MR HACK No. 102

 

 
We had planned to run this new picture at the time of the Queen's historic visit to Ireland, but something happened to make us change our minds ... Now we offer it as a reminder of how the Belfast Telegraph once upon a time covered a major event .... The event was the Queen's visit to Northern Ireland in 1976 and this is the Belfast Telegraph's reporting team sent to the University of  Ulster at Coleraine ... The team was made up of (from left) with photographer Charles (Charlie) Cockcroft, Betty Lowry, Women's Editor, Deric Henderson, then a young reporter and now PA boss in Ireland, the late David Watson, Robin Morton and feature writer, Michael McDowell, now a resident in Washington. Times have changed ...

Comments

[Blogmaster]

Thank you Mr Chairman ... I am always happy to keep you on the right side of anyone who might be moved to critique what you write.

[A.McQ.]

Runour has it that The Best Chairman We Ever Had is known loqually as Mr Perfect.

[Chairman]

Not only loqually.

[Graham]

DAVID DUNSEITH - REMINISCE

It’s been a terrible for the deaths of media people: four in one week – David Dunseith, Stanley Aicken, Jim Creagh, Harry Thompson. Once familiar landmarks are disappearing. I worked with all four.

When I put a notice on thelatest death – David Dunseith’s last night – I was too shocked to reminisce. Today there has been a huge outpouring of tributes on radio, television and newspapers. The “Daily Mirror” local edition had the “death of a radio legend” as its front page splash. Once again, the Mirror, despite its relative decline judged and anticipated the public mood in a way some others didn’t.

One thing that hasn’t been mentioned in all the tributes was the way in which David switched almost seamlessly from UTV to the BBC. Such switching doesn’t always work. The BBC, with its battleship-like building in Belfast, can be intimidating to newcomers from other media. Same with its management structure, departments, and bureaucracy. It can swamp some people. |I’ve known at least one well-known journalist who asked an employee to met him and accompany him in on his first day.

With David it seemed after a very short time that he had been there for ever, such was his personality. I played a small, though perhaps pivotal part, in getting him to the BBC, which started his famed Talk Back career. A senior BBC executive approached me one day when I worked there and said he believed I knew David Dunseith. Would it be possible for me to meet with him and suss out his contractural arrangements with UTV? If he was unchained could I suggest that David ring the BBC executive. I was not to conduct the conversation over the phone but meet David personally.

We arranged a neutral rendezvous and after a lot of craic, I gently probed his position with UTV. It had been explained to me by the BBC executive that it wouldn’t be cricket for him to in any way appear to be trying to “poach” David. So I told David that he might find a phone call to the BBC would not be unwelcome. That way David would be making the approach, And that was how it began at the Beeb. Such are the weird and wonderful ways of some organisations….!

After my “undercover” days were over, and, indeed after I left the BBC, I would bump into David from time to time. He was not one for nodding and passing on. He would stop in the street and engage cnversation. In these casual encounters he had a great ability to make you feel that what you were saying was terribly interesting. His attention never wavered.

The last time I saw him, he was minutes away from a deadline for starting a recorded programme and yet he stood yarning with me as if he had all day. He was a great listener, and maybe that was due his training as a former police detective.

Robin Walsh said on tv tonight that David would have been embarrassed by the tsunami of tributes today. Indeed he would. He wasn’t one to hog the limelight. He was not one to go to grand openings or, like some “personalities” the opening of an envelope. Nor was he grinning out of the photographs in the local glossy magazine.

I am reminded of the quotation: “When are content to simply be yourself and don’t compare or compete, then everybody will respect you.” There was a lot of that in David Dunseith.

Above all, he was neither up-market or down-market. He was able to appeal to a huge spectrum of audience from the AB social grades to the CDEs, as the market researchers would put it.He did this by simplifying complex political and other issues. A Mr. Everyman.

Which brings me to another quote: “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication” – Leonardo de Vinci. David Dunseith was both simple and sophisticated.

[A.McQ.]

There's an Ottilie Patterson obituary in today's London Times. It's a good read. I was introduced to her aeons ago by the late great Dave Glover at Aldergrove Airport as he and his wife and I flew from Manchester on the same flight and she was waiting for one to London. She was amazingly "ordinary" and civil and didn't seem to be touched at all by stardom. Dave and his band had been doing cabaret in some of the Northern clubs at the time.

[Graham]

Yes, it's taken a while for news of Ottilie's death to get around. The paper from where she lived, the Ayrshire Post just published a story today.
http://www.ayrshirepost.net/2011/07/01/heartbreak-blues-star-dies-in-ayr-102545-28962240/

[KB]

Somebody who isn't dead...
I've just read in interview in the Guardian with one Harry Chapman Pincher who's now 97 and has a new book!

[Cal McCrystal]

I didn't know David Dunseith well. My only encounter with him was when he interviewed me about a book I had written more than a dozen years ago. What struck me at the time (and which I recall warmly) was that the interview was more like a fairly brief fireside chat than a grilling.It may seem odd to those who had the misfortune not to know Dunseith, but throughout the broadcast I formed a rather cousinly feeling for him.
I am very saddened also about the deaths of Stanley Aicken and Jim Creagh, both of whom I knew very well when I was a reporter in Belfast. Much later, I wrote a couple of pieces for Jim's fairly short-lived "Quality Times" magazine.

[ruthie]

Talking of wrong captions, there is a good one in the Lurgan Mail this week. Referring to craturs in a caption of people.

[ruthie]

Just when I thought Wimbledon was over, they put on the mixed doubles.
I can't take any more.
The only exciting thing was Rory McIlroy's interview at Wimbledon and the fact he was also in Hamburg for the big fight last night.
Talking of the big fight, I yawned my way through 12 rounds as two men tip toed around each other.
The man with the long arms, frightened the Brit with his right fist poised all the time.
Had Hay only risked a decent enticement to get the Ukrainian to go at him with two hands, he may have come up with a decent upper cut.
Even changing the direction of the floor dance could have mixed up the winner.

[Chairman]

Remind me never to get into a fight with Ruthie. Sounds like a dangerous woman.

[President]

Remember the story this week about the prospective mother-in-law who sent her son's fiancee a fierce telling-off letter about her manners and habits?

This was followed by a riposte from the fiancees father, defending his daughter and attacking the woman, a Mrs Bourne.

The Daily Mail quoted him as saying that Mrs Bourne was "so far up her backside she really doesn't know whether to speak or f**t" (asterisks included) The Daily Telegraph had the same quote, except that "fart" was printed in full.

Question: which is the most Conservative newspaper; and which is the most conservative?

[President]

The Sunday Independent reports today (p2):
"trouble between men from the mainly Catholic Markets area and others from the mainly Protestant Short Strand area"

You'd thing after reporting 40 years of trouble here they'd get a handle on Northern affairs.

[Chairman]

Not sure either Mrs Bourne or the father of the bride-to-be would be much of an asset to the diplomatic corps. But it is very entertaining.

[A.McQ.]

It was also disclosed in a couple of Sunday prints yesterday that the fiance of the girl has set up a wedding planning business. Could this be a well-planned publicity stunt. Even The Times fell for it last week and did a spread in Times2 as well as news stories. Methinks I smell a rat!

[ruthie]

Glad to see my old mucker Carmel Robinson in the News Letter today. Carmel obviously wrote most of the paper yesterday.
Great nose for a story she has.

[President]

Is that the Carmel that used to be on the Armagh paper?

[Cal McCrystal]

Regarding the photo above, I had meant to ask about Betty Lowry whom I well recall as a colleague on the Belfast Telegraph before I hopped to London in 1964. She was extremely charming and talented: a most reliable journalist with a great eye for detail. I always admired her professionalism. Does she still grace Northern Ireland society? Does anybody know?

[Chairman]

Betty Lowry is still with us and living in a retirement home near Bangor. A few of her old colleagues from the features dept. plan to visit Betty shortly and will pass on your good wishes.

[Chairman]

Some of you may be old enough to recall a time before everyone had carpets and many floors in the home were covered in linolium. A fine pre-plastic floor covering, invariably highly coloured, and damn cold when you put your bare foot out of bed on a frosty morning. The shock however,did waken you up. However its lifespan was limited and gave rise to a disease known as the lifting-the-lino syndrome. This is a job that should take a matter of minutes but invariably took hours because the 'lifter' became engrossed in the stories in the ancient newspapers that served as a cushion below the lino. What put this into my head is that I was looking through some of the earlier blogs from a few years back looking for something, I forget what, and found myself engrossed with old entries in blogs of several years back. I recommend it to anyone with an hour to kill. What is the attraction of yesteryear's news that makes it so facinating? But perhaps you are all too young or too posh to remember the linolium era. But I can still recoil at the mere memory of a warm foot hitting the lino on a winter's morning.

[sm]

In the world of newspapers, there's a thing called "The Silly Season." It's that time of year when there's little or no hard news around. I think we've come to the silly season in the world of blogs!
Unfortunately, I am old enough to remember both the feeling of cold lino on warm feet - and also the ancient news stories - and particularly adverts - in those ancient and stained papers found under the lino. Who remembers "Wake up you liver bile" and "Eno's Fruit Salts" among many others?

[ruthie]

If you are missing the world of hard news, police raided a brothel on the Armagh Road in Portadown yesterday.
However the web page of Eringer is giving some real insights to the life of Prince Albert.
In fact I am loving this Eringer stuff. He even has given the inside story on Putin.
Who said anything about Silly Season ?
And even more interesting is the real reason why Kerry Katona left her management team.

[Chris Ryder]

In the current frenzy about journalistic ethics let us not forget it was skilled journalists who exposed all this. And there are even more damaging revelations to come about direct police curruption - again the work of journalists. We are not all tarred with the same brush and five cheers for the Guardian.

[A.McQ.]

I find some little comfort seeing that those mostly mired in this - and a couple of others still to come - came through the fast track/showbiz route with little if any time spent on news. While the rest of us were often regarded as plodders the whizkids were streaking to glory and now, if justice is to be done and seen to be done, a nice smelly overcrowded prison cell.

[Chris Ryder]

A very interesting perspective and I agree with you about the justice of the ultimate outcome for the guilty.

[A.McQ.]

Like a lot of Copyboys and girls you and I know, Chris, what it is like to be told "how to do" a story by a whizzer "who's never been out on their own in the dark" then blamed for not standing up a story that wasn't true in the first place. There's a couple of very juicy names still to become public - hopefully - and not all are from the NoTW. I have to say that there is deep deep joy among many of the rank and file in Fleet Street at the predicament of certain people. Doubles, trebles and even quadruples all round and if Inspector Knacker is successful then some of our old colleagues and chums may well drown in an ocean of champagne!

[Chris Ryder]

We used to call it the 'windy phone box syndrome'. You had these slick desk-jockeys - who had never been outside a newspaper office - unaware of the realities of driving through the night to an unfamiliar location, tracking and obtaining the story, then finding a working phone box, which invariably had no light or windows, smelt of piss and there was no operator at the other end to make the reverse charge call to file. (It would have been impossible to carry enough 10p coins).

So it will be great to see the sort of people who thought there was an easier way to do it getting their come-uppance at last and ending up in a prison cell where the paedos and rapists they persecuted can get at them. Steady on old boy. You're getting carried away but you know what I mean.

Seriously and sadly the misconduct of a minority of ruthless, amoral idiots has let MPs take revenge for their exes scandal and will result in a statutory regulatory framework for the media which undermines the role of a free press in society, compromises the real public interest and shackles independent journalism. What a price Murdoch's minions will force the media to pay.

The buck must stop with him and so his fitness to run, never mind expand, his media empire must now be seriously tested.The political establishment must get out of his bed and stop running scared of him.

Given the complelling evidence of deplorable tactics so far, and there is clearly more damaging information to come about actual corruption of the police and so on, I do not see how he can ever be allowed to take over the rest of BSkyB and continue to enjoy a dominant position in running newspapers. He has infected our whole society with a toxic virus that will be difficult to erode and only at great cost to the long held public values he has so seriously corroded and compromised. What a dreadful legacy, one that will surely overshadow his many visionary achievements.

[Chairman]

Dubious newspaper tactics have been the subject of several fine films. The Front Page,(set in the 1920s) Ace in the Hole (1950s) and Absence of Malice (1980s). In the days before telephone, radio and international air travel, the newspapers of the world were filled up with fantasy yarns it was practically impossible to disprove. Indeed until recently Florida had a paper that printed nothing but stories of aliens landing; lost two-headed tribes and world war two planes found on the moon. At home we had Freddy Starr eating hamsters among other celebrity publicity stunts. Sadly, I never worked for papers in the era of mobile phones, never mind a reporter having his own private detective to do his legwork (or tapwork) for him. I feel deprived.

[President]

SCANDAL? WHAT SCANDAL?

The splash lead story in the Daily Star today is "Love cheat Rio's eleven sexy babes". Perhaps when some "babe" thinks she's been hacked the Star will think that the phone hack story is of some interest to their readers.

The only other paper not to lead with the phone hack story is the Daily Express. It goes with "House prices up £67 a day" (Yawn!)

Yes, it IS time for an inquiry...an inquiry into whether these two publications, both owned by Mr Desmond, still qualify to be described as newspapers, there by avoiding payment of VAT.

[ruthie]

Where does all this phone hacking leave the role of Private Detectives.
Having been unsuccessfully followed by one at Balmoral Show and into the members rooms, (who signed him in or was he/she already a member) I have a bit of experience in their role.
In a High Court insurance claim for a hairline hip fracture, their weak evidence of trailing me around Balmoral Show didn't have any impact. However I did predict that Balmoral show would be a good three days to follow me at work.
The good news is I was able to later follow up this incident and learned so much.
As a result I have sympathy for Rebekah Wade.

[Chris Ryder]

A journalist friend in London who patrols a sensitive beat has just told me the department he shadows has assigned a press officer to cling to him and monitor all his conversations when he is invited to social functions. Any public enquiry into news gathering practices should also include news management on the part of the goverment etc

[A.McQ.]

I cannot answer my mobile phone at the moment, but those of you who have my number continue to call me and leave voicemails....I am assured the NoW will forward them to me via email!

[Cal McCrystal]

While I share Chris Ryder’s dismay, it isn’t easy to see a way out of journalism’s predicament. The old Press Council was a weak and bloodless creature full of half-formed aspirations and semi-delirious hopes. It’s modern replacement seems no better or wiser. Demands for serious reform will fade, I suspect as the economy improves, and the tabloid-reading public will continue to sustain the likes of the News of the World. More insistent voices may well sound like the final, faraway fulminating call of the lesser pipsqueak. What won’t happen is a Maelström to whirl to death the roaring whale. Hacking into celebrity or non-celebrity phones and emails will provoke little anger in Britain’s Great Chavatoria. As for the great English middle-class mass, as Richard Aldington observed in Death of a Hero, “that dreadful squat pillar of the nation will only tolerate art and literature that are fifty years out of date, eviscerated, detesticulated, bowdlerized, hum-buggered, slip-slopped, subject to their Anglicised Jehovah.” (Though they may help reverse the ban on fox-hunting). And don’t hold your breath for a trouncing of M. Rude Merdique, who is quite used to anticipating a political welcome that amnesties the past. Who among us Copyboys can honestly echo Mme de Staël’s assertion a century or more ago that “The freedom of the Press is the right upon which all other rights depend.”? I say all the above while recognising that age has jaundiced my outlook to a great extent.

[Graham]

[From Belfast Telegraph]

LOCAL JOURNALIST "HACKED"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-14059227

[A.McQ.]

I don't know Greg Harkin, but I know his excellent work and having heard and read what we've had in front of us recently this really is no surprise - a disgrace, but not a surprise. I know that shortly after the Montgomery culls in Mirror Group Newspapers in the early to mid-90s a news desk secretary on one Sunday paper and the crime reporter of another were sacked instantly after they were caught red-handed by investigators called in by MGN as they handed over printouts of newsdesk schedules and stories the papers were working on to a News of the World newsdesk executive in return for cash. Both also confessed and signed statements. The NoW guy is no longer on the staff but his name has cropped up a time or two as the hacking scandal has unravelled. I had at one time worked with the crime reporter and his betrayal of his newspaper and his colleagues particularly disgusted and angered me because the paper he was on had been extremely good to him during a particularly difficult period in his personal life and several of us put our jobs on the line to help him, including a couple of execs much higher up the food chain than me.

[Graham]

NEWS OF WORLD TO CLOSE!!

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23968230-news-of-the-world-to-end-publication-on-sunday.do

[A.McQ.]

A very very drastic move and a lot of good people who were not involved in it or aware of it will be cast adrift. The only thing I can think of here is that there is an awful lot more - and possible even worse - to come. They can't re-invent it as The Sunday Sun because that paper already exists in Georgieland - once part of the BT/Thomson stable - but it could be The Sun On Sunday. You read that here first...Anyway I'm off to the boozer - that's what newspapermen and women of my generation have always done when a story like that breaks!

[ruthie]

Phone Hacking, don't make me laugh. Just say a key word on your mobile and transcripts immediately go through to Cheltenham or for that matter maybe even Hollywood/
All phones are monitored.
Those with degrees in computer forensics are trained to hack.
Industrial espionage is big business, local councils are at it.
Give me a break. Many a stringer was glad of a good tip off fee from Rupert Murdoch.
I don't hear a cheap from the Barclay Bros. They are well under the radar but were well backed in sorting out a few ministers whose faces didn't fit.
Someone has it in for Murdoch, but don't stand in the firing line when payback comes.

[Graham]

"Someone has it in for Murdoch" Ruthie. Like, just all the rest of the newspaper industry, and all the rest of the television industry, for a start?

[Chairman]

I can hear the squeals of delight from all those sleezeball MPs who suffered in the great expenses scandal, at the backlash against the press over phone hacking. And all the other creepy celebs caught with somebody's pants round their ankles. However it is easy to see how this phone-tap on celebs got out of hand and wound up with the insanity of tapping the phones of families of murder victims and soldier's widows. Like peeping toms, phone tapping becomes like a narcotic. Peversity an adiction. Although to be fair, I cannot imagine listening in on some model's phone messages can have been entirely risk free. Surely the chance of dying of boredom would qualify for danger money.

[Chairman]

I couldn't help wondering if there wasn't someone in authority at the NoW, who had a flash of conscience, or even common sense, to say 'Hold on. This is going too far." Then I remembered a book that came out about fifteen or so years ago, by a psychologist, suggesting that even great commercial companies and entire governments can be susceptible to a kind of collective madness, where they fail to spot a glaring flaw in the course they are taking. And even when the flaw jumps up and bites them in the ass, they stay in corporate denial. A bit like those Europhiles who still think joining the Euro was a crackerjack idea.

[Cal McCrystal]

There is a prize for any Copyboy who comes up with the name of a reborn NoW. Suggestions so far include: "Nudes of the World", "News of the Whores", "Nipples Galore", "Sunday World" "Legs Akimbo", "Lap-top Dancer", "Thin Blue Line", "The Sunday Tights", "Nether Regions", "NoW's The Times".

[Chairman]

Legs Akimbo? Wasn't he an American gangster in the 1920s?

[ruthie]

Hugh Grant on Question Time, that says it all.
No better man with experience of the Californian Cops to discuss the Metropolitan police.
He hadn't even the manners to wear a tie.
But then he likes to keep his buttons open.

[A.McQ]

Nor, madam, is the titian-haired empress of Wapping a stranger to the Metropolitan Police. Just cast your mind back - remember to whom she was first married? Why none other than actor-turned-war correspondent Ross Kemp....and were not the police called when she allegedly attacked him giving him a black eye among other injuries?

[Derek Black]

Funny, none of that has been in the papers this time around - maybe it is early days yet.

[Graham]

Boy, haven't the national newspapers pulled out all the stops today to think of a striking headline to mark the death of the "News of the World"

"Paper that died of shame" - Daily Mail
"Hacked to death" - The Times
"World's end" - The Sun

And so on....

But the prize must go, not to a national, but to a regional with 1/20th the circulation of the big fellows - our own Irish News:

"THE END OF THE WORLD IS NIGH"

You couldn't beat that. Congratulations to Irish News editor, Noel Doran and to the sub-editor who wrote it. Let's have that sub's name, please. An award is in order.

[A.McQ.]

Link below to New York Times profile of Rebekah Brooks.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/08/world/europe/08profile.html?emc=eta1

[Ian Sanderson]

I seem to remember the title "Screws of the World" doing the rounds many (many) years ago...

[A.McQ]

And "News Of The Screws." But they also did some excellent hard news stuff away from sex and sleaze. Back in the day you had to have a fair bit of experience in news reporting under your belt before they'd even look at you for a reporters job. They had some extremely good - and straight - reporters and newsdesk staff. I saw an old mate on TV last night lamenting the demise of the paper, one of their best hands and as straight as a dye. The subs, too, who had nothing to do with any of this are being dumped. But how are the Murdochs and Ms Brooks going to fill the £2.8m a week loss in income from the NoW? Both The Times and The Sunday Times were being kept afloat by the NoW and The Sun. So there've got to be big cuts coming on the posh titles as The Sun alone can't sustain them. And what happens if Mr Murdoch's Sky bid fall in? Some believe even he and his son are not safe if the Sky bid fails. Interesting times. Brian Paddick, former Met Police assistant commissioner and former LibDem candidate for Mayor of London, is telling anyone with a notebook or microphone that after the arrest of Andy Coulson he cannot see the police "not inviting Ms Brooks for a chat without the option of declining the invitation."

[Chris Ryder]

I'm certainly not being political but isn't Ian Paisley jr being a self-important wee opportunist alleging local papers engaged in hacking. Is there the slightest shred of evidence? Does he feel guilty about something coming to light perhaps? Anyway can you think of anything more boring than listening in to his calls or indeed that of any of his political peers or contemporaries? A pathetic bunch all of them to be singularly and determinedly apolitical.

[Chairman]

I liked the crack I heard on the radio from some commentator (don'k know who - or care). He said that to save some senior News Internationl executives from going to prison, Murdoch decided to send the News of the World to jail instead. Personally I cannot think of anyone so important that they are worth the death of a great newspaper - and NoW was a great newspaper. And the great reporters who gave birth to a classic cliche'. Some young lady would be offering sexual favours for a price and the reporter would sign off with, "At this point, I made my excuses and left." Yeah, right.

[Graham]

SCREWS TERMINOLOGY

I liked one of the sales slogans they used in the past: "If it goes on, it goes in."

When I was a boy the News of the World was regarded as ever so naughty - when all it ever really did was report court proceedings in sex cases.

And even those court reports were sanitised, often including the words "it was stated that intimacy then took place." I wonder how many parents were asked: "What's intimacy?" And to think that the paper sold 8.5 million copies a week on this stuff, wildy mild by today's standards.

[Chairman]

Speaking of the arrogant corporate madness that has got, not only the NoW but the tabloids generally, targeted by the political elite they've been embarrassing for decades, is it possible that the newspaper executives who sanctioned this criminality have had their brains scrambled by attending too many trendy parties where inhaling cocaine is almost manditory? I've been trying to find some rational explanation for it all and I understand that one of the delusions you get from that stuff is that you can no longer imagine consequences for any behaviour however bizarre.

[Smyth]

Don't you think that maybe, just maybe, Murdoch was only too pleased to kill the NoW. He looked at North American papers and saw that it's cheaper to run a seven-day operation than to run two papers. (Here in Toronto the Sunday Star used to have its own staff (I was news editor and deputy editor), then the bean-counters amalgamated the two operations and now the Sunday is just another daily Star. It's the same all over this continent). There was talk, I read, a couple of weeks ago of combining the editorial staffs of the Sun and NoW, and I see that the domain sunonsunday.com has been registered. Remember how Murdoch fooled us all 30 years ago by pretending to launch another paper, when all the time he was planning the midnight flit to Wapping to fool the unions? Look out for the new Sunday Sun -- or the Sun's Sunday edition -- when the fuss died down and the Sky tv deal is inked.

[Graham]

IN THE SEWER

There's a fierce attack on the Murdoch empire in today's Daily Telegraph.

click here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/phone-hacking/8626421/Phone-hacking-David-Cameron-is-not-out-of-the-sewer-yet.html

[Graham]

The paywall is being demolished at the News
of the World so anyone who wants can read tomorrow's final edition online free.

Meantime, if you missed last night's punch-up on Newsnight between Steve Coogan and former News of the World journalist Paul McMullan, here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZV9Sh_R3wB4

[Graham]

NEWSPAPER WAR
Exclusive

Stand by for a real dogfight at the newsagents' tomorrow.

I hear that there all sorts of wheezes are in the pipeline. The Daily Star Sunday is DOUBLING its print run. The News of the World is increasing the number of copies available by 48%. But there's an internet campaign to boycott the the paper.

In addition there'll be cut-throat price-cutting offers from other titles - (playing Murdoch at his own game!)

[KB]

Graham, thanks for the steer towards the Newsnight punch-up. Classic stuff. I've witnessed Mr McMullan several times this week. He seems to have been selected through Central Casting's Grubby Hack section. Somehow I have been reminded of an ITV comedy series which ran in the 70s and centred on Fleet Street and had lots of people like him. Hot Metal. Does anyone remember it? I recall one senior reporter in an overcoat. To gain access anywhere, he always produced his NUJ pass and uttered the words - Her Majesty's Press.

[A.McQ]

It's worth bearing in mind with all the crowing going on about the NoW that this story was exposed by other journalists and that the vast majority still on staff putting together the last edition had nothing to do with - or knowledge of - the scandalous and criminal behaviour that has destroyed the paper. It wasn't the police, a campaigning MP or cleverdick lawyer - IT WAS GOOD OLD FASHIONED TENACIOUS IMPARTIAL INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING.

[Graham]

NEWSAGENTS BODY URGES SWITCH TO "MAIL ON SUNDAY"

The newsagents' trade body, the NFRN, has urged their members to push customers towards the Mail on Sunday tomorrow. Here's the full text of a a NFRN circular:

"The News of the World will cease publication after this Sunday 10th July.

There will be significant media attention paid to this final edition and in
an effort to meet the anticipated extra demand News International will be
increasing the print figure by 48%. Unfortunately due to the lateness of
this event there is likely to be a shortage in Colour supplements.

Other titles are also producing extra copies details as follows:

Mail on Sunday +8%
Sunday Express +20%
Daily Star on Sunday +100%
Sunday Mirror +12%
The People +3%

The Mail on Sunday will be delivering leaflets to all retailers via the
wholesalers. These leaflets offer readers of the News of the World the
opportunity to buy the Mail on Sunday at £1 which is 50p off the normal
price for six weeks.

This is an excellent offer which we would ask all retailers to fully
support. Remember the margin on the News of the World is 21.88p whilst the
margin on the Mail on Sunday is 31.5p – well worth encouraging your
customers to switch to!

Trinity Mirror are also producing some half price offers on their titles
details of which will also come through wholesale. Many of the News of the
World readership are likely to shift to another “red top” title so this
initiative should also be supported.

We do need to also target the HND customers currently taking a copy of the
News of the World. Below are a variation on the recently launched NFRN
Home Delivery leaflets. These could be delivered to your News of the World
customers and will probably need a follow up call as a reminder.

There is as you can see a lot of activity to ensure that the current sales
level of Sunday newspapers is not only preserved but hopefully enhanced
following the closure of the News of the World."

[Graham]

"MURDOCH'S EMPIRE IS SHAKING"

"The events of recent days are a watershed for Britain, for the United States, and for Rupert Murdoch. Tabloid journalism—and our tabloid culture—may never be the same." - So says famed Watergate jouranlist Carl Bernstein in a fierce piece in "Newsweek"

Read it here:http://www.newsweek.com/2011/07/10/murdoch-s-watergate.html

[Smyth]

My apologies: sunonsunday.com, which I mentioned earlier, appears to ahve NOTHING to do with the Dirty Digger.

[ruthie]

So not another paper has ever hacked.
Finger biting time I fear for a few more execs.
Meanwhile Hugh Grant was given a fair decent 'below the belt' doing today by Amanda Platell.

[Graham]

For me, the most interesting story among the flood of NoW-related articles this morning is one in the Sunday Telegraph headed "Swagger that sowed the seeds of destruction" This says that Rebekah Brooks micro-managed and would spend up to two houes quizzing newsdesk guys about the ins and outs of stories. Suggestion here is that she must have known....http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/phone-hacking/8628127/Phone-hacking-Swagger-that-sowed-the-seeds-of-destruction.html

[Graham]

David Mellor (remember him? Isn't he some sort of DJ now on Radio 3 or somewhere) sounding off this morning, calling for resignations at Scotland Yard over failure to investigate NoW phone hacking first time around.

No doubt we'll soon be hearing from Lord (Jeffrey) Archer and Jonathan Aiken.

[A.McQ.]

The Independent on Sunday carries this headline on its leader about the NoW: "The wrong red-top went." It also says if Rebekah Brooks had fallen on her sword the Screws could well have been saved. Few will argue with that. But it was the Yanks wot done it. The decision was taken in New York - not London.

[Graham (in pedant mode)]

ATTENTION ALL PEDANTS!

We recently had a discussion about over-used words and phrases. My own unfavourite was "robust" - now much beloved by bureaucrats and corporate-speak people. They're always having inquiries will be robust, enterprises which are robust, procedures which are robust and, no doubt, "world-class" as well.

Columnist Tom Hodgkinson writes in the Indepedent today about another word whcih has crept up on us and is being done to death. I swear I've seen it in local advertisements for journalists.

Tom manages to make a whole column out of his dislike for this word:

See here: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/tom-hodgkinson-can-you-really-have-passion-for-a-potato-2307899.html

[A.McQ.]

Graham: I think you'll find The Suits took robust from the Generals during the Iraq war and the early days in Afghanistan when they said they "would respond in a robust manner" if attacked. Bambi Blair picked it up and now Call Me Dave - having been a PR man and soundbite smoothy - is "running with it!"

[Graham]

We've said it before on this site - it was bound to happen. Now it has. A weekly paper has named the victims of an alleged sexual assault. The weekly paper is owned by the Trinity Mirror group. The PCC is so angry that it has written to the head of Trinity Mirror, Sly Bailey.

This from "Hold the Front Page" site - and it's worth reading the readers' comments at the bottom:

http://www.holdthefrontpage.co.uk/2011/news/weekly-newspaper-slammed-by-press-watchdog-for-appalling-error/?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed