Media Quotes of the Week: From photographer attacked in Belfast to digital journalism can't recreate profitability of old regional monopolies

Belfast Telegraph photographer Kevin Scott on Twitter after he was attacked by masked men while covering rioting in West Belfast: "So much for peaceful - I have just been jumped from behind by two males, masked on Cupar Way. One pulled me to the ground and smashed @BelTel cameras. As I fought this one off I was told to fu*k off back to your own area you fenian cu*t by the other. Police informed."

Belfast Telegraph editor-in-chief Eoin Brannigan commented: "Journalists should not be attacked, threatened or be subject to sectarian abuse while doing their jobs. It's shameful and should be condemned without equivocation. There is no justification for it, but unfortunately it's the reality for many journalists going about their work in Northern Ireland."

Amnesty International's Patrick Corrigan described the incident as: "The latest attempt to intimidate journalists from doing their jobs and constitutes an outrageous attack on freedom of the press".

From the Mail's serialisation of Alan Duncan's diaries

Alan Duncan on Boris Johnson in his diaries serialised by the Daily Mail: "He loves double-page spreads puffing him up, but is over-sensitive and loses all perspective when he faces an inch of adverse comment...Boris calls. He wants to see me. For the first time ever, we have something of a stand-up confrontation. He has completely popped and accuses me of briefing [the journalist], which I hadn’t. He says, ‘Why do you say they don’t take me seriously?’ I shake my head and say, ‘Just look in the f***ing mirror!’."

Alan Duncan on Michael Gove in his diaries serialised by the Daily Mail: "Gove has secured an interview with Donald Trump. It just feels creepy and a***-licking, keeping him on the map as an ex-minister, and no doubt all set up by Rupert Murdoch."

Rod Liddle in the Sunday Times [£] on the Johnson-Arcuri affair: "If Boris had launched a scheme called Shag the Mayor and Win a Contract, at least it would have been kinda transparent and we could all have applied. But does it not to you, even if you are a loyal Tory, have the whiff of corruption, of wrongdoing?"

Marina Hyde in the Guardian on David Cameron-Greensill affair: "It has now been a full 35 days since the former prime minister first declined to take calls from the Financial Times on the collapse and mushrooming fallout of Greensill, the specialist bank for which he was an active payrolled lobbyist with what he hoped was $60m worth of shares. There was one time Cameron accidentally answered the phone to the FT, then breezed 'Do you want to ring my office?' before hanging up. Said office has not cared to answer a single call or text. David Cameron is still allowed to claim up to £115,000 a year from the public purse, literally to run this office. Surely that’s enough for someone in it to return a call?"

Press Gazette reports: "Half of the 1,002 Press Gazette subscribers who chose to respond to our race and the media email survey said they had seen Meghan coverage that they thought was racist. And among non-white survey respondents, the vast majority said they had seen Meghan articles that they thought were racist. Some two-thirds of the 721 survey respondents describing themselves as journalists said they thought there was some evidence of bigotry in the UK media, and they said it was not an issue that was confined to the tabloids."

Richard Osley in the Camden New Journal on the paper's founder and editor Eric Gordon, who has died aged 89: "As editor of one of the last independent titles in the UK, he was proud of the newspaper’s freedom from large groups and championed a co-op style structure, warning that papers would struggle to survive if they had to answer to faraway group executives or distant shareholders seeking dividends each year."

Salford Star announcing its closure: "After 15 years, numerous awards, ten print issues and over 6,000 online articles, the Salford Star is to close after the local elections in May. The Star, which we believe to be England's longest running community centred media outlet, brought out its first issue in May 2006, giving a voice to residents caught up in the midst of regeneration, fighting the demolition of their homes."

The Committee to Protect Journalists in a statement: "Research by CPJ and other organizations shows sophisticated spyware products marketed to governments to fight crime have been used to target the press. Secret surveillance of journalists and their sources poses a severe threat to press freedom globally. That’s why we are calling for national and international action to slow the proliferation and wrongful use of spyware. Use and share this information—because when journalists can’t protect themselves or their sources, everyone’s right to information is at risk."

Josh Marshall in The Atlantic: "The super-low costs of entry and the lack of geographic limitations that were key to the explosive growth of digital journalism were also key to its undoing. These new publications had no way to recreate the profitability and stability that the old regional monopolies had made possible...In digital publishing, scale was the god that failed. And thousands of journalists went along for the roller-coaster ride, without anyone warning them how it was bound to end."

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