Volume 17, Number 4, 2006 |
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ContentsEditorial - Mean street 3Peter Wayne - Journalism on the inside 5 Telegraph revolutionPeter Wilby - Brave new world? 15Bill Hagerty - Up to a point, Lord Deedes 23 Iason Athanasiadis - Mid-East media: the news wars 29 Marilyn Johnson - Walking the dead beat 37 Martin Moore - In news we trust 45 David Rowan - Fireworks, fun and Richard Desmond 52 Stephen Kingston - Voices of the people: community journalism 58 Virginia Ironside - The last great agony icon 65 Peter Stansill - Life and death of International Times 71 BOOK REVIEWSStewart Purvis on John Grist 82Kim Fletcher on W F Deedes 84 Chris Hutchins on Hunter Davies 86 Stephan Russ-Mohl on Marion Elizabeth Rodgers 88 Charles Perkins on Michael Isikoff and David Corn 90 Don Hale on Edward Riley 92 Geoffrey Goodman on Hugh Cudlipp 95 Quotes of the Quarter 22 Academia Digest 28 Ten Years Ago - The way we were 36 
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Peter Wayne - Journalism on the insideWhen an enlightened tutor gave me a copy of Jean Genet's Thief's Journal in the early 1980s to read and review during a particularly isolated year I spent in Barlinnie, “The Big Hoose” Prison in Glasgow, for a wallet-full of stolen credit cards, I vowed I'd create something worthwhile and long-lasting from my increasingly regular periods of incarceration. I was only 23 at the time. For a decade or more, after this almost damascene realisation, I learnt to use the painful experience of confinement to my own and society's advantage... [Read full article]
Peter Wilby - Brave new world or digital doom?If you want to get a flavour of the thinking behind the Telegraph revolution – which has been described as “the most significant media revolution since Wapping” – the Telegraph's own blogs are probably a good place to start. There, on October 30 2006, Shane Richmond, news editor of telegraph.co.uk, responded to a claim by a City analyst that in 30 years' time online advertising would account for more than half of all newspaper revenues. “You think,” blogged Richmond rhetorically, “we'll still be printing newspapers in 2036?” Many Telegraph old hands would observe, the way things are going, that the company will struggle to print newspapers even in 2007... [Read full article]
Bill Hagerty - Good DeedesWhen it comes to upper lips, Bill Deedes's is stiff enough to open the batting for England. He may, as friends suggest, be dismayed by what has been happening at his beloved Telegraph, but is determined to fend off any deceptive verbal deliveries that might penetrate such thoughts. It's a question of loyalty. “I've been through so many vicissitudes that... well, you see, in a sense the Telegraph has been my home all my working life,” he says. “To me, it's rather like my own home, which is reliable regardless who runs it or what they do. I have a deep-lying affection for the Telegraph. After all, I've known it for 70 years now and I never discuss its affairs.” Well, up to a point, Lord Deedes... [Read full article]
Iason Athanasiadis - Mid-East media: the news warsThe British producer we had just met, sitting under a BBC sun-tent in Naqqoura, the southernmost town in Lebanon, could hardly believe his ears. After BBC requests for on-camera interviews with Hezbollah representatives had been consistently rejected by the party's leadership throughout the duration of the five-week war, he was astounded to hear that our two-person team – a local cameraman and me – had roamed freely around southern Lebanon's Hezbollah-dominated villages for several days, interviewing on camera many of the movement's members and supporters... [Read full article]
Stephen Kingston - Voices of the people: community journalismFreedom of the press? Freedom of the press. Don't tell us about freedom of the press. Try putting out a magazine that tells the truth about community (ie working class) conditions in this country... that tries to give ordinary people (ie the working class) a real voice... that tries to produce hard-core investigative journalism about things affecting the real lives of real people (ie the working class). The indignation of those who feed off public money to fatten their incomes, profits and egos is almost tangible. How dare you? How bloody dare you?... [Read full article]
Virginia Ironside - The last great agony iconWas it really 10 years ago that I sat in St Bride's church off Fleet Street at the funeral of the person who was, arguably, the best-known agony aunt ever in Britain? And to what, exactly, was I saying goodbye? Marje herself ? Or the agony column as a concept? As I left, I remember wondering if, with the arrival of the information highway and the democratisation of everything generally, time hadn't run out not only for Marje but for the whole idea of a problem page. Who now needed advice columns with old-fashioned “values” and a tremendously maternalistic approach to their readers? “Come to me, you sad little people, and let me, wise woman of the ether, cure your
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