Three warnings attached to this Ed Pick: 1. We don’t who he is, who he works for, or if it’s really true. 2. It contains very strong language. 3. This blogger might not be in a newspaper job for long if he gets the NightJack treatment.

Nonetheless, his comments warrant a link, we feel. ‘Blunt,’ who appears to hold a senior editorial news position at a nameless UK local paper, comments on the cruel effects of reduced pagination.

“In their infinite wisdom, my so-called bosses decided to reduce pagination over summer in order to cut costs. So far so sensible. It is a season where newspapers are always likely to make a loss. I expected to lose a few editorial pages as part of this drop in size and was actually looking forward to taking the foot off the gas a little and having a bit of fun.

“The plans for my new editions landed on my desk this morning and to be honest I felt like walking out there and then. Instead of a few back of the book pages being dropped, the fucktards in charge have fundamentally destroyed the layout of my papers.

“Full page ads are normally forbidden from the front of the book in order to give our dear readers the impression what we bring out is actually a newspaper. Now they litter my early pages. Back of the book far from being pared down is obliterated.”

FleetStreetBlues (another anonymous cynic) recommended ‘Blunt’ recently, as an example of raw but real newsroom blogging:

“Sure, he needs a sub. But it’s extremely readable and completely true. Nothing complicated – simply life on the front line of journalism, as told by someone who’s been around the block. It’s well worth reading.”

• Blunt’s “Suicide ain’t painless” at this link.
• Blunt’s self-introduction: “a jobbing hack, front line news man, boss and bitch and bully for some 20 years.”