Pearson, publisher of the Financial Times, can come off Press Gazette’s ‘skinflints list’after coming up with a £60,000 donation for the Journalists’ Charity to help run its care home in Dorking, Surrey.
Last year, Press Gazette published a front page pillorying the big newspaper publishers which had yet to make a contribution to the care home appeal.
The donation from Pearson means Trinity Mirror and Express Newspapers are the only major newspaper publishers yet to dish out a tiny slice of their massive profits to hand a little something back to the very people who make all that cash for them.
Still on the Journalists’ Charity, filmmakers Ian Craig and Paul Desmond have presented it with a cheque for £250 raised from donations for copies of their film, Time Gentlemen Please, about the closure of the House of Commons press gallery bar.
Craig is political editor of the Manchester Evening News and Desmond works in City PR. Their 15-minute film tells the story of the press bar and the people who pass through, and won silver at the 2008 British International Amateur Film Festival and gold in the Essex Film Festival. The bar was demolished as part of the recent refurbishment of the press gallery.
Chairman of the Journalists’ Charity, Robert Warren, said: ‘This shows that serious money can be raised from very simple ideas.
‘We want to see this replicated all over the country. If you are having a retirement do, a leaving do or a Christmas party, have a collection or a raffle and donate the profits to the Charity.
‘Put a swear box on the newsdesk. These sums mount up and help us provide some £300,000 a year for journalists and their dependants if they hit hard times.”
Axe reckons that with a 10p swear box in every newsroom we could probably build a new journalists’ care home in Beverley Hills.
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