Oxbridge? Groaniad indeed...

So some very flawed research over at Guardian Towers has 'revealed' that 38 per cent of the editorial workforce has a degree from either Oxford or Cambridge.

In my opinion, this 'research' is vastly underestimating that proportion.

I would estimate it's nearer 50 or 60 per cent, but that's just a guess - which basically makes it a fact, going by the same criteria as the research itself.

What other background could Guardian journalists have? I mean, no aspiring reporter - no matter how good - could afford to work in central London, have travelled to far-flung parts of the world and studied at Oxbridge before deciding they fancy having a go at journalism.

And that's before we consider the cost of the clothes these people wear, be it in court, a press conference or elsewhere.

No, these guys and gals wouldn't be seen dead in an ink-stained shirt that fitted you nicely in 2003 (the last clean one you had in the wardrobe), your old school shoes and a tatty suit your mum bought you for the interview.

And unfortunately, the distant reality enjoyed by these employees is coming through in the printed product and its agenda more and more.

The very idea that anyone doesn't already know this, or gives a flying fuck about where little Crispin wasted three years studying philosophy, is proof enough of the arrogance The Guardian now uses as fuel with which to power the continual production of inane drivel under the guise of 'proper' or 'meaningful' journalism, which is largely wide of the mark and equally wide of the agenda such a paper should be pursuing.

I am not a Guardian hater, but the percentage of what it does that has any merit or integrity is decreasing at a rapid rate.

The Guardian is now surviving on the very same principles as its reporters; portraying a fashionable facade with very little real content inside.

However, should anyone at The Guardian feel the need to correct my opinions, feel free to do so via thehaplesshack@gmail.com, or via Twitter - @haplesshack

Falling off the North Cliffe?

I read with interest the Guardian interview with in-coming Northcliffe chief Steve Auckland.

Mr Auckland, who is now an industry God through his work making the Metro everyone's favourite news-for-nothing publication, was strangely forthright in his opinions, if not a little contradictory.

Take this quote for example:

"If you have stacks of titles and lots of loss-makers and lots publishing six days a week and not making money you have to look at the portfolio.

"I want a step change. It might be harsh but it gives a platform for the future. The key thing is a product portfolio review. We have to look at the number of titles and frequency of publishing."

I don't think anyone could argue with the first par. No business, run by the giant arses of Northcliffe, Newquest or otherwise, wants to keep running a title that continues to lose money year after year.

So fair enough.

However, the contradiction for me comes when the piece explains Auckland was "keen to stress he is not a hatchet man".

Well, I would suggest that's exactly what he is, judging by his own words. Threatening to look at all titles and the frequency of publishing is clearly an indication that the hatchet is about to be wielded.

There may be nothing wrong with that, but at least be honest.

Anyway, I'm merely nit-picking there.

There real interest comes with other remarks, particularly:

"Less is more is my motto: I want a clear vision at each operating centre. I'm trying to do away with the corporate stuff and getting the editors and the managing directors free to do what they want to do in their centres," he added.

"Originally regional newspapers were run by entrepreneurial-type people back in the halcyon days. I want to get back to that flexibility. If they want to change the cover price or business cards or say that publishing on one day, or two, or staying at six is most profitable then I want them to have that flexibility."

'Less is more', to idiots like me, can simply be truncated to 'less'. Again, Mr Auckland, please just be honest. Less will NEVER be more, it is a complete misnomer on every conceivable level.

We all understand the "halcyon days" went as soon as Gannett darkened UK doors, so please don't patronise us with the usual bullshit, we've had enough of 'aim higher' initiatives and the likes which always seem to make us more efficient and still manage to do away with hard-working people.

However, it cannot be disputed that Northcliffe does indeed now have less, or more, if you are Mr Auckland. 50% more, or less, in fact, as Peter Kirwan points out in his excellent blog.

"Overall, the numbers for the six years between 2005 and 2010 are remarkable:

Headcount: Down by over 50% from 8,013 to 3,817

Quoted cumulative cost savings: £125m

Quoted restructuring costs (incl. redundancy): £71m

Quoted write-downs in asset values: £200m"

So Mr Auckland, you have inherited a group which indeed has a lot 'more' than previously, so good luck with that.

But basically, what all of this ponderingly bad writing is attempting to convey is that, as Mr Kirwan also points out, "plans for industry consolidation have gone badly awry".

Indeed they have. Lord Rothermere couldn't flog Northcliffe a few years ago, so what hope now?

My bet is that we will see more and more dailies become weeklies - watch your backs any newspaper showing figures down 10%+ - and some under-performing weeklies either sold or merely closed down.

I am also intrigued by the idea that editors will suddenly be enjoying a new-found freedom under Mr Auckland to basically edit their papers.

I am eagerly awaiting the day this is put to the test by an editor who wishes to reward his staff with a pay rise, or an extra reporter...

I do love the term "consolidation" though, as it would suggest joining something together for an all-round gain, a positive, for growth.

And don't we all know that is absolute shite? Consolidation has brought nothing but evil to journalism.

Look at it like this: a sub hub is a group of sub editors consolidated to one location.

A good thing?

Fuck it, let's all have a drink.

And a funny new year...

Well hello all and a happy new year and all that balls to everyone who actually reads this.

Due to a distinct lack of inspiration induced by a festive season spent bathing in copious amounts of alcohol and unsuitable food, I am falling back on the classic new year filler - a round-up of the previous year!

Yes, that's right, here are a couple of my favourite piles of shit from 2010. Enjoy!

Plus, I've saved a new one for last so don't despair!

Not strictly a journalistic error, but what the hell, it is funny... Is Facebook trying to tell me something?



Got to love this picture to accompany a story about undercover police officers. My, how they're getting hard to spot!



A rather over-enthusiastic columnist here it seems. Thanks for the Tweet, you know who you are!



And a special mention to those lovely people who follow me on Twitter, @haplesshack, just because they are special people:

@victoriaraimes
@fleetstreetblue
@nottshospice
@daviesshell
@NewsShopperJR
@ellastella
@obicolkenobi
@hizzary
@SeamusOKeeffe
@JTheBossRoss
@thegirlsilver
@PogalJoners
@Bezeb
@HullMailNews

Obviously, they may be mental, but I still love them.

Have a good one - and don't forget to keep your spots and any other rants coming to thehaplesshack@gmail.com should you wish to!

'Tis the season to be jolly...

Christmas is a tricky time for every department at a newspaper.

Sales are struggling to cut down supplies and deciding on which day to leave off their ABCs as sales are just so shit.

Editorial is stockpiling features like never before, while trying to maintain some semblance of actual news in a see of festive press releases.

And managers are, well, looking forward to the posh lunch/day off event they have planned despite giving every employee a £5 pot to piss in for their Christmas party...

Yet they shouldn't be the only ones reveling in the opportunities December presents.

Surely, for advertising departments up and down the land, Christmas is the time of joy, the time to make hay as it were, while the snow falls?

Every shop in the land should be queueing up to show off their wares in the pages of the local rag, giving away this that and the other and basically cosying up to newspapers all over the shop (I'm on fire for puns today).

However, it has to be embraced, and let's be honest, it's a bit of a God-send (can you see what I did there?) for stories in the week or so before the day itself, and for the week after. There are picture stories galore to be had, Christmas miracle births, Christmas Day births, swims, walks, etc etc.

So it was with interest that I took a little looksie round the usual band of high-flying news websites in a bid to see how each had harnessed the new season and was somewhat let down by my findings.

Various big hitters had nothing at all to do with Christmas online that I could find, including www.thisisnottingham.co.uk, www.thisisbrighton.co.uk, www.thisisderbyshire.co.uk and www.thisisbristol.co.uk to name but a few.

Others had a very small nod to the festive season, including the Lincolnshire Echo, which was flagging up a Santa's Letter scheme (prime advertising fodder I would imagine, as mentioned above) - a snip at £3.95!

The Reading Evening Post too seemed to have found a way of trying to eek out some cash, with a tie-up for Christmas shopping with an external retailer (see picture below).



Others had made a bit more of an effort, including Newsquest big hitters www.thisisbolton.co.uk and www.oxfordmail.co.uk, who put their stablemate the Argus to shame with full sections dedicated to everything snow- and Santa-based. A quick peek at the Bolton offering is below.



It would be interesting to know how much money their efforts made? Hopefully a lot.

Same with www.yourlocalguardian.co.uk, which is running a Christmas lights competition, a natural home for such competitions what with page-starved books for most papers.

Anyway, the point of having a look really was just to harness whether anyone is actually trying to do anything differently in this sea of 'difficult financial times'.

My answer, as has been exposed so many times while writing this blog and working in a newsroom, is no in pretty much all cases.

I can only presume we're all too full of piss and wind (as well as mince pies and cheap Champagne) to actually try and do anything?

I sincerely hope those attempting to innovate and fight their way out of this paper bag of a recession succeed. Those who moan a lot but have tried nothing? Well, the papers will survive, hopefully without you...

Student rags, or not?

As students started acting up this afternoon, I thought I'd do a quick run round the news sites, to see what everyone was making of the whole thing...

Anyway, here's the summary!

The Times:



Telegraph:



Metro:



Daily Mail:



Guardian:



Evening Standard:



BBC:



Interesting? Hardly... Mind you, the good old Express had nothing. Nothing at all. Can't say they don't know their audience, as there has been absolutely no mention of either Princess Diana or Madeleine McCann at the protests so far...

Carried out at around 2pm on November 24, 2010.

Mail order from the Daily Mail website?

Now, the Daily Mail website is something I've written about before.

Namely, HERE and HERE.

However, a recent article from The Guardian made me revisit it today.

Basically, as we already knew, the site has become quite a big player as far as 'news' sites go. I use the word news in inverted commas because, quite frankly, the lack of news on the site is my major gripe - and possibly the obvious reason behind the site's success.

While you do get some stories, you don't really get news, as such, in any prominent position, or in other words, anywhere that may attract a real news reader.



That is, of course, unless you count anything mentioning I'm a Celebrity, X Factor, chavvy footballers or benefit cheats as high-ranking on the news agenda, which sadly, I don't.

So I thought I'd just write this as an adendum to my previous post if you like, to say that the Mail website is the X Factor of news sites.



Yes, it appeals to the masses, and you can't knock it for what it does, it does well.

But when you look at it for any actual value, it's dog shit.

Sadly, this is something we're now seeing mirrored across the DMGT group's regional newspaper arm, Northcliffe.

ThisIs sites across the land now bear a little section on the bottom of their front pages titled 'SHOWBIZ'.

Basically, this is simply an excuse to post headlines that will attract the chav Googler to the site.

But while it may bump numbers for the site - the below is from www.thisisleicestershire.co.uk but it is everywhere - it has absolutely nothing to do with that area.

Just as the Daily Mail website has absolutely nothing to do with news.



I compare this bandwagon thinking to what the likes of Northcliffe are doing to our newspapers.

They have something that works (name me a site doing ONLY solid, regularly-updated local news that is falling in visitor numbers), yet far from being happy with that, they need to have more, more, more, and some complete fuckwit has told them Google looks in headlines and picture captions for searched terms and the even bigger dipshit who actually makes decisions has jumped on the bandwagon.

As with their newspapers, they'll soon release (too late, I would assume) that this will only work in certain circumstances and the gains will be limited.

Just as cutting staff back continually will when the papers are folded, despite still making a healthy profit.

Still, you can't teach an old dog new tricks, especially when the old tricks brought in 30% profits for them knowing fuck all...

Here's the link to the previous Daily Mail website article again if you missed it the first time!

And don't forget, follow me on Twitter and you'll get a mention every now and again!

@haplesshack is my address. You can debate my 'the Daily Mail website is dog shit' verdict on there right now if you like...

Conference bullshit. As usual.

Oh, how I love conferences where top bods at regional, national, shit, good, middling newspapers get to shout their opinions from a stage.

The best thing about them is that many of them serve only to show what a complete bunch of fools those overseeing our industry are.

I realise I am turning in to a complete whinger these days, but let's be honest, the fodder is too obvious to overlook.

Case in point: Society of Editors conference in Glasgow.

Editors and execs from up and down the country have thrown expenses caution to the wind (leaving behind reporters whose claims are thrown out if they submit them a bit late) for a few nights in a plush hotel to catch up with old mates over far too much food and drink.

Oh, and they might talk about newspapers a bit too.

The subject the other day was, as it inevitably is for at least one session at these things, the interweb.

And we saw the full scale of the problem encapsulated in one opinion, voiced by the revered editor of the Press & Journal, Aberdeen, Derek Tucker.

Revered, from what I can gather, for running a paper that managed to lose 3.4% of circulation in the January ABCs.

Right, anyway, his quotes included this glorious nugget...

"We have not sold our souls on creating an all-singing, all-dancing website. We have always adopted a stricter attitude to the industry norm."

Excellent.

It was also reported that not all Press & Journal stories are uploaded to the web and that none, repeat NONE, were uploaded before they appeared in the paper.

I'm sure countless editors and MDs up and down the land were gasping at this revelation.

"Derek Tucker doesn't upload everything? And nothing before it's been in the paper? Why, we must adopt this revolutionary process immediately!"

What a fool.

I don't care how revered he is, or by how much less his circulation has fallen than anyone else, he is talking utter tosh.

How can he quantify, for example, the amount of newspaper sales he may have gained by promoting things from the internet? Or by breaking news on the internet, even if it is in a scaled-down story or feature, flagging content in the printed product?

Content is free Derek, end of.

As an internet sceptic myself, I used to follow your way of thinking, but I soon came round when I witnessed the positive effects the internet can have on stories later published, be it comments from online, submitted pictures, whatever, it made the papers better.

You may have so far escaped this new-fangled interweb rubbish and flaunted a meagre 3.4% loss in front of some hapless MD, but your time is over.

Needless to say, he is stepping down in the new year after 18 years in the chair.

Let's just hope that ill-informed comments such as these do not have a lasting effect on the industry he clearly loves.

Because if his policy is continued, newspapers - and their websites - will be dead in 30 years. Completely.

And while that may be fine for those retiring in January, what about the rest of us?

Twitter update to follow - and mentions for my eight followers as promised!

Follow me now for a mention: @haplesshack

I'm also going to have a look at the Daily Mail's website today in light of a very interesting article...

Strike me down, but they need organising...

I find the recent upsurge of strikes across Newsquest centres very sad.

Not simply because of the moves which have made them inevitable - ever-falling staffing, sub hubs, pension changes, senior executives behaving like banking fat cats - but also because of the seemingly random way in which they are organised.

Speaking to colleagues on Newsquest papers, it seems there is no coherent thinking by that age-old bastion of a union, the NUJ.

I would expect the NUJ, as the NUS did yesterday in London, to organise something on a slightly larger scale than a handful of people outside a newspaper office on an industrial estate.

This is what happens to a union when it simply doesn't do enough.

After many years of membership, I eventually stopped my direct debit, as the cost of the union seemed to constantly increase in direct proportion to the loss of representation I actually felt.

I'm not alone.

So, say what you like about the NUS action on Wednesday, the NUJ can only dream of such a turnout.

And that, I'm afraid, is largely their own fault.

Some funnies ahead of Friday!

Well, as we all know, a Thursday is basically a Friday in newsrooms up and down the country due to the classic 'final day wind-down'.

So in anticipation of the start of the drinking, here are a couple of funnies. I'll try and get back tomorrow for something for the weekend, as it were...

First up is the delightful Press Gazette (the magazine that is officially not as good as it used to be, like Viz), which must have been having a slow day on this occasion...



Yep, that is the homepage.

And just to round off this quick-fire bulletin, the new BBC News website had something of a glitch on only the second day post-launch.

The new layout shows off images really well, unfortunately...

Needless to say, this was rectified later.

Tally ho!

New BBC News site vs Telegraph Online

Well well, here it is at last.

After countless public information blogs and even some pre-launch screenshots, the new BBC News website confronted users this morning as they browsed for their morning fill of news alongside their Weetabix.

And what do we think? Well, I was surrounded by an array of reactions, from "cack" to many, much warmer-sounding "ooooh"s and even one "why have they done this to me?"...

For me, I don't mind it at all. It seems to be pretty reactionary (and what, in the world of news website design isn't?), which is more of a good thing when it comes to BBC sites in the UK, as they don't have to factor in advertising - the number 1 complaint of any web user when asked.

So it's clean and reasonably appealing, which in fairness, the BBC site has always been.

The first thing that gleans any kind of derision from this viewer is the sheer size of the main headline, in this case 'UK employment declines to 2.47m'*.

And it feels, even though comparing new to old is not the case, like there are fewer stories on the front.

This is because of the top story - two sub-stories - list of others approach being centre-stage.

Previously, the list of other stories was segregated, to the right-hand side of the page.

Now, it is right there in front of me, and a lack of images makes me feel like it is an after-thought. But that is just me. If a list of stories is to be a focal point, give it something to appeal to the reader.

I also don't like 'Also in the news' being so prominent (did you see what I did there, did you?). Again, this, to me, means a section full of stupid stories that no one knew what to do with, and I perceive them to not really belong in the news, but instead in some God-awful 'Funny news' or 'Weird news' section.

I wish the BBC would lose a touch of superiority complex and call it what it is; the 'Stuff that isn't really news but you might laugh at and send to your mates boosting our numbers and justifying why we put this crap up', but I understand that may contain a few too many characters.

Another thing I find slightly patronising, and a classic reaction to reports of clicks and reader response, is the sheer size of the 'Most Popular' panel. Does it really need to be so large?

I realise click reports will show this to be THE panel on the homepage - although again, the Beeb retains an intellectual standpoint by putting the doubtless under-used 'Features & Analysis' panel above it - but honestly, if we are struggling to see it, we'll have our eyes tested.

The mid-page barrier, a customizable insert for weather and news from various regional and local BBC sites, is actually quite nice, also retaining some of the 'elsewhere' links from the old site.
Below here though, is where it starts to lose the plot for me.

The homepage descends into some sort of half-impression of the Daily Mail site - see here for what I mean - with overblown story summaries (yet none on the main headlines? A compromise would have been nice) in a bid to gain Google hits, and just simple over-population of this area.

It smacks of the developer saying "well, this is where you've lost most visitors, as our research shows most readers will scroll for 1.7534 turns of the little wheel thing on their mouse, so we thought we might as well cram as many keywords as possible into this section".

For me, it looks silly and too slap-dash.

And it also looks like the Telegraph, as the entire site does, far too much.

And the Telegraph constantly freezes my browser, so let's hope this isn't the case with the new BBC News site...

Overall though, there isn't a drastic change here, just a few minor alterations in a bid to catch up to other news sites in terms of volume of content and keywords.

BBC News has long been a reliable and technically-sound site - let's hope it stays that way.

* For the record, a font this big, with the SEO headline is just annoying to me. Get over the SEO thing people, or wait three months, then someone will come up a tag that hides the bit Google searches from us poor readers who have to look at it.

When searchable headlines go mad...

The plight of the sub editor is an oft-heard tale; there aren't enough of them, template pages are killing the art, etc etc.

And while sharing their pain to an extent, it's something that has never really hit home, not being a sub.

But gradually, over the years of growth of news on the interweb, I have come to relate to their issues.

Google. Google. Google. That is all we seem to here now from web gurus across the news globe. Your stories must be 'Googleised', or 'Googleified', or whatever the term is that they shout in my ear and which just doesn't seem to register, having not read 'What iPCmacbookpad?' this month.

Yet this morning, two things on the Daily Mail website caught my eye and summised my growing affection for those bods who sit and correct our stories day in, day out, for little recognition (let's be honest, the amount of changes they make to some copy, they deserve a byline).

Firstly, the Daily Mail site was among the first to cotton on to the benefits of being found by Google, i.e. appearing first in any search gives you the overwhelming majority of clicks from searchers.

So it adapted the way it wrote headlines for stories appearing online, which is fair enough.

However, with other news outlets catching up fast, the Mail has continued to grow its efforts, and quite frankly, the site is becoming one gigantic Google hub.

Repeated links are EVERYWHERE - see a grab below, which shows only a small section of the front page.



I realise it's not very clear, but basically, the Daily Mail homepage seems to have become a page containing hundreds of stories, with hundreds of links to those stories, everywhere!

Apparently, this will score massively with Google, but at what cost?

I do wonder whether anyone reading this site is with me when I say that I get quite frustrated with the same stories appearing everywhere when I'm looking for something else to read?

I've read the top story, so why link to it another four times on the homepage, in prominent positions? It baffles me.

But that is not the only 'Googleisation' tool that concerns me. The tailored headlines are now so ridiculous they take up half the page!



That headline, to me, is just too damn long.

Yes, I can see that includes loads of things people might be searching for; I can understand (despite the protestations of our web chap that it is dreadfully complicated) that people probably do search for 'Kylie concerts' and 'cocktails' a lot - and probably together a surprising amount too.

But was it really worth it for a four-deck headline that just looks a bit silly? I'm probably living in the dark ages (probably?) but for me, it wasn't.

I'm in no way averse to the joys of having a really popular website, but I do still hold a strong amount of pride in the presentation of a story, regardless of whether it is on a piece of paper or a monitor.

So I do share the pain of a sub when I see headlines like this. Where has the skill gone?

Yet as if the web people at the Mail were aware of my growing sadness, they provided me with something to laugh at...

Lovely. Thank you.