Welcome to the Northerner, guardian.co.uk's weekly digest of the northern press
The Northern Echo today devoted the whole of its front page to the 334 British forces personnel and Ministry of Defence civilians who have died while serving in Afghanistan since the invasion in October 2001.
On the day that the men of 3 Rifles are honoured with a parade to receive the freedom of the borough of Darlington, the Echo's front page carries the names of all those who lost their lives.
Of these, 294 were killed as a result of hostile action. The other 40 died as a result of illness, non-combat injuries or accidents, or their cause of death has yet to be made official.
This week 3 Rifles – the battalion with its origins in the region – receives the freedom of the borough. Soldiers from the battalion will parade in Stockton on Thursday and Sunderland on Friday.
3 Rifles, which was previously the Durham Light Infantry and recruits from the north-east and North Yorkshire, recently returned from a tour of Afghanistan.
Between October 2009 and April 2010, 30 members of 3 Rifles Battle Group lost their lives in the Sangin district of Helmand province. More than 100 soldiers were wounded.
James Ramsbotham, Honorary Colonel of D Company (Rifles) 5RRF and chief executive of the North East Chamber of Commerce, said last night: "Our soldiers have been operating in the most incredibly hazardous conditions, showing extreme bravery a long way from home.
"When newspapers like the Northern Echo and the communities they serve do something like this to show that they appreciate the sacrifice that has been made, it is an enormous boost to morale."
Ramsbotham served for 12 years with the Royal Green Jackets, who merged with the Durham Light Infantry to form The Rifles regiment.
Alasdair MacConachie OBE, deputy lord lieutenant of County Durham, high sheriff of the county and chairman of Darlington Partnership, served in the army in many capacities.
He said: "Under very difficult circumstances, our troops have done a fantastic job.
"They are a great credit to the nation and particularly to us all locally. We are very mindful of the sadness involving our own families.
"It is great what we are doing to acknowledge and respect the fantastic job that these guys have done under very difficult circumstances.
"It is great that Darlington is doing this."
Darlington Borough Council leader John Williams said: "The freedom of the borough is the highest civic distinction that can be conferred by the council.
"The event gives the people of Darlington a great opportunity to show their appreciation to our soldiers.
"I do hope that as many people as possible will come along and support the event."
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In Manchester, the Dan Thompson of the Evening News reports on the extraordinary story of two would-be thieves who got more than they bargained for when they found a man's body.
Instead of stealing scrap metal, they called 999 and were treated as witnesses rather than criminals.
It is thought Kenneth Christian, 68, had been dead at his home in Longsight, south Manchester, for several weeks. He died of a heart attack. He had lived there since the 1960s when he moved from his home in the Isle of Man.
His family learned of his death only after police made an appeal on Manx radio.
His niece Jean Gallagher, 49, said it was upsetting to find out he had shut people out of his life so much. She had never met her uncle.
Gallagher, from the Wirral, told the Evening News: "It's very, very sad. It seems that he was a lovely person. It's upsetting that he never felt he wanted to go back home.
"He is going to be cremated and his ashes are going back to the Isle Of Man so we are bringing him home at last.
"I'm grateful to the two men who alerted the police. They could've just left him there."
A police spokesman said: "Police received reports of a body being found in a house on Attwood Street, Longsight.
"An officer attended and discovered the body of a man. The death was not treated as suspicious."
No inquest was opened because Christian died from natural causes.
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From the Westmorland Gazette, the startling news in the Lake District that its tourism industry could lose out to other destinations next year.
The leaders of the tourist industry are being given a stark warning they will lose visitors to Scotland, Ireland and Wales next season.
Cumbria Tourism chief executive Ian Stephens told tourist industry bosses in Kendal that a £1.3m cut in his organisation's grant will mean it won't be able to compete with rival destinations when it comes to marketing and promotion.
Stephens said he felt duty bound to highlight a "grossly unfair disparity" which will have potential consequences on Cumbrian jobs and prosperity.
The budget to promote the county to visitors across the UK and beyond is being axed from April 2011, coinciding with the traditional start of the new tourism season. It will also mean half of Cumbria Tourism's 40 full and part-time staff will be axed.
However, rival destinations such as Scotland, Ireland and Wales will continue to spend millions of pounds on advertising and marketing their areas to visitors because they receive direct funding from their respective governments.
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A wine shop in Clitheroe has been named as the best in the UK, Lancashire Telegraph reporter Nazia Parveen reports this week. Inevitably, bosses at D Byrne and Co are "toasting success" after receiving a gong at the Decanter Wine Retailer of the Year Awards in London.
The chairman of the awards, Anthony Rose, described the shop as "the mecca of the north of England. A truly charming shop that is part of the fabric of the community."
The family firm was established in 1879 by Denis Byrne and is now run by his great-grandsons Andrew, Philip and Tim, who have four generations of knowledge to draw upon.
Tim Byrne said people travelled to the shop from long distances to buy wine. The shop has changed little since it opened and has a list of 4,000 wines.
Helen Carter recommends
Lovely Nidderdale, where they are gearing up for the Annual Nidderdale Show on 20 September at Bewerley Park, Pateley Bridge. It boasts "one of the finest exhibitions of animals anywhere in the UK".
Beautiful countryside, too.
Nick Clegg, deputy prime minister, answers questions from MPs about telephone hacking, public spending cuts and the bill for parliamentary reform
Condé Nast calls the blending of advertising and editorial content "contextual relevance." Now it is taking the concept online to an overhauled Vogue.com.
Jim Wiatt, the former chairman of William Morris, becomes a full-time "strategic advisor" for America Online.
Call for Applications The AEJMC Emerging Scholars Program will award $2,500 research and teaching grants to up to four research or teaching proposals to encourage innovative and timely projects in journalism and mass communication. AEJMC members will submit proposals for these grants in the fall of 2010, and selections will be announced by early January [...]
Applications are being taken for the editorship of Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly effective October 1, 2011. In order to maintain an open and fair editorship selection process, the AEJMC Publications Committee is calling for applications. All applicants will be considered for the position. Editors are appointed for three-year terms. Responsibilities include the prompt processing [...]
Slate
"The publicity value reaped has not gone to the magazine, which is already too well-known to benefit from this sort of exposure," writes Jack Shafer. "Instead, it's gone into the pockets of the Newsweek Six, all of whom write books." (Jonathan Alter has appeared on MSNBC more than 60 times in the past 12 months.)
American Journalism Review
"If journalists try to silence the 'haters and hollerers' by banning anonymous comments online, they also will silence the poor, the vulnerable and the dispossessed," writes
Bill Reader. "Such a ban would represent a drastic overreaction."
Journalism schools are in a frenzy trying to adjust to the changes in the newspaper industry. Schools everywhere are modifying their curriculums, ranging from offering new certificates to
renovating degree programs entirely. Students need to know new areas of studies to keep up with changing technologies, and for the first time
journalists need to keep up with computers, search engines, and mobile apps to survive. Yet these are all "hardware" skills. The "software" skills come from the insight to see how the digital revolution is changing the relationship journalists have with the public.
Jay Rosen, professor of journalism at
NYU, gave a welcoming speech to students entering
Science Po's journalism degree program (
An expanded form of his speech can be found on his website). Rosen emphasized new journalists (along with seasoned journalists) need to change the way they think about public, as the two are morphing into a much more active part of the journalism domain.
Rosen set his speech by recalling the days before popular print. 250 years ago, public opinions didn't matter and all the decisions that affected society were considered the "King's Business." With the emergence of print, people started to become interested in society as ideas started to spread. Newspapers started to get people to react to the world, instead of just consume it. The public became "thinkable," which is where the foundation of journalism began. Rosen goes on to list his advise to the students:
2.
"Remember: the users know more than you do." Rosen reminds young journalists "In the aggregate, the people on the receiving end have more knowledge, more contacts, more experience and more good ideas than a single journalist can ever have." Journalists should not fear the knowledge of the public, but rather facilitate ways to disburse it. For example,
NPR has used its Facebook users to source information for content.
3.
"There's been a power shift; the mutualization of journalism is here." Journalists need to realize they are not the only people in the field reporting on critical information. Users "bring us a rich diversity, specialist expertise and on the ground reporting that we couldn't possibly hope to achieve without including them in what we do."
The Guardian wisely included science specialists in a blog network, acknowledging that journalists are not always the best suited for publishing content. However professional reporters still bring their editing, experiences, expertise, brand, and ethics to the table.
5. "Anyone can doesn't mean everyone will." Rosen admits that most people may read content passively, but the fact that new technologies give more opportunities for interaction is still important. "The fact that 'anyone can' is still important because you can never predict who will accept your invitation."
6. "The journalist is just a heightened case of an informed citizen, not a special class." Rosen articulates his point well by asserting "A professional journalist knows how to get information, ask questions, tell stories and connect isolated facts. These are not esoteric or specialized skills, just heightened versions of things any smart citizen should be able to do."
10.
"Breathe deeply of what DeTocqueville said: 'Newspapers make associations and associations make newspapers.'" Rosen notes "wherever people have a common interest and wish to discuss it, there lies an opportunity for a smart journalist." The objective of journalists is to draw in a passive audience and create an opportunity for them to share their ideas. This is why hyperlocal sites have been so successful,
as users have an opportunity to interact directly with their communities.
In essence, Rosen's words or wisdom remind journalists of how lucky they are to be living in a time of rapid transformation. The rise of social media gives all citizens a voice, and with that will come the next phase in the field of journalism. "The rise of the periodical press, the emergence of the public as an actor in politics, and the power of public opinion such that even princes have to respect it, are not so much parallel developments as three aspects of the same event," say Rosen. "Together, they made modern journalism thinkable."
paidContent.org
The $3 million
local journalism effort has a dozen sites hosted by 14 public radio stations, each zeroing in on a specific topic. (For example, it's local music in Philly, and the military in San Diego.) "NPR wants to show that with the right resources, stations can create beats of value to the community and in turn increase their own audience and value by using the internet as a platform for original content," writes
Staci Kramer.
Philly.com
They had previously rejected a contract proposal. Fourteen of the 16 unions now have reached contracts with Philadelphia Media Network Inc., which bought the Inquirer, Daily News and Philly.com at bankruptcy auction in April.
New York Times
That's what ex-CBS News president
Andrew Heyward tells
Bill Carter. If ABC chooses someone with formal corporate training to replace
David Westin, that most likely forecasts a decision to manage costs in the short term, says Heyward. Choosing someone with a digital background could signal a radical and more long-term approach. "I think you'll either see someone from Harvard Business School or a Harvard dropout."
>
Heyward predicts an ABC outsider will get the job >
Networks must groom a new audience if they're to surviveBit of an announcement to make, although if you follow me on Twitter, the first shoe of the pair dropped last night.
I’m joining Gannett Digital today, as Product Manager, Local Sites.
That means I’ll be working with more than 100 newspapers and broadcast news outlets, thousands of journalists, and helping them deliver information to a rather engaged audience of millions.
I like the sound of that.
For me, it’s a return to building and improving news sites on a large scale, but it’s also the same job I’ve always had in this business: Find, track, and develop the best ideas about the future of news, then hand them off to journalists packaged with the tools and training they need to put those ideas into action. And then keep bugging them about it until they do so.
For a variety of reasons, I left my position at Publish2 a few weeks ago. Thanks to all my friends there, plus everyone who made the job easy, especially the brilliant journalists in newsrooms across the country (and yes, around the world) who “got it” from the start, and were excited to try out everything I threw at them.
And now, onward, to everything that comes next.
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Journalism.co.uk talks to media trainer and mentor Susan Grossman about writing for customer mags
Prime minister absent from House of Commons, Clegg says it is up to the police to investigate any wrong doing at the News of the World
Craig Silverman, editor of Regret the Error, a website which reports on inaccuracies and corrections in the press, has started a fortnightly column for the Reynolds Center for Business Journalism.
Silverman, who already writes a weekly column for the Columbia Journalism Review, told Journalism.co.uk he would be seeking advice from business journalists and editors to inform parts of the ‘Regret the Business Error’ column.
I’m hoping that the column will be a place where business journalists can turn to receive actionable advice for avoiding basic factual errors, and where they can learn about avoiding some of the common mistakes made in business reporting. So it will be a mix of general tips and very specific guidance that works best for business journalists.
In order to do that, I’m going to track down business editors and reporters and do my best to pump them for information and advice.
Anyone who has a tip or piece of advice they would like to share can contact Craig by email – craig [at] craigsilverman.caSimilar Posts:
The News of the World phone-hacking story won't go away. MPs are to debate it tomorrow. A key witness, a former News International employee, Ross Hall, is is prepared to talk about his knowledge of transcribing intercepted voicemail messages. And a former NoW reporter, Sean Hoare, is eager to testify.
The scandal is the subject of my London Evening Standard column today in which I argue that the truth may never be told because most of the press - Murdoch-owned and Murdoch-sympathising - is not giving it the coverage it merits.
All the same, the prime minister's director of communications, Andy Coulson (and, possibly, even Rupert Murdoch and David Cameron), must be feeling the heat. Few stories about the media have had the longevity of this one.
It dates back to August 2006 - when Coulson was NoW editor - with the arrests of the NoW's royal editor, Clive Goodman, and its casually-employed investigator, Glenn Mulcaire.
They were jailed in January 2007, precipitating the resignation of Coulson, and the opening of inquiries into his part (or lack of it) in the unethical and illegal use of voicemail interceptions.
Coulson said he knew nothing. Among journalists, his denial was met with incredulity. If he did know, he was complicit (and therefore lying). If he didn't know, he was incompetent because editors are expected to know the provenance of the stories they publish.
He maintained that Goodman was a rogue operator. There were no other examples of phone-hacking by his reporters, and most of Mulcaire's work for the paper did not involve illegal activity (despite being paid £100,000 a year).
Just six months after Coulson's resignation from the NoW in such shameful circumstances he was hired by Cameron to be the Conservative party's communications chief. That prompted another collective raising of eyebrows among the journalistic community.
His appointment prompted new questions about his role in his former paper's phone-hacking. Despite my considerable scepticism, I thought he must be clean because, surely, Cameron would not have dared to bring him aboard if there was any lingering doubt about the veracity of his denials.
For a while, a good while, the phone-hacking trail went cold. Goodman and Mulcaire were released from jail and refused to speak. I bumped into Goodman at Nigel Dempster's memorial in October 2007 and asked him if he had been paid by News International to keep quiet. He smiled and said nothing.
I would guess that, as the months passed, Coulson felt increasingly confident that the saga was behind him. But he must also have been aware of the fact that his former bosses were coping with a legal action by one of the hacking victims, Gordon Taylor, the chief executive of the Professional Footballers' Association.
Taylor was paid £400,000 by News Int, a fact that emerged in public in July last year amid revelations by Nick Davies in The Guardian about a culture of phone-hacking in the NoW newsroom during Coulson's editorship.
Davies's story, which revealed the names of other hacking victims, led to special sittings of the Commons media, culture and sport select committee.
Coulson appeared at one of them and once again denied any knowledge of phone-hacking scandal, saying: "My instructions to the staff were clear - we did not use subterfuge of any kind unless there was a clear public interest in doing so." His statements were supported by other NoW executives.
The committee's resulting report, issued in February this year, condemned the testimony of the News Int witnesses referring to their "collective amnesia" and "deliberate obfuscation".
A month later, the NoW settled a case brought against it by publicist Max Clifford for a sum reputed to have reached £1m. In succeeding months, other people contacted their lawyers too. Former MP Peter Kilfoyle is the latest to consider suing the paper.
Then, out of the blue, came the publication last week of an investigation by the New York Times. It quoted Hoare and referred to allegations by other members of the NoW staff about phone-hacking.
That prompted political concern, with the Commons home affairs select committee yesterday questioning the Met Police Assistant Commissioner John Yates over alleged police failures to investigate the NoW's phone-hacking in 2006, and since, with enough rigour (well, in fact, with any rigour at all). He stonewalled his MP interrogators.
There were certainly pertinent questions to ask both him and the home secretary, Theresa May, as Davies has pointed out.
Meanwhile, the story has some traction in the United States, according to FollowTheMedia's Philip Stone.
In my Standard column, and on the BBC Radio 4's The Media Show a half hour ago, I contended that Coulson will survive. But there are plenty of people who think otherwise.
See News of the World phone-hacking and why we may never learn real truth
Odd one: AOL (AOL) board member Jim Wiatt is stepping down from that role, but will get a new one as a “strategic advisor”, the company announced. AOL says Wiatt, the former head of the William Morris agency, will report directly to CEO Tim Armstrong, “helping to expand AOL’s development of content, partnerships and relationships across the entertainment and media world”. If this sounds familiar, it should: Google’s (GOOG) Eric Schmidt was discussing a similar role for Wiatt in 2009.
imaeil (매일신문)
@busantweet @mariebusan @imaeil @dgtwt @daejonilbo @knnews @kyeongin
그럼 저는 Local Newspapers Alliance - LNA •
Sep 9
friendsoftibet (Friends of Tibet)
India's national daily The Hindu journalists miss the Dalai Lama visit to Kochi on Sept 4, 2010! Shame on you! •
Sep 9
crimsonkaz (Kazeem Agboola)
RT @djdenuk: RT @StayterKray: RT @FEMFEL: Newspapers mug ppl off so bad http://plixi.com/p/44072759 «Jeez Rooney is an Animal •
Sep 9
J_Qpr (James Daly)
gotta buy newspapers as part of interview and take photos on a headline :/ •
Sep 9
oz_f (Osman Faruqi)
I always wonder why politicians spend so much time backgrounding journalists. Probably combination of ego and nothing else to do. •
Sep 9
robertchathaway (robert hathaway)
@SwanseaScrutiny ta - are WLGA on twitter. Any other overarching LG commentators. Surprised no bbc reporters - any LG print specialists? •
Sep 9
jacquipark (Jacqueline Park)
RT: @walkleys Confirmed! @cward1e will also be coming to Brisbane to run social media training for journalists, 28 Sept http://bit.ly/b00def •
Sep 9
WestHK (The Westside Stories)
New blog post: Who are journalists? http://bit.ly/9oWjqZ •
Sep 9
johnfairy (john perry )
RT @laureneyap: RT @annabellerama: day, nagulat ang byuti ko nang habulin ako ng news reporters ng gma 7, akala ko iinterbyuhin (cont) http://tl.gd/5uu7kf •
Sep 9
dorotaskop (Dorota Skop)
RT @flyinglotus Dear journalists There is no such thing as 'aquacrunk'. Please stop trying to put us in a box. (cont) http://tl.gd/5uuee1 •
Sep 9
cinejosh (CineJosh.com)
TV9 reporters ill treated by YS Jagan's men: http://wp.me/pOHfL-1IM •
Sep 9
Intvlive1 (Intvlive)
tamil news paper, tamilnadu news, hindi news papers, india newspapers, •
Sep 9
sazzlerock (Sarah Young)
God the tabloids chat shit! Proper newspapers' front pages are about David Cameron's dad & red tops are all about some slut & Wayne Rooney! •
Sep 9
wateradvocates (John Sauer)
http://twitpic.com/2mnqy1 - Musical interlude at WASH media awards #wwweek. 7 amazing journalists cover #water. Learn more:WSSCC •
Sep 9
Howlecom (Nigel Howle)
Good 2 spar with @tideswellman on @6townsradio on the need 4 professional journalists. Doesn't mean I don't have high regard for hyperlocals •
Sep 9