Media Quotes of the Week: From Harry and Meghan plan to chose 'credible' media and drop out of Royal rota system to scandal of Mirror journalists portrayal in Christine Keeler drama

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex on their website: "In the spring of 2020, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex will be adopting a revised media approach to ensure diverse and open access to their work. This adjustment will be a phased approach as they settle into the new normality of their updated roles. This updated approach aims to:

• Engage with grassroots media organisations and young, up-and-coming journalists; Invite specialist media to specific events/engagements to give greater access to their cause-driven activities, widening the spectrum of news coverage; Provide access to credible media outlets focused on objective news reporting to cover key moments and events; Continue to share information directly to the wider public via their official communications channels; No longer participate in the Royal Rota system."

Piers Morgan on Twitter: "Harry & Meghan have just published their new rulebook for the media to obey. Even Putin wouldn't try to pull a stunt like this. I fear they've both gone nuts."

The Times [£] in a leader: "Prince Harry has never made any secret of his dislike of the attention and scrutiny that it brings. He remains haunted by the memory of the treatment of his mother Diana, Princess of Wales, and has spoken of fears of the impact of such attention on his wife. The duchess for her part has suffered vile online abuse. Their desire to shield their son, Archie, from similar scrutiny is understandable."

Manchester Evening News reporter Beth Abbit, who covered the four Reynhard Sinaga rape trials, on Twitter:  "Should mention that my bosses at @MENnewsdesk gave me time to cover the Reynhard Sinaga case properly, allowing me to sit in court each day, even though they had to wait more than a year for the story. Great to work for a paper that gives you that freedom."

Harry Cole in the Mail on Sunday: "When asked at a Christmas party about his plans for Westminster’s press pack known as the Lobby, Dominic Cummings simply drew a finger across his throat. Whitehall’s ‘disrupter in chief’ has added the antiquated system for briefing political journalists to his list of things to blow up."

Michelle Stanistreet, NUJ general secretary, in a statement on the Lobby: “This decision to move the briefings from Parliament to Downing Street will make it more difficult, particularly for local papers and small press organisations to attend the briefings. The chair of the lobby has raised concerns that this will make lobby journalists’ jobs harder. Downing Street must consult with those reporters affected as this sends out a very worrying message to the press at the start of the new year and a new government. Proper discussions are needed so Westminster journalists can continue to do their jobs, holding government to account, without impediment.”

Amol Rajan on Twitter: "Scoop: John Humphrys is joining the Daily Mail as a columnist. My very distinguished former colleague, who left @BBCr4today in September after 32yrs, starts on Saturday. Replaces Peter Oborne. Will range beyond politics. Suspect @BBC will be in his sights from time to time!"

Index on Censorship chief executive Jodie Ginsberg  launching a new project aiming to expose the way those with wealth and influence use legal threats to shut down investigations by journalists: “Defamation law was reformed in 2013 to make it harder for people who had little or no connection to the UK to bring lawsuits here. However, we are still seeing people and organisations with almost no UK links bringing expensive and spurious defamation cases. In addition, increasingly people are turning to privacy and data protection laws in an attempt to prevent journalists reporting on corrupt, illegal or poor practice.”

Northern Echo editor Hannah Chapman in a comment on the paper's 150th anniversary:  "If I have to read another article in the national press about the death of local newspapers, or be asked one more time how we can hope to compete with social media-inspired citizen journalists, I might throw my phone into the River Skerne. And that’s not me looking through rose tinted spectacles. These are undoubtedly tough times, and we may be a bit battered and bruised, but we’re a long way from the description of the regional media that is commonly circulated. WE’VE just come through an election campaign that was marred by dishonesty and nastiness, with the national press sticking determinedly to their party lines. It was left to the largely non-partisan local and regional media to focus on the actual issues that matter to our readers, and hold candidates to account for their campaign statements.”

James Marriott in The Times [£]:  "Adults are likely to be loyal to one newspaper. Teenagers prefer to browse a number of outlets. Almost every teenage phone has Instagram installed on it — barely any has a news app. Even the influence of the BBC is fading — Ofcom reports that teenagers are more familiar with YouTube and Netflix. The average age of a BBC One viewer is now 61. It’s hardly worth pointing out that YouTube, Netflix, Snapchat and Instagram do not employ foreign correspondents or fund investigative journalism or send reporters to court cases and council meetings. But for many in their teens, news is now more likely to come from an influencer than from a journalist."

Roy Greenslade on Twitter: "Reviews of BBC1's excellent Trial of Christine Keeler ranged from the silly to the intelligent. But none mentioned the one big error - the cartoonish stereotypical portrayal of the Daily Mirror and its news editor. Hopelessly wrong."

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Media Quotes of the Week: From Donald Trump told journalist why he bashes the press to Ken Livingstone's pet 'Adolf' story was fake newts

Donald Trump revealed why he bashes the press, according to 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl, as reported by CNBC:  "You know why I do it? I do it to discredit you all and demean you all so that when you write negative stories about me no one will believe you."

Peter Barron @PeteBarronMedia  on Twitter: "Love the way the @MENnewsdesk has marked today's first anniversary of the terror attack. Pure class."

Joshua Rozenberg on the Law Society Gazette on the Cliff Richard vs BBC privacy case: "I shall resist the temptation to express my own view of this case. But I know what will happen if news organisations are prevented from identifying suspects and perhaps even unconvicted defendants. Names – sometimes accurate, sometimes not – will start circulating on social media. The mainstream media will not be allowed to confirm or deny those rumours. And legitimate news organisations will forfeit such trust and respect as they still have. We shall all be the poorer."

Jewish Chronicle editor Stephen Pollard on Reaction on why he's giving up Twitter: "There’s much to Twitter I love, and I’ve ‘met’ some fabulous people on it. But the mechanism it gives to total strangers to infect your life with poison is too great a downside for me."

Philip Collins in The Times [£] on Tom Wolfe: "Even at the time the new journalism attracted the criticism that it was subjective and, therefore, partisan. In a way the accusation was true but not much of an accusation. It was deep reportage with an agenda and, as long as the reader was aware what he or she was getting, that was fine. And what the reader was getting was some of the best journalistic writing in the canon. At his best, such as in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, which is a wonderful account of the Merry Pranksters, Ken Kesey’s band of manic counter-cultural followers, Wolfe really hits pay dirt. Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers skewers Leonard Bernstein’s plans to raise money for the Black Panthers and provides a template for the fashionable bourgeois leftie ever since."

Tom Wolfe quote: "I have no idea who coined the term 'the New Journalism,' or when it was coined. I have never even liked the term. Any movement, group, party, program, philosophy or theory that goes under a name with 'new' in it is just begging for trouble, of course."

Tom Wolfe quote: "God, newspapers have been making up stories forever. This kind of trifling and fooling around is not a function of the New Journalism."

Roy Greenslade in the Guardian on coverage of the Royal wedding: "In truth, two institutions, monarchy and the press, are walking hand in hand towards their doom after 400 years of interdependence. Viewed rationally, we can see how popular newspapers – which is an oxymoronic term nowadays – spent months manufacturing synthetic public excitement about the marriage. Their coverage, far from reflecting modernity, was marked by all the old tropes: fawning fascination, carping criticism, preposterous speculation and the elevation of the trivial to an implausible level of significance."

Press Gazette reports: "News publishers and broadcasters were reaping the rewards of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s royal wedding in sales of Sunday newspapers, online readers and TV viewing figures. Early newspaper wholesale estimates for the Sunday newspaper market, shared by the Daily Mail, put the week-on-week sales uplift at between 15 to 20 per cent. The figures, based on the expected final unsold volume returned from retail, estimated that more than 650,000 additional Sunday newspapers had been sold, with an extra £1.2m generated in UK retail sales value."

Jon Craig @joncraig on Twitter: "Very disappointed to learn reports that Ken Livingstone has or had a pet newt called Adolf, which I referred to y’day on TV & online, may not be correct. Am now told original source of this claim was satirical website “The Daily Mash”. Shame!"

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You'd want to read this: Great MEN billboard

I've heard of getting legless at a wedding but...Irresistible Manchester Evening News' billboard via George Dearsley.

• Here's a link to the story which tells how heartless thieves have stolen the artificial legs of a paralympian Anthony Booth just days before he was due to walk his sister down the aisle.

Oldham ahoy! Do Trinity Mirror's plans for the new MEN building remind you of anything?

Saying goodbye to the MEN

Sarah Hartley on her blog today writes about leaving the Manchester Evening News after nearly eight years.
She says: "This morning, for the first time in 20 years, I woke up without having a regional newsroom to go to.
"I don’t ‘belong’ to a newspaper, I’m not ‘from’ anywhere, because yesterday, in a scene being played out up and down the country, I packed my desk, handed back my laptop and said my goodbyes.
"It prompts an indescribably strange set of emotions - on the one hand I have a very exciting project lined up (more to come on that in future posts) but almost eight years at the MEN means there’s a lot to leave behind too."
Story via journalism.co.uk

Ronaldo car smash pics are a hit for Manchester Evening News reporter

Multi-media journalism scored for the Manchester Evening News when Manchester United star Cristiano Ronaldo smashed up his new £2000,000 Ferrari.
MEN crime reporter Nicola Dowling used her mobile phone to take exclusive pictures and video of the crash, in a tunnel by Manchester airport, which have been syndicated to the Sun, Sky, the BBC and other media outlets. The pictures were also used on the front page of the MEN and on the paper's website, while the video was on the site and on local TV outlet Channel M.
Nicola tells HoldtheFrontPage today: "As soon as we got the tip-off I and a photographer headed down there. I got down there before the scene had been properly secured and I was able to snap off a lot of pictures on my mobile and take some video footage as well."
The pictures can be seen here and the video viewed here.