Would YOU help a child actor being bullied in a newspaper set-up?

AT THE risk of coming over all Glenda Slagg - Undercover investigations using actors: Dontcha just love ‘em?  Undercover investigations using actors: That’s surely not right.

Enter stage left Britain’s newest daily newspaper The New Day which has a spread in its launch issue headlined ‘Would YOU help a child being bullied?’

The premise is quite straightforward. Four children acted out a bullying scene to see if ‘Good Samaritans might be a dying breed’ while a reporter and photographer lay in wait to see who intervened and who walked on by.

Among the women who did wade in one was left ‘very shaken by the confrontation’ and another admitted she was ‘scared’.

It makes for a good read with decent ‘real’ pictures too. But is it really something that journalism should be practising in these troubled times when the eyes of the world are on our activities?

Don’t get me wrong, I love a good set-up. Would the shiny unlocked bike get stolen? Would the ‘lost’ wallet be handed in? Been there, done that with both student journalists and reporters who didn’t want to go out on rainy days.

But putting people in a threatening situation with potentially explosive consequences might get a few post-Leveson tongues wagging.

Next week, we’re told in a trailer, we seem on safer ground. How did strangers react when an old lady struggled up the stairs with a heavy suitcase? (my question mark, by the way). We shall see…

Late Night Final: Wake me up when we get there...

I HEARD about my new job as editor-in-chief of Late Night Final when I was on top of Halidon Hill overlooking Berwick-upon-Tweed.

A fitting venue indeed, as it saw one of the bloodiest battles in history between The English (winners) and Scots (losers) in 1333.

BATTLEGROUND: Now peaceful view from Halidon Hill

Now all I have to do is keep warring factions from Britain's Big Four regional publishers happy - plus their embattled newsrooms troops - as we head towards the launch of this brave new world, as outlined so well by Steve Dyson in his HTFP column.

Of course, I've history here. More than 20 years ago I ran the prescient Thomson Online Features Service (TOFS),  sending material to the far-flung parts of the then great Thomson Regional Newspapers empire. With a doughty team of journalists - some experienced, some less so, but everyone unfailingly enthusiastic - we sourced top quality content for showbiz, food & drink, fashion and even gardening pages. 

Biggest problem wasn't getting the stuff - everyone from Kylie to the Queen was happy to be featured - it was convincing the editors that this was a help, not some threat to their independence.

We had some great take-up from the Press & Journal and Scotsman right through to the Belfast Telegraph and Western Mail, with a readership in the millions. A great testament to everyone involved at all ends of the operation.

Now we're getting ready to do it all again, with common features supplied to all part of the UK that will give the nationals a run for their money.

It's gonna be a helluva ride; wake me up when we get there...

'Soft Skills of Journalism' or 'Being Nice Gets You a Long Way'

THERE always seem to be some strange looks when I turn up in the newsroom or classroom to do a session on the 'Soft Skills of Journalism'.

That all sounds rather pompous so I'd rather call it 'Being Nice Gets You a Long Way'. I talk about how to cover death knocks by teaming up with a neighbour or relative before bowling up with your 'We'd like to write a tribute' speech and the importance of making friends with the really important people like security staff, drivers, receptionists and even the tea lady, if there is still such a thing.

The assistant at the care home who will help you gain the confidence of a 100-year-old; the teacher's aide who will let you into the classroom; the Minister's flunkey who will let you get close enough for a walkabout question and the policeman who will tip you the nod past the cordon.

I am reminded of this by a story now running on HTFP that has got the mutterati at it again. 'Weekly reporter files complaint against police over house fire cordon' runs the headline about  Reading Chronicle reporter Courtney Friday, who has done just that.

He set the ball rolling with a couple of tweets:

Followed up by the HTFP story, which spawned a rich variety of comments. Some talk about police heavy-handedness, others about the reporter's naivety or  the part the editor is (or isn't) playing.

I may humbly suggest that filing complaints never gets you very far and it certainly doesn't get you the story. Readers have no interest in the inner working of police-media relations; our job is to get the story out there on their behalf.

Back when I was a boy reporter the common wisdom was that Ernie the Cleaner knew everything that was going on. He was indeed a mine of information from  the comings and goings in the Managing Director's office to when the funeral director was calling with his latest warm death notices.

Sadly Ernie went the way of a lot of 'support staff', replaced by agency workers who swept in and swept out. But the modern days Ernies are still out there; you just got to work hard at finding them. They may even by manning a police cordon near you...

Wake up at the back! Yes, you, the journalist...

I HAD A fun time in Afghanistan working with people who called themselves journalists but were from artistic backgrounds like painting, sculpture and poetry and don't even get me started on American journalists and their 'liberal arts' background.

Like many of today's journalists here in the UK they had no understanding of the financing of publishing or the economics of journalism. Write story/publish/sit back/congratulate self/move on. The readership was a black hole of customers who should think themselves lucky that they are able to read my words.

ON THE JOB: Journalists (poets, sculptors etc) on
assignment in Afghanistan with editor (relaxing)

Beyond the editor (if not at lunch/Rotary/important meeting etc), news editor and a few vociferous local worthies nobody really had a view on whether what you did was good, bad or indifferent.

Now that pesky internet thing has moved the goalposts. A weekly newspaper reporter has gone from:

a) Write a story, wait up to six days for it to be published,  see if phone rings or letter comes in.

to

b) Write a story, wait 30 seconds to see who is reading it, in 10 minutes rewrite/change headline/spike as necessary.

So what's so wrong with journalists being accountable and being measured on what they achieve?

Unprecedented in the industry

Trinity Mirror has done everyone a favour and come out and said it: “Your performance will be assessed regularly, taking into account audience traffic to your stories and therefore encompassing page views, unique users, local audience and other metrics. You will be expected to grow your page views and uniques in line with the growth we require as a business,” says a widely leaked internal memo.

Back comes the NUJ’s Birmingham chapel as reported in Press Gazette with: “On the face of it these targets would be unworkable, counter-productive and unprecedented in the industry."

Yippedeedoo, at long last something "unprecedented in the industry", just what we need to revitalise the dying patient.

Counting key strokes

Twenty years ago I laboured with some very senior figures at Thomson Regional Newspapers (TRN) to come up with workable productivity targets for journalists and just a few years ago one the great newspaper executives of our time (you may know him: short, Scottish, spectacles) engineered a scheme which actually counted key strokes.

The legions lined up against the TRN scheme ("You can't put a figure on originality", "Genius doesn't count come cheap" or "Doing important background research",) and like a lot of original thinking it foundered for want of buy-in from those - mainly editors - who would need to make it work.

The key stroke scheme was of course bonkers, but I did issue some lazy reporters with the threat that "the system is counting what you do" (it wasn't) with remarkable effect.

Now the sophisticated metrics is doing all that counting, and in real-time too.

As Trinity Mirror Midlands managing director Simon Edgley explains: "The proposals we have shared with colleagues today are quite significant in the change in structure we need to equip ourselves as a flexible, multi-skilled newsroom of the future. 
"The decision taken to implement these proposals has not been taken lightly, it is necessary for us to adapt to commercial challenges and provide a structure that gives longer term sustainability of the business."

Immune from reality

For too long journalists have thought they are immune from reality. Doing important stuff and getting rewarded from a pot of money that magically appears from somewhere. Not that I blame them. Not enough is done on university courses or within industry accredited qualifications to get new entrants to understand the business of publishing and with it the business of journalism.

And inside the office (if indeed there still is one) the demarcation lines between editorial/advertising/circulation are as obvious as ever so there is little encouragement to find out what those noisy, bell-ringing, over-dressed people are doing.

Mr Media Commentator, Roy Greenslade, put it this way: "The cuts reveal a truth that Trinity Mirror (and other publishers) have previously denied: they are all about private profit and not about public interest."

T'was ever thus, Roy...

Press Awards: The secret to being a winner

GOOD TIMES AHEAD: Newspaper of the Year team from The Times

AMONG the many weird and wonderful jobs I had as general gofer for Thomson Regional Newspapers at the Watford bunker in the early 90s was ensuring that our papers won awards.

Sitting hundreds of miles from the action in Aberdeen, Belfast, Cardiff or Newcastle (plus Reading and Milton Keynes among others) I couldn’t affect the substance but I could add a little style.

Just making sure all the forms were correctly filled in and the ‘supporting statements’ were pithy yet, er, supportive was a job in itself.

And it worked.

Yes, of course the papers were very good but the attention to detail in making the judges’ task easy should not be underestimated.

The intensity of those inky-handed days came flooding back last night at the Society of Editors Press Awards, where I shared a table with the lovely people from Gorkana and tried not to divulge any insights from the confessional of the judges’ chambers where I had judged four categories and been panel chairman of two.

 It was an uplifting and invigorating night surrounded by talented, committed people fighting for the right to continue to practise journalism as we know it, Jim.

Congratulations, of course, to all the winners but two special mentions from me:

• Nicola Jeal (right), another graduate of the Today school of journalism from the late 80s, now editor of The Times Magazine which won supplement of the year.
• Jonathan Grun, now emeritus editor of the Press Association, given the Chairman’s Award. One of THE genuine good guys of journalism and shortly to appear in my next opus ‘60@sixty’ – more of which later…

Jonathan Grun (centre) with the grizzly old men of journalism, SoE executive director Bob Satchwell and  awards host Nick Ferrari

10 things I have just learned about journalism

I HAVE now finished a seven-week romp around Ireland, both north and south, helping nearly 70 journalists come to terms with the latest way of working.

I reminded them that I started work in the days of hot metal - "Hot, smelly, dangerous - and that was just the newsroom!" - which now looks like a museum exhibit, and that far from being wary and suspicious they should embrace the latest technology and concentrate on what they do best.

And what they do is journalism at its best: find stories, talk to people, write quickly and clearly. It's the message rather than the medium, as Marshall McLuhan famously didn’t say, so don't worry about pressing the right keys on the computer but concentrate on asking the right questions.

Here are my Top 10 takeaways:

1. Journalism is still fun: From chasing stories with headline-grabbing national significance to crafting a brief from submitted mumbo-jumbo most people loved most of it most of the time.
2. Journalists are still fun: They laughed, they cried, they took the mickey, they lunched, they drank, they worked hard…and they had fun.
3. Editors still inspire, lead, defend and challenge: I met some wonderful people performing courageously as the increasingly thin filling in a sandwich between the journalists and management/advertising. Didn’t always get the recognition or support they deserved but never flinched from doing things the right way.
4. There's life in the old dogs: A good proportion of the ‘trainees’ were of more mature years. Yes, folks, from my generation. But after chuckling at my hot metal memories they threw themselves at the digital era task in hand and often turned in better work than the so-called computer generation.
5. Journalism education and training is valued: While I can sign up to a certain amount of “Journalists are born, not made” it was interesting to see that those with some exposure to teaching and training generally fared better.
6. Integrity is alive and well: get a bunch of journalists in a room in 2014 and it’s not long before the conversation strays into ethical considerations or more likely: Would you do that? And mostly, the answer was: No
7. We have headline acts: I love teaching headlines; it brings out the best in people and gives instant gratification to those who listen to the simple instructions.
8. Upstairs…: The ‘Management’, however you care to define that, were largely caring, committed people doing a difficult job in trying circumstances with compassion and consideration.
9. Downstairs…: The support staff we have all grown to know and love, from Ernie the cleaner to Sid on security, are disappearing faster than the journalists. Now we’re all our own secretary/cleaner/security.
10. And on the Tenth Day God begat digital… 

In the days of click-throughs and downloads, why we still love shorthand

INVIGILATING at the NCTJ shorthand exams today I am instantly transported back to a windowless, airless room at Harlow Technical College in that long, hot summer of 1975.
It is nearly the end of our eight-week block release course. Much beer has been drunk at the Painted Lady – come on, it was very hot – and careers plotted via the charming encouragement of tutor extraordinaire Ken Andrews.
Now we are sitting the shorthand exam, the culmination of two hours a day sweating through hangovers and lack of sleep to reach the holy grail of 100 words per minute.
Most of us made it, either that year or the next, as failure was not an option for us teenage school-leavers looking to make it in the competitive world of journalism.
Shorthand is not just an academic exercise to get you the NCTJ diploma and a passport to fame and fortune as the reporters at the trials of R. Brooks and R. Harris will testify.
Yes, some courts are allowing devices to be used on the Press benches, but m’learned friends do not obligingly speak slowly enough for your fingers to keep up. And the days of checking your rusty shorthand notes with a helpful rival are long gone as news organisations rush to beat each other with stories via social media and online.
Others have written more eloquently than me on the pleasures and rewards of shorthand, notably the Guardian’s Chris Elliott and Graham Dudman from the Sun.
For employers the ability to do shorthand makes an applicant stand out and keen, hard-working and capable. And anyone who has mastered this particular and sometimes peculiar skill knows its enduring delight.
I saw one of my 1975 classmates, Neil Harman now tennis correspondent of The Times, talking eloquently on the telly from Wimbledon yesterday. I would like to have seen his notebook…I’m sure it includes some immaculate Pitman’s shorthand.

Hello Acacia mall...but don't mention the slums

WELL, yippededoo! Aren't we all thrilled that Kampala's newest shopping centre, Acacia mall, was officially opened today by that nice Mr Museveni, no less?

Well, probably not if you are one of the 20,000 people who live in the Katanga slum, just a mile but a lifetime away in the centre of Uganda's capital city.

Here, children play in open sewers, people live in leaky shacks with no water or electricity and those near neighbours of poverty and squalor, abuse and disease, are rife.

By either accident of geography or clever architecture it is impossible to see the horrors of Katanga unless you are actually inside it. From the main road alongside Mulago hospital you look down on a sea of tin roofs, hiding the daily dramas from public view (see below).

I did go in while my wife was helping out the with the wonderful Kids Club Kampala  -  "Hope and Love for Vulnerable Children"  -  and left with rather a desolate feeling of not enough hope and love to go round.

I don't begrudge Kampala its glitzy mall with boutiques, restaurants, banks, cinema, fitness centre and Apple store. But if just a fraction of the private and public money that goes into these grandiose projects found its way to help some of the less fortunate then death, disease, hunger and horror would start to be consigned to the past.

There is little appetite from locals to help out their countrymen and many of the aid projects are run by foreigners with foreign money. In fact, I was horrified to find out that I knew more about the squalor and deprivation of Katanga than people who had lived nearby all their lives. They are simply not interested.

And as I summon the poolside waiter at the Kabira Country Club (ironically the same name as the super-slum in Nairobi) or sip on a latte while using the wi-fi at the La Patisserie I reflect that it is easy to slip into the comfortable cosmopolitan lifestyle that I can live and many Ugandans aspire to.

I'm not some do-gooder on a mission - Praise the Lord there's enough of them to go round - but am lucky enough to ply my trade as both a media and education professional in what is loosely called the developing world. And I firmly believe we all need to use whatever position or influence we have to persuade, cajole and do whatever we can for the better.

Film-maker Tony Steyger, my friend from Southampton Solent University, has made a powerful report called 'Kenya - The Last Taboo'. The blurb says: In Kenya 6 million people still defecate in the open. This report literally cuts through the crap to take a funny and refreshing look at the serious risks and the bold new tactics being used to tackle them.

For Kenya read Uganda, or indeed one of many locations around the world that still lack basic sanitation.

And all this on a day when the Monitor newspaper reports: US punishes Uganda for anti-gay law: Withdraws support to police, UPDF [Uganda People's Defence Force] and Health

No doubt President Museveni was reflecting on that too as he cut the ribbon this morning.

Computers, science, the newsroom and me

“Will the geeks inherit the newsroom?” was one of the many questions posed at the Association for Journalism Education annual conference in Liverpool.

The engaging Angela Long from Dublin Institute of Technology directed us to the Columbia Journalism School which has devised a Dual-Degree Program in Journalism & Computer Science.

Students will earn MA degrees in both Computer Science and Journalism taking in units on ‘Analysis of Algorithms’, ‘3D User Interfaces and Augmented Reality’ and ‘Web-Enhanced Information Management’ along the way.

It’s easy to be a bit sniffy about what road this is taking journalism down, but I’ve always been a bit of a New Romantic and ready to embrace whatever is round the corner – or in Columbia’s case already set up on the High Street.

But within all the app development, data journalism and statistical analysis I hope we don’t forget some of the fundamental lessons of journalism, like the ability to talk to people, get them to say something and deliver that info quickly and succinctly.

The anonymity of email questions and nicking quotes from twitter is all very well but as one of the students before taking a final year assignment asked me rather sheepishly: “Do you mean we’ve actually got to talk to people?”

Other conference highlights:

• Student attendance was the talk of the bar. Everyone seems to be struggling to get a decent show in class, despite the £9,000 fees and our value for money drive. But I couldn’t help thinking we’re looking at this from the wrong end of the telescope. Perhaps the days of standing in front of a class like Mr Chips are gone and we should look at delivering our content in ways that the students feel happier to engage with.
• A Pop-up Newsroom championed by Newcastle University, where students teamed up with partner institutions in India, Holland, Armenia, the United States, and Brazil to look first at global poverty and then celebrate International Women's Day. Great idea, and one that I will unashamedly copy.
• A presentation about Blippar – “A bleeding-edge content platform” – through which you can “attract, retain and engage with consumers through an immersive experience”.  Strangely addictive and great fun.

Forest friends star in Animal Magic

WE'RE used to the donkeys and ponies auditioning as traffic police here in Brockenhurst but this performance from a herd of wild cattle brought our New Forest village to a standstill.

Surefooted, confident and completely unfazed by both traffic and humans they trotted (do cows trot?) at some lick through the village and disappeared off towards Sway.

I'm reliably informed they are red highland cattle, with a couple of black and white also-rans thrown in the for the ride. Whatever they are they were a welcome bright spot on a rainy day. 

Calm (shorts, ice cream, picnic) after the storm (30ft waves, 60mph winds, flying shingle)

INSIDE STORY: The mirror and decorations in this ruined beach hut open to the elements

SUNDAY afternoon in Milford on Sea and the day-trippers sitting on the sea wall soaking up the sunshine could be forgiven for not believing what they see on the front page of the Mail on Sunday.

Forsaking the flim-flam of politics or the tittle-tattle of celebrity the MoS leads with - Shock! Horror! - a news story and Milford is the main image on the page.

Friday night's storm ravaged its way into the Marine restaurant, scattering diners as water and wind-blown shingle smashed windows and sent them scurrying for safety.

Fast-forward 36 hours and life could not be more benign on the south coast. It's always busy down here at weekends but the headline-grabbing events and sunny day brought the sightseers down in their hundreds if not thousands.

They saw that the intrepid hi-viz men of New Forest District Council and the hastily drafted in muscle of the Signals Regiment from Fulford near York (are there no soldiers nearer?) have pulled off an amazing clean-up effort.

There's still much to do, but the beach-side paths are clear and the car parks ready to receive the paying public (every day, all year, incidentally).

• BY THE BOARD: the devastated Marine Restaurant now boarded up and weather-tight

MISSING LINK: Some beach huts survived the pounding...some did not

• ANYONE FOR BONFIRE NIGHT? Debris piles up on the beach 

• STAND (SIT?) EASY: Soldiers from the Royal Signals grab a lunch break

Norwegian Getaway in Hampshire

LATEST addition to the Southampton waterfront is the cruise ship Norwegian Getaway which docked this morning for the first time in the UK.

It’s not huge by cruise ship standards, coming in at number 9 in the big ship league table, but it did cut a dash in the watery wintery sunshine.

Some facts and figures below – 27 ‘dining options’! – courtesy of Maritime Matters

Dimension	145,655 GT
Length overall	325.70 m
Moulded breadth	39.7 m
Number of decks	18
Draught	8.30 m
Engine output	62,400 kW
Propulsion power	35,000 kW
Speed	21.5 kn
Number of passengers	3,969
Number of passenger cabins	2,014
Number of outside cabins (including suites)	1,508
Number of inside cabins	506
Crew	1,640
Number of theatre seats	815
Number of dining options	27
Total weight of applied paint	300 t
Total length of laid cables	2,154 km
Total length of laid pipes	400 km
Flag	Bahamas
Classification	DNV

From Ambridge to Lymington - where obituaries are alive and well

AS WE all know, Jack Woolley – aka Mr Peggy Archer that was – has died.
Talk of Ambridge on Thursday was his obit on page 36 of the Borchester Echo (60p from all good newsagents). It was presented complete with a nice picture of Peggy – and presumably Jack – although the write up did make him “sound like Simon Cowell” according to Emma Grundy (@EmeraldMTuesday)

Good to hear the Echo still tackling obits with gusto, but page 36 did sound a bit far back in the book. Far better follow the lead of my local paper, the Lymington Times, which this week fills an oversized broadsheet page with obits - on page 6.

It’s no design award winner, but all the recently deceased have a lengthy write-up, picture and headline including their name and description of their life. ‘Bob Gardam (81) was leading television sports broadcaster’ reads the top story about a man who was well known to generations of TV sports journalists.

I feel lucky to have written obits from Halstead (Essex) to Port of Spain (Trinidad & Tobago) and contributed to a lasting memory of someone’s life. When one tearful widow came into the Halstead Advertiser (RIP itself) office to point out that we (I) had got some of the facts wrong it taught me more about ‘check, check and check again’ than anything before or since.

I’m pretty sure obit writing is not actively taught anywhere and many local papers no longer bother at all. But what a superb skill to learn and what a service to readers.

When my turn comes, if I can’t be in Borsetshire (too expensive, I fear) I hope I’ll still be here in the New Forest and can be squeezed on the corner of page 6 of the Lymington Times. A fitting send-off indeed.

A job in journalism? Definitely...but it will take time, effort and money

THE most common question asked any newspaper editor is: "Can you help me/my son/daughter/friend get a job in journalism?"

Quick answer: "Yes, providing you are prepared to invest time, effort and money."

And the number one question asked me now I'm looking at things from an academic perspective is:  "Will I/my son/daughter get a job in journalism?"

And the answer? Just the same.

TIME means using your spare weeks  on work experience, volunteering, freelancing  and putting yourself about.

EFFORT is working hard on your course and doing the required added extras like blogging, social media and taking a leading role in course publications.

MONEY is spent on joining a reputable course, supporting yourself and ensuring you have enough time and space to give it the best shot without having to worry about working.

Currently there are nine 'Trainee and Junior Reporter' vacancies listed on HoldtheFrontPage, including two for papers on the patch I used to look after. A happy New Year to some lucky, or more probably hard-working, young people. But also evidence that the jobs - albeit in the beleaguered field of regional newspapers - are there.

Some insist on a National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ) qualification.

"You must be NCTJ-qualified or equivalent."

"So if you are NCTJ-pre-entry qualified, with shorthand, some newspaper experience and a driving licence and car..."

"The successful candidate should have a qualification in journalism from an NCTJ-accredited course as well as 100wpm shorthand."

"A basic requirement is 100wpm shorthand and passes in all the preliminary examinations."

Some don't ask for NCTJ but stipulate: "You will be competent in shooting video and taking photos and you will demonstrate a clear understanding of the stories and information which will stimulate reaction on the internet."

But, as my Trini friends would say, it's a hard row to hoe. The latest league tables for 2012-13 just released by the NCTJ make salutary reading. Across all the courses they accredit 1244 students were enrolled, 914 (73.5 per cent) took all the core exams and 367 (29.5 %) passed with an A-C grade in the core exams and mastered 100 words per minute shorthand.

In the undergraduate university sector out of 452 students completing their courses  just 67 (14.8%) secured this 'gold standard' qualification. The best success rate by a huge margin is for the  independent full time courses (64.9%) like Press Association and News Associates who recruit postgrad students committed to not just a career in journalism, but also passing with full honours.

There are rumblings in the industry that the rigour - and expense - of the NCTJ may have had its day.  Rival qualifications could spring up and with the nationals, notably the Mail and Telegraph, running their own courses this is not that unlikely.

But for many editors an NCTJ  qualification is as much a statement of intent as it is of attainment. Are you prepared to get up every morning and face two hours of shorthand regardless of  sleep, hangover or worse? Can you learn all the law that you need to know and find it in the book come exam time?

If you can buy your way into a career by taking a short course that doesn't worry about the demands of shorthand or the trouble of a publication standard portfolio then we're all in trouble.

As I've explained before I am worried about the quality and motivation of people coming into journalism, now I'm concerned about both the impetus of  young people studying journalism the potential  value of qualifications moving forward.
*I am indebted to @jamster83 for tweeting the picture used above with the post "Saw a pigeon having a job interview earlier. I hope he got it." Couldn't resist the opportunity to run it again.

Hidden treasure reveals the truth and horror of 1991 massacre in East Timor

IT IS a story of murder, betrayal, love and intrigue – but sadly not one you are about to see anytime soon on a TV or cinema screen near you.

I sat transfixed – and I’m not ashamed to say a little moist-eyed – through a screening of ‘Bloodshot: The Dreams And Nightmares Of East Timor’ here at Southampton Solent University this morning.

Also on hand was producer/director Peter A Gordon, an unassuming yet clearly committed film-maker, who poignantly reminded the audience of students and staff that today (November 12) was the 22^nd anniversary of the Santa Cruz massacre on the South East Asian island nation.

It was the filming of this bloodbath by former Blue Peter presenter turned war cameraman Christopher Wenner (now there’s an amazing fact for you!) that alerted the world to these atrocities and forms the basis for the narrative of Bloodshot, which reflects on events of 1991 and weaves a story of the fate of the survivors.

Gordon had been in East Timor making an undercover film before the violence erupted that Wenner (now reborn as Max Stahl) captured so dramatically. Helping make the film was Australian researcher Kirsty Sword, proving an adept front for their ‘tourist movie’ cover. Her local language skills proved invaluable and in another you-couldn’t-make-it-up moment she fell in love with, married and had three children with Xanana Gusmão, former resistance leader and latterly prime minister (see below).

That story is the subject of another film, Alias Ruby Blade, a bigger budget production that concentrates on Sword’s admittedly amazing story but at the expense of the bigger picture that Bloodshot encapsulates.

I guess like many people, my knowledge of the struggles in East Timor was sketchy at best, informed by some of the United Nations circus who turned up when I was in Afghanistan in 2002 fresh from the independence celebrations of the newly-born Timor Leste.

Gordon revealed that the film has just gone out on TV in Timor, but only after a seven-hour debate on the merits, or otherwise, of showing such a powerful retrospective on the massacre which killed 250 people in just a few hours.

And it is a powerful portrayal, but Gordon admits that it is not as ‘commercial’ as it could be which maybe accounts for why TV companies or cinema distributors are not queuing up to sign up the rights.

Which is a shame. Contemporary history is served poorly by mainstream media, beyond the first flush of recording in words and pictures atrocities and disasters. This portrayal is accessible, moving and thought-provoking. It deserves a wider audience.

See a trailer for Bloodshot here

Tony Garnett: Angry old man shows why we must all still care

I’VE SPENT most of my life striving to uncover the truth – or whatever passes for it at the time – and working to relay that to as many people as possible.

So it was fascinating to spend the evening in the company of man who’s spent his career making up stories – and jolly good ones too.

“We make sense of the world and help society to connect by telling stories,” said Tony Garnett, screenwriter, producer and director extraordinaire whose pedigree goes back to Kes and Cathy Come Home through to This Life and Ballykissangel.

Trim, dapper and looking nothing like his 77 years, Garnett (right) told an audience of students and staff here at Southampton Solent University that documentaries pose difficult ethical problems, which is one reason why he’s stuck to fiction. “There is some seriously morally ambiguous behaviour from film-makers,” he said.

Garnett, himself, has previous in this area. A film he helped make with his collaborator Ken Loach never saw the light of day for 42 years after the charity that commissioned it, Save The Children, took exception to its content.

“We agreed to lock it away in the vault of the British Film Institute if they didn’t sue us,” Garnett told me last night. “But it did eventually get shown once to a small audience all those years later.”

The story behind that film, originally called ‘In Black and White’, but ultimately shown as the nameless ‘Save the Children Film’ is told here, but it would be interesting to see what the protagonists think about it now, especially the big cheeses at London Weekend Television who never did transmit the programme.

It was thrilling to be in the company of such an angry old man –  “You’ll be exploited, abused and pissed on,” he told students at one point – and it was comforting to have such a venerable witness for my prosecution that the creative industries need people who really care.

He had encouraging words for students looking to start a career in screenwriting, citing the number and variety of outlets now available for their work. He shared some of the secrets of his success and touched on his widely-leaked email attacking the BBC for, among other things, “totalitarian micro management”. 

But he left with a word of advice that he’s certainly taken heed of himself: “Your reputation is all you’ve got and all you’ll ever have.”

Amen.

How to make it BIG..and stay a nice guy too

IT TAKES a lot to get 100 students to turn up at 6pm, sit still, stop fiddling with their phones and engage with a forty-something bloke standing at the front of a lecture theatre.

Sadly, pure mathematics rules me out on age grounds, so step forward David Davies, magazine industry guru, college buddy of Jon - The Men Who Stare at Goats - Ronson and now we find out all-round great guy.

Davies (pictured right looking inscrutable!) captivated students at Southampton Solent University with his tale of Brummie Boy Dun Good and sent them home salivating at the thought of a £200,000 job, making a Top 10 single and dining out with the great and the good – and George Michael.

Like a lot of us he’s had his lucky breaks, but you don’t get to be a big cheese at Grazia, heat, FHM and Q without having something going for you.

He was self-effacing to a fault, telling students that he wasn’t the brightest or best but he did share his ‘Six easy tips to build a successful career in the media’.

Among the barrage of superb advice a couple of ideas had the most resonance for me.

• Do anything you can to work with people better than you
• Don’t out-stay your welcome
• Have fun…while you can

I’m guilty as charged on all accounts and just hope our lovely students take it all on board too.

But more than anything I hope they realise that simply being a nice person - engaging, personable, lively and fun - goes a long way too. It certainly hasn't done David Davies any harm.

Caption contest: Anyone seen my contact lens...?

IT GAVE me the willies (can you still say that nowadays?) to look up, let alone down.
Brave souls tackled the 418 foot high National Lift Tower - or 'Northampton Lighthouse' - abseiling down from the access door near the top.
Thousands of pounds have been raised for charity over the past couple of years, but now Scrooge-like residents (not me, I hasten to add, although I live just around the corner) are trying to stop the activity because of traffic congestion.
You wouldn't catch me doing it, I'm afraid, and at £95 a pop I might have other things to do with my money. But if thrills from on high are your thing the National Abseil Centre is the place to go.

And, as they explain on their website: "There is a small risk that if the wind picks up while you are abseiling you could be blown away from the building and hit it on the way back in, possibly resulting in bruising and other injuries."
Oh, that's all right then...

'Why I was not born to be a local hack' revisited

THE latest addition to the pantheon of media books is officially launched tonight and I hope my chapter on journalism training gets another airing.

I’m keen to kick-start the debate on what journalism needs to do to not only attract the brightest and best recruits but also retain them.

My research looked at the fate of 60 trainees who I worked with over the past four years and drew some conclusions about where it all starts to unravel for some people.

One suggestion was: “Money is, I feel, is often used as an excuse to get out. Complaining that they are not compensated well enough is a convenient excuse when they are really finding the going too tough or they realise they are not good enough.”

Cue usual outrage from the usual suspects on the usual forums, but just this week one of those trainees who didn’t finish her training has delivered her reasoned, well-written, but also rather sad verdict on the state of life in the trenches in weekly newspapers.

Michelle Arthurs caught our eye when Surrey Mirror editor Deanne Blaylock and I visited the trainees at Brighton Journalist Works. She was bright, articulate, ambitious and just bolshie enough to have the makings of a good reporter.

As Michelle details in her blog post (above)she had a try-out with me at the Essex Chronicle and then joined Deanne on the staff at the Surrey Mirror, first on paid work experience and then as a trainee.

Michelle (left) did well, apart from struggling to make it to 100wpm shorthand, without which she could not be put in for her senior NQJ exams. But eventually she decided that she’d had enough of newspapers and decamped to work in marketing for a cycle shop.

I was sorry to see her go, and wondered what happened to the sparky, motivated wannabe reporter I met in Brighton.

Perhaps her own words sum it up best: “Working as a newspaper journalist was at times exhausting – at times it was stressful. Other days were wonderful, and there were moments when I loved my job. The truth is, however, that I wasn’t comfortable sharing the stories that people didn’t want the readership to have access to.”

I hope chairman Roy Greenslade and the rest of the distinguished panel have a chance to think about those words and what we can all do to make sure the right people come into journalism in the first place when we gather in London tonight.

• What Do We Mean By Local? The Rise, Fall – and Possible Rise Again – of Local Journalism. Edited by John Mair, Richard Lance Keeble with Neil Fowler. Published by Abramis Bury St Edmunds. isbn 978-1-84549-593-0. Price £19.95