It may have seemed like a good idea for the Birmingham Post to put
these three businessmen in front of the projection screen at a seminar
for their picture.
But Dog wonders how they felt when the resulting photograph left one
with the word “Boar” on his chin and another with “Fraud” indelibly
stamped over his cheek and chin.
Freelance contributors to The Guardian are an affluent lot, it seems.
So relaxed are they about claiming expenses that managing editor Chris
Elliot has had to beg them to do so more promptly.
“Some of our contributors are taking so long to submit their
expenses that they are making it impossible for us to work out our
budgets,” he pleads. “Some are claiming so late, it is even falling
into another financial year.”
“I am writing to inform you that I have instructed desk editors and
their administrators, with effect from October 1, 2004, to return
unpaid any expenses that are submitted outside the one-month period. I
advise you therefore to bring any outstanding expense claims up to date
as soon as possible and thereafter to make sure you submit your claims
within one calendar month, otherwise they will not be paid.”
For those in peril … on the weeklies
This month’s curse-of-the-earlydeadline award must surely go to
Surrey freesheet The Rush. Its efforts to keep up with the nautical
derring-do of a local resident, rowing with the cross-Atlantic
expedition aboard the Pink Lady, meant it published this report –
datelined 12 August – explaining how rescuers “were almost dispatched”
after a false emergency alarm was triggered.
Unfortunately, its tale was prematurely washed out by stories in the
nationals – on 10 August – that their boat was a total loss and they
had been dramatically snatched from an ocean grave.
It’s a rough old world out there…
“Dear Dog,” writes an anonymous fan from somewhere to the west. “I
was hugely impressed by the dedication of the three Western Morning
News journalists who ‘slept rough’ in Boscastle to cover the floods
there last week.
“As I read the breathless headline, my mind raced with thrilling
images of the three reporters huddled together for warmth on the edge
of a crumbling cliff, or perched precariously on the branches of a tall
and wind-tossed tree. And then I read in the third par that on the
planet Press Gazette, kipping in a community centre is considered
sleeping rough.
“I’ve been in a few community centres in my time and I can confirm
that in all likelihood the community centre in Boscastle has a roof. I
will also take an informed guess and say that it is centrally heated.
And I think I’m on fairly safe ground when I venture that it probably
has a soft chair or two.
“At a pinch, an enterprising journalist could in all likelihood rustle up a kettle, a radio and even a landline.
Annoyingly, Press Gazette gives us no information about the mental
and physical state of the three journalists after their appalling
ordeal. Was an extended period of rest and convalescence called for?
“Next week in Press Gazette… ‘My night of hell in hotel without room
service’, ‘Revealed: sick PR gang gave journalists warm liebfraumilch
and curly sandwiches at press launch'”.
“Rrrruff!”
Mott’s mean makeover
A photographic illustration of the Daily Star’s handsome music
writer, Joe Mott, has recently been added to the top of his Hot page.
No one is ever pleased with their byline picture, as we know, but
Dog hears that Joe asked for more cosmetic improvements to his picture
than Michael Jackson has had in real life.
The over-worked graphics department were so unimpressed with toiling
for hours airbrushing spots and shaving facial hair to satisfy his
vanity, they did their own version of how Joe should look. The little
devils.
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