UK journalism

Never really had a chance to see the writing of Malcolm Muggeridge - I remember him as a faintly embarrassing figure of fun. But here’s a lovely excerpt of Muggeridge describing America in the 1950s:
What they all want … is what the Americans have got - six lanes of large motor cars streaming powerfully into […]

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Writing in American journalism’s gilded age, Charles Dudley Warner offered this assessment of the worth of a newspaper:
Not all newspapers which make money are good, for some succeed by catering to the lowest tastes of respectable people, and to the prejudice, ignorance, and passion of the lowest class; but, as a rule, the successful journal […]

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I own a few Sky shares so I wasn’t exactly thrilled when James Murdoch decided to buy a chunk of ITV. Still, the following announcement had me choking on my chips:
Ofcom’s advice is that there are public interest issues, in relation to sufficient plurality of news provision for both cross media and television news in […]

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Five news is ten years old, and I was there at the beginning. To anyone who doesn’t know why news anchors now stand up…well, we made it semi-respectable. Most of our innovations were the result of the tiny budget allowed for Britain’s fifth and final terrestrial channel.
We had a young, multi-skilled newsroom, before digital had even […]

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There is a strangeness about the British press - the newspapers go from ponderous analysis to pure entertainment and they bring the techniques of journalism to bear on all of that content. But, at the British Press Awards, there was some outstanding journalism on display. To invidiously name just three of the winners:

Sheila McNulty on BP
The […]

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ITV News journalists will ask themselves if this sounds familiar…
Army Tries to Spin Walter Reed Story, Gets Bitten in the AssAlia Malek
The articles on Walter Reed Army Medical Center that ran last week in both the Washington Post and the Army Times revealed a shameful reality awaiting wounded soldiers returning from Iraq. The stories, particularly those in […]

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