Volume 16, Number 2, 2005 |
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ContentsEditorial - Nightmare scenario 3Andy Bell - The election: a dog's breakfast 7 Mary Riddell - Non-stop Neil, at home alone 13 Tabloid revolutionRobert Thomson - New Times, good times 21Christopher Walker - Small Times, bad Times 26 Greg Watts - Why is God such a hard sell 31 Great political correspondentsAlan Watkins - Called to the bar 37Political cartooning - Philip Zec: genius recognised — official 45 Brendan O'Neill - When reporters cloud the truth 49 Don Berry - News shouldn't be a free ride 55 John Hill - Tomorrow's world is digital 60 Fergal Keane - My best friend 65 Christopher Wilson - My nanosecond of celebrity 71 BOOK REVIEWSRoy Greenslade on Piers Morgan 81Michael Brunson on the Richard Lindley 85 Phillip Knightley on Phil Rees 87 Mike Molloy on Derek Birdsall 89 Brian Winston on Birt, Dyke and the BBC 91 Bill Hagerty on Conrad Black 93 The way we were 48 
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Editorial - Nightmare scenarioWhen he reached his threescore years and ten, Rupert Murdoch, as befits a grandson of the manse, was well aware of Psalm 90’s prayer: “Teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.” Characteristically, he went one better. Complaining about the many “useless meetings” he had to endure, he counted his remaining hours. Twenty more years would give him around 175,000, none of which he proposed to squander... [Read full article]
Mary Riddell - Non-stop Neil, at home aloneAndrew Neil has two front doors. Or more, if you count the villa in the south of France, the 78th floor Manhattan condominium and wherever he parks his worldwide transferable telephone landline number when he is in Edinburgh. But this is the grander end of South Kensington, where Neil resides in a brace of adjoining flats. While posing a challenge to the dropper-in (which door to tap on?), the conjoined apartments seem appropriate to his existence... [Read full article]
TABLOID REVOLUTIONRobert Thomson - New Times, good timesThe debate about the dimensions of The Times has been quaintly onedimensional, largely due to the self-referential and self-reverential nature of media criticism in Britain. The ritualised obsession with self and the profound ignorance of audience have combined to become an almost senseless act of seppuku by newspapers which have failed to comprehend that competing papers are but one of many threats to survival, and that the greatest enemy of all is irrelevant to contemporary life. Journalism, in print or online, which fails to address the readers (or is inherently contemptuous of them) is a slightly deranged soliloquy whose discordant echoes are a reminder that the speaker has stopped taking his medication... [Read full article]
Christopher Walker - Small Times, bad TimesAs one of the 20 victims of the euphemistically-named programme of “agreed departures” ordered to bale out the cost of turning The Times tabloid, I have had more time than most to contemplate the transformation of a paper that when I joined it 33 years ago still qualified for its nickname, “The Thunderer”. Although even back then the open fire in the leader writers’ room had long disappeared, William Rees-Mogg still supervised the editorial conference from the vantage point of his rocking chair and was suitably removed from the cut-and-thrust of the daily news to confuse the name of his paper’s first Northern Ireland correspondent, Robert Fisk, with that of the loquacious nationalist politician Gerry Fitt when calling in the former one day to congratulate him on one of his many scoops... [Read full article]
Gregg Watts - Why is God such a hard sell?In the middle of the media frenzy that accompanied the death of Pope John Paul II and the election of Pope Benedict XVI, I telephoned PR Week to offer a behind-the-scenes look at how the Catholic Communications Network (CCN), the media office of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, was responding to events in Rome. Given that this was such a huge news story, I figured that the publication would jump at the chance to gain an insider’s view. For us, it was an opportunity to show that the Catholic Church wished to engage more with mainstream media, and didn’t see them as the enemy... [Read full article]
Alan Watkins - Called to the barThe uniform of black coat and waistcoat and striped trousers is now worn chiefly by hotel managers, male dental receptionists, maitres d’hotel in restaurants and barristers when they are on duty. For more than a decade after the 1939-45 war, I would estimate, it persisted as the approved outfit of the official and professional classes in this country. The late Osbert Lancaster’s pocket cartoons in the post-war Daily Express (always an acute guide to contemporary fashions in dress) would show senior civil servants and eminent physicians attired in this manner... [Read full article]
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