Plain English prize for Rusbridger

By Zoe Smith

The
Guardian’s editor Alan Rusbridger today received the Best National
Newspaper Award at the Plain English Awards. The ceremony, hosted by
Matthew Parris, celebrated crystal-clear reporting and analysis.

Other
media winners included included Andrew Marr for the BBC’s Sunday AM
show. Marr, announced as “the BBC’s face of Sunday morning”, cited
‘could’ and ‘swathes’ as the most dangerous words in British
journalism, the latter because it was a euphemism for: “I have
absolutely no idea what the real number is and I can’t be arsed to
count.”

Rusbridger, who accepted the award alongside Mark Porter,
the Guardian’s creative editor, lamented the trend towards
‘typographical inflation’ in the press. “Newspapers today speak in
headlines sizes that were once reserved for the outbreak of war. We try
to speak in a different voice as speaking quietly is rather more
authentic than shouting,” said Rusbridger.

London Tonight’s
Alistair Stewart collected the award for Best Regional Television, the
first time an ITV programme has received the accolade and the Edinburgh
Evening News won Best Regional Newspaper. Irish station RTE1 won the
Best National Radio award for The Pat Kenny Show and BBC Radio Jersey
won the Best Regional Radio award.