Words Dept.: category

The BBC appears to have spent much of today debunking its own story about the National Bullying Helpline allegedly taking calls from members of Downing Street staff. I listened in amusement at lunchtime as a reporter on Five Live quoted several issues about this charity that were raised last night on Adam Bienkov’s Tory Troll [...]

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 [...]

There’s been a not wholly positive reaction to Manchester Confidential’s “redesign” today. It looks quite a lot like the old site although it’s somehow more grotesque. It’s cluttered, it’s dominated by an almost misanthropic shade of yellow and looks like it was conceived in about 1999. By a drunk. ManCon has unleashed the dogs of war [...]

I can’t for the life of me figure out why anyone would want to pay for an ID card. £30 for the privilege of owning a little pink bit of plastic that has the same basic purpose as a passport – while at the same time handing over your fingerprints to the government – holds [...]

AA Gill is a cock. To shoot an animal through the lung for the purposes of “naughty fun” is plainly disturbing and not in the least bit entertaining. Gill seems to see himself as a latter-day Hunter S. Thompson; an intrepid gonzo-journalist with a penchant for firearms and anappetite for illicit adventures involving red-blooded, macho tomfoolery. He is desperate to escape the truth, which is that he is a balding art school graduate (and former drunk) who has made a living by writing about whether or not some carrots have been satisfactorily boiled.

According to several newspapers yesterday, Kellogg’s is planning to use lasers to burn its logo on to individual corn flakes in an attempt to foil impostors. Metro, The Telegraph, The Daily Record and Marketing printed this as fact. Since journalists don’t seem to have realised that the story is made up by some PR people [...]

It’s easy to buy into the Sun’s rhetoric that by not backing Labour at the next election, as it will officially announce tomorrow, the paper will somehow guide public opinion in favour of the Tories. You can almost sense the “Sun wot won it for Dave” headlines now.
I’ve just watched the Sun’s political editor George [...]

Apologies for not getting back to you. I’m here now, it’s OK.
I’ve been thinking a lot about newspapers recently. About how I never buy one anymore except when I’m going on a long train journey, about the supposed closure of the Observer (which isn’t now happening), about what I can’t help thinking is gross mismanagement [...]

Has anyone else noticed that the Guardian has published some absolute garbage recently? A couple of weeks ago they had that stupid piece that implied comedian Richard Herring was some kind of a Nazi-worshipping racist and today there’s a piece on the website called “Women watch men strip for fun. Men watch women for darker [...]

I thought it was about time I mentioned that I’m quitting my job and going back to university. I will be finishing at Estates Gazette (which, in case you didn’t know, is where I work) on August 14 and will, from September, be studying for an MA in television documentary production at the University of [...]