Journopig looks at what the media writes about, how it does it, and why.
March 5, 2010
Bloggers Wanted: Must Have Better Journalism Skills Than Their Bosses
With all these intern vacancies and “unpaid job – but you may get the odd byline and experience!” adverts in the world of journalism at the moment, you may be forgiven for thinking that applicants’ standards must have to be very high for them to succeed in getting a journo job in today’s market.
Unfortunately, the same doesn’t apply to those offering the jobs.
Take this job advert on the Work For An MP website. It’s for a blog contributor, writing a minimum of one post a week for a new political debate blog. For that commitment, you get no pay, but just the kudos offering “new insights” into the political agenda.
But this is what the guys who run the blog want:
Now, perhaps this is a deliberate mistake. After all, they want writers, so maybe they really ARE after “write contributors”.
But you’d think that the least you could do for your potential unpaid contributors would be to work on your own writing skills first, eh?
March 4, 2010
Local Paper v Hyperlocal: How The Hull Daily Mail Lost The Plot
Now, we understand that local newspapers may be feeling a bit threatened right now, especially with the rise of the hyperlocal blog, where on a shoestring budget, bloggers come along and cover local news – sometimes better than the established newspapers.
But there’s no excuse for the poor standard of journalism that the Hull Daily Mail tried to tempt its readers with today.
Deciding to embark on a one-sided feud with Paul Smith, who runs the Beverley, East Yorkshire blog HU17.net, the HDM got one of its intrepid reporters to write a malicious diatribe about how Mr Smith was responsible for designing porn websites – the implication being, “Can you trust this man?”
The style of the story was a la News of the World in its salivating “The Mail can reveal…” tone; but also Daily Mail in its prudish, pursed-lips reporting.
It was a deeply distasteful article. Paul Smith designs websites. That’s his day job. He probably designs them for many different clients – who may involve those working in the sex industry.
That does not mean that HE works in the sex industry.
But the HDM went one better, seeming to imply that because of his web design work, Smith might also be a paedophile:
“the [HU17] site features photographs of junior sports fixtures as well as news events…”
Blimey – a local news site featuring sports coverage? Must be dodgy.
The HDM then decided the story merited getting a reporter to go undercover and try a bit of entrapment:
“When an undercover Mail reporter, posing as an escort girl, approached him to design a website, he agreed to do it for between £150 and £250.”
Not sure of the innuendo here – Smith agreeing to an act on payment of an agreed fee? Well, try this:
“He also boasted six years’ experience in ‘this field’.”
We love the speech marks round that last section. The Mail then claims it “confronted” Smith, although as he has posed for a photo and seems to have chatted quite honestly with the reporter, it’s not much of a “confrontation”. More of a chat and a cup of tea.
The HDM reporter also takes pleasure in listing, in detail, the services offered by various porn websites designed by Smith.
We’re more concerned with how long the HDM reporter spent researching those sites, and how much he dribbled over his keyboard whilst doing this part of his job.
The article is basically a badly written, snide, and pointless – it tries to make something very unpleasant out of someone’s perfectly legal career.
Innuendo and incredibly unnecessary “undercover” work aside, we’d be embarrassed if we were an editor and a reporter came to us with this story. Especially as the reporter makes a point of naming Smith’s partner – apparently just because she works for the respectable BBC.
Yet the online version of the Mail seems inordinately proud of its non-story, boasting:
“See today’s Mail for more on the story, including how our reporter posed as an escort and confronted Paul Smith…”
The Hull Daily Mail has little concept of what news is, and has badly misjudged what its readers want to see in the paper, judging by the 150 comments that were on the online version at time of writing this post.
But the paper doesn’t seem to really care what its readers want. In fact, it thinks it is being generous in allowing comments at all:
“The Mail has kept the comments facility on this story to allow debate to continue, but offensive postings will be removed.”
Well, we found the Mail’s story offensive, so we hope that will soon be removed. And we’re sorry that this local daily has proved that, in some quarters, the standard of journalism in this country is definitely declining.
Thanks to @rasga on Twitter for the tip-off about this story.
March 4, 2010
Education: An Urban Bias In The BBC?
One of our frequent bugbears is the lack of knowledge some parts of the BBC has about rural communities and life.
Commissioning a series about rural crafts, or moving Countryfile to primetime may get urban people watching, but it does not equal an awareness of country life.
This lack of awareness can be seen in a piece about secondary school places on the BBC News website, which was published on 2 March.
Entitled “Delay over for parents waiting to hear on school places”, the story is about families hearing from local councils as to whether their child got their “first choice” of secondary school for September.
But where it fails is in its attempt to marry the situation in urban centres with that in rural areas. The BBC writes about how:
“In London and Birmingham a third of pupils have not got their first choice.”
But then compares this fact with the fact that:
“in some rural areas, more than 95% were given their first choice places.”
Various statistics are given: 49% got their first choice place in Wandsworth; 66.5% in Birmingham; and then, again hammering it home:
“In some rural areas there is a much higher rate of pupils getting their first preference – such as Norfolk, which was above 95%.”
Now, let us just give our point of view as people living in a rural area. There is one state secondary school near us. The next two, geographically, are each more than ten miles away and so involve a long drive.
Many parents here have to commute many more miles to work, not necessarily in the same direction as the schools, making driving the school run twice a day unfeasible, if not impossible.
In addition, the other state schools have broadly similar exam results, resources and skills, meaning that there isn’t much point choosing one of them over the local school.
So we wonder how many people in rural areas, choosing a state secondary school, even put more than one choice down on an application form.
If there’s only one school, you put that down on the form. But it would still count as a first preference.
Getting a first preference school in this rural area does not mean, as the BBC paraphrases a Labour minister, that “parents had more choice”. It means, possibly, that they only had one choice.
March 1, 2010
Why Are Girls So Obsessed By Their Size, Again?
We’ve had the misfortune to read Closer magazine this week. We know, we’re sorry. But it was looking at us, and we thought we’d have a peek. Ahem.
But what struck us about this gossip-cum-fashion mag was its obsession with weight. The front cover flags this up, with a picture of actress Claire Sweeney before and after going on a diet with a strapline that shouts:
“I’ve lost a stone in 7 weeks!”
There’s even a special section listed in the contents, called Closer To Your Body. It comprises two parts – “Shape Up!” and “Eat Up!” – which sound like a bit of an oxymoron put together like that.
There’s a story about Kerry Katona, mentioning the weight loss boot camp she’s been on, and the fact that her husband had previously filed for divorce because she had become a “lard arse”.
Then we have WAG Carly Cole, expecting a baby this month. An “onlooker” (who? The guy who delivers the post to Closer’s office?) says:
“She still looks so slim and healthy.”
Because, obviously, the goal when heavily pregnant is to still look slim.
On the next page, we have Kelly Osbourne extolling the delights of now being a size 6 body – achieved, apparently, by just doing a detox diet for a month.
We also have a full page on how Britney Spears was looking “incredible” when she “flaunted a super-toned body”, but that now she has put on weight through eating junk food (apparently), she now looks “puffy faced”.
It is implied that she looked far better when she was a “slender size 8″ living on a “strict low-sugar 1,200-calories-a-day diet.”
And then there’s two pages on Leona Lewis, headlined:
“I love it when people tell me I’ve lost weight!”
- and detailing the singer’s “new slimline shape” after dropping from a “size 12-14 to a 10″.
A feature on presenter Christine Bleakley’s water-skiing challenge for Sport Relief describes her unnecessarily as “size 10 Christine”. Likewise, an interview with Joan Rivers calls her “the size 10 comedian”.
Claire Sweeney is pictured in her bikini, and again, we’re told:
“she’s dropped a stone, going…from a size 12-14 to a 10 – and is in amazing shape.”
- despite the before and after photos of her looking very similar. The only differences in the ones taken after her apparent weight loss that we can see are:
- she’s wearing a more flattering bikini;
- she’s been oiled to within an inch of her life; and
- she’s smiling in the second, to imply her happiness at being labelled a size 10.
And then we have American actress and singer Jennifer Hudson being commended for losing weight after having a baby:
“she has dropped from a size 22 to a 10 by cutting out her favourite fried foods…”
Now, the before and after pictures of Ms Hudson that the magazine has chosen to illustrate its piece with are interesting. In the former, she is pictured a month after her baby’s birth.
Yes, she has some pregnancy weight on, but she still actually looks good. In the after picture, she’s glammed up and wearing a nice outfit. She looks very good – but she’s not a “size 10″.
It is possible that she is actually an American size 10 – a UK size 14, if we remember rightly. But quoting an American size in a UK magazine, without clarifying the discrepancy in sizing, seems a bit odd.
It’s as though Closer believes that every girl’s goal should be to aspire to be a size 10 or under. It doesn’t matter whether it’s UK or US sizing – being able to say “I’m a size 10″ is the important thing.
Why can’t a size 12 be seen as healthy or desirable? Why do successful women have to have their profession prefixed with their dress size?
And why, in the 21st century, do we have this absurd obsession with what size female celebrities – and us – are?
Why can’t we just focus on their – and our – achievements and success?
Why?
February 26, 2010
When The BBC Should Use An Ellipsis… And When It Shouldn’t.
In our last post, about West Oxfordshire District Council’s magazine, Creating Futures, we commented on the council’s obsession with the humble ellipsis – in other words, its habit of ending every headline with “…”.
Presumably, it does this in the mistaken belief that it keeps you reading on. But it doesn’t.
It just makes you wonder why every headline ends so half-heartedly, as though the sub-editor (if there is one – from our experience, it’s probably a council press officer acting as writer, sub and editor all rolled into one) couldn’t think of a tight way of ending a sentence and so just added “…” at the end of everything.
It’s not just local publications that have this habit. Today’s BBC News website is following the trend. In a story that is, frankly, just horrible in itself, the Beeb has succumbed to this horrible grammatical habit.
This is the end of the story:
Now, why, in the second paragraph down, end a quote with an ellipsis? This implies that you just can’t be bothered to finish the quote; or it may make people wait with bated breath, wondering what on earth comes next.
We were always taught in school that you only put an ellipsis if you were omitting part of a sentence, but would then be writing the end of the sentence within the quote.
It’s a means of letting people know that there’s part of the sentence missing, and avoids you getting accused of misinterpreting what someone has said.
But in this case, we just have a few words from a quote added within the next sentence. So no need for the ellipsis.
In the pull quote used within the story, the BBC simply don’t bother with any punctuation at the end:
- which, although presumably done for BBC style reasons, looks equally odd to us.
We say, “bah humbug!” to style issues and unnecessary ellipses. What’s wrong with the common or garden full-stop, BBC?
February 25, 2010
General Election 2010: The View From Local Government
Another week, another local government magazine. This time, it’s “Creating Futures”, the oddly titled newsletter from West Oxfordshire District Council.
The newsletter is very unappealing to look at and feel, partly because it’s on recycled paper so feels a bit like school toilet paper. It also has a very uninspiring front cover, featuring a big aerial photo of a town – probably Witney, where WODC is based.
“Find out about planning for the future…” is the cover’s headline – which basically means, “We’re planning to stick thousands of new homes in all the market towns in our area, without providing an adequate infrastructure for them”. But that’s not a great headline – although, mind you, neither is WODC’s choice of headline.
But anyway. The main feature we were interested in was a double page spread headlined:
“Countdown to election fever…”
(WODC obviously likes the use of ellipses in headlines – we’ve never seen an organisation use as many in external communications)
Now, we’re not sure that the generally apathetic British public tends to get “election fever”. The media certainly does. We get a bit excited in this house about it, but that’s because we’re a bit sad and haven’t got enough of a social life, obviously.
The feature does serve a purpose, in trying to explain procedures for elections, the role that the district council plays in running polling stations and counting votes. It explains how to vote, how to ask for a proxy or postal vote.
But it inevitably focuses more on the district and parish council elections which will be held on 6 May (unless the General Election is called for that date, in which case, parish council elections will be delayed until 27 May).
And these are not sexy things. WODC tries to get its readers excited by saying that voting for district councillors will give the latter:
“the opportunity to sit on committees that deal with a wide range of issues, from planning to finance.”
Woo-hoo.
WODC also says that local elections give residents the chance to:
“have your say on the services that affect you locally, such as…housing…in your communities.”
Yet, in its “planning for the future…” feature four pages earlier, it puts the responsibility for the thousands of planned new homes locally firmly at the feet of central government.
Central government has decided that West Oxfordshire must have at least 7,300 new homes within the next 16 years; WODC is merely working out where they should go.
If residents want to disagree with WODC’s views, they have to let the council know by 22 March – two months before they can make their views known in a local election. And WODC doesn’t specify what will happen if lots of people disagree with the plans they’ve drawn up.
So when WODC quotes a local resident as feeling “passionately” about voting, because:
“you realise it is important to vote and that it can make a difference.”
- it is hard not to raise an eyebrow, and wonder whether it really does make a difference. WODC wants local people to vote – but it doesn’t make it clear why anyone should.
February 24, 2010
Regional TV News: An Analysis of the BBC
As a bit of an experiment, we’re looking at regional television news programmes at the moment, to see how well they represent our region.
We live in Oxfordshire, but very close to the borders of both Gloucestershire and Warwickshire. Our BBC news coverage comes from BBC Oxford or BBC South.
Ironically, we can only access this via Sky – on analogue TV, we can only access Midlands Today. Apparently, this is something to do with our nearest transmitter pointing the wrong way – which nobody seems to accept responsibility for.
The BBC employs a strange method of delivering local news to Oxfordshire. On the main weekday evening news programme, we get a ten to 15 minute long BBC Oxford bulletin – an opt from the studio in Summertown, Oxford – before going back to the main BBC South programme, which comes from Southampton.
But BBC Oxford doesn’t just cover Oxford, despite its name. According to the BBC Oxford website, it covers:
“Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, parts of Northamptonshire, Swindon and the Cotswolds”
- which is both a wide and diverse geographical stretch, as well as quite a specific one. Swindon is mentioned, and part of Wiltshire comes under the Cotswolds – but by no means all of it. Likewise, part of Gloucestershire is in the Cotswolds, but not all.
So there is a degree of overlap in the provision of BBC regional news. For example, within Gloucestershire, Gloucester and Cheltenham come under Midlands Today; Bristol comes under Points West; the Cotswolds come under BBC Oxford.
Yet things still aren’t that simple. Points West has district reporters for its programme – including one who is based in Swindon (and covers the whole of Wiltshire, including its Cotswold section), and one based in Gloucester (who covers the whole of the county, including the Cotswolds).
And stories are sometimes shared across programmes, which can lead to embarrassing situations. On 17 February, for example, BBC South included a story about a 90-year-old paperboy in Dorset. At the end of the report, the journalist on the vt said:
“For Spotlight [the BBC's news programme for the South-West], at Winterborne Monkton…”
Cut to the BBC South presenter in the studio, embarrassed, saying quickly:
“Or BBC South, even.”
BBC South itself seems to cover Berkshire, Dorset, Hampshire, Oxford, Surrey, Sussex and Wiltshire. But these are very different counties, and it is perhaps inevitable that the programme fails to cover all of them adequately – if our analysis of last week’s programmes is anything to go by.
One thing to note – on a Friday, we don’t get BBC South in the evening; the main news programme is broadcast entirely from Oxford, so our analysis of BBC South only covered Monday to Thursday.
With the main studio and reporters being based at Southampton, the week’s programmes were dominated by Hampshire stories.
Tuesday 16 February was the most Hampshire-heavy, with the section of BBC South that is transmitted in Oxfordshire covering eight Hampshire stories and one from East Sussex – and none of any of the other counties.
On the previous evening, Monday 15 February, Hampshire had had seven stories devoted to it, with one for each of East Sussex, Berkshire, Somerset and Gloucestershire.
Wednesday was the only day that included an Oxfordshire story in the main BBC South news – but it was a piece on an event that had already been covered in the BBC Oxford opt, which showed a lack of communication between Oxford and Southampton newsrooms. It meant that although we had two reports about our county on the regional news, they were about the same thing.
On Wednesday, there were also four stories about East Sussex (including sports pieces), and two about Dorset. On Thursday, there were three pieces about Berkshire and one about Dorset; the rest of the stories on both days were about Hampshire.
Just as BBC South concentrates disproportionately on Hampshire in the part of the programme we get to see, BBC Oxford fails to adequately cover the other counties it is supposed to. On Monday, there were five Oxfordshire stories, four Buckinghamshire, and one for each of Bedfordshire, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire.
On Tuesday, there were seven Oxfordshire piece, three Buckinghamshire, one for Gloucestershire and four for Wiltshire. Wednesday was the most Oxfordshire-dominated, with eight pieces about the county, and one for Buckinghamshire. Thursday saw five Oxfordshire pieces and three Buckinghamshire.
On Friday, when we had a half-hour BBC Oxford programme, there were nine Oxfordshire stories, two Buckinghamshire and one Wiltshire – when there was more opportunity to cover the rest of the BBC Oxford region.
Yet this focus on Oxfordshire led to a saggy, boring programme. There tends to be a concentration by both BBC Oxford and BBC South on the two-way interview – either live, or as-live. These are rarely about hot news, so you get an overly long interview about something not very interesting, often with people who are not the most engaging speakers.
Rather than try and shoehorn in these long interviews, the programmes would be more interesting – and varied – if interviews were made shorter, and more effort was made to send the reporters out to find and cover district stories.
There are also too many plugs for other BBC programmes – both TV and radio. Last week, we saw plugs for BBC Radio Berkshire, BBC Radio Surrey, BBC Radio Solent and BBC Radio Oxford. Events organised by local BBC radio stations are advertised; at one point, there was a scrolling aston advertising a BBC radio station whilst a sports piece was running. A BBC website was also advertised.
The BBC seems unable to provide good quality regional news programmes that cover a defined, local, area. The BBC Oxford opt fails to adequately cover the several counties it is supposed to, and when it is given a decent time to do so, provides flabby, overlong coverage of non-news.
And BBC South also covers a wide area, yet tends to concentrate on the area near to its studios. The reason for this is likely to be economic rather than laziness; it’s cheaper to walk down the road to cover a story than travel to a different county; it’s cheaper to borrow a story from another BBC programme than create your own.
But, we would argue, does producing regional TV news programmes like this adequately serve the licence fee payer? We think not.
February 22, 2010
A Tale Of One Freelancer: Revenge, Showing Off, And A Lack Of Imagination
Using your personal life experiences as the inspiration for stories is nothing new for novelists, but when journalists do this, it sometimes grates on us.
Take a piece in yesterday’s You - the Mail on Sunday’s magazine, entitled:
“From excess to exes – how my Dubai dream turned into a nightmare”
It is written by Alexandra Shakespeare, who describes herself as a “freelance editor and writer…living in the beautiful Cotswolds”, which makes us raise an eyebrow at her already.
We live in the Cotswolds and we don’t feel the need to preface it with “beautiful” all the time, as we’re not trying to impress people with what a wonderful place we live in. But Ms Shakespeare seems to want to impress her readers.
She is also a journalist who is not afraid to plunder the details of her own life in order to get a commission and make cash. So in You’s Real Lives feature, Alexandra tells us all about her five-star lifestyle in Dubai, where she edited Harpers & Queen and spent loads of money on material possessions that she didn’t need.
Oh – but this isn’t trying to tell people how successful she’s been, in case you’re wondering. It’s actually a tale of how her boyfriend turned out to be a philanderer, and how, after they married (yes, after), she realised he was cheating on her and left him in Dubai, returning to England where she met her “life partner” and had a baby.
Obviously, if you’re a freelance writer, and have a big Cotswolds mortgage to pay, writing about your life is an easy option when you’re looking for inspiration for articles. It’s also a picture editor’s dream, as you have a ready supply of images from your photo albums for the paper to reproduce.
But it is also the lazy option and shows a lack of imagination. Could Alexandra not have found a person with an interesting life that she could have written about? Most journos are nosy souls, and the Cotswolds are full of interesting characters, in our experience, that she could have chatted to.
Talking to someone else wouldn’t have provided such a good peg for a bit of revenge, though. Write negatively about your ex, list his shortcomings and how awful he was, and don’t give him the right of reply, to put his side of the story. And then publish lots of photos of him.
What happened to having a bit of dignity, to put the past to one side and concentrate on the future? Or is there no concept of a private life remaining private in Ms Shakespeare’s life?
It doesn’t help that the story is nothing new. People cheat on their partners all the time – it isn’t newsworthy.
But perhaps we’re being unfair on Alexandra Shakespeare, and the Mail on Sunday is to blame for commissioning this feature in the first place. She lived the lifestyle of a celeb (even if she wasn’t one), which the Mail loves. She’s blonde and easy on the eye. She has lots of pictures featuring her and nice scenery.
In addition, the story was about Dubai, which the Mail seems to be a bit obsessed about – the front cover of the TravelMail supplement in the same edition features Nell McAndrew explaining:
“Why I’m wedded to Dubai”
But whatever the thinking behind the Mail’s decision to run this story, we hope that next time, Alexandra Shakespeare looks a bit further than her wedding album for inspiration, and actually finds an interesting story to write about.
February 20, 2010
Free Gift Of The Year, Courtesy Of The People
If you do nothing else on Sunday, you must make sure you rush out to the newsagent to grab a copy of the Sunday People – and get there early, as copies are bound to go quick.
For the tabloid is advertising the best giveaway we’ve seen in a long time.
Forget the free DVDs of The Thornbirds from the Mail, the cheaply produced paperbacks from the Times or the Guardian’s (frankly bizarre) educational wallcharts.
They have all been usurped by the People’s advertising and gimmickry skills.
Ladies and gentlemen, we give you…
True Crime – a free magazine, only with the People!
The magazine includes – and we quote from the People’s low-budget TV ad -
• Celebrity Criminals
• British Monsters
Want to read a rehash of Myra Hindley’s crimes? Now you can! Want to learn about sick OAP Mr Biggs and the job that led to him living the high life in South America? You got it!
We’ll be dashing out to the paper shop for our “monster” copy of the magazine. We recommend you do the same. It would be “criminal” to miss it (sorry).
