Independent editor, Roger Alton shares five hard lessons he has learnt about newspapers in the current edition of The Word Magazine. Jon Slattery has provided an edited version at this link.

Spell-check is a sat-nav for language, Alton says, and ‘journalists should be involved with everything and everyone around them, but not necessarily sleep with them..’

On celebrity content Alton says: “If you can’t see that Britney shaving her own hair off matters, just as the Budget matters, or Bono, though not necessarily in the same way, you aren’t going to enjoy working in newspapers.”