Reaching the parts

THIS week we were presented with the results of research of the sort that has us crying out loud: “I could have told you that.” Nevertheless I cheered when I read it. The startling result was that sales of national newspapers increase when editions carry more regional content. Hallelujah! It may be blindingly obvious, but it is a lesson that the National Press would do well to take to heart. Their circulations have plummeted by roughly a half over the last ten years, with everything from round-the-clock TV news to lifestyles to the Internet blamed. But a factor far less discussed is that the accountants have taken over the board-rooms. They look at the cost of running teams of staff reporters in the regions and deem them surfeit to requirements. Offices have been closed and reporters, many of them experienced journalists who learned their trade on regional titles, made redundant. The result is that the papers have become more London-centric and driven by agendas remote and irrelevant to the vast majority of readers. Newspapers have opted for the easy political fare and celebrity news, easier to garner in the capital, and ignored real stories about real people living in the parts of the country where newspapers are still read. If you doubt this analysis, then look at the comparative resilience of the Scottish media. North of the border they still produce newspapers that reject the London bias, and their sales have held up far better than their English counterparts. From Liverpool to Norwich and Newcastle to Southampton there will be readers crying out for better representation of stories from their regions. So The Sun is to be commended for finally realising the error of their ways and confirming they will re-open their Manchester offices. It has promoted Northern correspondent Guy Patrick to Northern News Editor to lead a seven-strong team, which includes deputy Northern news editor Richard Moriaty and Northern features editor Jane Atkinson, alongside four reporters: Andrew Chamberlain, Rachel Dale, Emma Foster and Lauren Veevers. It was discredited Sun editor Rebekah Brooks who closed the paper’s old Manchester office in 2004 with the loss of ten jobs. But she was only one of many. Even a newspaper with as strong a Manchester connection as The Guardian acted similarly. Northen Editors and correspondents have been biting the dust consistently over the last few years. Now along comes the research and guess what? It finds the more regional content The Sun has, the more copies it sells. Well blow me down with a feather. Next it will be research proving ursine defecation usually happens in the trees and the Catholic tendency of Popes. But let all of us with an interest in the future of newspapers in general, and their regional content in particular, rejoice.

A right royal suspect

THANKS to Prince Charles and a soggy day in the Lake District, I now know what it is like to be an Asian or Arab-looking young man in Great Britain today.
I was today corralled, questioned and, despite my best efforts, intimidated by three of Scotland Yard’s finest undercover special forces. No doubt they were armed.
I think I was guilty of being provocatively dressed, in that I was wearing a mackintosh and a ridiculous wide-brimmed Lake District rain hat, useful for keeping the wet stuff off my note-book as I went about my daily business gathering news.
Not being in the main-stream media these days, I no longer get gilded letters from Buckingham Palace or notifications from Press Association when there is a royal visit pending. Nor am I admitted to the enclave of local dignitaries who swarm to such occasions to savour the scent of glamour which still attaches to the Royal family.
But I do keep my ear to the ground and when I found out Prince Charles was visiting the Lake District, I decided to tag along, to watch the watchers and chat to those he had graced with his presence afterwards to see if he said anything of interest I could sell to the National or regional media.
His first port of call was Staveley Mill Yard, just outside Kendal, where he went to the local baker, furniture maker and Hawkshead brewery, the owner of which is a former BBC radio correspondent Alex Brodie.
So having got the lie of the land from Alex, I went down to the Mill Yard and watched the local school-children, villagers and business people wave their flags and put on the semblance of a Royal welcome.
I had a leisurely coffee in the excellent Wilf’s cafe, waiting for the razzmatazz to die down before moving in for my mop-up exercise.
It was proving to be pretty boring. Even Alex was struggling to find an angle for his press release.
So I headed back towards my car in the yard car park. It was then I became aware of being followed, then hailed by three burly men.
They looked like slightly seedy, past their best, rugby players, or bookmakers perhaps. I stopped, turned to face them and put on my most disarming smile.
For a fleeting second I wandered if I was going to be mugged. But instead one of them explained, in a Durham accent, that they were from the Royal Protections squad. Two of them produced Metropolitan police identity cards.
They explained that I had been behaving oddly, by which I assume they meant I hadn’t been standing in the rain waving a pathetic union flag at some strange man in a limousine.
They demanded to see my business card and credit card, wanted to know what I was doing and for whom. Could I prove I was who I said I was? They wanted to know my birth date.
They took my car registration number and the smallest of the three, a cockney, started taking copious notes. These turned out to be my description.
The third man, the red-haired silent one, whose idea of camouflage was to wear a rugby shirt with a badge saying Cumbria RU, got on his mobile phone to some central data-base to check me out.
I thought I was about to be frisked and told to bend over the bonnet of my car for a good seeing to, but disappointingly they seemed satisfied by my generally relaxed demeanour and explanations.
I told them I had been on the verge of leaving as there was no story for me to report until they turned up. It was a joke as the media would not really be interested in Royal protectors doing their jobs.
But the note-taker seemed bolstered by the idea. He puffed up his chest and said “you gonna write ‘baht us, then.” “Might do,” said I, not wanting to give ground in the intimidation games. He actually seemed pleased.
There are two ways of looking at this episode. You can see it as an example of the terrorism-obsessed forces of law and order picking on a law-abiding citizen with a view to intimidating him. Or you can relax easier in your bed knowing that the Royal family is being well protected.
They were polite. Their guns were hidden. I came to no harm.
I suspect other innocent people get a far less civilised inquisition, even in this country, particularly if they are from a group, some members of which are seen to be a threat.
But despite my natural confidence and experience of such matters, there will be a small part of me wondering if I will get a knock on the door in the next couple of days.

Press freedom under threat

THOSE people who are rubbing their hands in glee at the plight of the established media may like to reflect on the fact that the United Kingdom has dropped nine places in the 2011/12 Press Freedom index.
The UK now stands at its joint lowest position since the survey was first carried out in 2002, standing at 28th, falling below the likes of Cape Verde and Namibia, the first two African countries to break into the top 20.
The campaign group Reporters without Borders, which compiles the survey, blames the UK’s “archaic” libel laws, which “threaten freedom of reporting”. the Leveson Inquiry and the London riots.
The accompanying report added: “[The UK] caused concern with its approached to the protection of privacy and its response to the London riots. Despite universal condemnation, the UK also clings to a surreal law that allows the entire world to come and sue news media before it courts.”
Citing the impact of the London riots, RWB said it was “worried” about co-operation between the BlackBerry manufacturer Research in Motion (RIM) and the police after the company provided Scotland Yard with information about a number of BlackBerry users following the disturbances.
RWB claimed this “jeopardised” their personal data.
The rankings are based on a country’s score in a 44-question survey covering areas including violence against journalists, censorship laws and freedom of the internet.
As has been the case in each of the surveys put together over the past decade, Scandinavian countries dominate the top of the table, with Finland and Norway taking joint top spot this year.
Eritrea, North Korea and Turkmenistan make up the bottom three for the seventh year in a row.
This year’s figures also drop the United States 27 places to 47th, after some journalists were arrested during coverage of the Occupy Wall Street protests.
The report concludes: “Never has Freedom of Information been so closely associated with democracy. Never have journalists, through their reporting, vexed the enemies of freedom so much. Never have acts of censorship and physical attacks on journalists seemed so numerous.”
The timing of this report was apposite with Sun associate editor Trevor Kavanagh warning that journalists arrested in this country, including five of his colleagues, and questioned by police have done no more than “act as journalists have acted on all newspapers throughout the ages, unearthing stories that shape our lives, often obstructed by those who prefer to operate behind closed doors.”
The five Sun staff journalists arrested at the weekend were questioned on suspicion of aiding and abetting misconduct in a public office.
There are a couple of dozen laws that are routinely used in Britain to curtail Press Freedom, but this charge is an offence so obscure that there is not one word about it in the 2009 edition of journalists’ media law bible McNae’s. So no journalist could reasonably be expected to know anything about it.
It’s an ancient offence under common law, rather than legislation, and dates back to 1783.
Doubts have been expressed about whether the charge of aiding and abetting misconduct in a public office can even apply to journalists. The idea behind the charge is to police public officials, not journalists.
Dominic Ponsford, Editor of the media industry’s trade magazine, Press Gazette, wrote: “I suppose technically that is a conspiracy to leak out secret information, but we would live in a strange and dark place if that sort of behaviour was made illegal.
“Proof that we are already living in unsettling times is given by the fact that News Corp – previously a staunch defender of press freedom – is providing the ‘evidence’ of the crimes against these journalists without a fight, or any discussion with those under suspicion about whether they had a public interest defence.
“Most journalists would, as Mail editor Paul Dacre might put it, die in a ditch to protect the anonymity of their sources. Yet News Corp is apparently serving them up on a plate to the police without any fight.”
One of the Sun journalists arrested as part of a police corruption probe has been questioned about an expense claim for £50 spent on taking two policemen to lunch, according to The Times.
Police are understood to be acting on information found in a cache of 300 million emails, expense claims, phone records and other documents which News Corp’s Management and Standards Committee has been analysing.
I left Fleet Street 28 years ago because I was uncomfortable with its ethics and culture, but I would not feel any less uncomfortable living in a country where Media freedom was so curtailed that journalists were too intimidated to do their jobs.
Lord Leveson will require the wisdom of Solomon to do his job. He also needs to be brave enough to resist pressure from those expecting his inquiry to introduce even more legislation to further muzzle the media.
If the police had applied properly the laws that already exist, there would be no bribery of their officers or hacking of mobile telephones to investigate.
Sources: The Guardian, Press Gazette and The Times.

Mail boss reinvents union code

Somewhere in a box or drawer I have a memo from Paul Dacre wishing me well in my career. He wrote it when I quit the Daily Mail as a regular casual.
This was back in 1984 when I was appointed deputy editor of The Bedfordshire Times. He was then News Editor of the Mail, one of several young, talented news room executives jostling for recognition from the then boss, Sir David English.
I thought it touching and the sign of a good employer that he took the trouble. He, of course, received his own recognition by succeeding Sir David to the top slot.
In those days he used to sit in a goldfish bowl in the otherwise open-plan office of the Daily Mail in their old Carmelite Street offices. The actual news desk was manned by minions who were supposed to filter out phone calls and the dross sent in by freelances and others for consideration for publication.
Only the best of the best was supposed to get to Paul’s attention. He then produced a closely typed news list consisting of a single sheet of A4. Around ten or twelve items a day made it on to the list, each with a couple of lines of explanation.
If the story didn’t make it on to this list it wasn’t worth bringing to Sir David’s attention. The news tasting abilities this demanded were considerable.
Also in this private office of Mr Dacre was an amazing document, in about 50 volumes. It was what was called a reverse telephone directory, with every street in Britain listed by town or area, with the telephone number and name of every householder.
It had been compiled by telephone engineers to help them trace and fix faults, and was covered by the official secrets act. In those days the telephone system was run by the General Post Office, a Government organisation.
The going rate for a bribe to secure a copy of this document, which was a tremendously helpful resource for newspapers, was apparently £100, quite a lot of money in those days.
I am reminded of this illegal access to information, every time I see Mr Dacre trying to fend off inquisitors during the Leveson inquiry. The reverse directory was the equivalent of hacking, in those days before the mobile phone.
The other thought is the extreme irony of Mr Dacre proposing a register of accredited journalists.
The Independent, of all publications, said Mr Dacre was right that the idea that journalists should be licensed by the state is repellent to the fundamentals of press freedom.
But there is merit in his suggestion for a body replacing, or sitting alongside, the existing Press Complaints Commission, which would be charged with the wider upholding of media standards.
One of its functions might be the issuing of a press card which could be suspended or withdrawn from individuals who gravely breach those standards.
This used to be the preserve of the National Union of Journalists, an organisation that The Daily Mail has always loved to vilify, or ignore.
In fact the whole newspaper industry has fought to undermine the NUJ, on the grounds that having got rid of print unions, publishers and owners dreaded the resulting soaring profits being watered down by a strong and militant journalists’ union.
Just how successful this marginalisation of the NUJ has proved is illustrated by their almost total absence from the considerations of the Leveson inquiry.
So why would Mr Dacre now appear to back a move his organisation has spent years undermining? The Independent has an interesting theory.
Dacre's model could move the sanctions to journalists, rather than their employers. In his evidence in relation to barring non-press card holders from events, Dacre commented: "It is my considered view that no publisher could survive if its reporters and writers were barred from such vital areas of journalistic interest."
This implies major organisations should sue only accredited journalists. If wrongdoing was found in a paper, it could be a matter for the journalist and the press card regulator. The writer would lose his or her press-card. The paper would dismiss them and express regret at their actions.
Whether this has been thought through as the way ahead by Mr Dacre and his advisers, it is impossible to tell.
The NUJ had a very strict, but sensible, code of conduct. If it had been allowed to play a role at the heart of the media, particularly national newspapers, it is interesting to speculate whether hacking and its associated excesses would have ever been allowed in the first place.

Reflections on Media regulation

THE annual conference of the Society of Editors was held this week at Runnymede on Thames.
The event is always on the home turf of the outgoing President, whose term runs from conference to conference. So Robin Esser, executive managing editor of the Daily Mail, must live in the leafy suburbs of Surrey.
But of course the venue, near where that iconic historical document Magna Carta was signed, gave the Society, true to their hyperbolic trade, the excuse to call the conference Magna Carta II, as if it was starring Sylvester Stallone, said one wag.
The name was also the target of extreme Mickey-taking by Justice Minister Kenneth Clarke, one of the guest speakers. He pointed out that the original had nothing to do with freedom of speech, but was rather a stitch up of the king by land-owning barons. The resonance to Press barons was too much of a temptation for Sir Kenneth to ignore.
He was undoubtedly the star turn, not only using his natural charm and wit to seduce a potentially hostile audience, but also getting his message across with maximum effect.
This was that the Government had no intention of introducing statutory regulation of the media, policed by some “ghastly Quango” as he put it.
But the media in general, and tabloid national newspapers in particular, had to be seen to put their own house in order. The public would not allow politicians to let them off the hook over the recent mobile phone hacking scandal without significant reforms.
Hugely enjoyable as the conference was, the over-riding feeling I had was one of déjà vu, followed swiftly by nemesis of the National press.
As Editor of the Bradford Telegraph & Argus I was appointed to the Newspaper Society Editorial committee and served on the Parliamentary and Legal Committee of the Guild of Editors, the Society’s forbears, back in 1990.
As such I was appointed to the original code committee of an organization called PressBof, a sort of media owners’ cabal which paid for and organized the setting up of the Press Complaints Commission. The committee also wrote the code.
It has been added to considerably since, but it was designed to assure the public that journalists and their employers took very seriously their own ethics and standards, which the regional and local media already did.
There was such a difference in attitude that there were many times that representatives of the local press argued that they should split away from the Nationals, so as not to be tarnished by the same brush.
This opinion was resurrected at this year’s conference, but as 21 years before, it falls flat because of the impossibility of deciding where the dividing line should be. What about big regional newspapers or Scottish, Irish or Welsh quasi-national ones?
Another resonance was self-righteous back slapping for the Daily Mail’s new corrections and clarifications column on its page 2. I introduced such a column on the T&A when deputy Editor back in 1988. When I commended it to the distinguished Editors on the code committee, including Sir David English then Editor of the Daily Mail, a couple of years later they looked at me as if I was mad.
They were mystified as to why on earth they should draw attention to their mistakes in such a way? Well they seem to have finally realized that a smidgeon of humility and putting the record straight indeed helps cement a relationship with the reader.
Whether the public will be satisfied by such gestures is doubtful. Other suggestions included only keeping VAT-exemption on newspapers which complied with the code; a regulated kitemark; and only giving recognition of audited circulation figures, the benchmark for advertising rates, to newspapers which comply.
One idea that received no support, even from another guest speaker Chris Patten the new chairman of the BBC Trust, was giving newspapers’ regulation to the broadcasting authorities.
Mr Patten said that newspapers, unlike broadcasters, did not have to be impartial. And, besides, broadcasters had to have more sensitive rules because of the power of moving live images.
The complexities of deciding how to police the media, without imposing any elements of state control, are truly daunting. The fact that the conference coincided with the opening of the Leveson Inquiry into the behavior of the media just underlined the sensitivities.
It was canny of the organizers to also issue the first draft of a report entitled The Test of Democracy by the Commonwealth Press Union at the conference. It highlighted many abuses around the world of Press freedom. It also included a chart that revealed that the United Kingdom is just 19th in a league tale of free media, even as things stand now. Top is Finland.
One striking difference between now and 1990 is that then the old Guild of Editors was completely dominated by regional and local Press representatives. They were no broadcasters and a tiny smattering of National Press delegates.
Now that is completely overturned. A rough count showed that of 175 delegates, just 37 were from the local Press; 47 were academics and secretariats of organizations allied to the media; 45 National newspaper delegates attended; there were more than 20 broadcasters and the rest were New Media, public relations and representatives of organizations like probation and police with a vested interest in the media.
That underlined a point by former Editor Neil Fowler that the whole hacking inquiry was a diversion from the real threat to the media, financial instability.
The truth is that the Internet, social media and other innovations have left the Press in a pretty parlous state. Advertising has migrated on-line to such an extent that, not only can the local and regional press not afford to send delegates to such an important conference, but also can’t afford to recruit or train journalists.
Arguably the most striking contribution of all was from a young lady who had started as an unpaid intern on a national magazine, progressed to national newspapers and ended up on an important Quango. She said she had never been trained as a journalist and had never even seen the Press Complaints Commission Code of Conduct.
Good Grief! Now you know what I mean by the media industry reaching Nemesis.

Heavy burden of claims for Sir Jimmy

There have been an awful lot of claims for Sir Jimmy Savile, since he died yesterday.
It is claimed he was the first Disc Jockey to realize you could run a dance to records, as opposed to live bands which had been the normal until he came along.
I doubt this. Surely the American clubs had already invented this. David Jacobs played records, as did Pete Murray and others before Sir Jimmy made the big time.
Sir Jimmy himself said in interviews that he invented the double deck, allowing DJs to play one record while lining up the next one. That was in the dance halls where he learnt his trade.
That has more authenticity and indeed laid the foundations for the current club DJs.
I heard someone say he persuaded the man who ran Mecca to bring bingo to this country. Whether this was a good thing, they didn’t say. But again I have my doubts.
He was the first celebrity to run marathons for good causes, said some. This was indeed an amazing claim if true, considering the billions of pounds that have been raised for charity since.
And he wore his shell-suits and bling jewellery so setting the template for all those fancy-dress fun runs that have also benefitted mankind.
But whatever claims were true, Sir Jimmy was indeed a one-off.
I met the former miner and wrestler several times, the first time being when I was about 10, around 1960 when my father discovered him in the Glasgow dance halls and brought him to Tyne Tees Television to front a live popular music programme. He had tartan hair at the time, so later hair-styles seemed tame to me.
I then heard him on Radio Luxemburg and saw him as launch host on Top of The Pops before went on to front the very successful Jim’ll Fix It for 20 years. This show really set the template for bucket lists, or wish fulfillment for children.
It was while he was recording this show that I was sent by the Daily Star news desk – it would have been 1973 or 74 - to persuade him to sign a Christmas card I had also had to buy and dedicate it to a terminally ill girl who had written to the paper.
I had to wait outside his dressing room at the BBC’s Shepherd’s Bush studios for a couple of hours before he would see me. He then took the mickey unmercifully about the card I had bought and kept me on tenterhooks for another hour before signing as asked.
It was typical of the man that he could be awkward and wary.
But he could not be faulted for his devotion to fun and good causes. Not only did he raise £40 million for Stoke Mandeville hospital unit for spinally injured patients, he turned up frequently to give morale support.
Less publicly he also spent a day or two a week as an unpaid porter at St James’s hospital in his home town of Leeds.
There was so much to admire about the man, it doesn’t matter if some of the tales were garnished in the telling on his death at 84 years old: RIP Sir Jimmy.

Serendipity triumphs

This is a sneak preview of an article written for Friends of Brewery Arts Newsletter in November:

SERENDIPITY is my favourite word in the English language. Not only does it have a lovely sound, but it also has such a positive meaning: “the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.”
Since I left The Westmorland Gazette, where I was Editor for ten years, I have been running a media consultancy, Lakes & Bay Communications, which keeps me in touch with many friends and contacts in this part of the world. I now have the time and freedom to make links that would not otherwise be made, and hopefully benefit all those involved.
Such a series of coincidences certainly came into play recently for The Friends of Brewery Arts.
When still Editor I got to know Mike Pennington, owner of Burgundy’s Wine Bar in Lowther Street, which hosted a micro-beer festival the newspaper sponsored.
Several years later, in autumn 2010, I went to interview the principals of Littoral Arts who own the Cylinders estate at Langdale, which was the site of the last installation by the German emigree artist Kurt Schwitters. I was preparing an article for Independent on Sunday about the proposed rebuilding of the Cumbrian barn that housed the artwork, at an exhibition of 20th Century Sculpture at the Royal Academy off Piccadilly in London early this year.
Ian Hunter of Littoral asked me to find a local film-maker to record the events, which I did. I was then asked to help develop the script for the film, arrange interviews and raise funds. So I went to see Mike at Burgundy’s and he kindly agreed to partly sponsor the film.
As a result I found out he was building an extension to Burgundy’s, to include a micro-brewery, and had obtained the recipe for the legendary Auld Kendal beer, originally brewed by Whitwell and Mark, whose brewery became the home of Brewery Arts.
In a completely separate sphere of influence I had met Hilary Claxton while being touted to help set up a new branch of the Rotary in Kendal, a venture that didn’t get off the ground. But Hilary and I had kept in touch and she had proposed I get involved in Friends of Brewery Arts, which I was happy to do as a long-term supporter of the venue.
I attended the fund-raising night, reacquainted myself with Ian Hoyle, who I had known years earlier through the Talking Newspapers charity, and he kindly invited me to attend a couple of Friends committee meetings as an observer.
At the first meeting I attended, I found out for the first time that Margaret Thomas and the Friends were planning a Brewery Story evening, including a talk by historian John Coopey on the building’s time as a brewery.
And what is more, by an amazing coincidence, the date of the event was the same week that Mike planned to produce the resurrected Auld Kendal.
Without my fortuitous intervention no-one would have made that link. It was then just a matter of persuading Mike to bring the new brew down to the Brewery Story evening so the audience could sample it. Very well it seemed to go down, too.
Serendipity triumphed. Perhaps that is what I should have called my company.