Here’s a snapshot of the best bits from the April edition of Press Gazette magazine – which is jam-packed with useful stuff for anyone who is seriously interested in journalism.
Sky News special correspondent Alex Crawford (on the front cover) is not yet a household name. But she will be. No-one else has ever won three RTS journalist of the year prizes.
She has most recently been on our screens with some brave reporting from the frontline of the Arab-nation revolts.
Asked whether she finds it hard to remain impartial covering such emotive stories, she says: “When you are walking into a hospital and seeing people dying in front of you from bullet wounds, unarmed protestors who just criticised somebody, there’s no impartiality required. That’s just human.”
Editors and publishers at The Economist, Good Housekeeping, Monocle and The London Review of Books reveal some of the secrets behind their bumper paid-for circulation growth. At the LRB a new website is apparently bringing in 500 new subscribers a month.
Regional newspaper publisher Archant also reveals how some of its titles have defied the industry-wide circulation slump – and we also find out how Trinity Mirror’s Liverpool Echo is bucking the trend.
Want to launch an iPad app but haven’t got the $30m Rupert Murdoch spent on creating The Daily? Don’t worry, Ian Reeves reveals how you can do it for free.
Lori Miles‘s latest must-read column on the magazine industry looks at the amazing soaraway circulation success of a certain tabloid red-top – The Economist – and she asks whether IQ is the new porn for male magazine readers?
Alex Thomson reports from Japan on the behind-the-scenes story of covering the earthquake, Tsunami and nuclear disaster – and on sharing a bed with Jon Snow.
Peter Kirwan explains why The Publican is now apparently worth barely one fifteenth the £21m price tag it fetched six years ago.
David Banks pays a birthday tribute to Rupert Murdoch by revealing the soft side of a media magnate more normally known for his ruthlessness.
And as he steps down after 33 years with the BBC – Kevin Marsh gives his side of the dodgy dossier row in-depth for the first time. Amazingly, Marsh was never called to testify to the Hutton Inquiry into the death of Dr David Kelly, even though he was editor of Today at the time Andrew Gilligan made his now infamous revelations in May 2003 about the government dossier making the case for war with Iraq.
“I was very confident the Gilligan story was substantially true, as indeed it was…There was a script, I saw the script – the script was fine…It was a slip of the tongue, it was early in the morning. I don’t think it was malicious.”
Marsh reveals how the whole terribly damaging row could have been averted if then Number 10 spin doctor Alastair Campbell had just called up and explained exactly what it was he was so upset about. Amazing stuff.
Read all about it only in the April edition of Press Gazette magazine, which goes in the post to subscribers on 1 April.
To subscribe (prices start from £40 a year) click on this link.
Email pged@pressgazette.co.uk to point out mistakes, provide story tips or send in a letter for publication on our "Letters Page" blog
