Taking Out The Trash

Staggering

Sad news from the New Statesman where political editor Martin Bright is leaving. Although it seems that John Pilger is staying contrary to Guardian reports.
What on earth is going on there what with that its incredible decision to recognise the NUJ? It may be that because Bright didn't get the editor's job he felt he had to move on.
At the Tribune Christmas party before Christmas there was optimism that the latest financial crisis might be resolved when the new owner takes over.
But as Dave Osler writes there is a wider issue about making left-wing publications attractive. There are some interesting comments following Dave's piece before it gets into a very boring and debate about angels and pinheads.
My two-penneth? Left-wing/progressive magazines don't pay and because I need to eat I need to look elsewhere. I'd love to submit to them lots of stories which would make readers sit up and take notice but I should be reimbursed for my labour.
Therefore the pool of available writers are restricted to those who don't rely on payment - a very limiting pool.
Red Pepper are among the worst on this as if writing for them is some kind of privilege or they are nurturing new talent. Tribune is at least apologetic and the New Statesman makes an effort.
My left-wing mag of choice? The Nation. You can have crap design in a print edition and still be a must read.

Life's a riot with spy vs spy

Great post over on Wired's Danger Room and a cautionary tale for any hack who thinks that playing around with spooks can ever be a beneficial experience.

Tribune future secure?

It seems reports of the death of Tribune magazine have been exaggerated.

I understand that on Tuesday night a sale was agreed between the unions and as yet un-named Labour activist. Nothing's been signed but it sounds like all parties want the deal to go through.

There's a comment on the situation from Tribune here.

Observer withdraws eco terrorist scare article

I'm grateful to Calvin for letting me know that The Observer has now withdrawn an article ran ran a couple of weeks back reporting that the police fear a lone eco terrorist from Earth First! might launch some sort of atrocity.

I criticised it at the time and there were a numer of other complaints.

Now the paper's readers' editor has published an adjudication which concludes:

While the paper had no intention of suggesting that every activist was a potential terrorist, several climate campers wrote to protest. 'If a journalist is told by a single anonymous source that a movement of people has among it individuals who would take the lives of men, women and children in a terror attack, what standard of evidence does that journalist require? In this case: no evidence whatsoever. The claim itself was the story.'

We've been here before. Other newspapers reported on a predicted 'summer of hate' at climate camps that never materialised and the Press Complaints Commission found against the Evening Standard at climate campers were planning attacks at Heathrow.

Environmentalist Keith Metcalf explained that Earth First! supported direct action against property, but not against people. He believed that the debate around sustainable population size had been twisted to imply that environmentalists wished to kill people.

He also repeated the belief of several others that Nectu was briefing in this manner in order to make prosecutions easier and to boost its funding, which is at risk owing to the decline in animal rights campaigns. I can't verify that or the fears about mass murder because, despite repeated requests, Nectu won't respond. Accordingly, The Observer has decided to withdraw the story.

You can read it in full here.

Good: a swift result and no messing. Score one for the readers' editor.

But aren't there subs and news editors whose job it is catch such shoddy work in the first place?

In other news: Henry Porter's column for The Obs today is, shock, not about how we're all on the verge of becoming a Gulag. True, it's still about himself, but it's actually a nice little tale about the Baader Meinhof gang. Porter, as others have pointed out, is a bit of a bore - but what with this sudden ability to write an atricle on something new and the retraction above there's hope for my Sunday reading yet.

 

More on demonising environmental activists

I posted about The Observer's shoddy story last week on how the police reckon Earth First! might be harbouring an environmental terrorist.
SchNEWS has done a nice hatchet job on the piece here.

Update: The Observer today published a couple of letters attacking the news story. As Kevin Smith from the Climate Camp media team points out:

We want to highlight that no Climate Camp has resulted in a conviction for any offence of violence. Every year since the inception of the Climate Camp, the police have warned about lone mavericks with dangerous intents. They have never materialised.

Black, white and not read all over

I'm about half way through my first term teaching journalism at UWE and I'm getting a little better at the teaching while the students are (mostly) getting the hang of the basics of journalism.

But this week two people independently told me the same, rather depressing story, about a group of journalism students they spoke to last year.

They asked them where they got their news from and a significant proportion said Newsround. We're talking people of average age 20 folks.

It's an improvement on what a friend who works for the Daily Mail found out when he addressed anther group of journalism students - none of them read newsapers.

Pitch and deal

Utne report on an interesting way San Francisco freelancers are getting commissions:

The new website Spot.us is experimenting with an innovative business model for freelance journalists. The idea is simple: Journalists pitch stories to the site’s community, and if people like an idea they can contribute money to make the reporting possible. Users are also able to submit news tips that freelancers can pick up on and craft into pitches that they will seek funding for through the site.

It could work the other way - perhaps by linking pressure groups and writers to work together. The group suggests an area it thinks needs investigating and freelancers might sign-up if enough other backers put money forward.

A buyer for Tribune?

There was a flurry of interest in whether the radical magazine Tribune was going under a few weeks back...then nothing.

So put a call in and I understand that there is a preferred buyer, the union owners are in negotiation with him and the deal is "80% certain" of going through.

There's plenty of split twixt cup and lip but that sounds promising.

So who might the "he" be?

Yasmin does Benn

Off to hear Yasmin Alibhai-Brown give the 2008 Benn Lecture tonight in the Arnolfini in Bristol.

The talk is titled: Not One Of Us: Columnists, Independence, Distance & Integrity which is easily applicable to many bloggers I would have thought.

Update: A low turnout but a good talk from Yasmin. I've never been a huge fan but she spoke well on the importance of columnists needing to remain outsiders and the present disgraceful treatment of asylumn seekers by the press.

Interestingly, she said that the shift to the centre-right in politics and journalism could be seen, for instance, in the choice of panellists on Question Time. Left-wingers are very very rare panellists (and simply being a member of the Labour Party of the Government does not earn you that title). I've asked the BBC for a list of panellists to see if it is true.

Porter's a liberty taker

Another Sunday, another column from Henry Porter in The Observer about how we're about to become a fascist dictatorship (it's not me that reduces the debate to a Young Ones sketch).

Porter writes: "...while there are many other serious calls on our attention these days we should pay attention to Ms Smith [the Home Secretary] who towers over our democracy like some comic-strip super-villain dominatrix. She is wrong, corrosive and arrogant. As Molière said: 'A woman always has her revenge ready.' ..."

It's funny but the only woman he quotes in the piece gets cast as a dominatrix - her gender is highlighted and used against her - while all the men are simply quoted and any criticism is not gender specific.

Meanwhile quotes from government ministers are treated with scepticism (fair enough) Porter quotes Phil Booth from NO2ID saying: "The government is proposing to record - for life - the details of everyone you call or write to and what websites you visit." - that's an opinion not a fact. Why not treat it the same as ministerial statements?

And finally, following on from Booth's quote, Porter writes: "Keith Vaz, chair of the Home Affairs select committee, Lord Carlisle, the government's independent reviewer of terror laws and the left-wing backbencher John McDonnell - none of them in the front rank of civil libertarians - all expressed grave alarm at this idea."

Vaz and Carlisle, fair enough, but I'll take John McDonnell's contribution to civic life in this country over Porter's any day. Anyhow, McDonnell has generally been against ID cards according to his Parliamentary voting record.

But when Porter writes about being in the "front rank" perhaps what he means is having the freedom to churn out the same article week in week out for a national newspaper and be paid thousands of pounds for the privilege.