Friday 23 April 2010

Quotes of the Week

Sir Michael Parkinson presenting the NAPA awards: "I am now chancellor of a university and I talk to the students there and there is a difference in philosophy, I think. I joined a newspaper because I thought it would be a glamorous job, I would be like Robert Mitchum with a trilby and a trench coat,  but nowadays when I talk to the students I get a real impression that behind their ambition is another ambition, that ambition is to walk down the stairs of a television talkshow and become famous, to be a celebrity, to sit next to Cheryl Cole."

Former Sun editor David Yelland writing in the Guardian: "I doubt if Rupert Murdoch watched the election debate last week. His focus is very firmly on the United States, especially his resurgent Wall Street Journal. But if he did, there would have been one man totally unknown to him. One man utterly beyond the tentacles of any of his family, his editors or his advisers. That man is Nick Clegg."

Stephen Glover in the Independent: "If a newspaper group increases profits, particularly during tough times, its most senior executives should receive significant rises. But when profits fall? The Daily Mirror would scream if a banker's salary soared as profits dropped, but its own Sly Bailey is judged in another light. Why are newspaper executives different? As the Daily Mail might say: 'They still just don't get it, do they?' "

NUJ general secretary Jeremey Dear welcomes the launch of the Birmingham Press: "As the union for professional journalists, the NUJ wishes the new venture well. It is ironic that its launch might never have happened if Birmingham Post and Mail proprietors Trinity Mirror had behaved more sensibly. We warned Trinity Mirror that by collapsing the scope of its publications in the city and making journalists redundant, the market was being opened up for a competitor happy to recruit skilled staff who became unexpectedly available."

Independent editor-in-chief Simon Kelner on the paper's revamp: "It doesn't surprise me that yesterday's postbag contained praise from some, and complaints from others. Most liked the design, although there were one or two quibbles about the front page (justified, I feel, but bear with us while we find our range). What really exercises readers is finding that a regular feature – the crossword or the sudoku, for instance – has moved. We will try to signpost these changes better. And I also take seriously your comments about the type size."

Council newspaper editor on this blog: "I come from a journalistic background but I never fooled myself into thinking that what I am now doing is journalism. It uses some of the same tools, but it is emphatically not journalism."

Nick Clegg after being attacked by the Tory tabloids: "I must be the only politician who's gone from being Churchill to being a Nazi in under a week."

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