Words Dept.: category

Yet another Manchester-based business news website/e-mail service has spasmed into life this month, prompting the question: Is there really enough business news to go round? I’ve been a business journalist in Manchester for four years this month, covering the North West for a national magazine. During that time, the North West Enquirer came, ran out [...]

I can’t work out whether Christopher Hitchens‘ decision to undergo waterboarding for a piece in Vanity Fair is (a) brave and vital or (b) self-serving and pointless. On the whole, I’m not sure the sight of Hitchens flailing around with dribble down his front adds any level of enlightenment to the “debate” about this method [...]

I was unfortunate enough to pick up a copy of the Mail on Sunday supplement Live from the seat of a train yesterday. I instantly regretted the act because it caused me to stumble across two of Britain’s smuggest men engaging in a feast of political name-dropping. In the inside back cover is Piers Morgan, [...]

Since Simon Cowell rolls his eyes and tuts like a bored suburban housewife following virtually every act that appears on Britain’s Got Talent (which his company, Syco, co-produces), why doesn’t he just piss off and do something else for a living? Just a thought. Similarly, am I the only person who finds it faintly disturbing [...]

According to almost everyone, private equity firms are fundamentally a bad thing, especially if the company you work for happens to be bought by one. And according to the Mail on Sunday yesterday, two of the most famous – Cinven and Apax Partners – are keen to buy RBI (my employer) from current owner Reed [...]

Do you wake up in the night sweating about your workflow solutions strategy? Do you fear inherent cyclicality and long for more cohesive and synergistic times? I, personally, don’t. But I did wake up yesterday morning in a hotel in Edinburgh to read on my Blackberry that the parent company of the magazine publisher I work for is [...]

There was an interesting documentary about weekly lads mags on Channel 4 last night, which showed that if you launch two similar magazine products into the market place at the same time – as IPC and Emap did in 2004 with Nuts and Zoo – they will eventually morph into one another in order to [...]

I’ve had, for the first time, an e-mail from a PR promoting a magazine. She says that since I am a “keen online commentator in the media arena” (pffffft!), I may be interested in the decidedly pretentious sounding publication she is promoting, which includes a photo feature on “The new heirlooms”, shot by Mary McCartney [...]

Turns out Tim Jonze, the NME journalist who interviewed Morrissey, didn’t ask for his byline to be taken off the piece because it was an anti-Morrissey stitch-up by the NME – but because NME wanted to tone it down! Writing on Comment is Free last night, he says: …it’s been something of a PR coup [...]

There’s an interview with Morrissey in this week’s NME that’s credited in a way I’ve never ever seen before. It says: Interview: Tim Jonze Words: NME How? What? HUH?!!! It turns out that Jonze, the writer of the piece, conducted two interviews with Moz but the NME decided to rewrite his copy. Jonze says “virtually [...]