adrian monck

Month: October 2007

  • Does this feel painfully familiar?

    From the folks formerly known as Kommon Kraft.

  • Do bylines matter?

    The Daily Telegraph on the importance of bylines: The signature system has … dwindled into a purely technical and professional matter, a typographical detail, a means of obtaining recruits for new journals, or for enabling writers to find employment in different papers. Out of a thousand signed articles only about twenty carry with them any…

  • The NUJ: the people united shall never get their act together…

    When I first tried to join the National Union of Journalists, aged 22, I was told they were full. Really. This was because they were run by ultra-leftists who wanted to mobilise labour by keeping people out of trade unions. It took two years, but eventually they let me in, and by way of punishment…

  • Journalism and the breakdown of public knowledge

    “The breakdown of the means of public knowledge” is a phrase coined by the great American journalist, Walter Lippmann. He used it in Liberty and the News (1920), which is about to be reissued. His argument is simple. Robert Park summarised it thus: that political liberty, under modern conditions, is no longer guaranteed by the…