Come on Arlene

I tuned in to Desert Island Discs this morning hoping to hear Kirsty Young put actor Martin Shaw through the wringer.
But what a Desert Island washout.
What we got was a passing reference to the street fight that forced him to have plastic surgery on his face, a nod to what is still his most famous role (Ray Doyle in The Professionals) and what seemed like an eternity warbling on about his spiritual conversion to ‘teetotalism, vegetarianism and meditation’.
No insightful questions from Kirsty Young about his three wives, stalker Sandra Price who poured petrol through his partner’s letterbox or why he does that latest TV cop tosh, Inspector George Gently.
Young, a former TV news anchor, follows in the illustrious journalistic footsteps of other DID presenters Sue Lawley (South Wales Echo) and Michael Parkinson (Barnsley Chronicle) but seemed to have left her inquiring mind at the door with this episode.
Hopefully on next week’s show featuring Arlene Phillips (Hot Gossip, Strictly Come Dancing etc etc) she’ll be less of a PR pushover.

Justice for dead drunks

At 1.50 on Tuesday afternoon in a room at New Bridge House, the drab offices in Chelmsford that double as coroner’s court, a weary line was drawn under the sad lives of Susan Evans and James Grimwade.
The inquest heard that police broke down the door of their home in Pennine Road, Chelmsford and found their bodies in the ‘unhygienic’ house. They had a history of heavy drinking and the coroner decided they died as result of chronic alcohol abuse.
But hold on a minute.
Two people found dead in the same house at the same time. How often does that happen? At the time of the deaths back in February we asked the police and the social care authorities what they planned to do about investigating the deaths.
We speculated on what might have happened. Suicide pact? Poisoning, either deliberate or accidental? Adulterated drink or drugs? Overcome by fumes from a faulty boiler? Perhaps even murder?
But no investigation was ever forthcoming. The ‘nothing going on here’ signs went up almost from the start and the despite our urgings no-one wanted to do anything.
We had the feeling from the outset that quite simply no-one was interested. But what if two people in their forties had been found dead in a house in, say, Beaulieu Park or Little Baddow? Would the authorities have taken a different view?
We feel that Susan and James have been badly let down, probably in life as well as death, and thrown onto an administrative scrapheap simply because of where and how they lived
We find it highly unlikely that two people would die at exactly the same time in the same place, addled by drink or not. At the very least they deserve a proper multi-agency investigation.
A ten minute hearing in front of a coroner with no witnesses called and no reports ordered is not good enough. Not for Susan and James. Not for anyone.
Taken from this week's Essex Chronicle editorial

A voice for Tragic Amber

“Thank you for your kind comments. Luke and I cannot believe that our Amber was taken away from us yesterday. Amber’s sister Melody is holding us all together and giving us a reason to carry on. Thank you.”
Jacqui Whyte, Otford

IT IS difficult – no, impossible – to imagine how you could ever recover from your own car accidentally running over your own child.
The story of ‘Tragic Amber’, who was crushed against a post by her mother’s car, happened on the patch of our Sevenoaks Chronicle. Our team has reported the accident sensitively and professionally, not intruding into what is obviously a very private grief.
But then up steps our website, sitting there with all the facts and also with an opportunity to share a comment.
Many readers did, leaving their own tributes on what has become an instant online Book of Condolence. And who leaves the poignant comment reproduced above? None other than the mum at the centre of it all.
This is not the time to start warbling on about how the web is beginning to grow into the complementary medium we all hoped. Let’s just say it’s given a voice to a community in a very troubled time and leave it at that.

Elections: My place in history

IT’S election day and we’re all atwitter about our coverage.
Our planning sessions have been all about laptops, mobiles, 3G cards and remote access but the fact remains that it still takes our dedicated team of editors and reporters to make it happen. Have a look later to see how they’ve done.
I got to thinking about my first election as a reporter, covering the count here in Chelmsford when Norman St John-Stevas (now Lord St John of Fawsley) won the seat for the second time in a year in October 1974.
I was excited to be asked by the local agency reporter to help out on the night and had visions of my quotes gobbled up and spat out by the Press Association and turning up in Nationals galore.
And how did I spend the crucial hour or so before the result was announced?
Camped out in the only phone box next to Shire Hall pretending to use the phone so no-one else could phone the result and so bagging us (or, rather, him) the premium paid for getting in first.
Dontcha just love journalism…

Would you run this ad?

OUR HARD-WORKING advertising people asked if this ad was ok run in some of our titles.
I ummed and ahhed and, after a quick poll in the office decided it was good to go.
It’s not planned to run in the Kent & Sussex Courier, so ‘disgruntled of Tunbridge Wells’ can keep his quill pen dry but there was some disquiet in the equally leafy lanes of Surrey where it was thought some readers might not find it appropriate for a family newspaper.
Anyway, it’s still good to go and is on page 20 of this week’s Leatherhead Advertiser. Are you offended? Did I make the right call? Over to you...

Work experience, Talent and more work experience

WE HAD two people come in on work experience today. One had pestered me to get in and by lunchtime had written a page three lead and learned the intimate secrets of the tea rota.
The other went out on police calls with a reporter and upon returning to the office revealed that it “wasn’t for her” after all and duly went home. Even by my shameful standards of brutalising work experience people this was a first: lasting less than 90 minutes.
Moral of the story – pester the editor, and don’t go into journalism with a film studies degree.

AT OPENING time we’re on the trail of the Banjo Brothers – our own little piece of Britain’s Got Talent winners, Diversity.
My initial idea of going out with a video camera and getting the populace to audition on the streets for the dance group was met with the usual polite derision. But we then got lucky when we found out that Banjo junior was sitting his maths GCSE at one of our local schools while the rest of the troupe were being entertained by Gordon at No 10.
Hours later and we’re in for the first (and hopefully, only) interview with Jordan – especially as he talked passionately and eloquently without the help of a PR minder – and some great pix of him, his classmates and even the headmistress.
Yet again I marvel at the ingenuity, dedication and not a little self-made luck that makes local journalism such a fantastic game to be in. Just a shame we’ve got to wait until Wednesday to get it onto the streets.

WE’RE HAPPY to entertain the work placement officer from Mencap and end up taking on a young person with learning difficulties for a couple of hours every week.
What was more shocking was her revelation that she had approached more than 20 local companies with the same request and been shown the door.
I’m no more caring and sharing than the next man, but I was genuinely taken aback. Cue feature on what it means to give someone a chance and some tough questions to those who refused.

The tears, the fears, the jeers and the cheers

Apologies for the short intermission, but thanks to popular demand (bless you Steve/Tom) I’m back.
I will be blogging from my vaunted position as editor in chief and editorial director laying bare the tawdry inside workings of a newspaper. Stand by for the tears, the fears, the jeers and the cheers.
Please feel free to comment and make this a ‘conversation’ – just like we’re trying to do our million or so readers across the south east.
Check out my editor’s chair colleagues Keith Perch, editor of the Leicester Mercury and Steve Dyson, editor of the Birmingham Mail to see what they get upto. Perhaps I may learn a thing or two about doing it properly…

Vice – A Magazine That Is Not Dull

I am hooked on Vice. Not the sort of vice that Jacqui Smith’s getting all hot under the two-piece about – “Excuse me, Madam Prostitute, before we get down to business can I establish whether you have been illegally trafficked?” – but the international style magazine and its companion website.
I spend a lot of time both in the classroom and the newsroom trying to get people to think differently and produce compelling content that is going to challenge the supposed norms of journalism.
Echoing what Daily Mail editor-in-chief Paul Dacre told the Society of Editors: “Dull doesn’t sell newspapers. Boring doesn’t pay the mortgage,” the first thing I get would-be journalists to write in the corner of every piece of copy is DBD – Don’t Be Dull – which sits there as a reminder.
Enter Vice, which seems to have cracked the dull code. It calls itself ‘the Coolest Magazine in the World’ and I don’t think I want to argue with that. It has:
* Serious stories that would embarrass any supposed investigative newspaper like ‘Inside the Violent Lives of Liverpool’s 11-Year-Olds’ and ‘Bloodthirsty Child Soldiers Tag Liberia’
* Difficult to get stories like ‘A Sperm Donor Who Has 46 Kids’ and its natural follow-up ‘A Guy Who Was a Test-Tube Baby’
* In-depth interviews with creative inspirations like Ian Hislop, Mike Leigh
*Stories you just have to look at like ‘A 74-Year-Old Japanese Porn Star’ and ‘People Who Just Had Sex With Each Other a Couple of Minutes Ago’

The headlines are straight-up what it says on the tin (albeit with that annoying US-style of Unnecessary Caps) and everything is written in a question and answer format, which I normally decry as lazy journalism, but here it just seems to sort of work.
And commercially it seems to work, too. There are swanky ads from household names like Ben Sherman, Levi’s, Dr Martens, Oakley, Red Bull, Sony and Nissan. Their media kit quotes £4,000 per page for ads just in the UK edition and a worldwide circulation of nearly a million.
The website not only captures the spirit of the print magazine but moves it on using the medium to best advantage. Check out DOs and DON’Ts, a section of reader-submitted pictures with a caption. The subsequent comments are not for the faint-hearted, but in an age where publishers are striving to engage better with their audience they must be doing something right.
And bang up to date, welcome to the November ‘No Photos’ issue. As they explain: “If you’ve gotten your hands on a print copy of the magazine, you know it’s a sumptuously printed tome containing the drawerly works of 35 of our favourite drawers with nary a photo to be found.” So how’s that for innovation? Vice rules!

Vice 'Table of Contents'

Birmingham Post in the Last Chance Saloon

So, there I am, nursing my half a pint of Banks’s mild in the Last Chance Saloon and who should walk in but my old mate, Birmingham Post.
“Hello, Postie,” I said, “finally got some new clothes, then?”
“Yes, do you like them?” he replied. “They’re a bit smaller and rather smarter, but I have managed to made do and mend with some my old stuff and make it look like new.”
“Not sure you’re new look’s going to be to everyone’s taste,” I ventured. “That sober businessman look is all very well, but a lot of people like a little sunshine in their life. And you look, well, er dull.”
“Yes, I know, but I guess it won’t be long before I don’t go out at all and people can just look at pictures of me on their computer.”
With that, he collected his drink. But Ms Bailey behind the bar wouldn’t let him put it on a tab. “Not sure you’ll be drinking here much longer,” she said. “And I want to make sure I get all the money out of you before you disappear.”

• See pictures of the Birmingham Post relaunch party.
• Read Alan’s guide to redesigns and relaunches in the latest issue of InPublishing.

The day the newspaper died

Shock, horror! Newspaper in trouble; editions close, staff go!
Hardly seems like news any more with the global recession and the march of the internet wreaking havoc in our industry daily. But when it happens to one of your own it all seems a bit too close to home.
I’m sad, angry and not a little perplexed at the latest turn of events at the East Valley Tribune in suburban Phoenix, Arizona – a title I edited 10 years ago. It was a feisty little upstart, biting at the bum of the giant metro Arizona Republic and prospered under both the benign management of Cox and the modernistic professionalism of Thomson.
It sold well in upscale Scottsdale, blue collar Mesa and in the new towns springing up in the desert like Gilbert and Chandler. It even had the university town of Tempe, home of Arizona State, bang in the middle of the patch.
Wind on 10 years and it’s suddenly downhill to giving up on Scottsdale and Tempe and going for a four day a week free distribution in what’s left. My successor in the editor’s chair is one of 46 casualties in the editorial department as the company sheds a total of 142 jobs in order to stay afloat.
The Trib’s own story spells out the details in a company announcement sort of way, but it’s left to the ‘alternative’ press to put some flesh on the bones. A blog from Ray Stern, a former Tribune staff reporter now at New Times (a sort of Private Eye meets Time Out), lists the staff going like a mournful memorial after an atrocity.
Some of the most interesting comments, though, come from readers (remember them, eh?) both on the Trib’s own site and at the Republic’s. They lament the passing of competition, recall ground-breaking investigations but also reflect on how slow newspapers seem to be at reacting to the threat – and therefore opportunities – of the internet.
Lessons here in the UK for our media businesses and the journalists who work for them. Be innovative, be bold and reinvent yourselves before you join my old pals Jim Ripley, Bob Satnan, Brad Armstrong, Paul Giblin et al on the sidelines looking in.

Helen Mirren’s boob job

I am worried about Helen Mirren’s tits. Or should that be t*ts, t***, boobs or even bust?
Dame Helen’s revelations about everything from date-rape to snorting cocaine in an illuminating GQ interview (ain’t journalism fun, Piers?) also included the shocker that her “big tits and blonde hair” had been a “disadvantage”.
Cue hasty rewrites from the nationals who all splurged on a story that they had done absolutely nothing to generate. And while the quote was the quite innocuous “tits”, which the Guardian and Times were happy to use, the well-thumbed style-books turned up some interesting variations.
The Metro had “t***”, the Daily Star “t*ts”, the Sun “boobs” and the Daily Telegraph “bust”, a great little word that my mum used to use a lot.
But D-cups off to Express online who not only used the quote in full, but dressed it up as a little display item on the webpage. I was going to post my congratulations/outrage but sadly got the ‘no comments’ logo (below). Oh well, when you’re still the ‘World’s Greatest Newspaper’ who needs readers’ comments?

Long live Women in Journalism

I’ve always been a bit wary of Women in Journalism – both the species and the organisation.
Started, presumably, as a backlash to Men in Journalism they’re still very much on the go after 12 years. I’d like to tell you a bit more about WiJ, but I’m not a member and so couldn’t get in to most of their website – yes, Access Denied!
I thought of them when I happened upon this ‘flannel panel’ of The People in south-east Ireland where all but one (poor Paddy!) of the staff are women.
Editors, reporters, the sales team and a photographer are all women – no need for the Women in Journalism recruiting sergeant here!

Our new friend in the newsroom

The session we do in the uni journalism class called ‘internet research’ is a lot more fun and illuminating than its rather pedestrian title suggests.
The students rummage around on the web and find out all sorts of stuff about their classmates. Some of it they’re not keen on their pals knowing about, let alone mum, dad, gran or the lady next door. And much of this is ‘hidden away’ on social networking sites like Facebook, Bebo and MySpace.
The students are horrified to realise that something they thought was just for messing about with among friends is actually out there for everyone to see.
In every newsroom I visit I encourage reporters to open accounts with the social networkers so they can easily access these sites when they need to find some info on someone.
Unfortunately it tends to lend itself to tragedy, like the gap year students in the Ecuador bus disaster or the car-load of teenagers killed in a Gloucestershire car crash.
And so it was to Bebo that we turned when news came in that a 14-year-old girl had collapsed and died after an asthma attack on the street in Ferrybank, just five minutes from the Waterford News & Star offices.
We found pictures with family and friends, an instant condolence book and links to other personal sites with more background information.
This isn’t to say that ‘internet research’ replaces old-fashioned reporting. We still knocked on doors, called up the headmaster and the undertaker and took a ‘copy picture’ of the unfortunate girl that was clutched by a friend at school.
True to form there are those readers who felt our coverage was a form of intrusion. “The girl’s not even buried yet,” said one, but our coverage was balanced, fair, accurate and a testimony to local journalists who worked their patch and contacts well.
Long live leg-work and the internet.

Humdrum? Come to Waterford, Monty

Many of us old lags have been surprised by David Montgomery’s continued sounding of the death knell of the sub-editor.
“There are many humdrum newspaper jobs,” said Montgomery, now executive chairman of European newspaper group Mecom. “The age of the sub-editor is going to disappear – we are coming to the end of the road.”
He went on to tell the House of Lords select committee on communications: “I was a subeditor… but many of those skills have been made redundant. The humdrum tasks are not necessary. We will make every journalist a creative, a publishing star in their own right.”
I was – and still, am – a sub-editor and for a few years under the tutelage of one Montgomery, D., who I can say with a completely straight face was a journalistic genius.
I’ve been putting those skills into practice in the unlikely surroundings of the Waterford News & Star, a delightful weekly paper up against three competitors in the deep south-east of Ireland.
I don’t suppose Mecom would look twice at this outpost of journalism, but Montgomery could do worse than see some of his ideas in action.
There are no sub-editors, as such, at the News & Star. As editor for a couple of weeks my job was to decide what went where, choose the pictures and write the headlines – pretty much the old back bench job on a national newspaper.
Before the copy reached me, the originators – staff reporters, freelancers, PR people, sundry self-publicists who know how to use email – had a stab at a headline and most pictures arrived with a caption of sorts.
Okay, so the grammar might not be great and the niceties of the style book haven’t quite made it into the collective psyche, but the system, as Monty might call it, works.
I don’t know my Lisduggan from my Dungarvan so people who do looked over the pages to make sure the thousands of names and places were spot on, headlines were rewritten and captions tidied up on screen and on proof.
When I made a naïve mistake because I didn’t know what had been going on the resident experts kindly pointed it out. We helped and cajoled each other, and the paper – as papers always do – came out with words and pictures in all then right places.
Bit like it did when Monty was doing it. Plus ça change… as we say in County Waterford.

Echo laps it up in Cheltenham special

Hats off to the Gloucestershire Echo for rushing out the ‘Runners and riders’ special for the next day, a glossy wraparound with the usual paper inside on sale for just 50p as the punters leave the Cheltenham Festival.
But, hold on, what’s all this inside? Oriental massage…Awesome new girls…lap it up at The Blueroom…Chic & Glossy, I take my Time!
On the inside spread there are seven quarter page ads for what we’ll call adult services plus a house-ad for thisisgloucestershire.co.uk. On the front is a strip (ho, ho) ad for the posh King’s School and on the back a fabric shop.
Now I know we all have to cash in while the sun shines, but this naked attempt at opportunism just seems a bit tacky for an otherwise wholesome and enterprising daily regional newspaper.
We’ve all learned to live with the small ads – the Echo has a column and half on page 44 – but these big, bold, brassy colour ads seem out of place.
Perhaps Gloucestershire Media – aka Northcliffe – has a new anything goes policy. Watch this space…

Why we love investigative journalism…

In today's 'On the Spot' column in the Metro, Mickey Thomas is asked 'What have you been up to since you ended your playing career?' He exclusively reveals to Chris Stocks that he's been doing “a lot of media work” and “keeping myself fit” but no mention of doing 18 months in chokey for a counterfeit currency scam. Or even that episode when he was stabbed in the bum after playing the away leg with his sister-in-law up a country lane. Still there is a plug for MUTV, so that’s all right then.

Lazy journalism, part 173

Page one write-off in The Times today: “Britain and Afghanistan fell out in spectacular fashion after President Karzai said that Afghanistan had suffered after the arrival of British Forces…” World news, page 41
Fast forward to page 41: “Britain and Afghanistan fell out in spectacular fashion [yesterday] after President Karzai …” You get the idea. Whatever happened to the skill of the rewrite man?

The newspaper without a deadline

I can still remember the thrill of my first day on a daily newspaper. I was a sub on the sports desk of the Cambridge Evening News, having broken my indentures at the Essex Chronicle and gone north in the search of fame and fortune and an escape from late nights at Great Baddow parish council.
No sooner had I topped and tailed a round-up from the Eastern Counties League (RIP) and had a bacon roll and cup of tea from the trolley (also RIP) than the paper – damp and smelly, fresh from the press – was in my hand.
It was never much more than half and hour from sending the last story to getting a paper in your hand. It seemed a miracle then and it still seems a miracle today.
What made me think of this was a visit from Kevin Ward, editor of the Worcester News, who came in to talk to some first year journalism students. A better editor you couldn’t wish to meet: knowledgeable, committed, passionate and forward-thinking. But Kevin wrestles daily with a strange beast: a newspaper without a deadline. The Worcester News, previously known as The Worcester Evening News, is one of the new breed of morning evenings. It prints at 10.30 in the evening (I can’t bring myself to say night) and is on the news-stand with the nationals the next day.
That means that the 10am and 3pm conferences identify and then confirm the news of the day. The reporters, subs, photographers and even Albert the cleaner can all work towards an orderly conclusion in mid-evening before the press whirrs into action and spews the hard-fought fruits of the communal loins into, well, just the waiting vans.
Deadlines are the life-blood of newspapers. Even in this instant-web-based-news-environment we now inhabit there are still deadlines for newspapers to hit. For the Evenings it’s the remorseless change-up from far-flung districts to city centre and for Mornings it’s whatever we can change while the press is still running.
I’ve had run-ins with press room managers (“It’ll have fish and chips in it in the morning”), recalcitrant subs (“Do we have to change – it’s my break”) and circulations bods (“You’ll miss the van to Truro”) pulling out all the stops to get the latest and best into the paper.
I get the feeling that even extra-time in the Carling Cup might be as far as the Worcester News needs to go. Not much happens in the provinces after dark so the paper I buy at 9am is a reflection of what was happening in my community the afternoon before – full of those overnight pages we put together and hoped would get ousted by newer, and by definition more exciting, developments.
Don’t get me wrong: Kevin does a great job on his limited staff and even more limited investment from the Newsquest moguls. But an early evening deadline and morning distribution is a recipe for disaster.
Now, nearly 30 years on from when I was subbing at Cambridge, I still look at the clock at 10.45 – the first edition deadline for the back page – and hope the picture has been sent and the headline written. If not there’s always that block in my pocket and a quiet word with Nigel on the Ludlow…

Infographics: Why we love the 90s

Hold up on those eulogies for the news graphic. Fleet Street may have long given up taking the time, trouble and effort to put together an informative words and pictures package – think ‘infographics’ of the 90s – but little brother Metro today shows the way.
A fascinating ‘Impact Science’ special compares the physical strains of rugby and formula one. It is well written with some amazing facts:

• During a scrum the spine can be subjected to 1.5 tonnes of pressure, equivalent to a medium sized rhinoceros
• During braking an F1 car can hit 5Gs – five times the force of gravity – making the driver five times his body weight.

OK, so some of the illustrations are a bit naff and the whole thing doesn’t get across the gutter very happily, but bravo to Metro and long may you carry on giving it a go.
Back in those 90s I was lucky enough to work with graphics journalist Duncan Mil who is still producing highly creative, imaginative graphics from his Graphic News studio in London.
At Thomson Regional Newspapers (RIP), editorial director Terry Quinn and I were convinced that graphics were the way forward. Some titles – notably Terry’s old stamping ground The Edinburgh Evening News and my old train set, The Journal in Newcastle – embraced the new marriage of words and pictures. But most others turned the other cheek and settled for refereeing newsdesk vs picture desk vs subs.
Most of those same papers are still reporting damp flats and stolen bikes – with far fewer readers and not a graphic in sight.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you…

Living up to George’s legacy

Endpiece. Commonwealth Press Quarterly, Aug 2007

I loved my job as editor of the Kelowna Daily Courier in the glorious Okanagan Valley of British Columbia, Canada. Skiing in the winter; boating, golfing and the 19th hole in summer; an almost crime free environment and that genteel ‘no, after you’ society Canadians do so well –what wasn’t to like?
Trouble was, nothing much ever happened. The news editor would scramble together a daily news list that barely satisfied the appetite. We’d work hard to make not a lot out of nothing and hope the readers accepted it was them, not us, who wasn’t doing much. Twelve years later and I’m in Trinidad & Tobago having the opposite problem. There’s too much going on.
Murders, kidnaps, road deaths, government corruption and acts beastly and heroic – everything you’d have in a newspaper of your dreams, and more.
Our afternoon news list often bears little resemblance to its morning counterpart as so much breaking news has broken. My skills at making the most of what we’ve go honed back in Kelowna, are almost redundant. Stories guaranteed leads in thousands of newspapers around the world struggle to make it into our first 10 pages.
As I write, this week we’ve had a businessman abducted and found dead in a cane field with a plastic bag on his head, a woman killed in a car crash after swerving to avoid a jay-walking pedestrian and four men murdered in one evening. None of these stories were on the front page.
The Readership Institute’s research on why people don’t buy newspapers listed “The paper makes me fearful” as one of the big turn-offs, and while we’re never going to sanitise the news or desensitise the reader we are mindful crime isn’t all there is to report. While I try to leave my so-called civilised world sensibilities behind it’s difficult to avoid drawing comparisons about the downright unfairness of life here.
A sad tale of an 11-year-old girl who drank poison at school because she was upset by bullying turned into a sordid story of incest, neglect and abuse. She lived in a cocoa-drying house with no water and electricity and was subjected to a torrid life almost beyond comprehension, unloved not just by her family but also by any kind of health or social service provision.
Meanwhile in the capital, Port of Spain, the finishing touches are being put to the newly-renovated Prime Minister’s residence. At TT$148 million it boasts a ‘diplomatic centre’ and enough bedrooms for all the cabinet to stay the night. Thirty minutes from the cocoa-drying house construction continues on the TT$275 million Brian Lara stadium and cricket academy at Tarouba. This was supposed to be ready for the Cricket World Cup in April and still isn’t much more than a big hole in the ground.
Patients sit for days in a hospital corridor because there are no beds. Children as young as five work openly in the markets because no one cares, or dares, to do anything about it.
All this makes me think about George John, a friend to journalism here in Trinidad & Tobago, the Caribbean and the Commonwealth. For 70 years he used the columns of many newspapers – including my own – to promote the joys of freedom and responsibility, cricket and calypso and almost everything else in between.
He died in March and a book of his writings has just come out, reminding me of the part I have to play in continuing his legacy. He reminds me of the 1997 Green Paper on Media Law Reform and its Draft Code of Ethics which the government of the day intended to impose on media reporting.
It read: “Journalists and newspapers should endeavour to highlight and promote activities of the State and the public which aim at national unity and solidarity, [and] integrity of Trinidad and Tobago, and economic and social progress.”
“Humbug to that,” said the thinkers of the day and the proposal died along with the aspirations of the UNC Government that lost the next election. Like much of the Commonwealth we continue to operate without any legislative framework save for one “Freedom of the Press” line enshrined in the constitution.
So we continue to govern ourselves, act responsibly when we feel like it and take pot-shots at politicians, businessmen and other inept and corrupt individuals who don’t fall into either category.
Coupled with this legislative free-for-all and buoyant news market is an almost complete lack of journalism education and training. People come and go through the gaping holes in the fences of the fourth estate, bringing bad habits and leaving a nasty smell.
But we’re doing our best to highlight the plight of the disadvantaged, call to account those who should be protecting them while also looking to our own industry by developing a proper internship scheme producing the well-rounded, robust journalists of tomorrow. George John, I hope, would approve.