Thursday, 6 April 2006
THE ACTION takes place in a spacious, luxurious office within an industrial complex somewhere in Wapping.
Around the walls are stuffed-head trophies, among them the Countess of Wessex, Sven-Goran Eriksson and Richard Bacon. Alongside sits a portrait of the MP George Galloway, captioned: “The One That Got Away”.
A masked figure in flowing Arab robes stands silhouetted against the Thames skyline. His editor is sobbing: “How did it all go so wrong? You offered the usual bait, didn’t you?”
The silhouette nods vigorously. “We blew the budget, boss, honest. We begged, we promised,” he stammers, “and they just took it and ran. But they didn’t come back.”
“Damn them, that’s not the way it’s supposed to be!” thunders the angry editor. “The snake oil’s always worked for Mazher Mahmood. Why wouldn’t they sign up to YOUR deal?”
The robed figure shakes his head sadly. “There’s no loyalty any more. They take what we offer, but they know they’ll get the same deal or better somewhere else next week. There’s no honour these days.”
“Sod those bloody readers!” storms the purple-faced editor, staring at the overnight circulation figures showing a 5 per cent loss week-onweek.
“That was the best deal we’ve ever made… and for WHAT?”
“Don’t w-w-worry, chief,” stutters the fake shakedown merchant.
“I’ve got a blockbuster for next Sunday.”
“Bollocks!” roars his boss. “Call yourself a marketing manager?
I wouldn’t wipe my arse on your DVDs. If it gets much worse we’ll have to go back to journalism…”
I TOLD YOU SO [1]: Remember Walter Wolfgang, the 82-year-old lifelong Labour activist who was manhandled out of last year’s Labour conference for heckling The Leader? And remember my Old Bore’s Almanac prediction for next September, 2007?
Here’s a reminder: “September: New Labour holds a party conference at which 82-year-old outsider Walter Wolfgang is elected leader.”
Cripes! Fact is stranger than fiction. In The Observer’s Pendennis diary the other week it was reported that [Wolfgang] “intends to stand for the party’s national executive committee”, telling the diarist: “I believe Blair has to go.”
Truly, I am the new Doris Stokes.
I TOLD YOU SO [2]: Remember my rant last week against dumb spellcheckers replacing proofreaders? Well, no sooner was the blighter published than I was deluged with a shoal of shockers.
Best example? This rib tickler from The Observer’s “For the Record”
column: “A paragraph in our investment column last week fell victim to the curse of the electronic spellchecker. ‘Old Mutual’ became ‘Old Metal’, ‘Axa Framlington’ became ‘Axe Framlington’ and ‘Alliance Pimco’ became ‘Aliens Pico’.”
You couldn’t make it up! Then again, maybe you can if you’re a spellchecker.
davidbanks@pressgazette.co.uk
Thursday, 30 March 2006
AMONG the babies thrown out with the bath water when Wapping pulled the plug on hot metal were proofreaders and copyholders.
Unlike the spell-check programs that replaced them, proofreaders were more than just spelling and grammar pedants.
They checked for sense, queried “facts”, questioned legality. They were often assertive, sometimes downright rude. But they saved many a journalist’s reputation, if not career, with their prod-nosing.
What brings on this nostalgic bile? Just this: I’m sick of woeful spelling, such as ‘lead’ instead of ‘led’; I’m horrified at the schoolyard literals that produce “to small” rather than “too small” and “there”instead of “their”. I shudder at the poor grammar and at the embarrassing apologies (and I’m not talking about tabloids here, as they NEVER have the decency, unless forced, to apologise!) made necessary by obvious, pitiful gaps in the writer/sub’s general knowledge.
Well done to The Observer for lifting Supplement of the Year with its Food Monthly, but what about human proofreading to weed out such recent Observer mag mistakes as ‘massacre’ instead of ‘mascara’ and ‘diary’ instead of ‘dairy’ — errors quite obviously ignored (or even created) by the dumb spell-check?
OK, so we’ve seen the last of the NGA, SoGAT, NatSoPA and a host of other ink-stained acronyms. But can’t editors find a pound or two in the annual purse to finance an effective editorial proofreading system?
I REGRET to announce that The Sunday Telegraph’s gain has been Times Business readers’ loss. No, I’m not talking about any lowering of journalistic standards since business editor Patience Wheatcroft left The Chunderer to take up her editorship at the girly STella.
Her replacement, Robert Cole, is doing an excellent job on the words-and-wisdom front, but cripes, just look at the difference when it comes to fronting up the column. Where the haughty dominatrix Ms Wheatcroft was all blonde and pastel pashmina-style wrap, poor old Robert’s photo image is that of a sobersuited meat-and-two-veg man. I’ve seen better figures in a Trinity Mirror annual report.
Memo to Robert: lose the tie, ruffle the hair and dress down in colourful check shirt and chinos. Memo to Patience: You’re the boss, in future you model the fashion spreads!
CONGRATULATIONS to Colin Patterson, recently appointed editor of the Sunday Sun in Newcastle. I drink and play dominoes with his dad, Ramsay, in my local in Northumberland, and I’m sure — had he lived to see me made editor — that my dad would have been as proud of me as Ramsay is of his lad’s achievements. Nice to see that journalists from humble beginnings can still reach the top, even in the 21st century.
davidbanks@pressgazette.co.uk
Thursday, 23 March 2006
WELL, it all went off pretty well, since you ask. Lacking anything remotely resembling a punch-up, the customary bread roll barrage or even the traditional drunken hectoring of the presenter, I bet the new, improved hit-’em-with-the-awards-before-they-get-pissed Press Gazette Gong Show will have left the Boycott Brigade feeling as jaded as I was the morning after.
A good spread of victories for Britain’s comics, both large and small, rewarded the Bash Street Kids equally as well as it did Lord Snooty and His Pals.
The Sunday Times scooped the most awards while The Guardian was named — almost inevitably — Newspaper of the Year.
And those bruising, boozing rivals The Sun and Mirror — their tables carefully positioned at opposite ends of the Dorchester’s ballroom and kept apart by a thoughtfully constructed Berliner Wall of posh folk — were each given three trophies so they wouldn’t squabble.
A controversial decision to ease the overload of paying customers by relegating the freeloaders (assorted judges, Yours Truly, Jean Morgan and the like) to a distant scullery served with a closed-circuit television feed was abandoned after howls of protest led by overfed LBC gabfester Nick Ferrari.
I was, I confess, rather disappointed at the organisers’ backdown on the issue of sending us to Bad Boys’ Corner. In my breakfast radio days I delighted in closeting myself grumpily in splendid solitude while the station’s news director Paul Connew, effing and jeffing his way (at full volume) through a series of early morning phone calls, competed with an irritatingly cheery Ferrari’s booming jokes, which he accompanied with his own laughter track.
At the Dorchester, I would happily have settled for a comfy broom cupboard, a light sandwich supper, a couple of brown ales and a black-and-white portable so I could watch the footy.
After all, they could easily have given me a wake-up call in the event of me being summoned onstage to shed tears à la Paltrow as I received a long overdue, but well-merited Lifetime’s Achievement Award…
FREELANCE photographer Edmond Terakopian’s images from the 7 July London bombings really wowed the Photographer of the Year judges, not just for their stunning quality, but also for their rarity value.
“He was snapping for 15 to 20 minutes before the police winkled him out,” veteran Scots smudge-judge Arthur Foster told me, admiringly.
Apparently it took British police years to adopt the kind of press controls that have been commonplace for decades at major incidents in the US. Snappers at Kennedy’s assassination, for instance, were corralled in a press bus travelling BEHIND the motorcade. Our boys in blue have got the hang of it now, though.
PIC-TIP: Scene of Crime Officers (cops with camera training)
have forsaken modern digital for old-fashioned film because clever briefs are persuading juries that digi-pix are a doddle to diddle.
If this argument catches on, where the Plods have trod might the paps have to follow?
davidbanks@pressgazette.co.uk
