May 22nd, 2009
If you think your local paper is a bit rough, you should see what American newspapers get away with. All the journos write as if they are aiming to win a Pulitzer Prize – and sod the readers.
It drives you crazy, reading a simple story about a car crash or someone rescuing a cat from drowning. Everything has a delayed-drop intro. It makes you scream: “But what’s the bloody story?”
I’ve done a fair bit of training there. When you talk to them about putting the main point of the story in the first sentence, you feel a bit like Moses coming down from the mountain. “Keith, that is a great idea!”
I think the problem is probably because most of their teaching comes from universities. So why should that be a problem?
Last year, I was at a conference and met someone from a US university that had better remain unnamed. He boasted that they had more than 100 people in their journalism faculty. “How many have been journalists?” I asked casually.
He thought, and answered: “Two.”
I was in New Jersey to attend a Dion concert. (DiMucci, not Celine. Come on!) He’s getting on, and seems unlikely to come to the UK again, so I headed for the Count Basie Theatre on Red Bank.
It wasn’t all perfect: the lights looked they were done by the usherette with a torch; the sax player looked like Zoot from The Muppet Show and Dion only played for 90 minutes. But I guess 90 minutes of rock n’ roll takes it out of you when you’re nearly 70. His voice is still amazing, however, considering that he was touring as a teenager with Buddy Holly.
I thought the theatre press office could get some mileage out of it (Man travels 3500 miles for Dion gig) and emailed the local paper too. I’d rather hoped to voice my trenchant views on the state of US journalism as well – but neither bothered to get in touch.
The paper’s front-page was about the problems of graduates getting jobs and some junior baseball team getting knocked out of a cup competition in the quarter-finals. Nice to see such a sharp news sense at work. God bless America.
–>
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
May 8th, 2009
It was an editor’s worst nightmare. You put the magazine to bed, send it off to the printer and feel pretty good about yourself. Another deadline hit, another decent issue. Time for a tincture.
Then you casually glance at one of the pages – and notice a typo on the front page.
Fortunately, pre-press had only just started on it, so I could Fetch through a new page.
But it’s one of those constant worries when you proof-read something you’ve written.
People always ask on training courses: “How do I pick up all the mistakes when I’m subbing or proofing my own work?”
The simple answer is: “You don’t.”
No matter how careful you are, something will slip under the radar. Homonyms, missed words, punctuation errors or typos: one of them will find a way round your defences.
The answer, of course, is to get someone else to proof your work. Easier said than done when you’re a one-man band. Even my wife, who is wonderfully loyal, suddenly finds she has an urgent need to wash her hair when it’s Classic Angling proof-reading time.
Can’t really blame her. Reading articles about the different engravings on 1920s Allcock Aerials or the minute changes in National Federation of Anglers’ badges requires a knowledge and devotion to accuracy and checking that few have (or want).
So spare a thought for those like me who beaver away writing, subbing, designing and proof-reading every word, every page. We’re gonna make mistakes. We just hope that we catch them before the presses start rolling.
I remember, some years ago, the phone ringing at 2am. The temptation was to ignore it. Drunk friend wanting a lift home? A pal arrested and hoping you can help?
When your magazine is due to print that night, it can only be one thing.
It was the printers, who in those days stripped in the ads. “Er, Keith, we’ve got a problem. On page 15, you’ve got a 25 x 4 ad. Only it’s not. The ad is 25 by FIVE columns.”
As I said, find someone else apart from yourself to do the proof-reading.
–>
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
April 16th, 2009
This isn’t an easy thing to confess, but…I’m a Stoke City fan.
Never lived there, worked there. No Elliott, to my knowledge, has any sort of Stokie connection.
It all started years ago, when I did casual shifts for Accountancy Age in Frith Street. Turned out the cleaner was Alan Hudson’s mum.
We talked, I travelled to a match with her, and for a couple of seasons, hardly missed a single fixture, even the away ones.
Those of a certain generation will remember Hudson (Chelsea, Stoke, Arsenal). Franz Beckenbauer called him the finest English midfielder he had ever seen after Hudson destroyed Germany, then world champions, in 1975.
And what a team Stoke had then! Hudson, Banks, Pejic, Greenhoff, Mahoney, Salmon, Smith… For a while, they were actually top of the league, but five broken legs for first-team players put paid to supporters’ hopes.
They were the 1970s equivalent of today’s Arsenal: sweet, flowing, one-touch football. Easy to support such a team and its ethos.
That was then. Now, Stoke appear to be a team of big, intimidating blokes who can kick and throw a ball a very long way: a real security guards’ XI.
Trouble is, as a fan, you can’t switch. You can’t say: think I’ll support Liverpool this year. You take what you’ve inherited and snatch a few moments of pleasure in seasons of gloom, while dreaming of those golden days.
Dominic Mills, Haymarket’s editorial director, is a Fulham fan. He’s even got a season ticket (renewed early, too). And when he invited me to their home match, I accepted without thinking.
Trouble is, I’m not a quiet supporter, a stay-in-your-seat-and-clap-politely fan. What if Stoke add to their rich tally of 13 away goals this season?
Unlikely, but it could happen. I just know I’ll leap in the air, punch Dominic and taunt the opposing fans – except they’ll be all around me.
Haymarket is an important client for us. Beating up their editorial director at a football match is probably not the best way to boost business and improve relationships.
Would it be too much, God, to ask for a tame 0-0 draw?
–>
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
March 31st, 2009
The toughest awards to judge are always for newspaper, magazine or website of the year. Best reporter, feature writer, news story…it’s reasonably easy to set some basics on what raises an entry from also-ran to in the running. But the others? Much, much harder.
These musings are prompted by the postman staggering under the weight of judging for Press Gazette’s regional press awards. I had three classes to shortlist: young journalist, reporter and newspaper with under 20,000 circulation.
Getting the first two categories down to six finalists was fairly easy. Are there three strong entries? Off-diary stories or stuff passed on by a news editor? Has it landed in their laps, or required some digging? Amazing how short the list becomes with these simple filters.
Very few of those entering the young journo category offered anything more than news stories. Perhaps editors didn’t trust ‘em with features. And none put forward any just-for-web stories. Smell the roses, editors.
I hold less store on the actual writing at this stage. You assume it’s going to be all right, and you can never tell how heavily it’s been subbed. My experience has always been that when you ask a writer, he or she always says: “The subs hardly touched it.”
Ask subs, and they’ll retort: “Well, it needed a load of work.” But then, good subbing is doing it so the writer never notices.
But that newspaper of the year is always much tougher. You look carefully through three issues but you know they’ve chosen the best ones. Sometimes, you have to take an editor’s statement as the major factor. But they would highlight the good bits, pass over the plunging circulation figures, wouldn’t they?
But this year, I had a master idea. They all claimed to be doing lots on the web – so I checked. Twice. It was a revelation.
Some were just pasting up stories from the paper and doing no rewriting to cater for a different audience. Some claimed to update daily, and hadn’t done so for four days. Some just did one story.
It made my job easy.
No names, but if your newspaper online is getting scooped by the local council’s website, you can leave your dinner suit or cocktail dress in the wardrobe this year.
–>
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
March 26th, 2009
I love PR. Get lots of stories from it. I’ve even done it myself. I know it’s customary for journos to make chundering noises when PR is mentioned, but I won’t hear a word against it.
Unless, that is, you are the sort of idiot who sends a press release like this.
Hello Classic Angling,
Tired of teeing off with the same white ball or does your competitive playing partner keep claiming your stellar shot? For those golfers looking to make a mark on their game Sharpie markers has produced the new Golfing Pack.
Whether you’re looking for a gift for Dad or just an excuse for personalising your golf balls the new Gold Pack
is the perfect for companion out on the course.
If you would like any further information or would like to arrange any competitions do please get in touch.
Kind Regards,
David Wall
Account Executive
McCann Erickson PR
I’ve left David’s name in, because he deserves the opprobrium.
Let’s forgive the fact that the third sentence appears to have a word missing. Let’s pass over the issue of what it’s called (Golfing Pack, Gold Pack or Golf Pack?) Let’s even excuse the absence of a comma on his computer.
Maybe the lad isn’t a sports person. Perhaps he doesn’t know a golf ball from a cricket ball. But a mite of commonsense should tell him that if my magazine is called Classic Angling, it probably doesn’t write a lot about golf.
In fact, the press release itself offers an even finer gem.
“Inspired by those golfers daring to be bold, the new Golf Pack comes complete with two Sharpie markers, golf tees, towel, golf balls, pitch repairer and ball marker – everything you need to ensure your balls stand out on the golf course.”
And you wonder why journalists are sometimes dismissive of a PR’s writing skills?
Time to get him on a course, methinks.
–>
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
March 16th, 2009
Phew! Another postgrad course over. Actually, don’t know why I’m wiping my brow. All I’ve delivered is a bit of tutoring, a spot of marking, a smattering of wise words.
The real sufferers have been main course tutor Roberta, who should be finding out around now if her husband still recognises her, and those who were our victims.
The 11 who signed up for the sausage machine (it was to be 12, but one dropped out just before the course started) have become different people.
Nine weeks on, you wouldn’t recognise the sleep-deprived, alcohol-reliant, lank-haired, junk-food scoffers to the bright-eyed things who sat down on the first day and related their journalism dreams.
Nobody really believes it when we say: “You have to put your life on hold for nine weeks.” Working Saturdays and Sundays, dreaming of Teeline, doing four things at the same time, rewriting a news story over a house-style infringement: for those straight out of university, it’s a horrible introduction to the real world. But then, the real world’s like that, isn’t it?
So where’s the good news? Well, two of the crop have jobs. Pretty good in today’s market. Now all we have to do is find another nine. But I’ve got hope.
Further cheer: one of our former postgrads, Dan Ilett, has some freelance for them. He’s set up his own company and wants some writers.
And at Friday’s graduation, Mark Allen (Wiltshire Life, 5 to 7 Educator, Practice Nursing, Recycling and Waste World) said his company’s figures are up on 2008.
So not every publisher, as the Guardian’s media website would have you believe, is looking up “euthanasia clinics” online.
My fishing magazine, Classic Angling, had its best year (though none of this year’s postgrads seem to know a Hardy Perfect from an Allcock Aerial, more’s the pity). My ad manager, Hayley, is still finding a few punters.
Yes, the light at the end of the tunnel may indeed be the light of an oncoming train (with apologies to Half Man, Half Biscuit, whom I went to see last week, to the total surprise of everyone who knows me).
But look on the bright side. There could be hundreds of bankers tied across the tracks who’ll get it before you do.
Bright sparks in a dark world
–>
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
February 25th, 2009
We used to call the Sun and the Mirror “subs’ papers”. But I notice that former Mirror editor Roy Greenslade has questioned in The Guardian media pages whether we need sub-editors today.
I have a vested interest. I spent a decade on various subs’ desks before I had the op and became an editor. Shortly before I joined The Times Business News, the paper had decided it had such wonderful writers that it could manage without subs.
Guess what? Within a week, frantic phone calls were being made. “Do you know any good freelance subs?”
A basic lesson. Most journalists are incapable of writing to length and to deadline. Ask them to cut copy by 50 words and you’d think you had asked them to chew off their foot.
They also make mistakes. Everyone does. Show me a journo who writes under tight time pressures and never makes a mistake, and I’ll show you a liar.
This makes the sub’s job sound like a health and safety inspector. Not so. It’s true that for some magazines, subbing is merely fact-checking. But done well, it’s an immensely creative process, taking dull copy and making it sparkle.
Doing that so writers don’t notice is an even more creative process. I love it when a reporter says: “My piece came out really well, didn’t it?” and you’ve made substantial changes.
Subbing is no job if you want writers to love you, though. I still remember that golden moment on The Sun when a reporter stormed over to the subs’ desk to complain.
“Someone changed all my copy round!” he blustered.
It went very quiet. We all looked at each other.
Then one sub pushed back his chair and said: “Yeah, I done it. What’s the matter?”
“Well, it’s got my byline on it but it isn’t my story. The intro’s been changed, there’s another story in there, new quotes and the order’s all different!”
“Listen, sunshine,” he was told. “You’ve got the glory, but we’ve got the power.
“Now piss off.”
You could hear the cheers in the Printer’s Devil in Fetter Lane (which, I noticed, has just closed forever).
But maybe, like the pub, that’s yesterday. Can the brave new online world dismiss the sub-editing role as something for a media history lesson? Readers’ views welcome.
–>
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
January 22nd, 2009
Tis the season of careers talks. For some reason, we’ve always have a wedge of Life as a Journalist talks coming up at this time of year, from sixth forms to Cambridge University. It is my painful duty to tell the bright young things (and the less than bright) that watching Match of the Day or wandering round New Look every week may not prove an infallible entree to a job on FourFourTwo or Glamour.
Of course, it’s not impossible. Your dad might be editor of NME, or your mum editorial director of Conde Nast. Nepotism is the best route of all. Sidestep all that nonsense about shorthand or an ability to write. Who needs a passing understanding of sentence structure and what’s going on outside Hollywood Towers when your parents call the shots?
Alas, most people have to take a more mundane path. But young people expressing an interest in journalism get really duff advice from many teachers, who rate working in the media somewhere below lap-dancing or puppy-drowning.
My English teacher went red in the face when I told him I was going to be a journalist. He shouted for all to hear: “Nobody has ever left this school and made anything of themselves in journalism!”
Went back about five years later.
“Ah, Elliott. What are you doing now?”
“Working as a sub-editor on The Times, sir.”
“Always knew you’d do well.”
I was lucky. It’s 20 times harder now. More people wanting to get in, fewer jobs to go to. But then, I wouldn’t study English to S-level either, given the choice.
Trust me on this: failing to understand the links between the Manciple and the Merchant in Chaucer will never hamper your journalism career.
Do me a favour: study agriculture or zoology, but not English. It takes ages to teach English graduates to write properly.
–>
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
January 12th, 2009
Three months on, I still haven’t really adjusted to the fact that I don’t have to sit in front of my Mac every Thursday evening.
Discipline and journalism aren’t words that sleep well together. But deadlines and journalism are very different bedmates.
When you survive as a freelance (unless you’re hugely talented or confident), you always feel you’re only as good as your last article. Most editors would rather have OK copy that hits deadline than dazzling stuff that invariably arrives late (or not
at all).
So you always file on time and to length, make a check call to see if there are any queries and NEVER do a Martin Amis because subs have inserted a comma.
My view (admittedly, tainted by several years as a sub) is that if someone has changed or rewritten your golden words, you probably didn’t write it clearly in the first place.
I filed weekly for 22 years on the Independent (for much of that time, twice a week) and never missed a deadline, even getting copy in from Outer Mongolia, the jungles of Ecuador and a tiny island off Malaysia.
Alas, all good things come to an end. You don’t have to be Miss Marple to know that things on the Indy are parlous. When the axemen swiped their way through the building last autumn, my head rolled.
But here’s the funny thing. I am an inveterate tearer-out of interesting scraps. These often turned into stories when nothing much seemed to be happening. I’ve still got two fat folders stuffed with sports stories like mud-wrestling and underwater football, and twice as many with fishy cuttings that could be twisted into an angling column.
And I can’t stop doing it. I no longer have a national newspaper outlet (and see little chance of one appearing any time soon, given what the dailies are going through), but I can’t stop tearing scraps from scientific journals to Materials Recycling Week.
Is there any cure, doctor?
–>
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
December 22nd, 2008
Christmas cards are a tricky area when you’re running a small business. Buying them by the gross in January sales is one option. But your punters soon spot that these are cheap cards. Huh! So that’s what they think of me!
Email is a simple alternative. Costs nothing. In these days of economic stringency, they make a lot of business sense. But once you’ve looked at it (assuming you don’t delete it, fearful that it’s actually been planted by some 4ft Microsoft-hating scrote), what next? Yup, into the trashcan.
So it’s gotta be proper, Best Wishes From All At PMA, with a suitable image on the front. Hundreds of cards, hundreds of stamps, hundreds of arguments about whether they deserve a card or not. What a waste of time, money, energy. Humbug.
But there was a time when I made my own cards, and a few old friends have hung on to them. Goodness knows why. I did one with Ho Ho Ho on the cover, with a photograph of me dressed as Santa inside.
On another occasion, I was working at the Guardian and nabbed some photos of Miss World contestants sharing flats prior to the big day. I stuck these pictures of the cover, and wrote inside: “Love from me and the girls at the flat.” You wouldn’t believe the number of friends who thought they might pop round and visit me.
Another was a plain card, with a cutting from The Times inside. It said: “Keith Elliott will not be sending cards this year, and wishes all his friends a happy Christmas.”
Occasionally the need to be original went a bit far. One card that I sent to a friend working for the Northern Ireland Tourist Board got blown up. It comprised kids’ playbricks, with X M E S R A Y R M painted on them. Security was convinced it was a bomb.
So be glad if you don’t get one of my cards, and settle for this column instead.
–>
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »