It’s been a while but next week Press Gazette is back in print with our first quarterly edition.
At 88-pages, stiff-covered and perfect-bound – Journalism Quarterly is the beefiest print package we have ever delivered. And at £19.90 a year for direct debit subscribers, the reduction to quarterly frequency means the price of getting the inside track on British journalism has come crashing down. (CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE: £26.99, or £19.90 if paying by direct debit. Call 0845 0739607.)
If you would like your Press Gazette subscription to include the current issue, please let customer services know on 0845 073 9607.
Here are my highlights of the Autumn edition:
With 46 UK journalists arrested SO FAR as a result of the phone-hacking inspired purges we have four superb essays from the right and left of the political spectrum which ring alarm bells about the threat to press freedom:
Nick Cohen:
It took London's genteel Metropolitan Police three searches of the home of missing schoolgirl Tia Sharp before they found the resolve to do a thorough job and find the poor girl’s body.
Critics who condemned the cops’ timidity should have understood that the police were only investigating the alleged murder of a child. If they had been dealing with journalists rather than minor offenders, the Met’s crack detectives would have shown their mettle.
Peter Preston:
It's a terrible example, seen from afar, of the way British justice handles its journalists. It's a terrible folly for police who need to live on shared information and admiration.
Quentin Letts:
Leveson and his friends have shown little grasp of the British public square being as noisy and chaotic and disputatious as Marakesh’s Jemaa el-Fnaa when the sun goes down and the drums start to bong. Were it any other way, our democracy would be weaker.
Our politicians are already worryingly out of touch. Imagine how much more remote from public opinion they would be if they did not have the press breathing down their collars.
Fleet Street Fox:
If you open a national newspaper today, you'll have to look hard to find a story that hasn't come from a press office, showbiz agent or an arranged buy-up.
We name the UK's top-50 sport journalists. An exclusive list voted for by Press Gazette readers.
John Dale writes on why e-readers could transform the economics of long-form journalism – with detailed guidance on how to get your first e-book published.
The reporters who covered every day of Leveson – including Ben Webster from The Times, Dan Sabbagh of The Guardian and Tom Harper from the Evening Standard – give their assessment of the inquiry and reveal what they think will happen next.
Journalism Training 2012: Free 20-page guide to training and getting started in a journalism career.
In-depth interviews with two of the UK’s leading sports journalists: Martin Samuel and David Walsh.
Samuel on journalism:
I didn’t come into it because I wanted to get into football matches for nothing. I came into it because I liked writing and enjoyed writing. I still do, and I miss it when I’m not doing it.
What Walsh said when he interviewed Lance Armstrong:
I don’t believe you’re clean, but this is why I’m here, because I have questions. But the only questions I want to ask you are about doping. I won’t be asking you one question about cycling outside of the context of doping.
Mick Hume on journalism and the public interest:
The pressurised search to unearth news that “somebody doesn’t want printed”, and to do so yesterday, can lead editors and journalists to make errors and unwise judgement calls.
That does not alter the fact that there will always be circumstances where the story justifies unconventional reporting measures and pushing the “ethical” envelope.
And Desmond Zwar writes about the real Rupert Murdoch:
Is Rupert Murdoch scary? Not when I met him –he broke off our chat to obediently stoke the fire and throw on a new log (at his elderly Mum’s bidding) grumbling at the way his nanny treated him when he was four.
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