Mirror takes its eye off the ball
The campaign for real exclusives is back with this front pager from
the Daily Mirror , whose ‘exclusive’ about the police crackdown on
Premiership football players’
behaviour appeared on Tuesday, two days after The Non-League Paper had led with it.
The
Mirror also said the crackdown had come after the weekend’s FA Cup
action, but as the NLP story makes clear, the Surrey Police email on
which the story was based had been issued a week before.
Related
FOILED FRAUD IS FODDER FOR BBC
Roy Templeton, the industrious head of press and publicity at BBC
Scotland, is mightily concerned that international fraudsters know far
too much about him for his own good.
Last year, £2,200 was spirited away from his credit card to persons unknown in Nigeria.
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Fortunately, his bank refunded the money.
That
let-off has been followed by a recent letter from the bank querying an
instruction by letter from Roy to transfer £2,500 to a Japanese bank
account.
The letter contained all his bank details – plus a pretty good stab at his signature.
Happily, this time Roy was able to thwart the fraudsters from the outset.
The
only heartening news to emerge from this alarming saga is that it
allowed his newsroom colleagues to feature Roy’s experience on
television and radio news programmes as a salutary example to the
public of the potent threat to their bank balances from invisible
conmen.
Like father, like son?
Dog couldn’t help noticing Alex Hitchen’s name on the list of Brits
heading across the pond to relaunch the National Enquirer in New York.
Because the Hitchens have form in the US.
Alex, ex-chief reporter of the People, is the son of Brian Hitchen,
who at one time edited the Daily Star in its pre-Archer glory years.
But before that, Hitchen senior was part of the original 1970s Brit
exodus to the Enquirer under Scottish editor Ian Calder.
It was
Hitchen who was behind the acquisition of the Enquirer ‘s most
notorious picture, Elvis in his coffin– one of the images that remains
in quarantine in the anthrax-contaminated office in Florida.
No doubt Enquirer bosses hope that son can emulate dad’s scoop.
STUDENT RAG IMPRESSES AN OLD HAND
Journalism students at the London College of Communications, as we
must get used to calling it, were delighted to receive this email from
an admiring reader of their current issue of the weekly LCC News.
He had just picked up copy that had been left on a seat on a tube train and felt moved to write in.
The students didn’t mind that Richard Morris wasn’t quite in their usual target readership – he retired a while ago.
His status as a former editor more than made up for it.
The
Falmouth Packet salutes Dame Ellen MacArthur’s triumphant return from
her recordbreaking round-the-world voyage. In fact, so quick was the
solo yachtswoman’s pace that it seems her boat was almost out of the
shot before the photographer could release the shutter. The edge of the
trimaran’s hull is just about visible, if you look very carefully.
Setting a truly shining example
“It seems blindingly obvious how to create a great magazine,” says
Everett True, editor of Plan B , in the press release accompanying the
latest issue of the ‘counterculture’ magazine that could be straight
from Chris Morris’s Channel 4 series Nathan Barley .
“Believe in what you’re doing, take a real pride in your work and strive for greatness,” he proclaims.
Inspired
by such rhetoric, Dog turned to the editor’s letter in the issue to
find that True’s real pride doesn’t always extend to actually working
on his magazine.
In it he thanks “Frances and Andrew and Sarah
and Daniel and Grace and everyone” for all the work they’ve done in his
absence, before admitting, “I had no part in putting together this
issue.
“From the Skegness Citizen. Dog has tried emailing the journalist Reporter’s Name. But so far, he or she hasn’t responded.
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