Without a place of refuge, there can be no escape from abuse
SAFE HOUSES, women’s centres, refuges… the names change regularly, but secure havens for women escaping domestic abuse have existed in some form or another for decades. They are needed now more than...
View ArticleWhen the union knows better than the boss, it’s time to rethink the strategy
LOCAL WORLD, David Montgomery’s Northcliffe-Iliffe mash-up, reported first year profits of £38.9 million last week based on revenues of £230.6 million, a margin of getting on for 17 per cent. This...
View ArticleIt’s time for Prince William to start doing the job he was born to do
THE younger generation, eh? All you want is for them to get a decent education, find a good job and settle down. Instead they go off travelling, take endless gap years trying to ‘find themselves’ and...
View ArticleThe future of newspapers, optimistic Aussie style.
WITH the newspaper industry in Australia facing the same problems as the rest of the world, Glen Le Lievre, cartoonist for The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Sun Herald, comes up with an...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Why Are We So Mean To Each Other?
Every day I get to work, fire up the Quattro (my computer) and hang around online to find out what’s going on. Most of the time it’s cool news about a wicked cool new site, a hilarious pun, or an...
View ArticleYes, it’s horrific, but the police aren’t going to tell me what I can and...
THE RELEASE of a video by ISIS militants purporting to show the beheading of American journalist James Foley sparked widespread revulsion today. It also brought about a rather sinister email exchange...
View ArticleSinking ships, in daily and weekly instalments
I REMEMBER a management meeting at the Evening Beast, the middling regional daily of which I was chief sub and then editor, in which we were informed of the apocalyptic news that our circulation was in...
View ArticleBe my friend. It’ll only cost you £60 a month
ON THIS day in 1791, a chap called John Edward Taylor was born. Having reported on the Peterloo Massacre in 1819, he went on to launch the Manchester Guardian with the financial support of local...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Vote ‘No’, good people of Hampshire!
THE INIQUITOUS situation whereby 8.4% of our population gets to vote on the future of the other 91.6% has obviously proved to be an irritation for our regional press. Denied a say in the Scottish...
View ArticleWhy the Derby ditherers were wrong to spike porn story
WHILE audience engagement is high on list of priorities for any form of media, and rightly so, I do think that there are occasions when this can go too far. Take what happened in Derby this week. The...
View ArticleThe Grey Cardigan – the early years
I UNEXPECTEDLY came across this piece written seven years ago for the British Journalism Review. Little, it appears, has changed. Extracts from earlier columns are in italics. IT CAN get rather...
View ArticleThe editors on the roundabout of doom and those pesky permanent poppies
IN MOST towns and cities in Britain, the editor of the local newspaper used to be a man of significance; a figurehead of the community, a person to be looked up to. You could see it at school fetes and...
View ArticleSounding the Last Post for Reading
TEN YEARS ago, the Reading Evening Post won Regional Newspaper of the Year for the second year running. Five years ago it dropped ‘Evening’ from its masthead and turned into a Wednesday weekly, with a...
View ArticleHow can politicians possibly protect the local press?
A GROUP of MPs have called for an inquiry into the future of local newspapers. An early day motion has been put down by Gareth Thomas, Labour member for Harrow West, following the closure of the Harrow...
View ArticleWhat becomes of the broken-hearted?
AS ANOTHER long-serving editor departs quickly and without explanation, I was taken with one redundant editor’s explanation of what life is like after leaving the big chair in the comments field of the...
View ArticleThe first half of 2014 through the rather jaded eyes of the Grey Cardigan
On January partworks… Time was that companies like Hachette would try to lure you into a lifetime of direct debits with the ‘Build Your Own…’ scam. A particular favourite was ‘Build Your Own Lancaster...
View ArticleThe second half of 2014 through the jaded eyes of the Grey Cardigan
On an advert for Newsquest’s subbing hub… OUR REGIONAL regional group editing services department, based in Newport, now has vacancies for Graduate Copy Editors. Working as part of a team, typical...
View ArticleOnline indignation didn’t kill the Page 3 lovelies
YOU KNOW, it’s no wonder that old people like me get confused in this modern digital age. Last week the Twittersphere was up in arms about the attempted censorship of a tiny French magazine that...
View ArticleLiving with the multi-headed Hydra
REGULAR readers will know how keen I am to keep up with developments in the multi-headed Hydra that our once simple industry has become. So when I saw a job ad on Holdthefrontpage for a ‘Backstory and...
View ArticleWhy should we spend money so a doctor can say ‘Hello’?
SINCE when did issuing simple pleasantries become such a rare event that thousands of pounds have to be spent getting us to use them? Or, more to the point, getting NHS staff to use them? Thankfully,...
View Article
