Friday 24 June 2011

Quotes of the Week: From a J.Lo celebrity face-fart to a South Yorkshire newspaper editor with balls

Camilla Long on interviewing Jennifer Lopez in the Sunday Times Culture section and defying her PR police by asking about an alleged sex tape: "I leave the suite alone, after 11 minutes of pure celebrity face-fart. Astonishingly, I can’t tell if J.Lo is angry, but later the publicity team try repeatedly to get me to confirm that I will not be using the final question. Sadly for them, a blank sex tape is too fitting a metaphor."

AA Gill in the Sunday Times reviews Channel 4's Sri Lanka's Killing Fields documentary, presented by Jon Snow: "What was depressing about this particularly bloody special was not just that it had precious little context or considered thought, but that the people who will suffer most from it are not governments or soldiers, but the victims of this brutal war, who deserve a more measured professionalism and due diligence, and who deserve better than this compilation of gore, topped and tailed by a man in a comedy tie."

Mary Ann Sieghart in the Independent: "Reports based on privacy invasion are lazy journalism. If the playing field were raised so that none of the papers was allowed to depend on intrusion, they would have to compete instead by telling the real news in an entertaining way and campaigning on behalf of their readers. That's how papers used to thrive. There's no reason why they shouldn't do so again."

R S Foster in a letter to the Independent: "Could I suggest that if Mary Ann Sieghart and her high-minded broadsheet colleagues are serious about restraining the muck-raking vermin who infest the tabloids, they do so by using the many discreditable facts they no doubt know about the vermin to produce a weekly page about their repulsive personal behaviour and private misdeeds? I believe this would have far more impact than any number of high-minded columns and editorials, might sell more papers, and would certainly provide much amusement to the rest of us."

NUJ Irish secretary Séamus Dooley on the photographer shot while covering riots in east Belfast: “Niall Carson was injured while doing his job. It is vital that journalists should be allowed to carry out their duties without fear of attack from any quarter. This incident is part of a sinister assault on the people of Northern Ireland."

Lorna Tilbian, media analyst at Numis, in the Telegraph: "The Guardian is being artificially propped up by Auto Trader and they will have to change things because a good, vibrant business shouldn't need to reinvest every penny it generates. The problem they've got is that they're never going to get back the revenue they've lost from public sector advertising, circulation is on a long downward slope and they are giving away their digital content. I think they will have to start charging for their online content if they are to improve their finances."

Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger on Radio 4's The Media Show on job cuts: "We will need to lose significant numbers but we don't need to do it tomorrow. We can do it over the next couple of years and have a civilised conversation about that."

Blogger Guido Fawkes (aka Paul Staines) on being asked to addresss a group of Chinese communists:
"Almost as bad as a Goldsmith’s Media Studies audience, but not as left-wing."

Sun managing editor Graham Dudman, as reported by Press Gazette, telling journalism students: “You cannot be a reporter without shorthand ─ end of. It’s like being a footballer without football boots.”

The Independent's owner Alexander Lebedev tells the Guardian why more air passengers pick up the Daily Mail than the Indy: "The Daily Mail is more entertaining… But my opinion is as a reader and not as a proprietor."

South Yorkshire Times editor Jim Oldfield on running a story about proposed job cuts, including his own, on the front page of his paper: "The Times is currently fighting a brave and protracted battle to keep its core towns from decimation during this recession, I make no apology for acquainting our readers with the changes being proposed for their champion title."

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