Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

How to trap a journalist

Hacks love winning gongs – and lobbyists know it

Shortly before his death, the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm wrote that capitalism crushed the integrity of artists and intellectuals. Assessed only in terms of their commercial appeal, they became ‘a sub-department of marketing’. In a touching display of filial loyalty, Julia Hobsbawm seems to be proving her old dad right.

The former head of New Labour’s favourite PR agency, Hobsbawm Macaulay, now runs an outfit called Editorial Intelligence, ‘a tool for… bringing together key journalists and PR professionals through networking clubs’. Journalists once had a vague notion that their job was to tell the truth whatever the cost, while PRs believed they must protect their institution whatever the cost. There was a natural antipathy between them, which Hobsbawm has sought to break down under the guise of ‘networking’. For a mere £1,500 a year (£3,000 for corporate membership), marketing managers, PR execs, brand promoters, lobbyists, and people who can never explain what they do but insist on doing it anyway, can ‘create and build your personal and professional network… not with algorithms but with real people, face-to-face, and real human intelligence’.

The question remained: how could Hob-sbawm persuade journalists and academics to give ‘face time’ to such an unappealing crew? Surely, they would run a mile. Hobsbawm enlists a good many of them to speak at her annual Names Not Numbers conference in Oxford, described by Niall Ferguson as ‘like Davos… with community singing’. This makes it sounds like hell on earth, but I imagine large cheques ease the suffering. Her main inducement, however, is to play on journalists’ most glaring vice: not greed, but vanity. A hunger for awards.

Hobsbawm’s annual Comment Awards for pundits and columnists will be held this year at ‘our lead partner, Edwardian Hotels, at their beautiful May Fair Hotel in Mayfair’.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in