Tag Archives: editor

Liz Jones on confessional journalism: “I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone”

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Liz Jones, a confessional journalist who needs little introduction, got to plug her book and share the most recent of her woes and pets in an Observer Woman feature yesterday.

Rachel Cooke, who once worked with her, took a shrewd and not exactly flattering look at Jones and the ‘Faustian pact’ the former Marie Claire editor seems to have with her personal columns (eg. an account of her single life in the Sunday Times, the ‘Wedding Planner’ series in the Guardian, and currently in the Sunday Mail.)

Confessional journalism as a trade has generated some criticism lately (Hadley Freeman here, for example; Jill Parkin here, for example); here was our latest chance to find out just why columnists do it. Cooke wrote:

“(…)The trouble is that the kind of writing she does leaves her marooned on a sad little island of self from which there is, apparently, no way back to shore. “I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone,” she [Jones] says. Well, why not stop, then? No one is forcing her to skin herself in public. “I could stop now, but I’ve destroyed lots of things already, so what would be the point? But if I was given the choice again, I probably wouldn’t have written about myself. It’s so difficult!” Difficult? “You have to be very brutal: you have to talk about your failings.”(…)”

In a related aside, that other doyenne of confess all to all, Tanya Gold, took part in BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions last week. Her final comment:  “I despise Twitter – I would like to talk to a real person.” Funny that. Maybe the bride berated by Gold for compiling a wedding list might have liked to receive criticism in person too, rather than via Guardian.co.uk.

What do you think of female-orientated journalism in the UK? Are sections like Observer Woman and Femail necessary or relevant in 2009? Where are the best places to find representative portrayals of female subject matter? The best blogs? Or is there even such a thing as ‘female subject matter’? Journalism.co.uk is pulling together some thoughts for a forthcoming feature. Please do get in touch with yours.

#FollowJourn: @alisongow/executive digital editor

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#FollowJourn: Alison Gow

Who? Executive digital editor

What? Part of newsroom overseeing all things digital at the Liverpool Daily Post and Liverpool Echo

Where? @alisongow

Contact? alison.gow [at] liverpool.com

Just as we like to supply you with fresh and innovative tips every day, we’re recommending journalists to follow online too. They might be from any sector of the industry: please send suggestions (you can nominate yourself) to judith or laura at journalism.co.uk; or to @journalismnews.

Former Shiny Media site Pies back in action

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It was, then it wasn’t – now it is again.

Who Ate All the Pies the football news site, formerly part of the blog network Shiny Media and recently bought by publisher Anorak Media, is live again.

Editor Ollie Irish had been locked out from the site following ‘a dispute between Shiny Media, Pies’ former owners, and one of their more difficult shareholders’, he writes.

Former owner Shiny Media went into administration earlier this month, with questions raised about the level (and receipt) of venture capital funding for the company announced in 2007.

The New York Observer: Daylife, an aggregator newspapers like

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The New York Observer’s Gillian Reagan takes a look at Daylife, a news aggregator in which news organisations are using and investing, rather than fighting.

“At Daylife, a digital media services start-up, founder and chief executive Upendra Shardanand and his team of young engineers have a name for a new breed of journalists: RoboCop editor.”

Full story at this link…

Journalism Daily: BBC video plans, Trinity Midlands strike and perfecting the press release

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Journalism.co.uk is going to trial a new service via the Editors’ Blog: a daily round-up of all the content published on the Journalism.co.uk site.

We hope you’ll find it useful as a quick digest of what’s gone on during the day (similar to our e-newsletter) and to check that you haven’t missed a posting.

We’ll be testing it out for a couple of weeks, so you can subscribe to the feed for the Journalism Daily here.

Let us know what you think – all feedback much appreciated.

News and features

Ed’s Picks

Tip of the Day

#FollowJourn

On the Editors’ Blog

NewsInnovation videos from @newsmatters: featuring @kevglobal, @currybet, @markng, @simonw, @willperrin

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The Media Standards Trust has finished uploading content from its NewsInnovation event, held in association with NESTA and the WSRI, earlier this month to its YouTube channel.

[Previous Journalism.co.uk coverage at this link]

We’ll embed the first segment of each session, and for further installments follow the links below each video.

Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.

  • Kevin Anderson (@kevglobal) Guardian blogs editor talks about news business models.

Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.

  • Ben Campbell talks about the Media Standards Trust website, Journalisted.

Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.

  • Will Perrin (@willperrin) on digital possibilities for the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War.

Part 2.

  • Simon Willison (@simonw) of The Guardian talks about using the crowd to sift through MPs’ expenses.

Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.

  • Martin Belam (@currybet) information architect at the Guardian on ‘The tyranny of chronology’.

Part 2, Part 3.

#FollowJourn: @marieteather/freelancer

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#FollowJourn: Marie Teather

Who? Editor and freelance writer

What? Was editor of the Tokyo Weekender; took six months out travelling and blogging her way back west; now back London to join the ranks of journalists seeking a job.

Where? @marieteather

Contact? marieteather [at] gmail [dot] com

Just as we like to supply you with fresh and innovative tips every day, we’re recommending journalists to follow online too. They might be from any sector of the industry: please send suggestions (you can nominate yourself) to judith or laura at journalism.co.uk; or to @journalismnews.

Tom Bower: “I knew I distrusted Desmond, but could I trust Eady?”

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As reported widely elsewhere, at this link for example, owner of Express and Star newspapers and OK! magazine Richard Desmond, last week lost a libel action against Tom Bower, concerning a passage in the journalist’s unauthorised biography of Conrad Black published in 2007.

Amid all the subsequent comment, Tom Bower’s own ‘My Week’ piece for yesterday’s Observer stands out. Bower believes that Desmond devised the libel complaint ‘to prevent the publication of Rough Trader, my unauthorised biography of Desmond which was completed and printed [but never published] in 2006 (…)’.

Here’s an extract from Bower’s account of the trial:

“The ‘forged’ letters incident was a glorious highlight. My letters in 2005 to Desmond asking for interviews were dismissed by Desmond as ‘forgeries’. Infuriated by Desmond’s audacity, I stood up while he was still giving evidence and signalled to my wife [former London Evening Standard editor, Veronica Wadley] seated behind to exit the court. One hour later, after a dash back to our Hampstead home, she returned clutching a recorded delivery letter sent in 2005 to Desmond’s home and returned by him unopened. For four years, it had been carefully preserved in a white filing cabinet in my study.”

Full post at this link…

Guardian.co.uk: How the Guide fell for Banksy hoax

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As reported in its corrections and clarifications last week the Guardian’s Guide interview on July 18 ‘purporting to be with Banksy’ [no longer available online] was in fact ‘conducted with someone impersonating the graffiti artist’.

Today, the readers’ editor, Siobhain Butterworth elaborates further, with a comment from the Guide’s editor Malik Meer and the freelance journalist who provided the piece, Rich Pelley (or Pelly, as it is spelt elsewhere on the Guardian site). An extract from Butterworth’s weekly column:

“(…)Meer also thought the responses matched the tone of the Guide’s back-page slot. “It’s that chatty banter style of interview,” he said. “Our stuff is a bit edgy and the page is set up to be cheeky and funny.” He adds: “There was no malicious intent on our part, we got conned and we held our hands up; in hindsight I should have put a call into the official PR and checked.”

“Before conducting the Guide’s Q&A Pelley did ask Banksy’s official spokeswoman for an interview – however, she didn’t agree to it. He was nevertheless confident that he was in contact with Banksy: “I really thought it was a genuine interview based on a comparison with the Times interview,” he told me. “I really feel I got busted. I’ve put up my hands and said sorry.”

Full article at this link…

The Observer: ‘Painful decisions’ about what it can print as advertising revenue and circulation fall

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Readers of the Observer might have noticed that the paper no longer prints a full television guide each week. Many have written to the paper to complain. One said that a full guide would be ‘infinitely preferable to part two of a Spanish or Italian CD, which is both incomplete and of absolutely no use to me.’

Yesterday Stephen Pritchard, the readers’ editor for the Observer, part of Guardian News&Media, explained:

“The figures are stark. With advertising revenue set to plummet 26 per cent this year and circulation down 6.9 per cent on last year, the Observer, like other newspapers, is having to make painful decisions about what it can afford to print. Loyal readers have displayed remarkable forbearance recently as the news, business and sport sections have gradually slimmed down but they could contain themselves no longer when the TV guide disappeared.”

(…) “This is not a decision we took lightly and it is a source of real regret to us,” wrote the editor, John Mulholland, in reply to complainants. “This was just one of the host of difficult decisions we have had to make in recent weeks. Newspapers and media groups are facing the most difficult trading conditions imaginable. Not only are we suffering from the catastrophic fallout from the credit crunch in terms of severely reduced advertising revenues but, additionally, our industry is undergoing structural change which is causing enormous disruption.”

Full story at this link…