Happy New Year

FleetStreetBlues will be taking a short break for the next few days, but would like to wish all its readers in advance a very happy new year.

We will return - with a somewhat belated roundup of the journalism heroes and villains of 2011 - on Monday 2 January.

Freelancer - Daily Mail

Money Mail, the personal finance section of the Daily Mail, is looking for a freelancer to work regular shifts.

The ad asks for a 'knowledge of personal finance' and 'consumer issues', plus a head for figures - and it won't hurt to have similar experience on a national already. It's listed as a full-time position.

To apply or for more information, contact Sarah Beck at sarah.beck@dailymail.co.uk.

Being Caitlin Moran

Having won both Critic of the Year and Interviewer of the Year at the British Press Awards, plus a stack of other gongs, there's no doubt that Times columnist Caitlin Moran has had a pretty good 2011. But how do you know you've really made it as a writer? When your own newspaper commissions an interview with you, that's when.

The Times has that tomorrow (paywalled, of course), and it's by the journalist who first discovered Caitlin Moran, back when she was a gobby teenager, Valerie Grove:

She was a podgy little girl of 13, with a clear-eyed and candid gaze, and her name was Catherine, not Caitlin, but everyone called her Tatty. She’d come from Wolverhampton with her rock-musician dad because she’d won £250 of book tokens in a Dillons young readers’ contest, for an essay on Why I Like Books. It was the first time she had been to London, the first time she’d been on a train.

She already had a distinctive, hectic style. “Basenji! Slartibartfast! Mint Julep, Jolly Super, Hoopy, Necrotelecommunicom, Wonka Vite and Vitawonk,” her essay began, making the judges (I was one) sit up. So unlike the other entries with their pious declarations of “I have always loved reading”. Tatty had retitled her essay: “Starting me reading — who dunnit?” The answer was Mrs Boden at Springdale Junior School. “She was the infant teacher who introduced me to the world of pixies, enchanted princesses and Jip the Big Black Rat. Eureka! I could read!”

The key point about Caitlin Moran's deserved success, of course, is that it's been far from overnight - incredible though it may seem, she was being interviewed in national newspapers about her career as a columnist some 17 years ago.

Back then, in an interview with the Independent, she was asked about her writing ambitions:

'I'm seeing the editor of a Sunday newspaper this afternoon. I know she'll offer me mega-bucks to do an opinion column, but I don't want that. I don't like opinion journalism. Anyway, how can you have 52 opinions a year? I'd like to do some interviews. How much do you get paid?

Quite a lot, it turns out...

Happy Christmas

And to think they call it the Dead Tree Press.

FleetStreetBlues would like to wish all its readers a very happy Christmas. If you're working over the holiday period, here's hoping it's a quiet one...

Quote of the Day: 24 December 2011

Roy Greenslade, tackling the flaws in the Guardian's phone hacking coverage at last, and taking the wider view:

Single errors by Davies and Hyde amid a host of truths do not invalidate The Guardian's terrific overall work. I cannot believe, in all conscience, that editors and journalists across Britain do not agree.

The funniest headlines of 2011

No matter what hot gossip or incisive analysis FleetStreetBlues serves up, there's always one thing that pulls in the punters like nothing else. Comedy headlines.

Our personal favourite of the year is probably this effort from the Phillipine Star, which somehow managed to draw a chuckle from a terrorist attack, although the 'something special' offered by girls' schools in Gloucestershire ran it pretty close.

But if you're looking for more, then it's worth checking out Buzzfeed's 50 funniest headlines of 2011, which explains the ones above, plus another 46 of pretty high quality. Enjoy.

The truth, the whole truth - and nothing but the truth

When is it OK for journalists to make things up?

The evidence submitted by Tabloid Girl author Sharon Marshall to the Leveson Inquiry has inspired the Unemployed Hack to write a lengthy blogpost on the topic of 'colour' - and, specifically, the slightly made-up colour which is often added to features.

She offers a series of concrete examples:

I once wrote about a gay man who had agreed to have his friend’s child and I conducted the interview with him. He was a nice man, articulate, open, willing to share the sad tale of how the baby he loved turned out not to be his after all. In the first person article I wrote:

“… one night she yelled from the bedroom, “come here. Come here! I ran in, panic-stricken, terrified something was wrong but she was lying on the bed smiling. “Put your hand on my stomach. Can you feel the baby kicking? she asked. I did and it was amazing.”

This is not an entirely true scenario. The moment of panic happened. The feeling the baby kick happened. They did not happen within minutes of each other. I added “colour” to stir emotion in the reader.

This happens, of course - FleetStreetBlues has seen it happen - but the Unemployed Hack goes beyond saying such instances are an occasional aberration. Instead, she suggests, they are actually a valuable part of the process for writing effective features:

No one was harmed in the adding of colour to these features.

Many journalists, once written the feature, will read them to contributing interviewees before publication, getting their approval and making changes. I’ve often been thanked for what I’ve written – I’ve even heard, “that is exactly how I told it” from people I’ve interviewed and known it really, really isn’t.

In many ways what we write is creative non-fiction. It’s what journalists have been doing for centuries to encourage readers to stay with their writing to the end, to feel something for the people described in the story – maybe even to react to the story by giving to charity; perhaps Leveson could be introduced to some of Dickens’ journalism.

Really?

Routine it may be, but to permit and even celebrate this kind of colour is surely straying dangerously into Johann Hari territory ('We stare at each other for a while. Then he says in a quieter voice...').

Yes, colour is important. It's what makes features work. But good journalists should use as colour real things that really happened, reported as they happened. If your interview subject doesn't give you the perfect anecdote, use another one, or write around it. Find another angle. Don't just write the anecdote as you or your editor wished it had happened and then persuade the interviewee to sign off on it because 'no one was harmed' in the process.

As this year has shown, the ethics of journalism are hideously complicated, but there's an easy starting point. Never, ever, write something you know to be untrue. Slant stories, quote selectively, take a line, if you must. But facts and quotes are sacred.

Journalists' only currency is their credibility - the only reason people read what we do and pay us for doing it is because it's presumed to be true. That's why this year many journalists found what Johann Hari did, trivial as it was, at least as shocking as the whole phone hacking thing. Hacking phones was immoral and illegal and wrong, and much less trivial than inventing a bit of colour - but at least it was in the twisted pursuit of some kind of truth, rather than fiction.

When Sharon Marshall told Lord Leveson that Tabloid Girl was 'intended to be a good yarn', and that it was supplemented with a 'bit of topspin', he asked whether 'topspin' meant 'lying'. The good Lord had a point...

Quote of the Day: 22 December 2011

From a leader in the Independent, of all places, which until now has been second only to the Guardian in pursuing the anti-Murdoch phone-hacking agenda:

It was The Guardian's claim about NOTW journalists deleting Milly's messages that revived public indignation about phone hacking and convinced politicians they had to "do something". That something became the inquiry headed by Lord Leveson...

... The "what ifs" that follow are legion. What if The Guardian had reported only the hacking and not the deleting, would the public outcry have been as great? Would the Prime Minister have felt compelled to respond? Would there have been an inquiry at all, on top of the police investigation already in train? After all, if phone-hacking was going on – which it was – it was a breach not only of ethics, but the law.

One conclusion might be that the Leveson Inquiry is doing the right thing, even if it was set up for the wrong reason. But this would be to make the best of what is, at root, a bad job. The question must be faced squarely: is it right that this inquiry, which could transform regulation of the British press, should proceed at all, now it is clear that it was built on a misapprehension?

The hardest-working hacks of 2011

When it comes to sheer quantity of articles filed in 2011, Roy Greenslade came top, averaging almost three a day across every day in the year. But overall it was the Stakhanovite reporters on the Mirror who were most heavily represented, between them claiming five of the top ten spots.

Here's the ten most prolific journalists of 2011, according to a Journalisted analysis:

• Roy Greenslade (Guardian): 1,057
• Ashleigh Rainbird (Mirror): 938
• Sarah Bull (MailOnline): 910
• Sarah Fitzmaurice (MailOnline): 903
• Nick Fletcher (Guardian): 870
• Clemmie Moodie (Mirror): 858
• Graham Hiscott (Mirror): 835
• Josh Halliday (Guardian): 790
• Richard Hammond (Mirror): 780
• Tricia Phillips (Mirror): 775

No mention of the indefatigable 'Daily Mail Reporter' though.

UPDATE:  Good point in the comments: 'A local newspaper reporter would be sacked with that kind of work rate. Three pieces an hour and then you're talking.'

Nominate your journalism heroes and villains of 2011

It's almost Christmas, which as every journalist knows means it's almost time to start publishing endless end-of-year reviews. And after a momentous and divisive year in journalism, on Fleet Street and beyond, we want your help in drawing up a list of the journalism heroes and villains of 2011.

We need as many nominations as possible (note these are nominations, not votes - the editor's decision is final), and the key thing we're looking for here is originality. So if you can, please, think beyond phone hacking - and very local nominations are as welcome as national ones. Who's been the bad guy for journalists over the past 12 months? Who's made your life more difficult or given you a bad reputation? And who's defied the odds to do a decent job and made you still proud to be a journalist?

Email your ideas, nominations, citations and abuse to fleetstreetblues@hotmail.co.uk today. The idea is we'll credit those who contribute to the final list - but of course if you'd like to be anonymous, just let us know. News International employees can play too...

Quotes of the year, photos of the year and 18 reasons to love and hate freelance journalism: Read all about

With Christmas fast approaching, here's a quick roundup of some of the things we've been reading over the past few days:

• Remember the #proudtobeajournalist meme on Twitter? Well, in the US they've gone one better, with journalists of every stripe rallying together on the excellent We Are Journalists blog. With a snappy mission statement, and a series of heartfelt first-person pieces, it's a guaranteed pick-me-up for reporters everywhere as the Leveson Inquiry rumbles on.
  


• Jon Slattery has pulled together a comprehensive list of media quotes of the year - and we particularly liked the Time magazine headline.
  


• There's an awful lot of 'photos of the year' collections floating around at the moment, but this flipbook from Getty Images is truly striking.
  


• Roy Greenslade has read our Kim Jong-il piece - and we think hope he's secretly pleased at the comparison. (Nice to see we made the Independent too).
  


• And finally, Pitching the World has written a list - 'Nine Things I Love About Being A Freelance Journalist'. Arguably, it's just a little bit less convincing than his previous entry, 'Nine Things I Hate About Being A Freelance Journalist' - but then that's possibly a reflection on his general level of optimism. Both are great reads.

Quote of the Day: 20 December 2011

Robert Hernandez, writing for the Nieman Journalism Lab, in one of the more sensible future-of-journalism pieces you'll read between now and the New Year:

Can I reliably trust you to tell me what is going on? If the answer is yes, then I don’t care if you work out of a newsroom or out of your garage.

Trainee Reporter - Dorset Echo

Weymouth-based daily the Dorset Echo is hiring another trainee reporter.

You'll need the standard set of qualifications to apply - NCTJ, shorthand, some work experience and a driving licence - but other than that it's all down to you to stand out from what will undoubtedly be a crowd. The ad boasts of a number of stories which have made the nationals - including Ginger, 'the abandoned dog who stole the nation's hearts'.

Apply to the editor, Toby Granville, at toby.granville@dorsetecho.co.uk. Deadline Friday 13 January.

UPDATE: The Dorset Echo has been on to clarify that unusually for a trainee reporter role, this is a maternity cover position, something we somehow missed first time round. So apply only if it's a short-term maternity cover position you're after.

Bah humbug at the Sunday Times

Tis the season for Christmas parties, and tonight sees the Sunday Times' annual shindig. But as is always the case with Christmas parties, some of those attending are keener about the whole thing than others.

One senior executive - whose blushes we'll spare, given it's Christmas and all - accidentally made his feelings about the party very plain when on Friday he forwarded a round-robin email with the invite on to his wife. Unfortunately, he copied in the entire Sunday Times.

From: [SENIOR EXEC]
Date: 16 December 2011 15:39
To: [SENIOR EXEC'S WIFE]
Cc: All Sunday Times Users
Subject: Re: Sunday Times Christmas Party invite - Monday 19th December

[SENIOR EXEC'S WIFE], i have to go to this on Monday evening. I don't particularly want to but feel I have to. I don't think it clashes with anything that you have planned?

love C xxxx

Hope you are having a good birthday.....rah

Expect a rather forced grin this evening...

Kim Jong-il: The Great Teacher Of Journalists

So Kim Jong-il has died, and judging by the slew of 'I didn't know he was ill' jokes and Team America references already doing the rounds, it seems on balance in the West at least he was seen more as comedy tinpot dictator than a genuine nuclear threat. Let's hope that doesn't change.

One less-explored aspect of Kim's legacy, however, is his role as a journalism academic.

That's right - Kim Jong-il was pretty much the Roy Greenslade of Pyongyang, if this 1983 book cover is anything to go.

By all accounts, the advice offered isn't necessarily exactly what you'd expect - chapter titles include 'Press The Shutter When You're Sure Of Success' and the much-needed 'Concerns About The Meals Of Journalists'. But there's also this:

A North Korean reporter figured he could write about a pepper bush plantation from the comfort of his office. But leader Kim Jong Il, the story goes, insisted on driving with him to a rugged ravine and crossing a flooded river to personally count the bushes.

'"Comrade journalist, you must see things on the spot before you write your articles. Otherwise you may talk big,"' Kim told the ashamed reporter from the state news agency.

"At the moment the journalist blushed. Across his mind flashed the bygones when he used to write his articles in his office only after his conversation with the officials."

Here's a sentence we never thought we'd write without irony. Trainee journalists could learn a lot from Kim Jong-il.


UPDATE:  Kim truly was the journalists' friend - Paul Wiggins reports that he also used to divert traffic so that sub-editors could work in peace.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, times two

FleetStreetBlues doesn't work in advertising - we're humble journalists. But looking at this week's Shortlist magazine, it's hard to avoid the feeling that something's gone a little bit wrong.

As is often the case, the magazine features an 'advertorial' wrap-around, promoting the new Daniel Craig/David Fincher film The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

The point of a wrap-around, of course, is that the advertiser can guarantee their product appearing on the front of the magazine. An advert's never as good as editorial, which is why the advert is styled up to look like the real front cover. But if a product's not newsworthy enough to make the actual front of the magazine, then paying for a (very expensive) wrap-around is the next best option.

So, here's Daniel Craig looking mean and moody on the front of the wraparound of this week's Shortlist.

 Then turn the page to the real front cover, and... oh, there's Daniel Craig looking mean and moody. Again.

It might be intentional, of course. Maybe someone at Shortlist can fill us in. But it doesn't look great editorially. And we can't help feeling that the producers of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo might not be thrilled to have shelled out thousands for a pretend front cover promoting their film - only to find it obscure a real front cover promoting their film.

Proof at last: journalists' FOI requests DO get special treatment

We've written before about the suspicion that FOI requests from journalists get singled out for special treatment. Now here's proof.

One Rachel Stewart, who is not as it happens a journalist, but instead from the Scottish Association of Mental Health, submitted a routine request to Highland Council - and received the following response:

Dear Mrs Stewart

Please find below FOI request.

As this has come from a member of the Media, your DRAFT response should firstly be sent to the Freedom of Information Mailbox for its approval.

Once the draft has been approved, it will be returned to you to send on the final response.

Please note - the deadline for this response is 17th January 2012.

Many thanksLynda Duncan

Public Relations Assistant
Chief Executive's Service
The Highland Council

The FOI officer later got in touch to apologise, saying Rachel had been 'sent the wrong email in error', but what she meant was that Rachel had been sent the email meant for the council official who was supposed to be answering the question, not that the email itself was incorrect.

A slip of the 'Send' button then reveals that Highland Council has a different approval process for FOI requests from journalists, and gives them an extra degree of scrutiny. It's probably far from alone in doing so, but the practice is hardly in keeping with the spirit of the Freedom of Information Act, which requires requests to be handled applicant and motive-blind. Good reason to consider using a pseudonym.

RIP Christopher Hitchens

So Christopher Hitchens has died, and the worlds of journalism and writing are a poorer place.

Amid the blizzard of tributes, his old columns and essays are being dug up this morning and re-read, and we'd recommend one. It's not one of his political pieces, or most iconoclastic (did he really call Mother Teresa a fundamentalist fraud?). No, it's on the most compelling topic a journalist can ever write about: their own imminent demise.

His 'Topic of Cancer', written for Vanity Fair last year after he first revealed he had been diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus, is brilliantly written, as ever, and humbly self-aware.

'To the dumb question “Why me?” the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: Why not?'

RIP Hitch.

Want to work for the Daily Mail?

The last time the Daily Mail advertised for trainee journalists, it prompted a series of sarcastic applications from the usual Mail-hating mob, and we've written before about 'Daily Fail' prejudice among student journalists, of all people. This isn't about that - this is for people who genuinely want to work for what is, for all its faults, probably Britain's most influential newspaper.

The full ad - in old-school print format - is over on Peter Sands' blog. There are positions for trainee subs and trainee reporters, and you'll need newspaper experience or postgraduate journalism training, with shorthand and driving licence an advantage for the reporters. It's a year-long course, with the chance to work on the Daily Mail or MailOnline - the subbing course will be based with PA in Howden, east Yorkshire, and the reporting course in London. You'll be paid a 'competitive' salary while you train.

If you're interested in applying, it's well worth checking out Peter Sands' detailed tips. As a former interviewer on the reporters' scheme, he knows exactly what he's talking about - and having helped whittle applicants down from 900, to 40, then 14 and eventually 7, he knows how fiercely competitive it will be as well.

Apply with CV, 200 words on why you want to be a Mail journalist and six clips to sue.ryan@dailymail.co.uk. Deadline Friday 10 February.

The news that made 2011 - in Lego

This is a great idea for a photo gallery, courtesy of the Guardian. See also the Royal Wedding, the August riots and, er, the fall of Gaddafi.

Are you a journalist's journalist? Take the test...

Do you work 16 hours a day for eight hours' pay? Can you no longer read a newspaper without scanning for typos?  Have you ever conducted a phone interview naked?

Our favourite American journalism blog Stuff Journalists Like has pulled together a checklist of 20 questions to help sort the real journalists from the wannabes. A little bit is lost in translation - 'lede', 'sportscaster', 'A1' - but it's essentially all true, and just as applicable to hard-bitten hacks this side of the Atlantic.

So, if you own your own police scanner or have ever corrected a loved one's grammar in a greetings card, now at least you'll know you're not alone. Head on over and check your score out of 20, then let us know what you got in the comments. FleetStreetBlues scored 15, just about. Must try harder...

Guardian offers fulsome apology for Milly Dowler phone hacking inaccuracies*

So after a day of fierce criticism, an intervention by the Met and Lord Leveson's decision to launch a spin-off inquiry into the hacking of Milly Dowler's voicemail, the Guardian this morning prints the following in its corrections and clarifications column:

An article about the investigation into the abduction and death of Milly Dowler (News of the World hacked Milly Dowler's phone during police hunt, 5 July, page 1) stated that voicemail "messages were deleted by [NoW] journalists in the first few days after Milly's disappearance in order to free up space for more messages. As a result friends and relatives of Milly concluded wrongly that she might still be alive." Since this story was published new evidence – as reported in the Guardian of 10 December – has led the Metropolitan police to believe that this was unlikely to have been correct and that while the News of the World hacked Milly Dowler's phone the newspaper is unlikely to have been responsible for the deletion of a set of voicemails from the phone that caused her parents to have false hopes that she was alive, according to a Metropolitan police statement made to the Leveson inquiry on 12 December.

Fair play to the paper for finally including the correction - maybe Mr Rusbridger's a reader. But as with the much fuller explanation offered by Nick Davies yesterday, the key defence seems to be 'we reported what the police thought to be true at the time', and that 'new evidence' has now emerged which has led the police to be uncertain about who did it. The briefings from police were, of course, all off the record. Flat Earth News fans will not approve...

*Actual extent of apology may vary

Picture of the Day: 12 December 2011

With the legendary Mazher Mahmood appearing before the Leveson Inquiry this morning, a great picture from inside the News of the World, courtesy of Brian Whelan. 'Hello, this is the fake sheikh...'

Content Editor - Staffordshire Sentinel

Staffordshire Sentinel News and Media, which produces 10 newspapers and magazines including the Sentinel and the Tamworth Herald, is hiring a content editor.

It's a six month contract, and they're after someone who already has experience of subbing - or a senior reporter looking for a change.

Apply via the editor-in-chief's PA, Vanda Gibbons, at vanda.gibbons@thesentinel.co.uk. Deadline Friday 23 December.

Sorry seems to be the hardest word

The Guardian is keen on corrections.

Getting newspapers which get things wrong to publicly and prominently admit to it has been a central thrust of the paper's campaign this year to improve press standards. When the Daily Mail launched a page 2 corrections and clarifications column in October, it was big news. When the Mirror moved its corrections to page 2 last month, former editor Roy Greenslade approved. And when the Daily Mail was censured by the Press Complaints Commission last week for making the wrong pre-prepared Amanda Knox story live for 90 seconds, it was, of course, fully covered.

The Guardian has its own corrections column, which unlike some of the others is easy to find online, and today there are four corrections. The president of Pakistan had his name misspelled, an author was accidentally called Justin rather than Jason, a theatre review confused actresses and 'an article about gaffes made by the Mexican presidential candidate Enrique Peña Nieto at a literary festival perpetrated another by referring to the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges as José Luis Borges'. We've all done that...

What's strangely missing, of course, is any correction or even clarification of the paper's biggest story of the year. As was reported on Saturday, it transpires that actually the News of the World didn't delete the Milly Dowler voicemails which gave her poor family false hope.

Instead, the original story has been subtly changed, with a footnote crediting 'new evidence'. Other stories written in the aftermath of the original story still strongly suggest the News of the World was responsible for deleting the voicemails which gave her family false hope.

Check out the storm of abuse we got when we wrote about this on Saturday, and it's clear that pointing out this error isn't a hugely popular move. We're a 'low-life publication', apparently. Questioning Nick Davies' story is 'pathetic propaganda'. Journalists are 'amoral scum'.

But really, honestly, genuinely, we're not trying to excuse phone hacking. FleetStreetBlues has never worked for the News of the World. We have nothing against the Guardian. We admire Nick Davies hugely, and are as keen as many others to see some journalists clean up their act - and have been since long before it was fashionable.

What irks us though, and what irks many other journalists, is a feeling that the whole phone hacking story has been a campaign driven by a political agenda as much as anything run by the Daily Mail or News of the World - and it's been a campaign which has rubbished our profession and resulted in hundreds of journalists losing their jobs.

And if you argue, as many do, that such a campaign was necessary, that while it is painful now, Fleet Street had to get its house in order? Then at the very least it matters that the key story that broke open the whole issue should have been factually accurate.

Quote of the Day: 10 December 2011

is gobsmacked to read The Guardian report the News of the World did NOT hack Mill Dowler's phone. Can we have our jobs back pls?Sat Dec 10 10:36:54 via LinkedInDavid Wooding
DavidWooding

Er... actually News of the World didn't delete Milly Dowler voicemails which gave her family false hope, Guardian admits

This is absolutely gobsmacking...

Remember the story which made phone hacking matter? Before July this year, media ethics was a minority interest. Then the Guardian uncovered the smoking gun: News of the World journalists had deleted voicemails from Milly Dowler's phone, giving her family false hope that she was alive. Cue a Fleet Street feeding frenzy, debate in Parliament, the Leveson inquiry, and so on... It was the media story of the year. Only it wasn't true.

The Guardian admits, in a story published today which somehow doesn't merit top billing on its home page or even the media page:

It is understood that while News of the World reporters probably were responsible for deleting some of the missing girl's messages, police have concluded that they were not responsible for the particular deletion which caused her family to have false hope that she was alive... 

...Testifying to the Leveson inquiry, Sally Dowler described how one day after Milly went missing she found that her daughter's voice mailbox had apparently been emptied. "I just jumped and said 'She's picked up her voicemails, she's alive'," she told the inquiry. 

Evidence retrieved from Surrey police logs shows that this "false hope" moment occurred on the evening of Sunday 24 March 2002. It is not clear what caused this deletion. Phone company logs show that Milly last accessed her voicemail on Wednesday 20 March, so the deletion on Sunday cannot have been the knock-on effect of Milly listening to her messages. Furthermore, the deletion removed every single message from her phone. But police believe it cannot have been caused by the News of the World, which had not yet instructed private detective Glenn Mulcaire to hack Milly's phone. Police are continuing to try to solve the mystery.

Of course, that doesn't mean that phone hacking itself didn't occur, and wasn't wrong, or that journalists haven't overstepped the mark, or that there wasn't a story there. But the key allegation so outrageous that the story could no longer be ignored was simply false. In fact, ever since the phone-hacking scandal started, the Guardian has been leading coverage which has reported police-leaked allegations and spurious half-truths as fact. (It's also emerged that the total number of people to have been hacked is likely to be 800, as opposed to the thousands previously reported).

As a result, the News of the World closed down, hundreds of journalists lost their jobs, our entire trade has been denigrated and the Leveson inquiry looks set to stamp all over the freedom of the press. Great work...


UPDATE:  There's reaction from the Dowler family lawyer here.

Technical failures will cost the Times

FleetStreetBlues is a subscriber to the Times' website. It's not cheap, and we sometimes wonder why, but the Times is a newspaper we really rate and its site, which focuses very much on quality rather than quantity, offers something different to the Guardian, Telegraph and Mail etc. And if journalists won't pay for news, who will?

Of late, though, actually reading that news has been increasingly difficult. This morning, any attempt to log on is met with a blizzard of 'Apache Tomcat' errors and 'server filter' failures. And we're clearly not the only ones having trouble.

The Times website isn't responding. Anyone else having the same problems? #timesnewspaper #timesSat Dec 10 08:29:23 via webMarcus Hook
_Marcus_Hook

It's far from an isolated case either. There have been a few glitches we've noticed in the past few weeks. Every so often the paywall falls down entirely (something Times columnists always report with a certain amount of glee - people can actually read their stuff!). And in the middle of last month something clearly went badly wrong with the iPad edition, to the extent that Sunday Times editor John Witherow was forced to apologise to all subscribers:

I am aware that many of our subscribers had difficulty downloading The Sunday Times iPad app this weekend (20 November, 2011).

A record number of readers attempted to download the edition at the peak time between 8 and 10 am, and due to technical issues some readers had to make several attempts before successfully accessing the app.

This did not meet the standard you have come to expect from The Sunday Times, and I apologise for what must have been a very frustrating morning. Our teams are working hard to fix the cause of the problem, and I will update you later this week with our progress.

Yours faithfully,

John Witherow
Editor, The Sunday Times

When most newspaper sites hit technical problems - which they rarely do - there's not much readers can complain about. What are they going to do - ask for their money back?

But when you're asking readers to shell out £8.99/month for something they've never had to pay for before and don't have to pay for elsewhere, it becomes a different proposition. Might be time to consider offering refunds...

What a lovely pear

Another day, another comically pointless local journalism story, this time courtesy of the Sutton Guardian, which breathlessly reports:

An Italian man has stumbled across a rather buxom pear in Sutton.

Kenneth Williams-style innuendo aside, Renato Bartolucci, 73, has a pear tree at the end of the garden which is producing incredibly voluptuous fruit.

Mr Bartolucci, who used to work in the hotel industry but has now retired, said he has never seen such a juicy pear as the 3lb one he saw recently.

Look, FleetStreetBlues enjoys a brilliant non-story as much as the next bored internet user. We were there when a mum in Whitstable mum had a custard crisis. We marvelled at Heinz's 'tomato which looks like an alien'. We gawped at Snoop Dogg and the giant swede. We speculated furiously about the nature of the unidentified object spotted floating in the water under Bridgwater bridge.

(It might or might not have been a pig's head, and definitely wasn't a turtle, if you're wondering).

But there is a slight feeling that this is a trend which has now officially jumped the shark, with local papers realising that the stories which garner the highest (ironic) traffic and are also most likely to be (ironically) picked up by MailOnline are also the easiest to write. When the whimsy of local papers was inadvertently wowing the wider internet, it was funny and just a little bit brilliant. If it's deliberate click-chasing, not so much...

Where are the role-models for female journalists breaking into news?

Really successful female journalists to inspire the next generation are few and far between, writes Laura Dew.

An article by Kira Cochrane in the Guardian this week has caused a stir by claiming that public life is dominated by men.

My first response to the article was 'Is this news?' To me, it's just a fact of life.

Articles are repeatedly written on this topic offering similar findings. In fact, an article actually appeared in the Guardian in March courtesy of Roy Greenslade, and it said many of the same things that were said this week.

When I first began considering journalism as a career I hadn't thought of it as a male-dominated profession; it was just a field I was interested in.

But the more time I spent on work experience and meeting other journalists, the more I realised this was the case.

When I started my NCTJ course there were more guys than girls. At my placement there was only one other woman on the newsdesk alongside eight men. All my job interviews afterwards were with male editors, and now I have a job in finance journalism my colleagues are primarily male.

It's not something that I feel has hindered me from getting a job, but there's no denying that it's noticeable.

Statistics from the article show that the average percentage of bylines by female journalists across the seven biggest daily newspapers was just 22.6% - a shockingly low statistic. Statistics for editors are even worse. Only two newspapers out of 21 (the Daily Star and the Sunday Mirror) are edited by a woman, a dismally low 10.5%.

The situation is not limited to the UK either; in America, the New York Times did not appoint its first female editor, Jill Abramson, until this September, some 160 years after the newspaper was launched.

In my opinion the problem stems from a lack of female role models in newspaper journalism. I do have my own female role models who inspired me to get into journalism, but neither of them were news journalists.

Girls read newspapers full of male bylines and then read a glossy magazine full of female bylines and go towards that, feeling they will have more of a chance there.

I always knew I wanted to be a news journalist and have no intention of working for a glossy magazine. But as a result I accept that I will probably always be in working in male-dominated offices.

I particularly enjoyed reading about Sky News war correspondent Alex Crawford recently and her report on Libyan civil unrest - but women like her seem to be few and far in between.

Probably one of the best-known female editors in the UK was Rebekah Brooks, the youngest editor of a British newspaper and the first female editor of the Sun. But her achievements have since been tainted by the News International phone hacking scandal.

Columnist Liz Jones in the Daily Mail made her career as editor of Marie Claire, but is now constantly criticised by readers for her obscure revelatory articles in the newspaper, such as 'I stole my boyfriend's sperm'.

While both of these journalists have been successful and earn vast sums for their work, to me, neither of them are examples for female journalists to look up to.

Without role models, who will inspire future generations of women to get into journalism? If we want to ensure we're not reading the same stories about Fleet Street being dominated by men in ten years' time, we need to show there's more for women to write than just features.

And finally, if you want to read the original article, it's on the Guardian website. Not filed under 'Media' or 'News' but under 'Life and style/women'. A telling placement if ever.

Laura Dew is staff writer at Financial Planner magazine. If you'd like to write for FleetStreetBlues, email us today at fleetstreetblues@hotmail.co.uk.

Associate Editor - PR Week

Public relations, public affairs and communications trade mag PR Week is hiring an Associate Editor (News).

All in all, it sounds like a pretty decent gig. They're after an experienced journalist to replace the long-serving David Singleton, who's served up some decent political scoops in his time (remember Gordon Brown cold-calling people at 6am?) It's based in Hammersmith, pays around £30k, and as well as writing and investigating there'll be some editing and helping to establish the news running order across print and online. The only downside? You have to actually like speaking to PRs...

Apply via the Haymarket website here.

Stand up if you're #proudtobeajournalist

Do you remember when you first became a journalist?

Every journalist remembers the thrill of their first byline. The stupid excitement of seeing a name - your name! - in print. Every journalist remembers their first proper job, the first time they told someone they were a reporter, the giddy thrill of realising that people actually get paid to ask awkward questions and write about the answers.

In the last few months, journalists' reputation has taken an absolute pasting, and whether you're a former News of the World door-stepper or a holier-than-thou Guardian columnist, the chances are your friends don't look at you in quite the same way they used to. Remember when your apologetic 'actually I'm a journalist' wasn't inevitably followed by some tired riff on phone-hacking?

Top marks then to the Press Gazette, which yesterday asked journalists of every denomination to take to Twitter to explain exactly why they are #proudtobeajournalist. Reasons given so far vary from the worthy to the practical to the disarmingly honest - and while a few tweets are hardly going to reverse months of raking over the sins of the few, it's already done wonders for journalists' collective morale.

And FleetStreetBlues? Well, like most journalists, we don't have any delusions of heroism. It's not about the glory, or some shot at fleeting fame. We're never going to work on Watergate. And we're certainly not in it for the pay.

No, for us it's about the small victories - about telling a story as best we can, about nailing a top line, about exposing a half-truth or carving out a bit of coverage for someone who really deserves it. We're proud to do a professional job alongside a bunch of other hard-working professionals - colleagues and rivals alike - and simply try the best we can at a job we love.

Oh, and personally we're still proud we get paid to ask awkward questions and write about the answers.




UPDATE: The T-shirts are still available in the FleetStreetBlues shop, by the way, alongside other ones campaigning against superinjunctions and for greater press freedom. Haven't sold many of them in a while...

The final edition

The East Kent Gazette has been delivering news to the people of Sittingbourne and its surrounding villages since 1855. Today, at midday, its final edition went to press after 156 years.

Along with the closure of the Medway News, at least 35 jobs have been lost. Best of luck guys...

Quote of the Day: 5 December 2011

Tory MP and superinjunction fan Zac Goldsmith, talking about tabloids and in no way overstating the case on phone-hacking:

'If the only way a business can stay afloat is by engaging in immoral or unethical behaviour, then that business should either change its model or go out of business. No one said that Auschwitz should have been kept open because it created jobs.'

'I'd be shot': Local newspaper editor explains why he can't cover a website for small businesses

The Chinese wall between editorial and advertising is supposed to be one of the central tenets of journalism. We assure our readers that we are independent - that decisions made by advertisers have no influence at all on the stories we write or the editorial slant of the newspaper. You cannot buy good coverage.

One frequent exception to the rule has been with direct commercial competitors: newspapers have often seen fit to pretend that other newspapers don't exist. But with the advent of the web, and with newspapers frantically seeking alternative revenue sources, our pool of potential commercial competitors has exponentially expanded.

And so to Hertfordshire, where one unfortunate local newspaper editor last week perfectly illustrated why this is such a tricky area. He refused to run a story on co-deal, a start-up set up to help local small businesses - and in what can only be described as an interesting PR move, co-deal decided to publish the entire email exchange on their website.

From: [Start-up]
To: [Editor of local newspaper]
Sent: 01 December 2011 11:12

Morning XXXX,
Was the story about co-deal and Christina Larkin of interest at all? I thought it may be relevant with the recent autumn statement and the right mess we are in at the mo! Please let me know your thoughts.
Laura

From: [Editor of local newspaper]
To: [Start-up]
Sent: Thursday, 1 December 2011, 11:22

Hi Laura, I don’t tend to do general pieces commenting on national issues unless there’s a strong local connection…
xxxxx 

From: [Start-up]
To: [Editor of local newspaper]
Sent: 01 December 2011 11:30

Christina is from St Albans and has set up the business to try and help support the local business community. Here’s the story again if that helps?
Many thanks
Laura

From: [Editor of local newspaper]
To: [Start-up]
Sent: Thursday, 1 December 2011, 11:46

Thanks Laura. Can’t run this I’m afraid – far too much of a conflict of interest with our own commercial department and our own online directory. I’d be shot if I was seen to be promoting a rival website facility like this.
xxxxx

Quite whether the editor was right or wrong, we'll leave you to decide, and it certainly wouldn't be the first time that a journalist has just tried to be painfully blunt with a pushy PR.

But equally, the response points to an obvious but rarely-admitted truth in local journalism - editors have to be commercially aware, and it can and does affect coverage. And with news websites now chasing the same finite number of local page views as other businesses, that commercial sensitivity has been ramped up a notch. The Chinese wall just got more complicated...

Is Fleet Street still a man's world?

An interesting article in tomorrow's Guardian asking, in true time-honoured Guardian style: 'Why is British public life dominated by men?' The evidence gathered by features writer Kira Cochrane includes a four-week analysis of the bylines on seven nationals.



Awkwardly, it was the Daily Mail which came out as the most progressive in its use of female journalists:

There wasn't a single day, on a single newspaper, when the number of female bylines outstripped or equalled the number of male bylines. The Daily Mail came the closest of any newspaper to parity on Monday 27 June, when its contributors were 53% male and 47% female – reflecting the fact that, whatever the Daily Mail's style and tone, it clearly recognises the commercial importance of its women readers, targets a mass of material at them, and is rewarded as the only daily national, besides the Daily Express, whose female readers currently outnumber male readers.

Overall though, if the methodology is right - and we have no reason to think it isn't - then the chart above seems pretty conclusive. Fleet Street is still very much a man's world.

'Sorry for any incontinence'

Thanks to Niall Firth for this snap of a rather unfortunate fridge on the Daily Mail news floor yesterday.

Cleaning department don't have sub-editors, of course, so the literals and typos are forgivable. Let's just hope 'incontinence' was one of them...

Trade journalists the latest victims of under-the-radar job cuts

This time last week, we wrote about a swathe of pre-Christmas closures and job cuts in regional newspapers, and added one of our own - the imminent closure of a local paper in Somerset which as far as we can tell still doesn't seem to have been officially announced. Now there's more bad news.

Journalists at the Incisive Media trade title Computing magazine were told yesterday about a major 'restructuring'. FleetStreetBlues understands that while the publication isn't going to close, the news comes, inevitably, with a round of job losses across both news and production. And with 2012 budgets being finalised against the backdrop of another global financial meltdown, it seems certain more journalists across the UK are going to lose their jobs between now and Christmas.

We've been here before, of course. At the end of 2009 the situation was so bad the Guardian put together a map of media cuts drawing together dozens of redundancy announcements and newspaper closures across the country. Might be time to dust it off again...

Got information about journalism job cuts or closures? Email us at fleetstreetblues@hotmail.co.uk - anonymity guaranteed.

Page 3 fuck

Quite how this got here, we have no idea, but page 3C of today's Greenville News, a local paper in South Carolina, is every editor's worst nightmare.

First par, nice drop intro. Second par, some context. Third par... 

UPDATE: According to a comment on US media blog Jim Romenesko, the error was apparently made at a subbing hub in Louisville, Kentucky - some 413 miles away.

That was the month that was: November 2011

The Leveson Inquiry may end up curtailing press freedom and castrating the business end of Fleet Street, but there's no denying it's good for ratings on blogs about journalism.

FleetStreetBlues is now closing in on half a million visitors, and more importantly for a niche site, is read every day by hundreds of journalists across the UK, working on nationals, local papers and in the trade press. If you'd like to advertise, the big ad at the top right will cost you £20 a week - email us at fleetstreetblues@hotmail.co.uk.

Most-read stories of the month were:

1. Five questions for Lord Leveson
2. A letter to Lord Leveson
3. And the winner is...
4. 'Rusbridger needs to roll his neck in. Frankly, we all do'
5. 'I couldn't make love to Gerry'
6. Tripadvisor comes to journalism: the new site which allows you to rate your reporter
7. The dinosaur bones are back
8. Michael O'Leary, PR genius
9. Shop a dog - and win a mug
10. 'Freddie Starr Ate My Camel'

Keep up to date with FleetStreetBlues on Facebook, on Twitter @fleetstreetblue or by signing up to our daily email in the box on the right-hand side. Thankyou for reading.