SEPTEMBER 2000
BY JON SLATTERY
Telegraph goes for modern design
Five years ago The Daily Telegraph unveiled its new look. The
redesign by Clive Crook and his in-house team aimed to make the paper
easier to navigate, more modern, crisper and cleaner.
Battle of the baby scoops
OK! beat rival Hello! and the tabloids to clinch world exclusive
pictures and interviews with Catherine Zeta Jones, Michael Douglas –
and their new baby Dylan. Hello! hit back with a scoop of its own –
exclusive pictures of David Bowie, wife Iman and their new baby in a
deal estimated to have cost close to £1m.
Dyke remembers the first time the BBC rebuffed him BBC director
General Greg Dyke, giving the MacTaggart lecture at the Edinburgh
Television Festival, revealed he had applied for two jobs at the BBC.
“The first in 1970 was as a reporter on Radio Teesside, which I failed
to get, and the second nearly 30 years later as director general.” Dyke
was the first director general never to have worked at the BBC before
taking on the role.
Newsreader with a makeover
Also at Edinburgh, news presenter Andrea Catherwood admitted she had
felt under pressure to change her image when she moved to Channel 5’s
evening news bulletin. “I was given a stylist who tried to tell me what
way to do my hair but I have made sure I have made my own decisions,”
she said.
“I don’t want everyone to be thinking about my hair when I’m on TV.”
Catherwood was speaking during a session entitled ‘Can News Be Sexy?’
Huw’s haircut advice ‘should have led to a defection’
On
the pressure for news presenters to look good, BBC foreign
correspondent Jeremy Bowen told the festival: “If I was announcing a
significant breakthrough in the Middle East I wouldn’t want people
thinking, ‘Look at that tie.'” Another BBC foreign correspondent,
Charles Wheeler, suggested that Huw Edwards “should have resigned and
gone to ITV” rather than let the BBC give him advice on his clothes and
haircut. A BBC spokesman denied Edwards was given a makeover.
Sport staff ordered to smarten up
At the Daily Sport, editor-in-chief Tony Livesey made no bones about
his bid to spruce up his journalists. Livesey had issued an edict that
all staff, including subs and photographers, should wear collars and
ties. “I might be old fashioned but I feel it helps the work ethic,” he
said.
“I don’t want my journalists walking around like Worzel Gummidge. I
don’t hold with all that smart-casual nonsense – where did it get
Richard Branson?” A year before, Sport journalist Simon Scott was
sacked in an argument over clothes. He had refused a demand by the
assistant editor that he don a “Colin the Alien” suit.
Reporter ploughs on after prankster covers him in leaves
A smartly dressed Sky reporter, sabotaged by a prankster who emptied
a bucket of leaves over his head outside the High Court, was praised
for his professionalism. Sky health correspondent Thomas Moore kept his
cool and continued his live report on a court case. Moore finished his
report without a glimmer of a smile, according to managing editor Simon
Cole, before turning to the news crew and saying: “What the **** was
that.”
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