Thursday 1 December 2016

Media Quotes of the Week: From what journalists can do about Trump to getting the local reporter blues when you really want to be Muddy Waters



Washington Post editor Marty Baron, accepting the annual Christopher Hitchens prize, as reported by Vanity Fair: "We will have a new president soon. He was elected after waging an outright assault on the press. Animosity toward the media was a centerpiece of his campaign. He described the press as 'disgusting,' 'scum,' 'lowlifes.' He called journalists the 'lowest form of humanity.' That apparently wasn’t enough. So he called us 'the lowest form of life.' In the final weeks of the campaign he labeled us 'the enemies.' It is no wonder that some members of our staff at The Washington Post and at other news organizations received vile insults and threats of personal harm so worrisome that extra security was required....Many journalists wonder with considerable weariness what it is going to be like for us during the next four—perhaps eight—years. Will we be incessantly harassed and vilified? Will the new administration seize on opportunities to try intimidating us? Will we face obstruction at every turn? If so, what do we do? The answer, I believe, is pretty simple. Just do our job. Do it as it’s supposed to be done."




Jeremy Corbyn, asked by Sam Delaney "Does it really matter what the papers say any more? I get the impression you don’t think speaking with them is important,"in an interview for The Big Issue: "It matters in that it often frames debate. Numbers of people that buy and read newspapers are declining but the number that follow news online is huge. I do a straw poll at meetings, asking ‘how many people buy a newspaper?’. With an older aud-ience you get usually about a third to half buy a newspaper once a week, often the local paper. When you go to a younger audience, it’s almost none. One audience I spoke to, nobody did. They read it online though."


National newspaper executive talking off the record to Digiday: "We’re long past the point of thinking advertising alone pays for the cost of quality journalism. You’re grabbing for pennies. I’m sick of ad tech vendors knocking at my door, promising to give me 10-30 percent increase in yields. For starters, they can’t, but even if they could, it wouldn’t make any difference, because you’re talking pennies. And Facebook is ad tech. You’re encouraging consumption of journalism on a platform other than your own. And for what end? A few pennies. It’s the most ridiculous deal that anyone could strike. And it’s because publishers are so desperate that it seems in any way attractive."


Matthew Parris in The Times [£]: "In time I expect we shall adapt ourselves to the violence of social-media-driven formation of opinion; learn to question; learn to distrust or discount. But for the moment I fear the advance of technology is outrunning our ability to contain and civilise its effects. All at once, too many individuals who had felt solitary, outnumbered in their unbalanced or unpleasant opinions, have learned that there are millions more like them out there. I worry that the social media are putting us in touch with our inner barbarian."


Newsquest's Croydon Guardian editor Andy Parkes in a column in his paper, as reported by Press Gazette: “In an effort to get even more of your news stories onto our websites we would like to invite you to publish your own stories on our website.…write your article as close to the style of a news story as you can, making sure you include detail of the what, who, where and when. Attach any photos you’ve got to go with it and then click send.”



Charlotte Edwardes interviewing John Humphrys in The Times [£]: "He’s constantly asking his bosses whether they want him to leave, displaying that complicated neediness common among journalists. 'Nobody seems desperately keen to get rid of me,' he says. 'I’ve talked to everybody. I keep saying to people, ‘Do you want me to …?"


Roy Greenslade on MediaGuardian on the way the publisher of the Mirror gave up a source to police: "Trinity Mirror has no right to own newspapers. Its board should resign. Read the story of what the publisher did to Robert Norman, as detailed in a Press Gazette interview, and you will understand why."


Martin Stone, ex-journalist, rock guitarist and rare book dealer who died this week, on leaving the Croydon Advertiser, according to his obit in the Telegraph"I wanted to be Muddy Waters - instead I was covering the Women's Institute donkey derby for seven quid a week."


[£]=paywall




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