better be right, and accurate, and sure. If you got your media law wrong, and reported something you shouldn't, as I did once (or, rather, my news editor did to me, different story) you could jeopardise a whole murder trial and be stood up in Nottingham Crown Court being found in contempt. Not the best day of my life/career.
2 - why that model no longer exists, and the damage it causes
- Newspapers that were weekly now don't exist. Daily papers that you moved onto, like the Northants Evening Telegraph in my case, have now gone weekly. My home towns growing up, Grimsby and Scunny, both used to have a big evening paper, as did Kettering which I went to work on, now they've got shit weekly ones. - The newsrooms have all been sold. Your local newspaper is now processed from a central hub, miles away. I thiiiiiiiiink Grimsby, Scunny and all the Derbyshire titles I worked on are now done from Leeds. The reporters are not on patch, they're not building sources, they're not doing courts and council (dreadful for local democracy BTW, nobody there keeping check and reporting what's going on) they're in Leeds shovelling press releases onto pre-laid out pages. Court cases are now often 'covered' by the means of a press release from the police, who obviously want you all to think they've done a brilliant job, which is fraught with legal and ethical problems. - Sub editors have gone, so mistakes and legally unsafe copy is plentiful and just shovelled onto the page directly by the reporter. It leads to worse copy, inaccurate copy, legally unsafe copy, and copy riddled with mistakes, which make the paper look a joke, and erode public trust and confidence in it. - As I say, it was always the people on the ads and commercial side who rose up to run places like Johnstone Press, which was my company, never good newspaper editors. So they want to get as many ads as they possibly can on the websites, and they want clickbait articles to drag in traffic from Twitter. Doesn't even matter if it's not from the patch, as long as it does well online. I mean look at this, both the website, and the story, that is front page and top of the Hull Daily Mail website today. She's from America this woman I think... https://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/news/real-life/mum-gets-1m-views-after-7361629 The ad sales people never got that while this might go well on Twitter, nobody in the town cares about it, so nobody buys the paper, so they stop printing the paper, and close the newsroom, and you get less journalists going through the grounding I had as a result. - I interviewed a journalist not so long ago to come and work on my current team. She works at The Express, which may be a fcking joke, but it's still a national newspaper in theory. My favourite interview question, "let's say you've been off work for two weeks and are coming in cold on a Monday morning - how would you set about getting a lead for that night's edition?" Correct answer - pick the phone up. Ring your ten best contacts, ask them what's been going on, what you missed, what's the gossip. She said: "I'd scroll through Twitter and Reddit and do my own version of whatever was trending." I threw her a bone, gave her another chance, told her that wouldn't work for me and how would she modify her approach? "I'd probably have to change who I followed on Twitter and Reddit." That's journalism now. What's trending on fcking Twitter, can we rip that off, paste it onto our site, and suck up some of the clicks? - It destroys all credibility in the profession. Why would you want to listen to and read this sht? I don't. I used to be a rabid consumer of newspapers, I now can't remember the last time I had one in my hand.
3 - Opinion now counts as news
- So many 'stories' are actually just 'somebody said a thing'. Somebody Tweeted something, somebody is demanding an apology, here's what ten people thought of last night's Love Island. Loads of stories on newspaper websites are now just "here's what ten people on Twitter said about this thing that happened". Who gives a fck? Watch TV news - how many of the reports are the anchor interviewing one of their own journalists about something? The BBC love it - they have Huw in the studio, and a correspondent literally standing outside Broadcast House, and Huw says "what can you tell us about this Mark" and Mark tells you, and they go back and forth, and that's the report, somehow. How many news reports include three vox popped talking heads from the local working man's club, or Morrisons, or knitting circle? Who gives a fck? I want to know what's happened, who, what, where, when, how. I don't give a single fcking fck what some cnt thinks about it.
- The journalists you know by name now aren't journalists at all. The big names and celebrity hacks aren't the ones who break news, and get scoops. You know Owen Jones or Allison Pearson, who go into work each day and vomit their opinion about trans people or Jeremy Corbyn onto the page. Why does anybody give a fck what Owen Jones and Allison Pearson think? It boggles my mind. Who are these people? Why do we care what we think? If I'd asked my first editor whether I could have a page in the paper to give my opinion on the Tory leadership debates she'd have pissed herself laughing for 10 minutes and then banished me to a planning meeting somewhere. Nobody gives a fck what you think Clive, why would they? But the viral clips you see from the morning news aren't the moment their political correspondent interrupted the broadcast with a big breaking story are they? It's the moment Quentin Letts said something totally fcking stupid again and had a 2 minute row about it with Ben Shepherd.
- And with this has come this idea that there are two sides to everything, that there are facts and alternative facts. That you can have a fcking nuclear scientist of 40 years' experience telling you "probably not a good idea to do that with the nuclear reactor mate it's going to take your head off" and instead of just accepting he probably knows what he's talking about you now get people all over the internet and opinion columnists, and Julia Hartley-Brewer and her cnty lot, saying "who does this guy think he is?" and "I've done my own research". People who listen to Matthew Le Tissier as an authority on vaccines, over doctors, scientists. Because, as Michael Gove says, "we're tired of experts". This value of opinion over fact is insane, and rampant. Our TV news is rapidly accelerating towards where America is, where it's not a news report at all, it's some gobsht nobody like Dan Wootton or Tucker Carlson volleying their opinion down the lens at you.
4 - anybody is a journalist now
All of that I've already said, plus the power of technology, the power of the phone in your hand to film, record, broadcast, things like Twitter which give some absolute thicko like Nadine Dorries an equal say and number of characters and reach and influence as professor Stephen Hawking, means that everybody can be a journalist now if they want to be. Zero training, zero skills, zero experience, no media law, no scruples, no morals, no worries about truth and accuracy. You could, if you wanted to, set up a WordPress blog, a Twitter account, and a persona as a local journalist covering Shepherd's Bush tomorrow, and start writing and tweeting, unchecked, unedited, nobody making sure it's true. You could spout off your opinions, lie, libel people - and trying to track you down and hold you to legal account for that is nearly impossible. And so in this country now Darren Grimes is a thing, Sophie Cocoran is a thing, Guido Fawkes is a thing - because there's no check and balance. Those people get on the fcking television, you see these people on the fcking news. People listen to them because they agree with them politically as Blob says above, "they want to hear their opinions coming out of your mouth". But they're fcking nobodies. It's just some stupid little cnt off the street. How and why are we letting them wield this power and influence?
This website is a microcosm of it. I've never played football to any kind of level, never coached, never managed, refereed a bit, don't know what I'm talking about. And yet I can sit here and trot out opinions on QPR, what the manager did, what substitutions he should have made, and people read it and are influenced by it (I see and hear stuff I've written being parotted by others), 12,000 people follow me on Twitter. It's why I've tried to move it more towards awaydays and fan experience stuff as opposed to the early days when it was angry Clive ranting about how we should never play a back three or take short corners. Arsenal Fan TV - who gives a fck what these people think? But they do. Millions of them do. That guy makes a mint.
5 - Bias and ownership These newspapers, these GBNews channels, they're not there to inform and educate any more. They're there to pedal and press the world view of whoever is writing the cheque. Why is The Times, The fcking Times, churning out so many reams and reams and reams of stuff about trans-rights, when there is so much more going on in the world? When there's a literal fcking war in Europe? Because it suits Murdoch, and Gallagher, and Brookes, and all these horrible cnts that control the whole message, and what we see and hear and think and see and feel.
That's quite a damning indictment of modern journalism and the path is heading along. Would say you are a little harsh on yourself and your views and opinions on football there is some weight to your opinions thanks to time and money spent watching QPR here there and everywhere. The current trend that all viewpoints have to be heard and given equal weight is worryingly true and a sad state of affairs where we have a society that has instant access to knowledge on virtually any subject we can think of but very rarely does anyone stop to actual think and process that knowledge. Then throw in virtually all media sources have agendas of their own some plainly in sight some slightly hidden from view. To all of the human race we are the only animal capable of cognitive thought might be a time to use that advantage to its fullest potential
Hard to follow up Clive's dissertation, but I'll share my own experience in the industry.
Got into sports writing at university in Buffalo, New York and received my Master's in Journalism in 2012 while focusing on multimedia, data visualization, etc. From there, worked for ESPN and Sports Illustrated from 2013-2019.
I grew up reading and watching content from both of those orgs growing up, and the transition to lowest common denominator content while in media sapped my soul. Longform written content moved to documentaries moved to Netflix docuseries moved to snack-sized social content with limited context. The illusion of "access" has affected storytelling too... why have a writer profile someone when that individual can tell their own story on social media? Everything needs to be signed off by subjects. If it doesn't portray them in the most flattering light, then good luck getting another story.
When I worked in social media at ESPN the transition to graphics, hot takes and opinions had already taken place. I enjoyed parts of it, hated most of it.
My last role in media was as a content strategist and distribution arm for Sports Illustrated's attempt at building a premium $5/month network that focused more on storytelling. Lot of really well-shot, thought out pieces of journalism. This a project that was rushed out to show potential buyers that the company had thought about the future and had a revenue driver. But subscribers were low, and it was an expensive venture, so when we were bought out by a private equity firm at the end of 2019, it was one of the first things to go.
This happened a few months before the pandemic, so it took a career shift and courses for me to land back on my feet. I'm in tech/product now with hopes of maybe getting back into media from a product management perspective, but the industry is too fickle and too focused on mind-numbing experiences for me to jump back in.
I'll do some initial thoughts based on my career and experience and maybe come back to it because there's so much and different journos would think different things...
1 - My background and why I believe in the model
I always wanted to do it, so all my work experience through secondary school and college was at newspapers, and I did a three-year journalism degree which was a very practical course teaching news and feature writing, page lay out, working a patch, developing contacts and sources, audio and video editing stuff like that and crucially a year of media law thrown in there as well. Then I went to work on a weekly local newspaper, and then a daily local newspaper.
That model gives you such a great platform to go on with the career. As well as all the practical skills you get a proper knowledge of what you legally can and can't say or do, libel law, contempt of court and all of that. On my local weekly newspapers there were two reporters for the town, so each week two of you sat down and stared at 36 blank pages and you had to fill it over the next six days, by working the patch, talking to sources, doing courts and council. Pick up the phone. Talk to people. Make friends with a copper. Find out who the town gossip is. Make sure you're visible, and known, and liked. 36 pages of news out of Belper, or Ripley, or Heanor is fcking tough.
You got to do everything - cricket reports, entertainment pages, murder trial, inquest. It was just you two for everything, so you had all these skills and knowledge to take on into the rest of your career and specialise. Belper had a top flight hockey team while I was on that paper - I'd never been to a fcking hockey game, suddenly I'm writing a back page lead with a turn inside on some game I'm going to tonight, apparently. It meant that later in my career I went into business reporting and although I didn't know anything about the business I was covering, I did know the basic principals of working a patch and an area - get yourself out there, get yourself known and liked, get a contacts book built up, find the gossips, and stick to the who, what, where, when, how, why principals. Double source everything at least, and make sure it's fcking accurate.
If you got something wrong, or you didn't report something fairly and accurately, and it went into print, you soon found out about it, because the news room was on the high street, and they'd come in and see you. Sometimes they'd come in mob handed and see you. Sometimes they'd wait out the back at closing time to see you. So you'd better be right, and accurate, and sure. If you got your media law wrong, and reported something you shouldn't, as I did once (or, rather, my news editor did to me, different story) you could jeopardise a whole murder trial and be stood up in Nottingham Crown Court being found in contempt. Not the best day of my life/career.
2 - why that model no longer exists, and the damage it causes
- Newspapers that were weekly now don't exist. Daily papers that you moved onto, like the Northants Evening Telegraph in my case, have now gone weekly. My home towns growing up, Grimsby and Scunny, both used to have a big evening paper, as did Kettering which I went to work on, now they've got shit weekly ones. - The newsrooms have all been sold. Your local newspaper is now processed from a central hub, miles away. I thiiiiiiiiink Grimsby, Scunny and all the Derbyshire titles I worked on are now done from Leeds. The reporters are not on patch, they're not building sources, they're not doing courts and council (dreadful for local democracy BTW, nobody there keeping check and reporting what's going on) they're in Leeds shovelling press releases onto pre-laid out pages. Court cases are now often 'covered' by the means of a press release from the police, who obviously want you all to think they've done a brilliant job, which is fraught with legal and ethical problems. - Sub editors have gone, so mistakes and legally unsafe copy is plentiful and just shovelled onto the page directly by the reporter. It leads to worse copy, inaccurate copy, legally unsafe copy, and copy riddled with mistakes, which make the paper look a joke, and erode public trust and confidence in it. - As I say, it was always the people on the ads and commercial side who rose up to run places like Johnstone Press, which was my company, never good newspaper editors. So they want to get as many ads as they possibly can on the websites, and they want clickbait articles to drag in traffic from Twitter. Doesn't even matter if it's not from the patch, as long as it does well online. I mean look at this, both the website, and the story, that is front page and top of the Hull Daily Mail website today. She's from America this woman I think... https://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/news/real-life/mum-gets-1m-views-after-7361629 The ad sales people never got that while this might go well on Twitter, nobody in the town cares about it, so nobody buys the paper, so they stop printing the paper, and close the newsroom, and you get less journalists going through the grounding I had as a result. - I interviewed a journalist not so long ago to come and work on my current team. She works at The Express, which may be a fcking joke, but it's still a national newspaper in theory. My favourite interview question, "let's say you've been off work for two weeks and are coming in cold on a Monday morning - how would you set about getting a lead for that night's edition?" Correct answer - pick the phone up. Ring your ten best contacts, ask them what's been going on, what you missed, what's the gossip. She said: "I'd scroll through Twitter and Reddit and do my own version of whatever was trending." I threw her a bone, gave her another chance, told her that wouldn't work for me and how would she modify her approach? "I'd probably have to change who I followed on Twitter and Reddit." That's journalism now. What's trending on fcking Twitter, can we rip that off, paste it onto our site, and suck up some of the clicks? - It destroys all credibility in the profession. Why would you want to listen to and read this sht? I don't. I used to be a rabid consumer of newspapers, I now can't remember the last time I had one in my hand.
3 - Opinion now counts as news
- So many 'stories' are actually just 'somebody said a thing'. Somebody Tweeted something, somebody is demanding an apology, here's what ten people thought of last night's Love Island. Loads of stories on newspaper websites are now just "here's what ten people on Twitter said about this thing that happened". Who gives a fck? Watch TV news - how many of the reports are the anchor interviewing one of their own journalists about something? The BBC love it - they have Huw in the studio, and a correspondent literally standing outside Broadcast House, and Huw says "what can you tell us about this Mark" and Mark tells you, and they go back and forth, and that's the report, somehow. How many news reports include three vox popped talking heads from the local working man's club, or Morrisons, or knitting circle? Who gives a fck? I want to know what's happened, who, what, where, when, how. I don't give a single fcking fck what some cnt thinks about it.
- The journalists you know by name now aren't journalists at all. The big names and celebrity hacks aren't the ones who break news, and get scoops. You know Owen Jones or Allison Pearson, who go into work each day and vomit their opinion about trans people or Jeremy Corbyn onto the page. Why does anybody give a fck what Owen Jones and Allison Pearson think? It boggles my mind. Who are these people? Why do we care what we think? If I'd asked my first editor whether I could have a page in the paper to give my opinion on the Tory leadership debates she'd have pissed herself laughing for 10 minutes and then banished me to a planning meeting somewhere. Nobody gives a fck what you think Clive, why would they? But the viral clips you see from the morning news aren't the moment their political correspondent interrupted the broadcast with a big breaking story are they? It's the moment Quentin Letts said something totally fcking stupid again and had a 2 minute row about it with Ben Shepherd.
- And with this has come this idea that there are two sides to everything, that there are facts and alternative facts. That you can have a fcking nuclear scientist of 40 years' experience telling you "probably not a good idea to do that with the nuclear reactor mate it's going to take your head off" and instead of just accepting he probably knows what he's talking about you now get people all over the internet and opinion columnists, and Julia Hartley-Brewer and her cnty lot, saying "who does this guy think he is?" and "I've done my own research". People who listen to Matthew Le Tissier as an authority on vaccines, over doctors, scientists. Because, as Michael Gove says, "we're tired of experts". This value of opinion over fact is insane, and rampant. Our TV news is rapidly accelerating towards where America is, where it's not a news report at all, it's some gobsht nobody like Dan Wootton or Tucker Carlson volleying their opinion down the lens at you.
4 - anybody is a journalist now
All of that I've already said, plus the power of technology, the power of the phone in your hand to film, record, broadcast, things like Twitter which give some absolute thicko like Nadine Dorries an equal say and number of characters and reach and influence as professor Stephen Hawking, means that everybody can be a journalist now if they want to be. Zero training, zero skills, zero experience, no media law, no scruples, no morals, no worries about truth and accuracy. You could, if you wanted to, set up a WordPress blog, a Twitter account, and a persona as a local journalist covering Shepherd's Bush tomorrow, and start writing and tweeting, unchecked, unedited, nobody making sure it's true. You could spout off your opinions, lie, libel people - and trying to track you down and hold you to legal account for that is nearly impossible. And so in this country now Darren Grimes is a thing, Sophie Cocoran is a thing, Guido Fawkes is a thing - because there's no check and balance. Those people get on the fcking television, you see these people on the fcking news. People listen to them because they agree with them politically as Blob says above, "they want to hear their opinions coming out of your mouth". But they're fcking nobodies. It's just some stupid little cnt off the street. How and why are we letting them wield this power and influence?
This website is a microcosm of it. I've never played football to any kind of level, never coached, never managed, refereed a bit, don't know what I'm talking about. And yet I can sit here and trot out opinions on QPR, what the manager did, what substitutions he should have made, and people read it and are influenced by it (I see and hear stuff I've written being parotted by others), 12,000 people follow me on Twitter. It's why I've tried to move it more towards awaydays and fan experience stuff as opposed to the early days when it was angry Clive ranting about how we should never play a back three or take short corners. Arsenal Fan TV - who gives a fck what these people think? But they do. Millions of them do. That guy makes a mint.
5 - Bias and ownership These newspapers, these GBNews channels, they're not there to inform and educate any more. They're there to pedal and press the world view of whoever is writing the cheque. Why is The Times, The fcking Times, churning out so many reams and reams and reams of stuff about trans-rights, when there is so much more going on in the world? When there's a literal fcking war in Europe? Because it suits Murdoch, and Gallagher, and Brookes, and all these horrible cnts that control the whole message, and what we see and hear and think and see and feel.
For starters...
Yeah that's a really interesting post, thanks for taking the time to write it. I personally think Twitter is worthy of almost all of the blame. It was like Twitter became the media, and the media became twitter. Twitter acknowledges that they are massively biased when it comes to what they choose to highlight and amplify. And this bias began to manifest itself in UK media and IMO still hasn't gone away.
Imo GB News wouldn't exist if people didn't feel like they were being left behind by the more mainstream news outlets, which is related to the reasons above. There is obviously an agenda behind the channel, they clearly have a bunch of know-nothing cnts on their sofa every night, but it seemed like all news outlets had gone that way a long, long time before GB news had even been thought of.
One of the key examples that drove me away from the "mainstream media" was when Jordan Peterson was interviewed by Cathy Newman. It became clear that she had no interest in him or what he had to say, but in doing a job on him and sending a message that this guy is either stupid or immoral, or both. What was that all about? Why does it constantly feel like the majority of media outlets are doing everything they can to misrepresent what some people say, but not others?
I think the vaccines are actually an area where listening to the experts was not always the best thing to do. Quite a lot of experts have got their advice around the vaccine spectacularly wrong. But, I do agree with more of your post than I disagree with!
"Someone despises me. That's their problem." Marcus Aurelius
I'll do some initial thoughts based on my career and experience and maybe come back to it because there's so much and different journos would think different things...
1 - My background and why I believe in the model
I always wanted to do it, so all my work experience through secondary school and college was at newspapers, and I did a three-year journalism degree which was a very practical course teaching news and feature writing, page lay out, working a patch, developing contacts and sources, audio and video editing stuff like that and crucially a year of media law thrown in there as well. Then I went to work on a weekly local newspaper, and then a daily local newspaper.
That model gives you such a great platform to go on with the career. As well as all the practical skills you get a proper knowledge of what you legally can and can't say or do, libel law, contempt of court and all of that. On my local weekly newspapers there were two reporters for the town, so each week two of you sat down and stared at 36 blank pages and you had to fill it over the next six days, by working the patch, talking to sources, doing courts and council. Pick up the phone. Talk to people. Make friends with a copper. Find out who the town gossip is. Make sure you're visible, and known, and liked. 36 pages of news out of Belper, or Ripley, or Heanor is fcking tough.
You got to do everything - cricket reports, entertainment pages, murder trial, inquest. It was just you two for everything, so you had all these skills and knowledge to take on into the rest of your career and specialise. Belper had a top flight hockey team while I was on that paper - I'd never been to a fcking hockey game, suddenly I'm writing a back page lead with a turn inside on some game I'm going to tonight, apparently. It meant that later in my career I went into business reporting and although I didn't know anything about the business I was covering, I did know the basic principals of working a patch and an area - get yourself out there, get yourself known and liked, get a contacts book built up, find the gossips, and stick to the who, what, where, when, how, why principals. Double source everything at least, and make sure it's fcking accurate.
If you got something wrong, or you didn't report something fairly and accurately, and it went into print, you soon found out about it, because the news room was on the high street, and they'd come in and see you. Sometimes they'd come in mob handed and see you. Sometimes they'd wait out the back at closing time to see you. So you'd better be right, and accurate, and sure. If you got your media law wrong, and reported something you shouldn't, as I did once (or, rather, my news editor did to me, different story) you could jeopardise a whole murder trial and be stood up in Nottingham Crown Court being found in contempt. Not the best day of my life/career.
2 - why that model no longer exists, and the damage it causes
- Newspapers that were weekly now don't exist. Daily papers that you moved onto, like the Northants Evening Telegraph in my case, have now gone weekly. My home towns growing up, Grimsby and Scunny, both used to have a big evening paper, as did Kettering which I went to work on, now they've got shit weekly ones. - The newsrooms have all been sold. Your local newspaper is now processed from a central hub, miles away. I thiiiiiiiiink Grimsby, Scunny and all the Derbyshire titles I worked on are now done from Leeds. The reporters are not on patch, they're not building sources, they're not doing courts and council (dreadful for local democracy BTW, nobody there keeping check and reporting what's going on) they're in Leeds shovelling press releases onto pre-laid out pages. Court cases are now often 'covered' by the means of a press release from the police, who obviously want you all to think they've done a brilliant job, which is fraught with legal and ethical problems. - Sub editors have gone, so mistakes and legally unsafe copy is plentiful and just shovelled onto the page directly by the reporter. It leads to worse copy, inaccurate copy, legally unsafe copy, and copy riddled with mistakes, which make the paper look a joke, and erode public trust and confidence in it. - As I say, it was always the people on the ads and commercial side who rose up to run places like Johnstone Press, which was my company, never good newspaper editors. So they want to get as many ads as they possibly can on the websites, and they want clickbait articles to drag in traffic from Twitter. Doesn't even matter if it's not from the patch, as long as it does well online. I mean look at this, both the website, and the story, that is front page and top of the Hull Daily Mail website today. She's from America this woman I think... https://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/news/real-life/mum-gets-1m-views-after-7361629 The ad sales people never got that while this might go well on Twitter, nobody in the town cares about it, so nobody buys the paper, so they stop printing the paper, and close the newsroom, and you get less journalists going through the grounding I had as a result. - I interviewed a journalist not so long ago to come and work on my current team. She works at The Express, which may be a fcking joke, but it's still a national newspaper in theory. My favourite interview question, "let's say you've been off work for two weeks and are coming in cold on a Monday morning - how would you set about getting a lead for that night's edition?" Correct answer - pick the phone up. Ring your ten best contacts, ask them what's been going on, what you missed, what's the gossip. She said: "I'd scroll through Twitter and Reddit and do my own version of whatever was trending." I threw her a bone, gave her another chance, told her that wouldn't work for me and how would she modify her approach? "I'd probably have to change who I followed on Twitter and Reddit." That's journalism now. What's trending on fcking Twitter, can we rip that off, paste it onto our site, and suck up some of the clicks? - It destroys all credibility in the profession. Why would you want to listen to and read this sht? I don't. I used to be a rabid consumer of newspapers, I now can't remember the last time I had one in my hand.
3 - Opinion now counts as news
- So many 'stories' are actually just 'somebody said a thing'. Somebody Tweeted something, somebody is demanding an apology, here's what ten people thought of last night's Love Island. Loads of stories on newspaper websites are now just "here's what ten people on Twitter said about this thing that happened". Who gives a fck? Watch TV news - how many of the reports are the anchor interviewing one of their own journalists about something? The BBC love it - they have Huw in the studio, and a correspondent literally standing outside Broadcast House, and Huw says "what can you tell us about this Mark" and Mark tells you, and they go back and forth, and that's the report, somehow. How many news reports include three vox popped talking heads from the local working man's club, or Morrisons, or knitting circle? Who gives a fck? I want to know what's happened, who, what, where, when, how. I don't give a single fcking fck what some cnt thinks about it.
- The journalists you know by name now aren't journalists at all. The big names and celebrity hacks aren't the ones who break news, and get scoops. You know Owen Jones or Allison Pearson, who go into work each day and vomit their opinion about trans people or Jeremy Corbyn onto the page. Why does anybody give a fck what Owen Jones and Allison Pearson think? It boggles my mind. Who are these people? Why do we care what we think? If I'd asked my first editor whether I could have a page in the paper to give my opinion on the Tory leadership debates she'd have pissed herself laughing for 10 minutes and then banished me to a planning meeting somewhere. Nobody gives a fck what you think Clive, why would they? But the viral clips you see from the morning news aren't the moment their political correspondent interrupted the broadcast with a big breaking story are they? It's the moment Quentin Letts said something totally fcking stupid again and had a 2 minute row about it with Ben Shepherd.
- And with this has come this idea that there are two sides to everything, that there are facts and alternative facts. That you can have a fcking nuclear scientist of 40 years' experience telling you "probably not a good idea to do that with the nuclear reactor mate it's going to take your head off" and instead of just accepting he probably knows what he's talking about you now get people all over the internet and opinion columnists, and Julia Hartley-Brewer and her cnty lot, saying "who does this guy think he is?" and "I've done my own research". People who listen to Matthew Le Tissier as an authority on vaccines, over doctors, scientists. Because, as Michael Gove says, "we're tired of experts". This value of opinion over fact is insane, and rampant. Our TV news is rapidly accelerating towards where America is, where it's not a news report at all, it's some gobsht nobody like Dan Wootton or Tucker Carlson volleying their opinion down the lens at you.
4 - anybody is a journalist now
All of that I've already said, plus the power of technology, the power of the phone in your hand to film, record, broadcast, things like Twitter which give some absolute thicko like Nadine Dorries an equal say and number of characters and reach and influence as professor Stephen Hawking, means that everybody can be a journalist now if they want to be. Zero training, zero skills, zero experience, no media law, no scruples, no morals, no worries about truth and accuracy. You could, if you wanted to, set up a WordPress blog, a Twitter account, and a persona as a local journalist covering Shepherd's Bush tomorrow, and start writing and tweeting, unchecked, unedited, nobody making sure it's true. You could spout off your opinions, lie, libel people - and trying to track you down and hold you to legal account for that is nearly impossible. And so in this country now Darren Grimes is a thing, Sophie Cocoran is a thing, Guido Fawkes is a thing - because there's no check and balance. Those people get on the fcking television, you see these people on the fcking news. People listen to them because they agree with them politically as Blob says above, "they want to hear their opinions coming out of your mouth". But they're fcking nobodies. It's just some stupid little cnt off the street. How and why are we letting them wield this power and influence?
This website is a microcosm of it. I've never played football to any kind of level, never coached, never managed, refereed a bit, don't know what I'm talking about. And yet I can sit here and trot out opinions on QPR, what the manager did, what substitutions he should have made, and people read it and are influenced by it (I see and hear stuff I've written being parotted by others), 12,000 people follow me on Twitter. It's why I've tried to move it more towards awaydays and fan experience stuff as opposed to the early days when it was angry Clive ranting about how we should never play a back three or take short corners. Arsenal Fan TV - who gives a fck what these people think? But they do. Millions of them do. That guy makes a mint.
5 - Bias and ownership These newspapers, these GBNews channels, they're not there to inform and educate any more. They're there to pedal and press the world view of whoever is writing the cheque. Why is The Times, The fcking Times, churning out so many reams and reams and reams of stuff about trans-rights, when there is so much more going on in the world? When there's a literal fcking war in Europe? Because it suits Murdoch, and Gallagher, and Brookes, and all these horrible cnts that control the whole message, and what we see and hear and think and see and feel.
For starters...
Wow! Thanks very much for taking the time to write that, especially as you must be in the middle of your team by team pre season piece.
As if anyone cares , but I agree with most of that, or at least the bits and people I've heard of.
When I was at work I used to read the Daily Mail, yes I know!, the Eve Standard, one of the free papers you got at the station and our local weekly.
Beginning of Covid, after I retired, Eve Std basically printed a blatant lie in the editorial no less, about Covid and that was me done with all papers - had given up the Mail when I retired. Now I literally can't watch the news - that BBC thing really does grate - and - don't laugh I get the news from teletext - its been cut back, but at least on there they just report the facts (If you ignore the pointless transfer gossip page).
Interesting to hear the views of someone on the inside.
As mentioned previously, I worked at ITV for 38 years, but virtually all that in the sport dept, looking after the money, counting beans etc - very interesting & fun most of the time, bit stressful and by the end 38 years was enough and I couldn't have done 38 years in a Baked Bean factory, counting real beans that's for sure!
Hence my interest in the media - thanks again for taking trouble - appreciated.
Another side of opinions = news debate is that no one is going to print your name/organisation if you come up with boring stuff most of the time.
Hence (as above) the Daily Express will issue snow warnings every other week come October based on some independent weather organisation, who know, predicting our normal, cool, wet winters isn't going to cut it.
I once heard a PL ref say that of course the ex referees will take the opposite viewpoint to the current ones on the field of play.
BT/Sky etc are not going to pay someone to agree with the ref 95% of the time are they?
Yeah that's a really interesting post, thanks for taking the time to write it. I personally think Twitter is worthy of almost all of the blame. It was like Twitter became the media, and the media became twitter. Twitter acknowledges that they are massively biased when it comes to what they choose to highlight and amplify. And this bias began to manifest itself in UK media and IMO still hasn't gone away.
Imo GB News wouldn't exist if people didn't feel like they were being left behind by the more mainstream news outlets, which is related to the reasons above. There is obviously an agenda behind the channel, they clearly have a bunch of know-nothing cnts on their sofa every night, but it seemed like all news outlets had gone that way a long, long time before GB news had even been thought of.
One of the key examples that drove me away from the "mainstream media" was when Jordan Peterson was interviewed by Cathy Newman. It became clear that she had no interest in him or what he had to say, but in doing a job on him and sending a message that this guy is either stupid or immoral, or both. What was that all about? Why does it constantly feel like the majority of media outlets are doing everything they can to misrepresent what some people say, but not others?
I think the vaccines are actually an area where listening to the experts was not always the best thing to do. Quite a lot of experts have got their advice around the vaccine spectacularly wrong. But, I do agree with more of your post than I disagree with!
And Facebook. Absolute poison, to democracy, society, media, information. And that poison can be in the hands of Zuckerberg, or Elon Musk, to wield and direct at their discretion.
And Facebook. Absolute poison, to democracy, society, media, information. And that poison can be in the hands of Zuckerberg, or Elon Musk, to wield and direct at their discretion.
I'm not sure that Facebook has ever tried to manipulate the "What's happening" type stuff in quite the same way - But yes you are right.
"Someone despises me. That's their problem." Marcus Aurelius
Yeah that's a really interesting post, thanks for taking the time to write it. I personally think Twitter is worthy of almost all of the blame. It was like Twitter became the media, and the media became twitter. Twitter acknowledges that they are massively biased when it comes to what they choose to highlight and amplify. And this bias began to manifest itself in UK media and IMO still hasn't gone away.
Imo GB News wouldn't exist if people didn't feel like they were being left behind by the more mainstream news outlets, which is related to the reasons above. There is obviously an agenda behind the channel, they clearly have a bunch of know-nothing cnts on their sofa every night, but it seemed like all news outlets had gone that way a long, long time before GB news had even been thought of.
One of the key examples that drove me away from the "mainstream media" was when Jordan Peterson was interviewed by Cathy Newman. It became clear that she had no interest in him or what he had to say, but in doing a job on him and sending a message that this guy is either stupid or immoral, or both. What was that all about? Why does it constantly feel like the majority of media outlets are doing everything they can to misrepresent what some people say, but not others?
I think the vaccines are actually an area where listening to the experts was not always the best thing to do. Quite a lot of experts have got their advice around the vaccine spectacularly wrong. But, I do agree with more of your post than I disagree with!
The 'news' media is now so corrupt and agenda driven - an instructive example is the hunter biden laptop, the mainstream narrative, and what happened to investigative journalists such as Glen Greenwald when they tried to tell the, er, truth. So people don't trust it, and the experts who inform it, and this has led to greater distrust of experts in general, and I get that. As you say, covid possibly not the best example Northern could use, Bill Gates was comparing it to flu the other day............... As for GB News, I get why it started, and as my son, who writes columns for various publications/websites, is quite regularly asked to give his opinion - for him it's been a great step in his career and media profile. One website he wrote for didn't put out an article they'd asked him to write as there were 'too many white, middle-class voices already". My lad is from a council estate, and I thought we listened to the message, but apparently for some it's the messenger that's more important. And don't get me started on the BBC's horrible, divisive race-baiting.
Was on a media reform meeting tonight, and a fantastic journalistic suggested that journalists should be peer reviewed in the same way Scientists are. Not sure how the practicalities of that would work though.
My answer
- No corporate ownership - Stronger privacy laws - Libel Law overhaul
I’ve posted this before, but it’s so apt I really think people should watch it:
“I’m sure you believe everything you’re saying. But what I’m saying is that if you believe something different, you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting”
The 'news' media is now so corrupt and agenda driven - an instructive example is the hunter biden laptop, the mainstream narrative, and what happened to investigative journalists such as Glen Greenwald when they tried to tell the, er, truth. So people don't trust it, and the experts who inform it, and this has led to greater distrust of experts in general, and I get that. As you say, covid possibly not the best example Northern could use, Bill Gates was comparing it to flu the other day............... As for GB News, I get why it started, and as my son, who writes columns for various publications/websites, is quite regularly asked to give his opinion - for him it's been a great step in his career and media profile. One website he wrote for didn't put out an article they'd asked him to write as there were 'too many white, middle-class voices already". My lad is from a council estate, and I thought we listened to the message, but apparently for some it's the messenger that's more important. And don't get me started on the BBC's horrible, divisive race-baiting.
[Post edited 21 Jul 2022 20:41]
Actually I'll think better of it and withdraw, said enough already and I think I can see which way this thread will go and it's going to be me driving it there if I'm not careful.
The 'news' media is now so corrupt and agenda driven - an instructive example is the hunter biden laptop, the mainstream narrative, and what happened to investigative journalists such as Glen Greenwald when they tried to tell the, er, truth. So people don't trust it, and the experts who inform it, and this has led to greater distrust of experts in general, and I get that. As you say, covid possibly not the best example Northern could use, Bill Gates was comparing it to flu the other day............... As for GB News, I get why it started, and as my son, who writes columns for various publications/websites, is quite regularly asked to give his opinion - for him it's been a great step in his career and media profile. One website he wrote for didn't put out an article they'd asked him to write as there were 'too many white, middle-class voices already". My lad is from a council estate, and I thought we listened to the message, but apparently for some it's the messenger that's more important. And don't get me started on the BBC's horrible, divisive race-baiting.
[Post edited 21 Jul 2022 20:41]
Agree about the BBC. Traditionally I've had a soft spot for the Beeb as my mum worked there when I was a kid. Now they hire openly biased reporters for inappropriate roles. For example, LGBT activist Ben Hunte was employed as their LGBT correspondent and then wrote a bunch of articles in light of the Kiera Bell case. They included multiple sources saying that puberty blockers had saved their lives or their children’s lives, and that, by implication, stopping access would cause children to commit suicide. After six months and three stages of the complaints process, having twice denied the complaint, the BBC admitted ‘the article did not meet the BBC’s standards for due impartiality or the requirements of the BBC’s guidelines on reporting suicide or attempted suicide. When suicide is presented as a reasonable reaction to a situation, people in a similar situation may identify with the individual concerned and consider taking the same action.’
It's difficult to imagine the Beeb of old doing stuff like the example above. Too many checks and balances back in those days, as Clive says. I still pay my tv license, because it's easier than having some cnt knocking on the door all the time, but I do resent it. I'd rather simply not have access to it anymore.
We have "To the point" on every morning on GB news and really enjoy it. Patrick and Mercy make a brilliant duo, and we find they generally have decent guests on. Headliners is also good value, although a bit of a lefty-fest sometimes, and I quite enjoy the money show with Liam Halligan when covering industries I'm interested in. Is Aidan your lad? Always gets a mention of the R's in
"Someone despises me. That's their problem." Marcus Aurelius
Agree about the BBC. Traditionally I've had a soft spot for the Beeb as my mum worked there when I was a kid. Now they hire openly biased reporters for inappropriate roles. For example, LGBT activist Ben Hunte was employed as their LGBT correspondent and then wrote a bunch of articles in light of the Kiera Bell case. They included multiple sources saying that puberty blockers had saved their lives or their children’s lives, and that, by implication, stopping access would cause children to commit suicide. After six months and three stages of the complaints process, having twice denied the complaint, the BBC admitted ‘the article did not meet the BBC’s standards for due impartiality or the requirements of the BBC’s guidelines on reporting suicide or attempted suicide. When suicide is presented as a reasonable reaction to a situation, people in a similar situation may identify with the individual concerned and consider taking the same action.’
It's difficult to imagine the Beeb of old doing stuff like the example above. Too many checks and balances back in those days, as Clive says. I still pay my tv license, because it's easier than having some cnt knocking on the door all the time, but I do resent it. I'd rather simply not have access to it anymore.
We have "To the point" on every morning on GB news and really enjoy it. Patrick and Mercy make a brilliant duo, and we find they generally have decent guests on. Headliners is also good value, although a bit of a lefty-fest sometimes, and I quite enjoy the money show with Liam Halligan when covering industries I'm interested in. Is Aidan your lad? Always gets a mention of the R's in
No, he's only on now and then, but increasingly so! Must admit, the only time I've watched GB News is when he's on, ITV news is presented as if it's for kids. My lad is an R, but he's invited on to comment on certain topics, so hasn't mentioned them yet!
Northern, sorry if I went on a bit of a rant, strange times we live in.
Actually I'll think better of it and withdraw, said enough already and I think I can see which way this thread will go and it's going to be me driving it there if I'm not careful.
This post has been edited by an administrator
😂
Seriously though. Thanks everyone it's been a really interesting discussion ðŸ‘
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, but I agree with most of that, or at least the bits and people I've heard of. 
