Tag Archives: Roy Greenslade

Goodbye Press Gazette: round-up of the links

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We bid farewell to our fellow media reporters at Press Gazette, unless, as Roy Greenslade hopes, a buyer comes forward (again).

We haven’t produced our own coverage, as there has been more than plenty – with insider perspective – elsewhere. We would, however, like to wish the editorial team at Press Gazette the very best of luck in the future with whatever they go onto do. We’ve enjoyed meeting Press Gazette team – past and present – at events, and being kept on our toes when we’re covering the same stories.

Here’s a round-up of the coverage in links:

Please do add any others of note in the comments below.

Newly added:

PressGazette: Wilmington – Press Gazette magazine to close

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Statement from Wilmington, publishers of Press Gazette:

“Unfortunately Press Gazette, along with much of the profession, has suffered from a declining market during these years and its losses have increased. We have therefore been forced to conclude that the market required to sustain a commercially viable Press Gazette magazine no longer exists. The last hard copy edition of Press Gazette will therefore be the May edition which will be published in April.”

Full story at this link…

Update: Over at MediaGuardian Roy Greenslade reports that there will be no future news content on the site:

“There will be no journalism on the site,” said Les Kelly, the managing director of Wilmington’s media and entertainment division.

He added: “There will not be news coverage but we will develop the site to offer other services, such as training and freelance referrals.”

Why the PCC didn’t appear at Frontline event and Steve Hewlett’s take on UK press regulation

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The increasingly heated UK press regulation debate continued this week. Yesterday saw former PCC chair, Sir Christopher Meyer, appear on BBC Two’s Daily Politics Show, to defend the body, with criticisms offered by Roy Greenslade.

And here’s an update from an event a few weeks ago during which the Independent’s editor, Roger Alton – a former PCC member – defended the body at a debate hosted at the Frontline Club (reported at this link by Press Gazette). The event is still well worth a watch if you have the time, with a mixed line-up led by Radio Four Media Show’s Steve Hewlett.

Alton, along with Steven Barnett, special advisor for the Media Standards Trust report  ‘A More Accountable Press, Part One’, and Albert Scardino, the broadcaster and commentator, hotly debated the current state of affairs.

Alton: “I don’t want to be the only person live on the web speaking up for the PCC.”

Debate host Steve Hewlett said that the PCC had been invited to participate but had chosen not to. Following the claim up, Journalism.co.uk asked PCC director Tim Toulmin why not. He said it was for a couple of reasons:

“First, we are focusing on the select committee inquiry at the moment, and think that the time to debate these big issues is within the context of their report, which of course is a more serious enterprise than the Media Standards Trust’s effort. Secondly, our dealings so far with the MST have shown them to be rude and not particularly well informed – which may sound harsh, but is a reason for not wanting to spend a precious evening being further exposed to their nonsense.”

That’s straight from the press regulation horse’s mouth.

Alton had also been particularly candid and, erm, descriptive in his language during the event – especially before he realised it was going out live. For example:

Alton: “The McCanns was a thing of such astonishing ghastliness by the press, you do indeed feel like viscerating your own bladder with it. I mean, it’s absolutely awful. But you can’t say the whole industry is fucked (…) What’s the basis for this conversation? It’s fairly confidential?”

Hewlett: “It’s being confidentially live broadcast…”

Alton’s face as he looks up to the camera, shown below:

rogeralton

Broadcaster and writer Steve Hewlett offered his take on the debate to Journalism.co.uk at the end of the Frontline event. For Hewlett, the issue is maintaining freedom of expression. “I think the press has always been disliked and it’s always been held in low regard (…) journalists may just be bottom feeders, but democracy is needed. You wouldn’t expect the press to be popular and well-thought of and I’m not surprised by that.”

“Multiplicity of regulation is one of the things that guarantees freedom of expression in a country that is prone to regulating everything out of existence if it can,” he told Journalism.co.uk.

“The last thing you’d want is everyone regulated in the same way,” he added.

Robert Peston is able to have freedom in his BBC blog, but he also has quite a lot of restrictions on what he can say, Hewlett added. “For example, the level of proof the BBC will insist is at a higher level than many of their City [correspondent] counterparts [in newspapers].

“Traditional media that don’t deliver value are going to go out of business,” Hewlett said, adding that there are ‘probably one too many papers’ in the UK.

Hewlett said that the Media Standards Trust had ‘opened the door’ to criticism by the PCC in its review of UK press regulation, for which it consulted an independent peer review group for part one of the ‘A More Accountable Press’ report.

“If you look at the statistics [cited in the report] it’s so easy to question,” Hewlett said, referring to specific examples in the report – for example, that ‘only 0.7 per cent of complaints are adjudicated on’. But, Hewlett said, that omits complaints dealt with by mediation rather than adjudication and complaints that are on the same issue.

While saying that he ‘held no candle’ for the PCC at all, Hewlett said the fact the MST’s authors had been ‘partial’ in the way they presented their data, and that they didn’t raise issues with the PCC prior to publication led to an ‘open goal’ for Sir Christopher Meyer and the PCC, who were able to say the report was partial, misleading and that the PCC hadn’t been appropriately consulted.

BBC Two Daily Politics – Greenslade and Meyer on regulation

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In the latest public debate surrounding regulation of the UK press, Sir Christopher Meyer, former chairman of the UK Press Complaints Commission (PCC), today argued that the current self-regulatory system was ‘robust, quick and satisfying.’

Meyer, who has now been replaced as PCC chair by Peta Buscombe, was a guest on today’s Daily Politics show on BBC Two, and said that the process worked for many reasons – the body’s discreet handling of complaints was just one, he said.

Meyer defended the PCC’s role, using the fact that they received a record number of complaints from newspaper readers last year as evidence that the principle of self-regulation was firmly established in the industry.

He added that the number of complaints to the PCC had doubled during his tenure.

During the debate, however, Roy Greenslade, professor of journalism at City University in London, said that the body was not advertised widely enough. He said: “Most of the public aren’t aware of the PCC, and the newspapers certainly don’t publicise it.”

The show’s presenter, Andrew Neil, asked Meyer where the PCC was during the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. Neil also asked why the body didn’t do more to protect Kate and Gerry McCann from the accusations made by newspapers.

Meyer said that Gerry McCann felt that the publicity and coverage of his daughter’s disappearance would aid the search for his daughter. “We told them we were there for them if they wanted help, but they were too busy,” Meyer said.

He added that the McCanns were focused on finding Madeleine at the time.

Greenslade argued that a PCC statement should have been issued at the time, warning the newspapers to adhere to the PCC code of practice.

Radio 4’s Today programme on Metro’s 10th birthday

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To mark the 10th birthday of UK freesheet Metro, Steve Auckland, head of the paper’s free division, and Roy Greenslade, journalism professor and media commentator, discussed the impact of the the free newspaper on news consumption and the print industry on this morning’s Today programme (available at this link until March 23).

Steve Auckland, head of the free division at Associated Newspapers, succinctly explained the paper’s remit as a commuter’s newspaper.

“We’re there for a 20-minute read,” he explained, adding that stories outside of the lifestyle section are kept to around five paragraphs to facilitate this.

“I think we’ve just brought in a fresh group of readers who had been lost to the industry before. Those paid-for papers hadn’t been attracting younger readers,” argued Auckland.

What the paper isn’t doing, however, is helping to encourage these younger, freesheet readers to switch to paid-fors later in life, as Greenslade suggested:

“What is dificult to divine is whether they are converting to paid-fors (…) They are stuck on the idea that all news is free (…) and they are not graduating, as was thought to be the case, from a free newspaper to a paid-for newspaper later.”

While Metro has had a negative effect on sales of regional dailies and tabloid titles, he added, it has helped, but is not the major reason for the long-term decline facing the newspaper industry.

Greenslade said he sees free titles, such as Metro, as part of the news mix for future consumers, with short, sharp news ‘bullets’ in print supplemented by news, opinion and analysis online.

“As far as I’m concerned we will continue to grow Metro (…) many of the [other paid-for] papers are well-resourced operations and they’ll ride out this recession,” added Auckland.

Q&A with an information architect (aka @currybet aka Martin Belam)

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Martin Belam, of the CurryBet blog, has recently been appointed as ‘information architect’ for Guardian.co.uk. Journalism.co.uk asked him what he’ll be doing for the site…

For those who don’t know what you do, fill us in your background and the new gig…
[MB] I was at the Hack Day that the Guardian’s technology department ran back in November 2008, and the talent and enthusiasm that day really shone. I’ve really enjoyed the freedom of working as a consultant over the last three years, much of the time based either in Crete or in Austria, but the opportunity of coming to work more permanently for an organisation as forward-thinking as the Guardian is being with initiatives like the Open Platform was too much to resist.

So, an ‘information architect’ what does that mean and what are you doing?
Information Architecture has been defined as ‘the emerging art and science of organising large-scale websites’.

All websites have an inherent information structure – the navigation, the contextual links on a page, whether there are tags describing content and so forth. It is about how people navigate and way-find their way through the information presented on a site.

What I’ll be doing at the Guardian is influencing that structure and functionality as new digital products are developed. It involves working closely with design and editorial teams to produce ‘wireframes’, the blueprints of web design, and also involves being an advocate for the end user – carrying out lots of usability and prototype testing as ideas are developed.

Is it a full-time role?
I’m working four days a week at The Guardian, as I still have some other commitments – for example as contributing editor for FUMSI magazine – although already it feels a bit like cramming a full-time job into just 80 per cent of the time!

It’s not happy times for mainstream media brands: where are they going wrong?
I don’t think it is only mainstream media brands that are suffering from the disruption caused by digital transition, but we do see a lot of focus on this issue for print businesses at the moment. I think one of the things that strikes me, having worked at several big media companies now, including the BBC and Sony, is that you would never set these organisations up in this way in the digital era if you were doing it from scratch.

One of the things that appealed most about joining the Guardian was that the move to Kings Place has brought together the print, online and technical operations in a way that wasn’t physically possible before in the old offices. I’m still very optimistic that there are real opportunities out there for the big media brands that can get their business structures right for the 21st century.

What kind of things do you think could re-enthuse UK readers for their newspapers?
I think our core and loyal readers are still enthusiastic about their papers, but that as an industry we have to face the fact that there is an over-supply of news in the UK, and a lot of it – whether it is on the radio, TV, web or thrust into your hand as a freebie – is effectively free at the point of delivery. I think the future will see media companies who concentrate on playing to their strengths benefit from better serving a narrower target audience.

Do you see print becoming the by rather than primary product for the Guardian – or has that already happened?
I think there might very well be a ‘sweet spot’ in the future where the display quality on network-enabled mobile devices and the ubiquity of data through-the-air means that the newspaper can be delivered primarily in that way, but I don’t see the Guardian’s presses stopping anytime soon. Paper is still a very portable format, and it never loses connection or runs out of batteries.

Your background is in computer programming rather than journalism, will the two increasingly overlap?
I grew up in the generation that had BBC Micros and ZX Spectrums at home, so I used to program a lot as a child, but my degree was actually in History, which in itself is a very journalistic calling. I specialised in the Crusades and the Byzantine Empire, which is all about piecing together evidence from a range of sources of varying degrees of reliability, and synthesizing a coherent narrative and story from there. And, of course, I’ve spent most of this decade blogging, which utilises ‘some’ of the journalist’s skill-set ‘some’ of the time.

Whilst I’d never suggest that journalists need to learn computer programming much beyond a smattering of HTML, I think there is something to be gained from understanding the software engineering mindset. There are a lot of tools and techniques that can really help journalists plough through data to get at the heart of a story, or to use visualisation tools to help tell that story to their audience.

One of the most interesting things about working at the Guardian is the opportunity to work alongside people like Kevin Anderson, Charles Arthur and Simon Willison, who I think really represent that blending of the technical and journalistic cultures.

You’ve spoken out about press regulation before; why do you feel strongly about it?
In a converged media landscape, it seems odd that Robert Peston’s blog is regulated by the BBC Trust, Jon Snow’s blog is regulated by Ofcom, and Roy Greenslade’s blog is regulated by the PCC.

At the moment, I believe that the system works very well for editors, and very well for the ‘great and the good’ who can afford lawyers, but does absolutely nothing for newspaper consumers. If I see something that offends me on TV, I can complain to Ofcom. If I see an advert that offends me in the street, I can complain to ASA. If I see an article in a newspaper that I think is wrong, inaccurate, in bad taste or offensive, unless I am directly involved in the story myself, the PCC dismisses my complaint out of hand without investigating it.

I don’t think that position is sustainable.

The last thing I want to see is some kind of state-sponsored Ofpress quango, which is why I think it is so important that our industry gets self-regulation right – and why I believe that a review of how the PCC works in the digital era is long overdue.

Guardian.co.uk: The subbing ‘Terminator’ speaks out in print

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“Greenslade, a former editor of the Daily Mirror, has become journalism’s very own Terminator,” writes his colleague Simon Hattenstone in today’s MediaGuardian.

Then (a subbed?) piece from Roy Greenslade, on the subs’ ‘fatwa’ he now faces.

Full story at this link…

Subbing debate continues on Radio4’s Media Show with Greenslade and Cathcart

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If you missed it yesterday, this week’s Media Show presented by Ed Stourton is worth listening to. In light of the recent bush fires in Australia, Stourton asks his guests (Reuters’ Chris Cramer and Channel 4’s Lindsey Hilsum) about generational changes in journalism when reporting in emotional or distressing situations. Then, a look at the fate of Teletext. But then to a debate that’s been dominating newspaperland over the last week following Roy Greenslade’s declaration that subs – as we know them – are becoming redundant.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00hklvr/The_Media_Show_18_02_2009

Brian Cathcart and Roy Greenslade (on the line from Brighton) talk to Stourton.

A quick summary:

BC:

  • “There is this army of people who are out there serving the industry of journalism, who police this and in quite a private and quiet way (…) [They] check the grammar and spelling, check some of the facts (…) check the sort of general thrust of the story, that it all makes sense (…) cut it to length and put a headline on top.”
  • “I don’t think they [subs] should be at the front of the queue for the chop.”

RG:

  • Makes it clear that his comments apply to regional/local and broadsheet or serious newspapers, rather than tabloids. Subs are ‘key workers when it comes to tabloid newspapers.’
  • Subbing outsourcing is already happening, with sub-editors working cross-titles at many papers.
  • “The change I’m expecting next is that subs will be eliminated or re-purposed (…) what we need are writers, reporters who can produce copy which is already accurate and obeys the law, and so on…”
  • Radio and TV presenters are expected to produce material speedily and accurately; “why is it that we don’t expect NP journalists to do the same thing?”

Then to the Midlands to meet the Birmingham Post editor, Marc Reeves (@marcreeves) and one of the media production journalists who works across several of the group’s titles.

MR:

  • The paper is ‘saying to people we need you to be used to this new way of working’.
  • The titles will ‘always need people to look after the finessing of the output (…) certainly the traditional role of the subeditor will be redefined.’

Guardian.co.uk: Subbing own Guardian blog is not the norm, says Janine Gibson

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It would seem that Roy Greenslade is in a ‘small handful of journalists’ who blog straight-to-screen at the Guardian. Today in the Guardian, Siobhain Butterworth’s weekly column looks at the media regulation debate following the publication of the Media Standards Trust report.

This part, near the end of the article, is particularly interesting, given Roy Greenslade’s comments last week:

“The trust reports that many newspapers are giving journalists responsibility for their own editing and that this is increasing the risk of inaccuracies. Janine Gibson, editor of the Guardian’s website, says this is not true of the Guardian: “The majority of our blogs are edited and subbed before publication. I can only think of a small handful of journalists who blog direct to the web without being either desked or subbed first. We don’t publish news stories undesked and although our journalists can publish pictures direct to blogs, they rarely do.”” Open door, Guardian.co.uk 16/02/09

According to Press Gazette’s report from last week’s Publishing Expo, Roy Greenslade said that he subs his own blog:

“I write my blog every day, I don’t need a sub to get in the way,” said the former Daily Mirror editor turned Guardian blogger.

“I produce copy that goes straight on screen – why can’t anyone else do that? You can eliminate a whole structure.

“It’s not perfect, not how I would want it to be – but the thing is, commercially, we have to do it.” PressGazette.co.uk, 13/02/09

Roy Greenslade: Response to criticisms of sub-editor comments

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Media commentator Roy Greenslade responds to criticisms made of his comments last week, in which he said why the current role of sub-editors is becoming redundant.

“It is just not good enough to say that it’s fine for reporters to upload an ill-written set of facts and that subs should make sense of it. The coming generations of reporters will need to have both reporting and subbing skills,” he writes.

Full post at this link…