Volume 17, Number 1, 2006 |
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ContentsEditorial - Bananarama 3Future of the printed wordSteve Barnett - Reasons to be cheerful 7Derek Brown - Joe Blog's turn 15 Bruce Page - It's the media that need protecting 20 Andrew Marr - Brave new world 29 Esther Rantzen - Why are women such bullies? 35 James Geary - In praise of the tabs (sort of) 41 Simon Jenkins - PR and the press: two big guns Thembi Mutch - What Blair and Geldof didn't see 51 Oliver Preston - Cartoons... at last a big draw 59 Christian Christensen - God save us from the Islam clichés 65 Mukti Jain Campion - Diversity, or just colour by numbers? 71 BOOK REVIEWSAlan Rusbridger on Graham Stewart 77Roy Greenslade on Martin Conboy 79 Fred Halliday on Steve Tatham 81 Andrew Gilligan on Jake Lynch/Annabel McGoldrick 83 Peter Cole on Brian Winston 85 The way we were 40 
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Editorial - BananaramaPerhaps it is too soon to call it a trend, but there has certainly been a recent flurry of incidents in which public figures have found themselves flailing their arms in mid-air because their feet have connected with banana skins. Candidates for the Liberal-Democrat leadership, the Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis and the coach of the England football team are among the injured, at least in the tender zone of their pride... [Read full article]
Steve Barnett - Reasons to be cheerfulWe’ve become accustomed to predictions of the imminent demise of the printed word. Much as the rise of television in the 1950s fuelled fears throughout the Hollywood studios that no one would want to venture out of their living-rooms to a cinema, so the combination of internet, multichannel television and digital convergence have convinced today’s pundits that newspapers are not long for this world... [Read full article]
Derek Brown - Joe Blog's turnFor my tenth, and, as it turned out, my last, incarnation on The Guardian, I chose to work for its then-infant website, since renamed Guardian Unlimited (GU). That was at the end of 1997. I was its 14th member of staff. By the time I left early in 2002, there were about 150 on the GU staff, scores of them journalists. In that first autumn, my memory tells me, GU was taking some 30,000 hits a month. In September 1997, the month after Princess Diana died, the hit-count soared to 300,000 and everyone was saying we’d never see the like again. Last time I asked, I found that GU was recording well over 100 million page impressions – a much more accurate count – a month... [Read full article]
Esther Rantzen - Why are women such bullies?I was extraordinarily lucky throughout my 40 years in television to have been trained by some remarkable bosses. They were all men because, sadly, in those distant days when I was learning the trade there were no women in senior management. Huw Wheldon, Paul Fox, Bill Cotton, Michael Grade, Desmond Wilcox... if television had a golden age, a Renaissance, these men were its Leonardos and Michelangelos. Not only exceptionally creative themselves, they enabled others to explore and develop their own talents. You might think that with these shining examples among my influences, when my turn came I, too, would become an exemplary boss. Alas, you would be wrong... [Read full article]
James Geary - In praise of the tabs (sort of)A couple of years ago, I was asked to judge several categories in the British Press Awards. I was glad to be assigned to the “Best front page” and “Best cartoonist” categories since that meant I didn’t have to read a lot – or anything, really, apart from the captions to the cartoons. And the judging process itself, an afternoon of provocative debate and discussion with the other judges, was fun. When I attended the awards ceremony itself, though, I realised that despite living and working as a journalist in London for almost 10 years I still felt very much like a stranger in a strange land... [Read full article]
Thembi Mutch - What Blair and Geldof didn't seeI love Deborah Ross’s recent musings in The Independent on why it is that women never really tell the truth about the pain of labour: “If you were to ask me what it is truly like I, too, would fudge and say something along the following lines: ‘OK, imagine someone has stuffed a vast shipment of hand grenades up your uterus, timed to go off at increasingly frequent, increasingly violent intervals over a 17-hour period but, hey, it’s all worth it at the end when they hand you a little baby and you think: fucking hell, what have I done? I can’t love this. Put it in a home! Give it to a nice couple that can’t have children of their own!’ So that is what I would say because, of course, if you did actually spell out how bad it is there is no way women would ever have babies.”... [Read full article]
Mukti Jain Campion - Diversity, or just colour by numbers?I love Deborah Ross’s recent musings in The Independent on why it is that women never really tell the truth about the pain of labour: “If you were to ask me what it is truly like I, too, would fudge and say something along the following lines: ‘OK, imagine someone has stuffed a vast shipment of hand grenades up your uterus, timed to go off at increasingly frequent, increasingly violent intervals over a 17-hour period but, hey, it’s all worth it at the end when they hand you a little baby and you think: fucking hell, what have I done? I can’t love this. Put it in a home! Give it to a nice couple that can’t have children of their own!’ So that is what I would say because, of course, if you did actually spell out how bad it is there is no way women would ever have babies.”... [Read full article]
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