Quotes of the Week

Simon Jenkins in the Guardian writing about media coverage of Jon Venables: "The chief enemy of British freedom at present is the British press."

David Hepworth in The Word magazine on showbiz PRs and their increasing demands: "PR control reduces mystique. It acts on charisma like bromide on erectile tissue and sets up stars for an inevitable fall."

Nick Kent in his new autobiography Apathy for the Devil says of his first impression of Julie Burchill when she joined NME: "A strange teenaged girl with a pronounced West Country twang, sullen eyes and a vibe about her that could best be described as 'Myra Hindleyesque'".

Julie Burchill reviewing Apathy for the Devil in the Observer: "As Kent was so off his bonce due to various medications of both a street and legal kind that he regularly apologised to the NME office hat stand when he bumped into it during this time, one hardly expects 20/20 recall."

Wageslave posts on HoldtheFrontPage about the Northcliffe reorganisation of its papers in the South West which could cost 30 jobs: "It's symptomatic of how out of touch management are that on a website read almost entirely by journalists (most of them in this case their own employees) they still feel it's appropriate to attempt to mask the reasons for their decisions, which are well known to us all, under this veneer of glib PR b*ll*cks which most of us have spent our professional lives decoding. Give us some credit; some of us have probably been in the business longer than you have. Spin doesn't beguile us; it makes us even more suspicious. We're trained to spot the real story under the layers of self-serving dross; it's called being a journalist."

Peter Sands on the decision to cancel the Regional Press Awards this year: "If the regional press doesn't celebrate the excellence that runs through its newspapers, applaud the journalists who go that extra yard every day, recognise the editors who invest in off-diary work and innovation … then who will? I am particularly uncomfortable with the suggestion that we just applaud excellence during the good times. Those who work hard to maintain standards when the going gets tough deserve to be honoured."

NUJ organiser Chis Morley on Johnston Press: "Our members are sick of being pulled from pillar to post. What they want to do is to produce quality newspapers by using their professional skills and experience. While all the company wants is to reduce everything to a financial equation, Johnston Press Group is putting everyone’s jobs at risk by this reckless strategy."