Where there's news, there's a chant

People losing their jobs and livelihoods is never a laughing matter and sadly the press and media industry has been too full of stories about redundancies recently.

Still, one can always rely on that most positive-thinking of demographics - the modern football fan - to shed a little comedy where others see only misery.

Last year Trinity Mirror announced it wanted to move printing of the Liverpool Daily Post and Echo out of the city to Oldham - a town not too far away from the home of Liverpool FC's biggest rivals, Manchester United.

So the inevitable has happened according to the Twitter feed of journalism lecturer and blogger Andy Dickinson:

Would Franzen have done better?

Former That's Life presenter Esther Rantzen today struck a blow for the journalistic profession by announcing she will stand for Parliament at the next election in the Luton seat being vacated by expenses row Labour MP Margaret Moran.

But if it's Rantzen for Luton South, it could have been Franzen for Norwich North, if Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg had had his way.

Peter Franzen was, until a few weeks ago, the hugely respected and long-serving editor of the Eastern Daily Press. But after announcing his retirement at the end of May, he was apparently then approached by Clegg to be the Liberal Democrats' candidate in the Norwich North by-election caused by the resignation of another MP hit by expenses revelations, Ian Gibson.

The story, which originally surfaced on Iain Dale's Diary and was subsequently carried on HoldtheFrontPage, has never been denied, and Peter's own carefully-worded non-denial - "it would be unfair to the now-adopted prospective parliamentary candidate for the Lib Dems, April Pond, to say any more" - seemed to amount to a confirmation.

In the event, of course, Ms Pond's selection proved disastrous for the Lib Dems. She came a poor third, prompting at least one political blogger to question Clegg's own future.

Would Peter have done better? Quite possibly. For all the low esteem in which they are allegedly held, journalists have a good record as "anti sleaze" candidates, as Martin Bell proved in 1997, and as the redoubtable Ms Rantzen may well prove in 2010.

Express & Star group gets 'fantastic manager'

When former North-East and Midlands MD Steve Brown left Trinity Mirror in a company restructure earlier this year, the response from his former employees in Newcastle and Birmingham was startling.

The NUJ chapel in Newcastle passed a vote of no confidence in the company's management over Steve's departure - despite the fact that he had previously overseen a round of job cuts at the North-East centre - while HoldtheFrontPage was deluged with comments in support of the former boss.

One Newcastle insider who called himself 'Angry Journo' wrote: "Steve Brown is without argument head and shoulders above all of them in terms of his passion, respect, strategic vision, performance delivery and intellect. Someone is going to get a fantastic manager soon. Good luck Steve."

He was right. Today it was announced that Steve is to take over as chief executive of the Claverley Group, parent company of the Wolverhampton Express & Star.

You are the strongest link.....goodbye!

Times are tough in the regional press and it's a constant gripe among the rank and file that wages are low.

So no-one can blame Salford Advertiser reporter Pamela Welsh for trying her hand at winning some extra PIN money by appearing on the BBC quiz show The Weakest Link.

Screened this week, it showed a confident Pamela burst her way through the early rounds and into the final three.

She even took time out to engage in some toe-to-toe verbal pugilism with host Anne Robinson about, among others things, crime reporting in Salford and her red dress.

Check out the show on the BBC iPlayer and skip to six minutes in to watch the fireworks fly.

But sadly for Pamela she was voted off by her two male co-contestants despite answering all her questions correctly in her final round and therefore being the strongest link.

As with all contestants, the Cambridge University graduate was able to comment on her eviction and Weakest Link experience.

She concluded: "I think what I'll take away from The Weakest Link is Anne's dress sense. I think it'll give me a real edge on the other journalists on my patch and make me harder and tougher and a bit like Anne herself."

Had Pamela won, she would have pocketed a cool £3,250. Shame!!

Are the Tories trying to spin their way into the regional press's good books?

Earlier this week the Tories made a bit of a splash in some quarters by announcing plans to allow newspaper groups to provide regional TV news using funding top-sliced from the BBC licence fee.

It was of course good to see David Cameron and co taking such an interest in the future of the industry, but I couldn't help thinking it was slightly opportunistic on their part, given that the creation of new regional news consortia was a key aspect of the Digital Britain report published by the government last month.

Shadow Culture secretary Jeremy Hunt berated Digital Britain for what he called its "lack of radicalism," but although it failed to spell out a role for local newspaper companies in TV news provision in words of one syllable, this was implicit in the proposal and was widely reported as such in the trade media.

As HTFP reported at the time, "newspaper groups, TV broadcasters and other news media organisations are expected to benefit" from the top-slicing proposal. Indeed the Press Assocation has already launched a local news pilot that seems to be putting down an early marker for a share of the funding.

Fair play to the Tories for getting a few headlines - that is their job after all - but essentially what they have done here is taken someone else's idea and given it a fresh angle.

And I thought it was just journalists who were supposed to do that sort of thing.....

Three out of four ain't bad

Congratulations to Oliver Luft who starts work as online news editor at Press Gazette on Monday, joining from Media Guardian.

Having previously worked for Journalism.co.uk, he now only needs to come and work for HoldtheFrontPage to complete a full-house of the four major UK journalism news sites.

Slow mews day in Lichfield?

We've had the one about the town that ran out of custard (see previous post) - now here's the one about the dead moggie that united a Midlands cathedral town in grief.

Well, it is July after all.....

The case of the disappearing story comments

Earlier this year, HoldtheFrontPage ran a piece about a weekly paper in Kent which had published a story about a mum-of-three complaining that the local shops had run out of custard.

It provoked a lively debate, both on HTFP and on the paper's companion website, thisiskent.co.uk, over the question of whether or not this constituted news.

One reader calling himself Nik from Newcastle commented: "How on earth did this terrible story make it to the morning news conference, let alone to print? As a fellow hack, I am shocked, appalled and rather ashamed at this dire example of journalism."

Another, Simon from London, added: "The journalist who wrote this and the news editor who allowed it should be sacked. You're taking the mick out of your readers."

At the time, Whitstable Times editor John Nurden, proudly defended his scoop, saying: "I sense fellow hacks are just jealous of our eggs-clusive."

"If it was our splash I would agree but I think it made a nice page four funny - and has attracted more comments than any other on our web site proving that custard shortages should be top of everyone's news menu."

Four months on, however, while the story is still visible on thisiskent.co.uk, the comments appear to have been taken down.

Maybe the editor decided it wasn't such a great "eggs-clusive" after all...

The joys of Twitter

As well as being one of the best observers of the national political scene either inside or outside the Lobby - check out his blog Outside the Bubble - David Higgerson is an enthusiastic Twitterer in his role as Trinity Mirror's head of multimedia.

Many journalists already follow his Twitter feed - but we thought this "tweet" during a recent train journey between Birmingham and Manchester deserved a slightly wider audience.

Coulsongate

Or should that be The Wages of Spin? Thanks to cartoonist Slob for this take on the potential political ramifications of the alleged News of the World phone hacking affair - it was originally posted on my political blog but I thought it merited another outing here.

Meanwhile regional editors have been having their say on the Guardian claims, with the Northern Echo's Peter Barron calling for a new police investigation.

Nothing 'Plain' about this entry

We at HoldtheFrontPage always try to be clear and concise in the way we write our stories. So it was with no little amusement that we stumbled upon this titbit from the Plain English Campaign - the lobby group launched in 1979 to combat incomprehensible jargon in government and public body documents.

It holds a small number of annual awards, including one for the best regional newspaper, won last year by the Salford Star.

In December, it will hand out its annual 'Golden Bull' gong for "the worst examples of written tripe".

And we hear the smart money is being waged on this 102-word piece of 'ploddledygook' from the Association of Chief Police officers, which discusses.....erm.....we've no idea actually. Over to you:

"The promise of reform which the Green Paper heralds holds much for the public and Service alike; local policing, customized to local need with authentic answerability, strengthened accountabilities at force level through reforms to Police Authorities and HMIC, performance management at the service of localities with targets and plans tailored to local needs, the end of centrally engineered one size fits all initiatives, an intelligent approach to cutting red tape through redesign of processes and cultures, a renewed emphasis on strategic development so as to better equip our Service to meet the amorphous challenges of managing cross force harms, risks and opportunities."

For the record, it was taken from ACPO's response to the government's green paper on policing and the way it will be conducted in the future.

Farewell to the Sporting Star

An interesting news item from the regional press has just landed on HoldtheFrontPage's radar.

After 90 years of publishing, the Midlands-based Sporting Star will cease publication at the start of the forthcoming football season.

The Sporting Star is owned by the Midland News Association whose titles include two of the UK's biggest-selling regional dailies - the Wolverhampton-based Express and Star and the Shropshire Star.

The timing is unfortunate for West Mids football lovers as Wolverhampton Wanderers have just been promoted to the big time of the Premier League while another Express and Star club Aston Villa have just enjoyed a very successful season.

For those unfamiliar with this publishing marvel, the Sporting Star and others of its ilk are written and published at breakneck speed, with the vast majority of its content coming from Saturday afternoon football matches.

Its demise signals the end of all 'pinks' in the Midlands after the Coventry Telegraph closed its edition last autumn, while the Birmingham Pink was closed three years ago by owners Trinity Mirror.

Express and Star MD Alan Harris was quoted in the Birmingham Post as saying: ".....unfortunately technology has outstripped its viability.

"First it was terrestrial TV, then it was Teletext, then Sky Sports and obviously now the internet. Also many of the major matches are not played on a Saturday.

"Reluctantly we have decided that the 2009-10 football season will not have the sporting pink."

Good business sense

Difficult times at Trinity Mirror at the moment, with the announcement of nine newspaper closures and job losses yesterday, and accusations from the National Union of Journalists concerning the future of two of its traditional morning papers, the Birmingham Post and Liverpool Daily Post.

The Guardian's Roy Greenslade has published a lengthy post analysing the TM Midlands proposals. Not all journalists will agree with it but it provides a useful counterbalance to the NUJ point of view.

Meanwhile, a correspondent from TM-owned Media Wales emails HTFP to let us know that the company has (in his words) "hit such hard times it is renting out the 5th and 6th floor of its new offices in Cardiff."

We say: good on them. If it helps avoid any further journalist job losses, then renting out unused office space surely makes good business sense. Come to that, there are probably other newspaper publishers who ought to think about doing the same.