Earlier today I spoke to group editor of Newsquest’s South London titles, Andy Parkes, who refused to confirm whether or not he had penned an editorial printed by the Wimbledon Guardian and Streatham Guardian calling for the return of the death penalty and corporal punishment.

Parkes did say that we could “put his name to it”,  claiming that it was “tongue in cheek” and a “just a bit of fun”.

The piece – and Parkes subsequent comments to Journalism.co.uk – proved to be controversial however and he was asked to appear on BBC Radio Scotland this afternoon alongside Guardian blogger Roy Greenslade, who first blogged about the editorial.

Parkes admitted on the show to writing the leader, and said that he stands by the call for the death penalty and corporal punishment to be reinstated.

• Editorial in Newsquest papers calling for capital punishment ‘was just a bit of fun’
• Scotland on Sunday: Rangers bans BBC from press conference
• Mail & Guardian launches latest in blog series
• TheAustralian: ‘Major gap’ in whistleblower legislation
• Currybet.net: Regulation, news media and election coverage

The Manchester Evening News has proved that long-established newspapers can shine online, following Roy Greenslade’s criticisms of some London local newspaper publishers for what he considered weak web riot coverage, with their focus instead being on print editions.

The MEN had around 25,000 people viewing its liveblog at any one time between 8pm and 11pm last night (9 August), one of the paper’s digital editors, Lee Swettenham, told Journalism.co.uk.

We didn’t want to fan any flames so held off from liveblogging until something concrete happened.

The liveblog was started shortly after 6pm, once it was clear riots were taking place in Manchester and Salford.

We had half a dozen reporters out tweeting and taking pictures from the whole area.

We received thousands of comments on the liveblog, including lots of very positive feedback. We were providing information such as travel news.

MEN used liveblogging platform Cover it Live which “worked perfectly” despite heavy traffic.

It shows that if you do it properly online the audience and interest is there.

We shone compared with a lot of the national media. It just shows how valuable we still are.

But where the MEN excelled, readers of the Birmingham Post could be forgiven for failing to realise rioting had taken place in the city.

Just two of the five top stories on the home page carousel are about the riots, the others include a cinema reopening as an independent, a story how a Hong Kong “newspaper shakeup gives Birmingham City investment hope” and a top story about Dragon’s Den. Sister title the Birmingham Mail had more riot coverage on its home page but its site design means it failed to shine (see pictures below which illustrate this).

UPDATE: Responding in the comments section below, David Higgerson, who is head of multimedia at Trinity Mirror, explains the stats prove readers have been going to the Mail and Post for news of the riots and more.

Both sites have seen unprecedented levels of traffic over the past three days, and have devoted many, many man hours to covering the story in a responsible way. The riots coverage is prominent on the home page, but our traffic analysis also demonstrates that people are interested in more than just the riots – hence the promotion of other content on the site. In the case of the Birmingham Post, it is a relied upon source of business information for the city and people expect to be able to find that too. The Birmingham City Football Club story you reference is a very important story, and has been very well read.

Like the MEN, and the Liverpool Echo, the Birmingham Mail and Post sites have run a live blog, and will continue to have reporters working in difficult circumstances to ensure we bring our readers the best possible coverage.

Your analysis of the Post and Mail v the Redbrick coverage seems to centre on not liking our front page design. That’s purely a matter of taste. If you apply the logical web publishing question of ‘Can people find the content they are looking for?’ to our home page, then there’s no doubt those looking for riot coverage will find it, as will those people looking for the content they also expect – other news, business news, sport and so on.

Wolverhampton’s Express and Star, which is behind a part-paywall does well, making its riot coverage available to non-subscribers.

Compare the home page of the Trinity Mirror-owned Birmingham Post (which does have riot video content further down its front page) and sister title the Mail with that of Redbrick, the University of Birmingham’s student newspaper.

Moutrie told Journalism.co.uk how he has been coordinating coverage “quite easily”:

We are doing a lot of it through Twitter, keeping a check on hashtags and following things up.

I’ve also been chatting on Facebook and have managed to do things such as organise a statement from the MP.

Meanwhile The West Londoner, a blog that is the work of another student covering the riots, has seen a million views in one day.

So if a group of unpaid students can get to the heart of the story when the editor is the other side of the world, newspapers which have suffered the closure of their town centre offices in favour of out-of town news hubs should be able to cope.

That is exactly what happened at the Hackney Gazette, which moved from its Cambridge Heath Road office, a short walk from the location of looting on Monday night, to Ilford, Essex, which is nine miles away.

But far from being removed from the story, the Archant-owned weekly has one reporter who works from their Hackney home.

Emma Bartholomew was able to get on her bike and go in search of the story. She described the scene she was reporting on as “a little intimidating”, as she witnessed bricks were being thrown by rioters.

It seems location is less important as long as some reporters are able to go out, tweet, upload videos and get the story. The problem, as Greenslade said, is not to do with the journalists who have shown themselves to be perfectly capable, but with their print-minded publishers.

The problem could not be clearer. Local newspapers remain wedded to print. They are just not set up to report online, even if their journalists have engaged with new media tools.

So long-established local newspapers must focus on their online content, on site design, allowing a story to have sufficient impact if they are not to be outshone by students working without a budget and with an editor posting from the other side of the world.

• The top 10 most-read stories on Journalism.co.uk, 6-12 August
• Newspaper Society: Round-up of record web traffic for local media titles covering riots
• Trinity Mirror announces exit for Birmingham Post and Mail editors
• London riots: Five ways journalists used online tools
• The Birmingham Mail’s Gareth Barry letter and breaking ‘exclusives’ online

The Guardian’s Roy Greenslade reports today that book deals relating to the phone-hacking scandal have already been signed.

This includes one for Guardian journalist Nick Davies, of which is said to be “provisionally” titled Hack Attack.

It’s scheduled for release in autumn next year. So it looks as though Labour MP Tom Watson will get in first because his tome, for Penguin Press, is due to be published before the end of this year. It is being co-written with Martin Hickman of the Independent, a former journalist of the year.

Greenslade adds that “there is not the least sense of competition or animosity between Davies and Watson”, with the story big enough for the two of them, if not more.

• ‘I knew they’d never get the lid back on’: Tom Watson talks to the Guardian about phone hacking
• YourRightToKnow: Heather Brooke responds to MP Alan Keen’s questions
• Independent.co.uk: Solicitor general to look into phone hacking concerns
• Green paper tigers
• Alan Rusbridger and Nick Davies to receive Media Society award

Yesterday we reported on the BBC Trust ruling that Panorama had broken editorial guidelines of fairness and accuracy in its programme Primark: On The Rack.

The BBC was ordered to make an on-air apology over the documentary, which was broadcast in June 2008, after the Trust said the programme contained footage that was likely not genuine.

Roy Greenslade said the Trust’s decision was “baffling”.

It goes against natural justice to find against the journalist and producers on what it calls “the balance of probabilities.”

Dan McDougall is an intrepid, award-winning investigative reporter with a superb record in exposing human rights violations.

Frank Simmonds is an experienced producer who has been responsible for many important revelatory Panorama programmes.

Yet this so-called judgment – which requires the corporation to apologise for the documentary – puts a black mark against their names on the most tenuous of grounds.

Having studied the report, I believe the Trust has got this wholly wrong.

Full post on Greenslade’s blog at this link.

• Former Panorama reporter calls for ‘searching inquiry’ into Primark documentary
• Tom Giles made editor of Panorama
• Guardian: BBC proposal to ‘pool’ journalists across Today, Newsnight and Panorama
• Inforrm: European Court of Human Rights privacy case may provide clarity for media
• George Ayittey: ‘Freedom of expression was not invented by the West’

On his blog today Roy Greenslade outlined the libel case Christopher Jefferies is bringing against the Sun, Daily Star, Daily Mirror, Daily Mail, Daily Express and the Daily Record.

Mr Jefferies was arrested in December, as part of the Joanna Yeates murder investigation, and later released by police having been eliminated from their inquiries. Greenslade said at the time of Jefferies’ arrest he wrote about the press coverage “arguing that it amounted to a character assassination”.

Law firm Simons Muirhead & Burton partner, Louis Charalambous, leads the team representing Mr Jefferies. A statement released this afternoon by the firm stated: “Mr Jefferies will be seeking vindication of his reputation for the terrible treatment he received”.

• Jo Yeates’ landlord: media responsible for ‘extraordinary tissue of fabrications’
• Index: Due process, prejudice and the press in case of Chris Jefferies
• Greenslade: Peter Hill’s ‘mistakes’ to parliamentary committee
• Looking at the Liverpool papers live blog coverage of the Rhys Jones murder trial
• Australian newspaper prevents publication of police leak report

Roy Greenslade has written a thorough round-up on how the weekend newspapers covered the News of the World phone hacking apology. He also looks at the coverage – and non-coverage – in today’s papers.

But where will those headlines appear (and which papers will remain silent)? There is a clue in today’s papers.

The Guardian carries a page one story, Civil service blocked hacking probe. The Independent runs two pages under the headline Lawyer claims up to 7,000 may have had phones hacked, plus a leader – Saying sorry is not enough – and a column by Donald Trelford (the ex-editor who thinks hacking isn’t much of a story).

Elsewhere, silence. Well, not quite. Boris Johnson pops up in the Telegraph to argue the News of the World was not the only paper to have hacked.

In a piece which makes light of hacking while calling on “every editor and every proprietor to appear before an inquiry and confess” to having been involved in such activities.

This was just what the Times wanted to hear. It quickly drew on Johnson’s column to run a news story on page 4, Johnson calls on editors to tell the whole truth on hacking.

This is nothing more than the continuation of a News International strategy to deflect from its own paper’s misbehaviour – and its accompanying cover-up operation – by spreading the muck.

Greenslade’s full blog post is at this link.

• CMS Report: News International claims party-politics make report on phone hacking worthless
• Phone hacking: new government inquiry launched, PM expected to be quizzed today
• Phone hacking: Lib Dem MP raises question of Tessa Jowell’s phone
• Commons committee hearing tomorrow: It’s Andy Coulson’s turn…
• Phone-hacking on Dispatches: a good documentary but not enough new evidence

Kelvin MacKenzie’s rubbishing of journalism courses has sparked a heated debate across numerous websites.

“There’s nothing you can learn in three years studying media at university that you can’t learn in just one month on a local paper,” he wrote in today’s Independent, saying he would shut down the colleges.

This post on Wannabe Hacks gives four reasons why MacKenzie is wrong and makes this interesting observation of why the former Sun editor – who has only one O-level – ended up in journalism.

This is key for me: the fact Mr MacKenzie had no choice but to scrap at a local paper when he was 16. He had few prospects and no options beyond an early entrance to the newsroom. But when you have the chance to go to uni or do a postgrad course, I think it’s natural to want to do so and to push yourself academically. It’s not for everyone and the jury’s out as to whether courses do you good. But let’s not take advice from a man who didn’t have a choice.

Over on Jon Slattery’s blog, he points out it is not the correct climate for newspapers to take on trainees.

The trouble with the local press route into journalism is how are regional newspapers going to take on trainees when they are cutting staff? Look at today’s news. Midland News Association, publisher of Britain’s biggest selling regional, the Wolverhampton-based Express & Star, is planning 90 [95] redundancies.

The National Council for the Training of Journalists agrees. HoldtheFrontPage has this interview with the chief executive of the NCTJ, Joanne Butcher.

She said: “Kelvin MacKenzie, of course, exaggerates to make some valid points about media degree courses and the value of learning the journalist’s craft by cutting your teeth on a local paper.

“But he does seem stuck in a time warp. Unlike when Kelvin trained on the South East London Mercury and was sent away to college, newspapers simply don’t take on many raw recruits these days.

In this post, a journalism student from University of Central Lancashire, Wordsmith, also argues the difficulties in being accepted on a paper directly from school.

On papers you don’t have time to fail, because of the pressure on you and the hundreds of people waiting to take your job.

A blog post on Rantings of a Sub Editor suggests a non-journalism degree first does help and some training, in a sub’s case the “basics of libel, copyright and privacy law, which are essential, a grounding in public affairs – local and national – and a working knowledge of Quark” and Substuff has some pretty good advice for wannabe journalists too.

Roy Greenslade also believes it is important to get a university education before going on to take a postgraduate journalism training course and, in this blog post, responds to MacKenzie’s jab at Greenslade’s City University lectureship.

I came up by the same route as Kelvin. He is right about it having been a terrific combination of learning-on-the-job and fun. But that was then, and this is now.

A university education is far better for journalists – and for journalism. It sharpens their critical faculties. It provides a great grounding in the basic skills. It is so good that many graduates are able to step straight into national papers.

Over on the Press Gazette blog, Dominic Ponsford argues MacKenzie “has a point about the ballooning cost of journalism training”.

MacKenzie does highlight a looming problem for the journalism industry, and one which it desperately needs to address. On the whole journalists are nowadays expected to fund their own training (the industry used to provide it on the job via block-release schemes). With first degrees costing up to £9,000 a year, and post-grads another £10,000 on top, and with food and board added in,  you are looking at spending £50,000 to to bag a job which, in the regional press, offers starting pay of £15,000.

How many aspiring journalists are realistically going to do that?

Journalism.co.uk’s earlier comment post – where you can tell us why you think MacKenzie is right, or wrong.

• Comment: Response to Kelvin MacKenzie on shutting journalism colleges
• Daily Echo journalist defends Bournemouth Uni after Kelvin Mackenzie swipe
• Independent adds attribution to controversial MacKenzie article
• New journalism training site launched by regional news veteran
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – get journalism training updates

Media law, 100 words a minute shorthand and how to shoot and edit a video, these are just some of what I probably would not have learned in my first month on a local paper.

But according to former Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie, writing for the Independent this morning, “there’s nothing you can learn in three years studying media at university that you can’t learn in just one month on a local paper”.

He believes aspiring reporters should start on their local newspaper at 18 and be on a national by 21. Perhaps he is unaware local newspaper editors, radio stations and TV newsdesks are not exactly falling over themselves to take on teenagers with no training.

Learning on the job may be a highwire act but it will be a lesson you will never forget compared with listening to ‘professor’ Roy Greenslade explaining why Wapping was a disgrace. No amount of academic debate is going to give you news sense, even if you have a PhD. It’s a knack and you’ve either got it or you haven’t.

There are more than 80 schools in the UK teaching journalism. These courses are make-work projects for retired journalists who teach for six months a year and are on a salary of £34,000- £60,000. Students are piling up debts as they pay to keep their tutors in the lifestyles they’re used to. I’d shut down all the journalism colleges today. If you want to be a print journalist you should go straight from school and join the local press. You will have a better career and you won’t owe a fortune. Good luck.

This is not the first time MacKenzie has rubbished journalism courses.

The Independent’s full story is at this link.

So, fellow journalism graduates, are you shouting at your computers/phones/iPads yet? Or has MacKenzie got it right?
Please comment and let us know what you think.

• Kelvin MacKenzie sparks big debate on journalism training
• Independent adds attribution to controversial MacKenzie article
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• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – try Google Code University
• MediaGuardian: Montgomery empire has two months to solve financial woes

Sky News is reporting that Richard Desmond has discussed selling the Express to the Daily Mail and General Trust.

Writing on the Sky’s blog, City editor Mark Kleinman claims talks have taken place between the chairman of Northern and Shell and Lord Rothermere, chairman of DMGT.

The two men are now said to get on reasonably well, and I understand both believe that a deal could be in their interests. A merger of the titles would create a newspaper powerhouse commanding weekday sales of more than 3m copies, according to the ABCs (which measure newspaper circulation) for February.

It’s not clear what DMGT would plan to do with the Express if it did buy it. I’m told that it has considered launching a red-top tabloid to compete with the Sun at various points during the last decade, a consideration that would be fulfilled if it acquired the Daily Star and its Sunday sister title, which Desmond also owns.

Kleinman’s blog is not the first to report on the potential sale of the Express. Last month the Evening Standard mentioned a possible offloading of the title when reporting Desmond’s readiness to sell three magazines, including OK!

Roy Greenslade ponders what form a DGMT Express could take.

To reduce national press ownership would be a mighty step at a time when there are increasing concerns about pluralism and diversity of voice.

Of course, the nature of the merger need not result in the disappearance of the Express title. I guess it would be possible for DMGT to publish both papers.

Given their current similarity, there would be no point in producing the Express in its current form. Perhaps it could be transformed into a cheap Mail (on the lines of The Independent‘s kid sister, i).

Then again, maybe Desmond and Rothermere are just having a laugh. I say again: are they really being serious?

• Guardian: Trinity Mirror and DMGT mulled merger of regional media
• MediaGuardian: DMGT records second highest ever profit
• MediaGuardian: Channel 5 plans revamp of news programmes
• TimesOnline: Daily Mail halves its advertising decline rate
• Greenslade: Six newspapers sued for libel by Christopher Jefferies

Roy Greenslade asks: “Why are so many national dailies ignoring the activities of the man who is bringing the royal family into disrepute?”

I would have thought this story was manna from heaven for The Sun. It involves a member of the royal family enjoying what must surely be regarded as an inappropriate relationship. Isn’t that Sun territory any longer?

See Greenslade’s full post at this link

• Graham Smith: BBC must report, not celebrate, the royal wedding
• kate publisher: Are journalists abandoning print media?
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• Peston: News of the World emails allegedly show police payment requests
• Steve Buttry: ‘Avoiding ethical conflicts in small towns’

Media commentator Roy Greenslade has taken a look at the newspapers’ response to the resignation of Downing Street director of communications Andy Coulson on Friday.

Coulson, a former editor of the News of the World, cited the continued pressure from coverage of the phone-hacking scandal as the reason for his departure.

One of the government’s key aides departed amid controversy on Friday. So how did the weekend’s press cover the story of the resignation of Andy Coulson, No 10′s director of communications?

Answer: in most cases, with kid gloves. In other cases, hardly at all. And in a couple of instances, it was as if nothing of consequence had happened. What was that business about News of the World phone-hacking? Let’s start with the Saturday issues…

Full post on Greenslade’s blog at this link.

• Alan Rusbridger on Coulson resignation: ‘This is not the end of the story’
• Channel 4 News extended to cover Coulson resignation and Blair testimony
• Today: Cameron defends Coulson, refuses to comment on resignation rumour
• Channel 4 News: Andy Coulson resigns again “over something he knows nothing about”
• MediaGuardian: Scotland Yard uncovers new material in phone-hacking case

Society needs journalists who are prepared to break the law in order to serve the public interest, argued the former director of public prosecutions Sir Ken Macdonald last night.

Speaking at a debate at City University on the the News of the World phone-hacking case and the lengths to which reporters can go to get information, MacDonald said: “There are bound to be cases where journalists will want to break the law, and for good reason (…) We do want journalists to break the rules.”

Macdonald did not condone the phone-hacking at NotW, and stressed that it was only under certain public interest circumstances that journalists might be forgiven for breaking the law.

He was joined by key players in the phone hacking scandal: Nick Davies of the Guardian, ex-News of the World journalist Paul McMullan and defamation lawyer Mark Lewis, as well as Max Mosley, Roy Greenslade and libel barrister Caldecott QC.

Mark Lewis, who is currently suing the Metropolitan Police and the Press Complaints Commission for libel, echoed Macdonald, saying that in certain circumstances illegal activity is acceptable.

“If you know something is of public interest then you can use certain methods to corroborate it,” he said. However, he stressed that these methods should not be used to obtain a story.

Macdonald also cautioned against increasing privacy laws, warning it could create a “contagion of caution” among newspapers, and pointed out that a culture of deference has developed in France due to its strict privacy rules.

However, Macdonald conceded that it is nearly impossible to define what is and isn’t in the public interest.

As former Daily Miror editor and journalism professor Greenslade pointed out, “the public interest for the Guardian’s audience is very different to the public interest of the News of the World readers.

“There is no easy way of drafting a public interest definition that would give journalists clear guidance on what they should and shouldn’t publish.”

More from Journalism.co.uk:

Former News of the World journalist defends phone-hacking at lively debate

PCC claimes it did respond to Dispatches with phone-hacking statement

Phone-hacking on Dispatches: a good documentary but not enough new evidence

• ‘Questions need answers’ from NotW, says PCC chair
• #iq2privacy: Privacy, the press, and Max Mosley
• Solicitor Mark Lewis considering legal action against PCC
• Former News of the World journalist defends phone-hacking at lively debate
• Guardian commends Chris Huhne for speaking out over NOTW phone hacking

The News of the World phone-hacking scandal was once again in the spotlight last night, this time at City University where reporters, lawyers, a former tabloid editor and a victim of the NotW’s close attention gathered to debate the question: “How far should a reporter go? The lessons of the News of the World phone-hacking story.”

Former News of the World deputy features editor Paul McMullan spoke largely in defence of the newspaper and its practices, revealing that he had been contacted three times by the Metropolitan police following his recent admission of illegally obtaining information while at the newspaper.

McMullan is one of a string of former NotW staff to confess to phone-hacking, both on the record and anonymously, and allege that the practice was widespread at the newspaper. He admitted last night that he had illegally hacked voicemail accounts, bank accounts and medical records for an investigation into cocaine smuggling.

Appearing alongside McMullan were: former Daily Mirror editor Roy Greenslade, who elected to speak on behalf of the NotW in the absence of a senior figure from the newspaper; former director of public prosecutions Sir Ken Macdonald; Guardian reporter Nick Davies, who broke the story initially and has reported on it extensively; former head of the FIA Max Mosley, who won record damages of 60,000 from the newspaper in a privacy action, and defamation lawyer Mark Lewis, who has represented many of those claiming damages from the NotW after the scandal. The debate was chaired by Andrew Caldecott QC.

Guardian reporter Nick Davies began by apologising to the NotW for “saying some beastly things about it” and said they were unlucky to get caught out in an industry-wide practice

I should start off by apologising to the NotW, in a way I feel sorry for them. It’s sheer fluke and bad luck that that particular newspaper is the subject of all this attention. It’s just because one journalist Clive Goodman got caught hacking the voicemail not of an ordinary punter but of the royal family. All of us with our headlights on know very well that this illegal activity was going on in most Fleet Street newsrooms.

Davies even drew attention to the naming of the Guardian’s sister paper the Observer by the Information Commissioner’s report on obtaining of phone records. But despite his apologies he was unequivocal in his distaste for the phone-hackers: “I’ve had enough. Even though I’m a reporter I want a law to protect me from these creatures. These people have no business in our phone calls, they have no business in our bedrooms.”

Davies did however speak out in support of a law which would give reporters additional powers to hack into telephones and voicemail accounts where there was a demonstrable public interest.

What we’ll discover as we go through this evening is that a lot will cluster around two simple words, ‘public interest’ (…) I would go so far as to say I would like to see a change in the law to allow journalists to intercept voicemail messages if it’s in the public interest. The huge problem is that nobody knows where the boundaries of that concept are.

Well, as Roy Greenslade pointed out in his terrifically acted (if somewhat comical) turn defending the NotW, “What is the public interest to the Guardian and the Observer is very different when you reach the celebrity agenda of the Sun and the NotW.”

Paul McMullan clearly has a very different concept of public interest to Nick Davies and especially to Max Mosley, with whom he repeatedly clashed. McMullan said, in answer to “How far should a reporter go?” that “if you want to get ahead in journalism you have to go as far as you possibly can, there is no limit”.

I think privacy is the thing we really have to fight against, privacy is the place where we do bad things. We hide our misdemeanors embarassments and things we wouldn’t want to have to tell our wives and children we were up to and then we say privacy, it’s my private life, I can break my marital contract, I can have a completely false public perception when actually, I’m a grubby little sinner.

Mosley, on the other hand, is clearly more of a fan of the French way of doing things. He claimed throughout that the private lives of public figures have no bearing on their public life, dismissing McMullan’s notion that there was a legitimate public interest in reavealing the private actions of those who presented themselves as family men, or who were said to be role models.

…there is this mad argument ‘oh we should expose Tiger Woods or Mr [John] Terry because they tell the world they are great family men and they’re not. This is the idea that people go to watch John Terry play football or Tiger Woods pay golf, and they say to themselves ‘why am I going to see him, oh because he’s a wonderful family man’. It’s so absurd.

Mosley was very firm in his belief that jounalists should not be able to get away with breaking the law because they decide it serves the public interest. Defamation lawyer Mark Lewis pointed out that if the police want to tap somebody’s phone they have to approach the home secretary first for permission, with prima facie evidence, and not just go on a “fishing expedition” if they so decide.

Sir Ken Macdonald, former director of public prosecutions, countered that their argument was “too simplistic”, arguing that without journalists bending, or perhaps breaking the law, a huge number of important public interest stories would not have been published. Macdonald also expressed concern about allowing public figures to live “entirely parallel lives”, which he said could lead journalists to “an attitude of deference to those in power and to cultural elites”.

His comment prompted an audience member to ask whether a hypothetical story about David Cameron being caught with call girls had legitimate public interest. Given what this information would tell us about the judgement of the country’s prime minister in opening himself up to bribery and coercion, Nick Davies was surprisingly unsure whether he thought this constituted public interest.

Repeatedly mentioned of course was Cameron’s director of communications and former NotW editor Andy Coulson. Last night’s Dispatches documentary featured a former senior NotW journalist claiming, anonymously, that the former editor had listened to hacked voicemail messages. Coulson has continually denied any knowledge of phone-hacking, despite recent accusations in the New York Times that he sanctioned the practice. Roy Greenslade, in his role as the newspaper’s defender, sounded quite convinced in his support of Coulson, inparticular Coulson’s claim that he wouldn’t neccessarily have known or even asked about the provenance of stories. According to Greenslade:

Editors don’t have to know every intimate detail on this occasion I don’t think he did (…) A lot of people here will say ‘of course he knew’, but it seems perfectly feasible to me that you don’t neccessarily know every detail about the methodology.

The panelists debated various possible ways of negotiating the difficult terrain between freedom of the press and privacy, with Max Mosley calling for the law to require prior notification on issues which the subject of the story might not want publicised. Mosley’s strict position was largely dismissed by the journalists present, who saw the extent to which it could compromise a free press. Nick Davies suggested a variation on the idea, in which editors could approach a “council of wise men” who (quite who was never clarified) could arbitrate and advise on publication, with their recommendation taken in to account if the editor was challenged post-publication.

The risk all these possible regulatory measures pose to freedom of the press was articulated of course, leaving the panel not much closer to a workable solution to the problem by the end. But it was a spirited debate which generated decent conversation about some of the issues at the heart of the phone-hacking scandal and well-demonstrated the difficulty of satisfying both the need for freedom of the press and the need for privacy.

• ‘We do want journalists to break the rules’, says former prosecutions chief
• Media Guardian: Fresh phone hacking investigation into John Terry affair stories
• MediaGuardian: News of the World’s phone-hacking defence unraveling
• Myler on Mosley: ‘I make no apologies for publishing that story as editor’
• Greenslade: Phone hacking book deals already signed

Interesting response from Guardian staffer Stephen Moss to MediaGuardian blogger Roy Greenslade’s post on the News of the World’s plans for a paywall announced yesterday.

Greenslade argues that Rupert Murdoch is “indulging in information protectionism” and with the Times’ and Sunday Times’ paywalled websites has removed the titles from online conversations.

Moss responds in the comments:

Have the Times “dropped out of the national conversation”, whatever that absurdly woolly phrase means. There seems to have been huge discussion (e.g. on Twitter) about their Populus poll findings and Clegg’s incendiary piece on welfare in today’s paper, so they seem still to be absolutely in the ‘national conversation’.

And the fact remains that news orgs have to try to make some dosh. It’s not enough to say paywalls don’t work; you – and the industry – have to come up with a package that does work, which in my view will mean protecting certain print products, paywalling some (tho (sic) by no means all) online material and building networks around information-gathering interest groups which can be monetised by donation and/or through the sale of ancillary products and services. There is no one big answer; there are a range of answers which will add up to a profitable business. And a business that isn’t profitable – and this includes the Guardian – is enfeebled and vulnerable.

Full blog post and comments at this link…

• UK national papers offering collective ad package
• MediaShift: How will an ‘iTunes for magazines’ work?
• FT.com: Dow Jones planning digital overhaul of B2B activities
• Beehive City: Alan Rusbridger on the Times, paywalls and industry in-fighting
• Rumour mill cranks up over upcoming New York Times ‘paywall’

Media commentator Roy Greenslade gives a no-holds-barred review of the local news scene in his home city Brighton, in particular the problems faced by the Newsquest-owned local newspaper, the Argus.

As we all know, regional evenings have been in decline across the country, but the Argus has lost more buyers faster than many similar titles. Is this Newsquest’s fault? Well, a publisher cannot be entirely free of blame.

However, the central difficulty facing any editor of the Argus (and, arguably, all regionals and locals) has been demographic, trying to identify, and then appeal to, a target audience. In plain terms, should it be The Times or The Sun or the Daily Mail?

The paper, again like others, has tried to be all things to all people, without managing to satisfy any sector. Its front pages have tended to be red-toppish, with an accent on crime. Indeed, much of the news follows a tabloid-style agenda.

Comments from former Argus journalists, contributors and some readers make for an interesting anatomy of the difficulties faced by regional and local newspapers across the UK – a worthwhile read for all regional hacks.

Full post at this link…

• Are the new police crime maps any use for UK journalists? Some doubts raised
• Jon Slattery: ‘You can slice the salami only so many times,’ warns ex-Argus man
• How sticky are UK newspaper sites? 62.8 per cent of users look at just one page, says Alexa
• HTFP: Northcliffe editor defends production hub plans
• Brighton Argus’ new out-of-town subs fall at the first hurdle