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May 31, 2011updated 23 Aug 2022 7:22pm

Press Gazette magazine: Giggsygate…Times paywall one year on…lessons for journalists from Baby P

By Dominic Ponsford1

The June edition of Press Gazette is now out – here are my six of the best from a packed edition:

The death of kiss and tell: Why Giggsygate has inadvertently injected fresh life into a former tabloid staple which had appeared to be on its way out. A redtop editor speaks out and secret industry figures reveal that kiss and tells rarely provide an on-the-day circulation boost.

The Times and Sunday Times paywall. One year on we find out whether Murdoch’s Wapping gamble has been a success or failure, includes: Dominic Young, Katie Vanneck-Smith, Stevie Spring, Rob Grimshaw, Douglas McCabe, Edward Roussel, Dan Sabbagh and Janine Gibson. Said Gibson (the editor of Guardian.co.uk): “It’s not that I refuse to pay for The Times, it’s just that, increasingly, the subject doesn’t come up.”

Regional Press Awards special report. Includes Alan Geere on returning to the Essex Chronicle 38 years after he started there as a trainee and picking up weekly newspaper of the year (above 20,000). He said: “We have a rule that reporters can’t submit a story unless it’s got real people in it. And we try to have fun, newspapers have got too serious.”

Lessons from Baby P. Former Health Service Journal editor Richard Vize on how overly negative reporting of the world of social work could put children’s lives at risk.

Former BBC staffer Michael Cole sticks the boot into former BBC colleagues who he believes have lost the art of telling news stories with pictures: “Today almost every television news bulletin consists of very little except people telling us things – but showing us little.”

Two great insights on reporting from conflict hotspots. Jonathan Steele on 30 years of reporting from Afghanistan and Alex Thomson on reporting from the rebel-held Libyan town of Misrata – where food and lodging, guides, transport and extreme danger are all provided on tap to foreign journalists.

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