Words Dept.: category

I live in the Cale Green area of Stockport. Until recently we had three Liberal Democrat councillors. Then in February, two of them – Roy Driver and David White – left the LibDems to stand under the banner of “Independent Left”. These are the facts. Imagine my surprise, then, when I received a leaflet today from [...]

There’s nothing especially unusual about the Daily Express producing an entirely confusing and off-beam front-page. This, after all, is the paper that splashed with Princess Diana for the best part of a decade after she died. However, I couldn’t help noticing this morning’s effort, which manages to juggle tragedy, absurdity, bad taste and utter irrelevance [...]

I’ve been a freelance journalist for a little over a year now and can’t help noticing that it’s taking a hell of a lot longer to get paid than it did when I had a full-time job. In fact, I’ve found that during the last year it’s actually taken 49 days, on average, between invoicing [...]

Help me. I’m worried I may be one of those “Morrissey apologists” you sometimes hear about. None of my best friends are Morrissey, yet I can’t help empathise with the erstwhile Smiths frontman. To make matters worse, I’ve got form in this area. Three years ago when, in an NME interview, Morrissey expressed some rather [...]

If you ever wanted a snapshot of the mainstream media’s rather depressing agenda and the puerile preoccupations of the public who consume it, you could do worse than searching the phrase #journorequest on Twitter. I’m not sure what journalists did before Twitter. Maybe they phoned people or something. Nowadays though, all they have to do [...]

Here are a few instantaneous thoughts on the sad closure of Crain’s Manchester Business, which was announced today. As a local business journalist who was very occasionally (ahem) scooped by the paper, it goes without saying that I have lots of respect for their journalists. But here’s a few quick thoughts on what went wrong: 1. They [...]

The New York Post’s headline yesterday “USA wins 1-1″, in reference to Saturday’s World Cup match between the USA and England, is actually a subtle joke. I know it’s difficult to grasp the idea that Americans understand humour but the front page actually contains self-deprecation and two amusing historical references. The only reason I mention [...]

I don’t really get the point – journalistically, poetically, metaphorically or otherwise – of the Observer’s 3,000-word Miranda Sawyer-authored feature on the joy of Nando’s today. The feelgood piece, with the headline How Nando’s conquered Britain, is the type of advertising money can’t by, as Sawyer mooches around a couple of branches of the restaurant chain [...]

There have been a couple of interesting developments on the local web publishing scene in recent days. Firstly, it looks as though Manchester Confidential’s paywall model has rather sheepishly fallen over after three months because boss Mark Garner finally realised some time after everyone else that it never had a hope of working. Commenting on [...]

It’s transfer deadline day today. So, what better time to note that football journalism is the one area of the profession where it remains possible to make things up completely off the top of your head and still remain in a job even after the 300th time your byline appears on something that’s complete and [...]