Newspapers

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Andy Coulson’s Day in Court

Though the London press has barely noticed the fact, it’s possible that Andy Coulson will be in court later this month at which point, presumably, he will be asked, under oath, about the News of the World’s newsgathering methods. Coulson may be asked to testify during Tommy Sheridan’s perjury trial. This may just be a publicity stunt but the defence – for Coulson will be called by Sheridan’s legal team – will presumably have something to say about the News of the World and its “techniques”. Coulson, as editor at the time, is an obvious witness to call in this regard and, if my understanding of the law is correct,

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Andy Coulson Needs Better Defenders

He also needs more of them. Of course Labour are hyping the Coulson Affair to the maximum. Any opposition party would. As tends to be the case in such stories it’s useful, I think, to ask how you’d feel if it was all the other way round. If this were a story about Alastair Campbell many of those defending Coulson (or just keeping quiet) would be demanding his resignation and, equally, many of those Labour MPs agitating for Coulson’s dismissal would be silent if this were a Labour scandal. So, yes, this is more about politics than principle. (And about the New York Times vs the Wall Street Journal.) Nevertheless,

Saturday

Alex Massie

The Guardian Buys A Miliband Pup

If Labour members really want to vote for Ed Miliband then bully for them. Quite why they think doing so would advance their prospects of regaining power is something that’s lost on me. But if they do want to plump for Miliband Minor then at least they should do so for the correct reasons and not on the back of an utterly bogus poll. That’s the poll that “found” that 72% of “undecided” voters would be less likely to vote Labour if its new leader decided that New Labour was still a Good Thing. Ordinarily the Guardian likes to think of itself as a serious newspaper for serious people. Lord

Thursday

Alex Massie

The Hague Affair

This so-called story is fast becoming an ideal case study for any student of politcs and the British press. Neither party comes out of it looking especially good. I’m sure James is correct: the press wins (or loses, if that’s how you view it) either way. If Hague ignores the innuendo then it’s fodder for bloggers and diarists (and eventually columnists) and if he addresses the matter then that means that it’s “officially” a story fit for public discussion. Heads gossip wins, tails Hague loses. If the rumours about Hague’s relationship with his young and now-former SpAd were true then, yes indeed, you’d have a scandal that would cost the

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Andy Coulson’s Phone Problem Returns

I’m not sure why the New York Times Magazine thinks its readers will be interested in a long piece about the News of the World and its history of phone-hacking but I’m glad that the Times has published this article anyway. Among the most damaging allegations: the suggestion that, for various reasons, the police limited the extent of their inquiries into law-breaking at the Screws. To wit: That fall, Andy Hayman, the head of the counterterrorism branch, was in his office when a senior investigator brought him 8 to 10 pages of a single-spaced “target list” of names and mobile phone numbers taken from Mulcaire’s home. It read like a

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Everything is Relative…

From today’s Telegraph letters page: Comparatively ungallant nickname for a military hero SIR – Those with experience of the old Stock Exchange floor will readily recall some of the nicknames (Letters, August 22) bestowed upon its habitués. Among them were two brothers, both with highly distinguished military careers and both winners of the Military Cross, one with bar and one without. The latter acquired the sobriquet of “The Coward”. Quentin Smith, Dunley, Hampshire [Many thanks to AH for the tip.]

Saturday

Harry Mount

Fourth Estate skulduggery

Tim Waterstone is the man who set up the bookshop chain in 1982, so you might expect him to have read a few books, and be OK at writing them. In fact, he’s more a businessman than a writer. He began life as a broker in Calcutta, before becoming marketing manager for Allied Breweries and W. H. Smith. But it turns out that Waterstone is rather a skilled thriller writer; his publicity people are doing him a disservice in their promotional literature by comparing him to Jeffrey Archer (the novel’s gallumphing Archeresque title apart). He has wisely chosen two worlds he knows about to set his thriller in — business

Friday

Alex Massie

Hackwatch

Tom Scott – who I’m pretty sure I saw taking part in BBC4’s spiffing quiz show Only Connect – has been waging a mini-guerilla war against mediocre journalism. He explains his mission here and this is the kind of sticker he’s taken to leaving in copies of spare newspapers he finds on the Tube… Plenty more here. You might need an entire sheet just for a single edition of some of our magnificent papers…

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Know Your Readership

Meanwhile, in other Glasgow news the city’s evening paper makes its readers an offer they can’t refuse. I believe this exhausts my annual quota of posts making gentle fun of Glaswegians. [Hat-tip: Kevin Schofield]

Tuesday

Alex Massie

A Graduate Tax is a Bad Idea

But not because of the argument Iain Dale makes here: Just a thought on the graduate tax. We already have a graduate tax. It’s called income tax at 40 per cent. This is an off-hand comment, sure, but it would also be a better argument if it were true. There are about 31.7 million taxpayers in Britain; only 3.8 million of them pay any tax at 40%. I’m all for widening tax bands to take some people out of higher tax rates but there are millions of graduates who don’t earn enough to pay higher rates of tax. Nevertheless, the belief that everyone pays tax at 40% is a constant

Sunday

Alex Massie

Headline of the Day | 8 August 2010

Obviously it’s from Western Nevada County, California: SWAT Team Requested for Violent Midgets Details, alas, remain sketchy but here’s what we have so far: At 12:32 p.m., a caller from West McKnight Way reported steroid-using body-builders from Reno had beaten up the caller’s son and might have killed him. Midgets from Fulton Avenue had been following and trying to poison the caller. The body-builder and the lead female midget, who the caller reported as being “really violent,” allegedly had been driving the caller’s truck. The caller wanted the Nevada County Sheriff’s Office to activate the SWAT team. God bless America. [Hat-tip: Radley Balko]

Friday

Alex Massie

Heffer’s Style Notes

This is good: the Daily Telegraph has published Simon Heffer’s back-catalogue of style notes in which, with exasperated patience, he points out the paper’s mistakes. Read too many of them and you might form the impression that the Telegraph no longer employs sub-editors. Nevertheless, Heffer’s advice is mostly good and, I’m pleased to see, the subject of a new book. I particularly enjoyed the note which began: There are many reasons to avoid using long sentences when writing. An obvious one is that the message is transmitted to the readers most easily when it is concise. Another is that an array of clauses can sometimes cause confusion. When we wrote

Thursday

Alex Massie

Growing up on Struggle-Street

Tom Switzer knows much more about Australian politics than I ever will, so I commend his post on Kevin Rudd’s downfall to you. (For an alternative take see John McTernan here.) What I would say, mind you, is that it’s a bad idea for a Prime Minister to abandon his signature issue simply because the going gets a little bit tough. That’s what Rudd did on climate change legislation* however and, frankly, even from a distance of many thousands of miles, one can see why his stock would struggle to recover from that debacle. Anyway, let’s talk about journalism and political terminology. Reading the accounts of Australia’s latest political shenanigans

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Heroic Journalism

I am a great admirer of John Rentoul’s series of Questions to Which the Answer is No and recommend it to you without hesitation. Until today, however, I had not known of the inspiration for this splendid feature. Discovering that it all began with the Daily Mail is no great surprise and could anything really be more perfect than the question* that Rentoul picked to begin this valuable series: There is, I submit, something almost heroic about this and the minds capable of producing such dizzying leaps of logic. It is magnificent. *As is often the case, the online version isn’t quite as good.

Sunday

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Alan Ruddock, 1960-2010

I suppose that relatively few people in England knew Alan Ruddock, who died from a heart attack on Sunday aged just 49, but in Scottish and Irish journalistic circles he was a considerable figure. As Kevin Myers reminds us, he defied the IRA as editor of the Sunday Times’s Irish edition. Later, as Stewart Kirkpatrick remembers, he was a very fine editor of the Scotsman, presiding over the paper and its coverage of the first elections to the new Scottish parliament in 1999. Later still, and foolishly, the Irish Times declined to give Alan the chance to edit the old lady of d’Olier St. Their loss. Instead he wrote a

Tuesday

Peter Hoskin

The media helps the coalition’s fiscal cause

This feels like a watershed moment: a national newspaper devoting its cover to an image of the country’s “debt mountain,” with a small shaded-off area showing how little of it is covered by yesterday’s cuts.  The paper in question is today’s Independent.  And while the cover may not perfectly depict what’s going on with our public finances – yesterday’s cuts will reduce the government’s annual overspend, not the overall debt burden which will keep rising for years to come – it is still a powerful reminder of Brown’s toxic legacy. In some respects, the coalition might not appreciate this kind of focus: after all, politicians don’t much like mentioning the

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Times Goes for Broke

  Rupert Murdoch is scarcely infallible and there’s a sense abroad that he doesn’t really understand the internet. But even if that’s true it doesn’t mean that his decision to take the Times behind a paywall is necessarily a mistake even if, naturally, it’s inconvenient for bloggers and other news-grazers. So journalist me sort of hopes that Murdoch’s gamble, beginning today with the launch of a new and sleeker Times website, works; blogger and consumer me is less optimistic and not just because the Times paywall is an upfront charge, not the metered system favoured by the Financial Times and, soon, the New York Times. In one sense £2 a

Sunday

Alex Massie

Great Moments in Sub-Editing

Am cricketing today, so talk amongst yourselves. Or stay silent if you prefer. Meanwhile, here’s a reminder that the Murdoch press reaches parts their competitors can’t…