The Telegraph, it’s English Gothic, innit
GET RID of the subs, say Archant Publications. Don’t be silly, says the NUJ. You need them to check for style, grammar, legals, literals and the rest.
Turns out there’s an even better reason. Researchers at Manchester University — groan — have discovered that “the humble newspaper sub is a whiz-kid [sic] at maximising a page’s impact — just as an architect draws a passer-by to his buildings.
“The experiment” (using Zipf graphs apparently ) “revealed that an edition of the Daily Telegraph had similar ‘architectural’ properties to beautiful woodland, music, army camouflage and the famous Gothic Oddfellows Hall building in Manchester.
“All appear ‘interesting and varied’ when approached from far away in the same way that subs make newspapers easy to read from a range of distances.”
The result, to quote the inevitable press release, is this: “Newspaper subs blamed for tyranny of nosy commuters”. Come again?
It seems that “commuters annoyed by fellow travellers who read newspapers over their shoulder can blame sub-editors whose page designs are the product of ‘architectural genius’, according to University of Manchester researchers …”
I dare say that, for once, research of such enchanting loopiness deserves publicity. But will it work on hard-nosed Archant bosses? “Now look at Norwich Cathedral. Doesn’t it bring to mind yesterday’s sports pages?”
Dictators? The more the merrier
THINGS happen, dreadful in themselves, that delight you just because they confirm your view of the world.
The dictator of Belarus, Alyaksandr Lukashenka, the megalomaniac’s megalomaniac, has hired a London PR agency to buff up his image.
The company is Bell Pottinger, headed by Lord (formerly Tim) Bell, who in the 1980s was the chief PR guru for Margaret Thatcher.
Belarus is the country that still has a Soviet-style KGB and where journalists are harassed, beaten and jailed. There is plucky resistance from journalists and from small opposition parties, who are accused by Lukashenka of being financed and steered by the west.
Perhaps some of them are, for all I know, but it will be curious to hear that from Tim Bell, who in Thatcher’s time was bent on destroying the Soviet system and lauding western-backed opposition to it like the Solidarnosc movement in Poland.
That doesn’t mean he’s changed at all; just that he, Thatcher and Lukashenka are basically in the same line of business, which is to suppress democracy and enrich our oppressors. But I do wonder what he sees in the mirror.
Beeb on the slippery slope
NUJ MEMBERS on the BBC website fought a spirited battle against plans to take advertising. They warned it would go horribly wrong and it has.
The ads are visible only to overseas readers but, as predicted, commercial pressures are affecting the site.
In March the design was updated. It was shambolic: the website was down for hours, and journalists, who had not been consulted, found the new design much worse for editorial.
The changes were to make the ads more prominent.
Managers admitted the process had been “chaos”. Why did they rush it through? Apparently it was “Pressure from advertisers”. Who would have thought it possible at the BBC?
Repeat after me: the media ARE
SHARP-EYED hacks of the sort who spot literals in the Journalist (thank you) might have noticed a strange discrepancy between the notice in the last issue and the union’s email circular about the London event to mark World Press Freedom Day, taking place as the magazine went to press.
The event was a debate entitled “The New Media is Killing Journalism”. The ad in the last Journalist said it was “The New Media are …”
The change was made by the editor, who is obviously a pedant, but he has reason. It is Journalist style that “media” is a plural word and that will not change.
Etymologically it is Latin, the plural of “medium”. A medium is something that links other things, a means of communication. What other word defines a newspaper, a book, a TV or radio station, a magazine or a website? A publication? Not for broadcasting. An outlet, perhaps, but that sounds like a plumbing attachment.
Really there is no other word. Medium is just right. Please, start using it, spread it around. And the collective of them is the media.
The singular use of media makes them into one great lump, a phenomenon to be pored over by academics and derided by everyone else. It loses the individuality and significance of separate media.
At least, so far, English speakers have avoided the French solution, in which the singular “media” is now used for a single medium, so the plural is “les medias”. That is just, de trop.
Welcome to our pages
TOP PEOPLE in our profession hire themselves out for fat fees to advise business and politicians how to get a get a good press. Now I’m told this shameful trade is spreading to local media. The editor of the Western Telegraph in Pembroke, South Wales, Fiona Phillips, spoke recently at a course for tourism businesses on how to get free publicity.
Highlights included: how to use the media to promote your business for free; what makes a good story (hints and tips) and how to take a good picture — hints and tips from the picture editor.