'My column at the News of the World' blog discussion

Hern

StopMurdoch wrote: »

MARTIN, PLEASE LEAD DON'T FOLLOW ON THIS CRITICAL CONSTITUTIONAL ISSUE

The News of the World brand was destroyed because it is Murdoch who taints it and every other Media and News organisation he controls, especially the Sun which he hopes will take the place of the News of the World on Sunday. . .

If ANYONE takes advertising time and space in New Corp news and media properties they will be associating their brands with Murdoch and not the media or news channel they use.

DON'T RUSH TO ADVERTISE IN THE SUN ON SUNDAY!!
DON'T RUSH TO BUY THE SUN ON SUNDAY!!

I'm not sure if you're a genuine, newly-registered poster, or a foam-at-the-mouth Socialist Worker zealot currently working up their latest daft campaign. Either way, some thoughts for your fevered brow at this time:

The NOTW sells 2,625,220 copies a week. On the spurious basis that every newspaper sold in Britain is read by more than the actual purchaser, the NOTW has a ‘readership’ of anything up to 7 million, depending on the multiple you choose to use. Thanks to that number of sales and size of readership, the NOTW has been one of the most profitable newspapers in UK publishing history.

Thanks to 2,625,220 purchasers every Sunday, the News of The World is, or was. . . The News of The World. The shoddy, the salacious and the sensationalist is exactly what millions of British people require and so the NOTW's shoddy, salacious and sensationalist content is what they make possible.

With their own money. Not one of them had a gun held to his / her head by Rupert Murdoch.

It may be depressing to realise that the diet of sh1te which Murdoch provides via his mass market papers is fodder for the pathetically prurient, but the purchase of junk print for the brain is as much an exercise in freedom of choice as junk food for the stomach.

And if Murdoch didn’t provide that diet, those hungry for it would get it from some other newspaper or magazine proprietor (as indeed, millions already do.)

As to Murdoch himself, an individual you've clearly never met, nor are ever likely to, here's a heads-up from one who has:

Unlike that Fat Robber Baron Maxwell, and certain national newspaper proprietors of more recent vintage, Murdoch has newspaper ink in his veins. Yes, he loves power and equally yes, politicians the world over have been weak-kneed enough to suck up to him and his minions (Cameron and Gordon Brown at Rebekah Brooks's wedding, for Crissakes) and enhance his power.

But Murdoch also loves newspapers to the point that he throws money at ‘em on a scale way beyond anything Thomson or Beaverbrook would ever have contemplated.

Without Murdoch’s £millions, the loss-making Times wouldn’t even be on sale tomorrow morning.

Point of fact: there’d actually be so few national papers to choose from, a champion of diversity and liberty like you would despair – but then, you clearly haven’t a clue about how Murdoch liberated Britain’s newspapers from the tyranny of the print unions, of how Murdoch and Murdoch alone – forget Shah – had the guts and resources sufficient to smash the self-serving Luddites of the NGA, NATSOPA, and SLADE.

So. There ya go, StopMurdoch. Deploy your pious cant to push The Sun out of business, and then come back here and tell me how you’re really, truly, sorry you just pushed The Times out of business, too.

:rotfl:

On a side note, can I thank those many MSErs who were kind enough to be so supportive of my earlier comment about Martin Lewis. The comment was made from my perspective as one who knows a leetle bit more about national media life than he does.

Though I still stand by that comment, I’m sorry to see that Martin – and no, we don’t know each other – is still being vilified for an error of judgment that shows him to be as fallible a human being as the rest of us.

I wish the vilification would stop because Martin Lewis is just a guy, not God, in the same way that Rupert Murdoch is just a guy. Not Satan.


PS: for reasons not unconnected with current events, I can’t post for a while. By way of thanks to all those here and elsewhere who have shown such an intelligent interest in how media actually works, I humbly submit just one further message. . .

Though with no guarantee at the time of writing that what it refers to will come to pass, the day after tomorrow.

;);)

Hern

Sweet headlines come no sweeter than that adorning today’s Daily Telegraph’s page 1: ‘Goodbye, Cruel World.’

On the off-chance, then, that MSErs might wish to purchase the NOTW’s goodbye edition, here’s a tip. Don’t share this information with News International’s top management though: their apparent lack of journalistic provenance means they’ll miss this completely unless told about it.

Old hands at national tabloid journalism do, however, relish this, a trade secret to which I myself have been party to for many, many years. For the record, it’s actually a crime punishable by sacking to do what I’m about to describe. . . but if you’ve already lost your job, then hey: why worry? Fun and games are surely less harmful than phone hacking.

Basically, the trick is to say something astonishingly rude / offensive / obscene in print, but without anyone realising it. Rather than being explicit, the rude / offensive ‘/ obscene phrase is buried in innocuous-looking text. Ordinarily, it will be completely missed by the newspaper reader and even, the newspaper proprietor. Only those privy to the joke will get it. Knowledge of what’s happening is therefore inevitably confined to a certain few.

Still, now that you know how newspaper professionals, as distinct from newspaper amateurs, get their own back, you too can now look at Sunday’s final NOTW and see if you can spot where the initial letters of a series of innocent-looking sentences actually spell out something rather different.

whitewing

I think James May lost a job at one point by doing something like that ^^.

I hope the hint in the previous post was something that I'll be happy about....

Errata

Hern - it's an old trick, but still a very good one. Long may it flourish.

melancholly

Errata wrote: »

Hern - it's an old trick, but still a very good one. Long may it flourish.

although i'm feeling a bit slow as i can't work out what the final word means......

*MF*

Extract from Martin's blog: I’ve spoken with the paper’s editor this morning and asked that instead of running my column (filed last week) I have some space to write something of my feelings on what’s happened

You also have that space here, Martin.

Indeed could there be a more suitable, and more important, space in which to offer your thoughts, not imho on what has happened at the NOTW, but in response to the members on this, your site - a space for you to write something of your feelings on what's happened - about the many posts that precede this one.

I would be surprised if you had not read those posts, and more importantly heard, and I suspect felt quite keenly, the many criticisms that have been levelled against you.

I, too, would be one of your critics - but like many other posters it would be borne of a profound sense of disappointment on the factors you listed - and that you felt were more important than that of simple human dignity - the inherent right to respect for individual privacy - and crucially so when that privacy relates to the loss of loved ones.

Jenna_Appleseed

whitewing wrote: »

I think James May lost a job at one point by doing something like that ^^.

I hope the hint in the previous post was something that I'll be happy about....

I remember when somebody did that in an otherwise quite boring column in The Express in disgust at Richard Desmond taking over.:cool::rotfl:

Paulgonnabedebtfree

Hern wrote: »

I'm not sure if you're a genuine, newly-registered poster, or a foam-at-the-mouth Socialist Worker zealot currently working up their latest daft campaign. Either way, some thoughts for your fevered brow at this time:

The NOTW sells 2,625,220 copies a week. On the spurious basis that every newspaper sold in Britain is read by more than the actual purchaser, the NOTW has a ‘readership’ of anything up to 7 million, depending on the multiple you choose to use. Thanks to that number of sales and size of readership, the NOTW has been one of the most profitable newspapers in UK publishing history.

Thanks to 2,625,220 purchasers every Sunday, the News of The World is, or was. . . The News of The World. The shoddy, the salacious and the sensationalist is exactly what millions of British people require and so the NOTW's shoddy, salacious and sensationalist content is what they make possible.

With their own money. Not one of them had a gun held to his / her head by Rupert Murdoch.

It may be depressing to realise that the diet of sh1te which Murdoch provides via his mass market papers is fodder for the pathetically prurient, but the purchase of junk print for the brain is as much an exercise in freedom of choice as junk food for the stomach.

And if Murdoch didn’t provide that diet, those hungry for it would get it from some other newspaper or magazine proprietor (as indeed, millions already do.)

As to Murdoch himself, an individual you've clearly never met, nor are ever likely to, here's a heads-up from one who has:

Unlike that Fat Robber Baron Maxwell, and certain national newspaper proprietors of more recent vintage, Murdoch has newspaper ink in his veins. Yes, he loves power and equally yes, politicians the world over have been weak-kneed enough to suck up to him and his minions (Cameron and Gordon Brown at Rebekah Brooks's wedding, for Crissakes) and enhance his power.

But Murdoch also loves newspapers to the point that he throws money at ‘em on a scale way beyond anything Thomson or Beaverbrook would ever have contemplated.

Without Murdoch’s £millions, the loss-making Times wouldn’t even be on sale tomorrow morning.

Point of fact: there’d actually be so few national papers to choose from, a champion of diversity and liberty like you would despair – but then, you clearly haven’t a clue about how Murdoch liberated Britain’s newspapers from the tyranny of the print unions, of how Murdoch and Murdoch alone – forget Shah – had the guts and resources sufficient to smash the self-serving Luddites of the NGA, NATSOPA, and SLADE.

So. There ya go, StopMurdoch. Deploy your pious cant to push The Sun out of business, and then come back here and tell me how you’re really, truly, sorry you just pushed The Times out of business, too.

:rotfl:

On a side note, can I thank those many MSErs who were kind enough to be so supportive of my earlier comment about Martin Lewis. The comment was made from my perspective as one who knows a leetle bit more about national media life than he does.

Though I still stand by that comment, I’m sorry to see that Martin – and no, we don’t know each other – is still being vilified for an error of judgment that shows him to be as fallible a human being as the rest of us.

I wish the vilification would stop because Martin Lewis is just a guy, not God, in the same way that Rupert Murdoch is just a guy. Not Satan.


PS: for reasons not unconnected with current events, I can’t post for a while. By way of thanks to all those here and elsewhere who have shown such an intelligent interest in how media actually works, I humbly submit just one further message. . .

Though with no guarantee at the time of writing that what it refers to will come to pass, the day after tomorrow.

;);)

Certainly Murdoch has not had a monopoly on dubious behaviour amongst the newspaper proprietors. As you rightly point out, Maxwell hardly has clean hands either.
As for the print dispute around Wapping in the mid 80s, it had been clear for some time that the industry needed to modernise - not just in printing methods but in industrial relations. I had been in the NATSOPA union (though I think it had merged with SOGAT by then) and as an out of towner, I did spend the occasional Saturday evening outside the Wapping plant. I didn't work on newspapers at all but in a provincial company that focussed more on sheet fed printing. My concerns at the time were wider than just the immediate dispute. It was more about the changes in industrial relations legislation. Although the unions had quite a bit of power in the 1970s, I felt that things went too far in the other direction in the 1980s. It seemed too easy for a government and an employer to cosy up behind closed doors.
Paradoxically, the attempt to weaken the print unions actually caused them all to unite under a much larger media union umbrella. Potentially this made them much stronger but in practice, it didn't seem to pan out that way. It may even have suited the employers because there were less bodies with which to negotiate. Bear in mind that jobs were very hard to come by at the time in pretty much every trade. Inflation had been running at 20%+ for a while and we were going through a period of enforced recession to bring that figure down. Or perhaps we were through the worst of that by then. It's so long ago that the exact timeline is hard to recall. I know we went through a period when prices tripled in seven years.
Yes, I know there were abuses in Fleet Street that had to be curbed. I'm just not convinced that deliberately provoking a dispute to cause a strike (meaning that the workers could be legally sacked) was the best way of dealing with it.
Even though I've been self-employed for 20 years, and out of the trade since 1988, I've never knowingly bought a NI publication since those days. It just wouldn't feel right for me.

flimsier

drewdrop wrote: »

Hi, having just read this thread it is rather daunting to see the vitreol & bile being directed at Martin Lewis. I read his blog stating that he would carry on writing for the NOTW & although slightly disappointed I thought other factors were swaying his opinion, eg. contactual or the fact that accusations were coming from many sources with no actual proof at that point. The evidence is clearly profound now in the light of Murdochs decision to close the paper. Many posters are targetting Lewis due to not withdrawing his services in a timely (to them) manner. This is unfair, Martin Lewis created this site, which acts to assist in financial advice. That is all. He is not our moral guru, just financial. In addition people should remember the most salient poiint, 4 million people were happy to read these articles weekly, if you want someone act as a focus for your anger etc I would suggest you look closer to home.

:A

He did create this site. Fair play to him. I have personal experience of him saying he will never accept tuition fees for students (as he was my general secretary when I was in the LSE Student Union).

He has got this wrong. He's not a moral guru, but the same as he loves the praise, he needs to take the brickbats

flimsier

OK; I was ready to move on; Lewis isn't likely to write for the paper so why go on about it. However, posts on this thread have been deleted (to be fair it's only the harshest ones about Lewis). That's low, and deceitful.

edit: should point out that my posts are fine for now.