Sportingo article

You can find a football related musing of mine here. Sportingo is a sporting citizen journalism project.

Good news sense?

Why has this not been the subject of greater attention? Only the Mail and the Mirror have covered it on their websites.

Sub editors not dead yet

Roy Greenslade and former Mirror Group chief executive David Montgomery have both said in recent weeks that, in their view, the news organisations of the future will have no need for sub editors. The role, they say, will disappear as reporters become all-rounders, able to carry out the subs’ tasks as well as their own, and the digital revolution takes hold.

Greenslade’s suggestion on his Guardian blog received an avalanche of responses – 54 when the comments facility on the piece was closed – the majority of which seemed to disagree.

It is certainly true that journalists will have to learn new skills as the industry changes at a faster pace than at any time in history. They will be called upon to carry out a range of tasks that would seem alien to those working in the media even 10 years ago. But to say that the role of the sub editor will vanish altogether is premature.

Asking journalists to do lots of different things is counter-productive. Reporters should stick to reporting – if you overwork them by asking them to carry out all sorts of other tasks the reporting will inevitably suffer. You will get fewer stories, and the quality and substance of these stories will be diminished. Nick Davies argues in his book Flat Earth News that this is exactly what has happened over the last 20 years – to the detriment of journalism.

Subs perform a vital role, and increasingly illustrate the difference between a good, well put-together product and the plethora of poorly researched and badly written journalism that litters the internet (which, by the way, probably includes this blog). Merging roles may cut costs, but it would also cut quality.

Subs seem though to be being asked to carry out more tasks, not less, in the digital age, with responsibility for newspaper websites, particularly at a regional level, often falling to them. For me, this state of affairs paints a more realistic picture of the future: it is those people who possess a diverse range of skills already, and who are able to adapt and turn their hand to anything, who will survive. There will be a greater coming together of roles, but those basic sub-editing skills will continue to be crucial to the final product.

Archant Suffolk recently announced it is to replace 20 sub editors at the East Anglian Daily Times and Ipswich Evening Star with ‘advertising designers’. It will be an intriguing experiment. But it is not one that I think will have a positive effect on the quality of their journalism.

Recognition for this blog

A couple of honourable mentions from elsewhere in the blogosphere:

http://www.martinstabe.com/blog/2008/02/19/christopher-deans-blog-musings-about-work-experience/

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/greenslade/2008/03/hail_city_universitys_student.html

Comment: banning the display of cigarettes will only make the problem worse

When a child is told it can’t have something, what tends to happen is its desire to obtain said item increases, often proportionately to the vigour with which it is withheld. For to be told something is off limits is to infuse it with a certain aura, to turn it into the archetypal ‘forbidden fruit’ and a symbol of rebellion against authority.

This is a phenomenon that has been recognised for centuries, from Biblical tales of a prohibited apple in the Garden of Eden to the often irresponsible attitudes of present day teenagers to alcohol. Yet the British government seems to have dispensed with all semblance of this reality with its proposals to ban the display of cigarettes in shops.

The implementation of these plans will make the prospect of smoking more attractive to young people, rather than discouraging them from starting. By hiding cigarettes away, smoking is given an even greater edge, appearing more dangerous, and ‘cooler’.

Likewise, the recent rise in the age at which tobacco products can be purchased, from 16 to 18, will not have the desired effect of reducing their use among the young. Rebellion is an inevitable, and necessary, part of growing up. If something is made out to be bad, young people are going to want to try it.

The problem is that someone who starts smoking at 15 is three times more likely to die of smoking-related cancer than someone who starts in their late twenties. But making tobacco products harder to get hold of is not the answer.

Higher taxation is unsustainable too. Pricing people out of buying cigarettes will not stop them acquiring them: some will turn to crime to feed their addiction, as is the case with many illegal drugs. The problem would merely become one of a different, and indeed worse, nature, its character altered instead of eradicated.

An outright ban on smoking can also be discounted as a practical solution. Prohibition of this kind never works – witness the effects of the alcohol ban in 1920s America.

As with all societal troubles, the answer lies in education, and in preventing rather than curing. But we must show young people that smoking is bad, rather than telling them. In some countries, cigarette packets are adorned with graphic images of the damage smoking does to internal organs. This is the type of message that needs to be sent, not a token ‘smoking kills’ on the back of a packet, which tells people that it is dangerous, but does not explain why or how.

What is required then is a sustained advertising campaign that leaves nothing to the imagination. Let’s not pretend smoking doesn’t exist – let’s be brutally frank about its effects. It will have a greater and more resounding impact than words alone.

There are some key differences been this approach and that advocated by the government. One hides smoking away, the other is open and honest about it. One makes smoking more attractive by making it less available, while in the latter case, tobacco products are freely available, and can even be reasonably priced.

Simply saying ‘don’t smoke’ has the opposite effect. It is only through this showing, rather than telling, that governments can get messages through to the people who need to hear them the most.

Crossing Iranian roads - in the name of journalism

I have just watched John Simpson dodging cars in Tehran as he reports for the BBC Ten O’Clock News on this week’s forthcoming Iranian elections. The passage, in which he makes his way from one side of a busy road to the other while doing a piece to camera, is quite the most bizarre spectacle of TV news reporting I’ve ever seen. Not only do his attempts to avoid being struck by moving traffic distract totally from what he has to say, they surely set a bad example to youngsters being taught to pay attention to the Green Cross Code.

Uneven coverage of missing children

The disappearance three weeks ago of nine year-old Shannon Matthews has been met with near media silence when compared with the blanket coverage afforded to Madeleine McCann. Roy Greenslade blogged on the subject last week and concluded that the social class of the girls, and their respective attractiveness (harsh, but probably correct), were the main reasons for the relative lack of interest in Shannon’s plight.

Perhaps though, there is another factor at play here. Having followed the McCann story for months, and ultimately ending up getting nowhere, might it be that the collective media did not wish to be drawn into story that is potentially just as lengthy and inconclusive, for fear of losing face? The Madeleine McCann story ran and ran, but has now reached a stage where it has all but vanished from the papers. Realising it was going nowhere, it has been quietly dropped. Madeleine McCann added sales to a certain extent, but has not had a significant impact on the press ABC figures.

Newspapers have been criticised for the intensity of their Madeleine coverage, which many agree has been way over the top; it has seen news organisations, to a large extent, in the hands of the McCann’s slick media operation (see a previous post of mine for an example of this in relation to the BBC). And just this week it was revealed that the McCanns are considering suing the Express group for its “incorrect and unfair” coverage.

Normally when a child goes missing the story dominates the news for many weeks, as was the case when Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman disappeared, and likewise Milly Dowler. But this case is different: there has been much less coverage than of previous, similar incidents.

So perhaps the media just don’t want to go through another circus akin to the Madeleine affair again; maybe a lesson has been learned. But this would be a terrible shame for all connected to Shannon Matthews.