Why Local World's David Montgomery is right and so very wrong

With almost impeccable timing David Montgomery, chairman of Local World the publisher which swooped on the former Northcliffe Group of local and regional newspapers, announced he wanted his papers, or rather its websites, to "harvest content and publish it without human interface."

This, he said could all be achieved within four years. He argued that newspapers “cannot sustain a model from the middle ages, where a single journalist goes out on a single story, comes back and writes it up”.

He is wrong, of course. But not quite so wrong as some of his loudest critics have argued.

For the time being, since you are probably one of the journalists who will be affected by this, let us concentrate on why he is wrong.

Within days of him making his ill-judged comment something happened in a corner of south east London. Drummer Lee Rigby, leaving Woolwich Barracks, was run over in a car by two fanatics who then attempted, at least according to reports, to hack off his head.

Although the initial incident was not captured on film, at least as far as we know, all the subsequent events were. From the attackers' blood soaked preaching, to the angels of Woolwich, to the gunning down of the pair. All were caught on mobile phones, in colour, with sound and from a dizzying array of angles. Hollywood itself would have been proud.

So how did this shocking footage make it onto the television screens and websites bringing the full horror shocking horror of what had happened on a British street into our homes? Well, there is the problem for Mr Montgomery... it was down to the "human interface", the very outdated model he believes is a thing of the past.

It was that human interface which was able to get the footage immediately from the dozens of eyewitnesses standing around - to stop them before they uploaded it to YouTube or put it on Twitter - that gave them the scoop and the huge rewards that go with it.

A lot of that footage and the subsequent interviews were also free.

But, under the brave new Local World, this would not happen - although let's be realistic how many local reporters were at the scene? And even if they were there, for how long? 

Indeed, for many papers fighting ever shrinking circulations and decreasing ad revenues Mr Montgomery's vision is in fact a reality.

So let's not be so fast to lambast the man who is at least saying what he believes in. There are a fair many publishers who are already doing this by stealth. The one man operation already exists in many newsrooms or, indeed, Starbucks.

The ultimate logic for Mr Montgomery is of course the further closure of offices and the  even further moving away from the patch that is already part and parcel of many reporters' working lives. The weekly visit to the patch - especially in wealthier areas where rents are too expensive for a journalist on sub-£20,000 a year salaries to afford - being not unlike that of the parish priest who must tend his flock from afar.

No, the absolute conclusion is that reporters locked in aircraft hanger-sized newsrooms, hundreds of miles from their patch, never going out, never seeing the community they are meant to be working in, is the future.

What happens then is that stories go wrong, subtleties get lost, basic mistakes get made, press releases become news, sometimes those press releases will be countered by opposing press releases or statements. Meshed together they form the basis of a story. That is sometimes, not always.

Sometimes those press releases might even be good.

Those press releases and Twitter and Facebook and YouTube become the non-human interface of 21st Century newsgathering.

But these sources are flawed. Could you, would you, dare trust them on their own? Can - let alone should - journalists even rely on press offices (which themselves are subject to periodic cutbacks)?

However, let us put aside our natural prejudices on this matter and again remember, in too many newsrooms that is already the reality for too many stories.

(Some years ago I wrote a press release for a friend's restaurant. It was written to be cut at five, 12, 20 and a whopping 40 pars. It went to all the local papers and apart from minor changes to the intro went in at five, 12, 20 and 40 pars - even I was surprised by the latter.)

So again, let's not jump down Mr Montgomery's throat for outlining his vision. 

Only like those papers the veteran newspaper man has forgotten a few things. Those papers are all shrinking in circulation.

Because who still buys newspapers? It is readers. People who still read for pleasure and  information. In the rush to emulate The Sun's still sizeable circulation, editors cut the length of stories down to 15 par max "page leads". The art of writing was lost in order to cram even more "news" onto its pages.

And what news it was. Garden fetes, appeals, charity collections, coffee mornings, annual fairs. In fact so much of news that could be found stuck to the lamppost in the average town.

In fact everything except that you - or the casual or first time reader - might actually want to read.

All of this, and a propensity of some of the more baser editors to exaggerate so-so stories with ever ever increasingly hysterical headlines, made real readers disappear in droves, even those who still believed in the importance of community news.

Even more importantly those new readers attracted to the garish, brash, made up stories, were hardly the prime targets for advertisers.

Local papers became dull rags. Something that, to quote one reader: "You always felt that you'd be missing out on something if you didn't buy the paper... you never did."

How long does that go on for?

Now let us put aside our higher notions of what a newspaper actually is. Look at it, as every reporter or editor should now do, for what they really are in the commercial world. Let us, for a minute, be grown up about it and deal with the real world. 

Strip the news - the baubles that entice the readers to pick it up or buy it in the first place - from its pages and what are we left with?

The answer, though we may be loathe to admit it, are the adverts. Those things that pay the wages, that keep the whole operation running.

And when advertisers read a paper that appeals to them and their customers, then they will carry on advertising. That, and not simply insisting upon saying "advertisers and readers" whenever talking of them is the nub of a newspapers long term success.

Occasionally this has been tried. For a short while, there was much talk of using Mosaic to target readers. It didn't work. It didn't work because too many editors had no idea how to change from the formulaic approach they had used for years.

So in areas that were seeing a boom in wealthy younger pensioners, newspapers made little or no effort to capture a potentially lucrative market. They played to core audiences, insisting that hundreds of pictures of children - or worse pictures by children - would sell papers. This on the basis that the mother would by two copies, so would an aunt and a grandmother and so on and so forth...

Of course they wouldn't be doing that the following week, indeed, it would be the turn of the next doting parent. No one else would get a look in. That is, unless they were running a coffee morning.

And in other areas house prices booms saw entire areas change readership profiles. Would you believe it from what you are reading? The content remains stuck appealing to its traditional public sector housing estates readership, the paper itself is cheap, the layout grey or tabloid brash.

Meanwhile, all around them, smart publishers produce glossy magazines, with little or no actual news content but rich in advertising.

Important, real news, is lost forever because, ironically, news is a parasite on advertising and newspaper advertising, of itself, cannot live without the news.

And so let me return to the news "without human interface" and why it is a danger, not, for loss of news, but for long-term advertising. For this symbiotic relationship the advertising need to feed on something and in the brave new online world local papers have only one thing: Local news.

This is the very advantage Local World has. It already has in place its very biggest advantage, the largely trusted brands it bought from Northcliffe.

Pulling away from the medieval model may make sense commercially in the short or even mid-term. But losing - or even downgrading - the paper version now or even four years time does not make sense.

To do so puts the online content on a par with the one-reporter set-up of the local news blog. Set up by those with drive and a vested interest, other than advertising. Look around the country and more and more are springing up.

Too often they fail, not least because one man bands are difficult to sustain. But good writing and investigative reporting attracts new writers, those who want to be associated with a local brand. And that writing and those investigations are improving.

(Again, I know this from experience. As a local newspaper editor at 10 to 20 percent of content came from writers willing to offer their services or content for free. The time saved was reinvested back into the news content of the paper making it more attractive to readers. Poor articles were rejected, somewhat mercilessly to maintain quality.)

Now imagine poor content from a paper with a "non-human interface", written far away from the very people it is meant to be serving. Online does not have the high overheads of the newspaper industry. Any slob with a computer and a will can write (as you are reading). 

How soon before they attract real advertising? Before the directors of small local firms decide they prefer the content of this upstart online media publisher? Before small groups of local writers staff to form together to challenge the big conglomerate, whose local HQ is 60 miles away? Who offer cheaper advertising to cover wages and not profits?

Local newspapers, as they exist, need to change, Mr Montgomery is right. They cannot go on forever as they currently do. We need a change in the way news is gathered. A smarter way to collate the information, sent back to a newsroom (perhaps even hundreds of miles away) is packaged for individual newspapers and web by teams of subs. Not because they know the area but because they know the target audiences of each of the areas. Subs who will know how to use Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and the rest as a secondary and not a primary source. That should remain the place of the reporter.

Journalism Tips 53. Lessons from the movies: Keeping a diary

To begin with I am not taking about a Piers Morgan style diary as I suspect that it is highly unlikely that your expose of the mayor fiddling his expenses and the cold stares he gives you will be of much interest to a wider audience.

Today's post is about newsdesk diaries.

One of the things you soon find in any newsroom - be it newspaper, television, radio or website - is that news does not come in nice easy to handle packages.

And that goes for nationals, regionals to even the most hype-local of weeklies because news is funny like that.

One week you are scrabbling around trying to find nine page leads and something that will vaguely look slightly less embarrassing to stick on the front and the next the editor is agonising over what they should splash with that day.

(Admittedly the former is rather more common than the latter.... and when I say rather more common I mean usual.)

Now this lumpy and, quite frankly inconvenient news scheduling is a bit of a pain in the butt for news editors and will soon prove to be a rather bigger one for you since it will be you (the reporter) who has to find the stories to fill the pages.

The result is a constant scramble of chasing after so-so news stories to turn into page leads and shorts or nibs (news in brief).

And what that means is time is constantly running out for the edition, minor stories are propelled into page lead status and longer investigations are forgotten about.

So it is worth considering the introduction of the newsdesk diary. A full diary - which admittedly does take time - will pay long term dividends.

Many newspapers already have them. But they are all too often restricted to upcoming court cases and dates of forthcoming meetings (councils and the like).

A really good diary will go much further. It is worth taking half an hour each week after edition (or better once the paper is printed) to see which stories are worth a follow up.

A few examples: A new major supermarket announces it is coming into town. Everyone says that it will be the end of the small independent shopkeeper.

Inevitably protest groups are set up. There is much anger and many meetings. People are up in arms (literally, because all you can afford is to live in a rough part of town).

The council gives the go-ahead and in the store rolls. And for some reason everyone thinks the story has ended there.

Of course you may run odd follow ups about boycotts, protests and so on (which always happen on a Saturday morning when no one is working). You may also, if people can be bothered to tell you, run stories about small shops closing down as a result of lost business. But this is waiting for events to happen.

Now think again. A diary entry making note that the store opened three, six, nine and 12 months before will help you gauge how the town is coping with new supermarket.

Instead of writing that the local shops have closed down you can chart their progress. Is it as bad as everyone feared? If the answer is yes, a campaign: Shop local! Save Our Shops! Over the next few weeks and months you will have a series of engaging, relevant local community stories that will engender good will from locals and - more importantly - fill that space on page nine. (I will deal with running a campaign in a later post).

Or what about an inquest? A small child dies after drowning in a pool. The parents are naturally devastated and, understandably, at the time really do not want to talk. But the issue is an important one. Making a note of the anniversary of the death and asking again if they wish to talk a year on from the tragedy is not unreasonable. No one is suggesting their pain is any less. However they may feel they now want to talk so as to warn others. Well told, the story will have lost little of its relevancy or importance.

Example three: A local nursery has shut down and the parents have had to find somewhere else for their beloved brats to go. One month, two months, three months on... have they found new places? What does it mean for the parents? Have they had to give up work because they can no longer afford child care? And so on...

A few quick calls - to the organisers of the campaign to save the nursery - will soon establish if there is a problem. If there is a page lead... if not a nib.

There is a spin off from all of this as well. In two of the above you have taken stories about buildings and committees and turned them into stories about people (again this will be covered later).

Now here is a clip from ITV's mid-1980s fantastic sitcom Hot Metal that perfectly demonstrates everything I am talking about in terms of news desk diaries.

Loosely modelled on The Sun's own history and the Kelvin MacKenzie era it was not as Hugh Grant may have you believe a documentary but a sitcom.

The Crucible's ace reporter Greg Kettle (played superbly by Richard Kane) is busy at work in the hotel room of a royal's girlfriend...

(One thing: The entry should have been at two and a half months before any official announcement at nine months the whole world would have known and there would have been no exclusive.)





For part one of journalism tips from the movies click this link.

Journalism Tips 49. Getting started on your patch: Refining your Twitter feed.

Now, if you followed the advice in the previous post, you should have a Twitter feed with an awful lot of drivel... welcome to Twitter.

Day to day this will be mostly useless - especially if the few gems of stories are lost among the endless promotion of club nights.

To get around this you will need to learn how to use lists. Click on the cog, select lists and create a new one - then add those that seem to be constitently tweeting relevant news.

This is not to say your main Twitter feed is redundant. Remember people Tweet about interesting things they see - if they are in and around your patch they are likely to Tweet mostly about that area.

A list will allow you to separate the news wheat from the promo chaff - and allow you to hold onto the chaff just in case it later proves useful.

To demonstrate - and to make sure I still knew what I was doing - I set up my own feed about an area I don't know very well - in this case the London Borough of Hackney. You can find it at @MyHackney1. If you are living in Hackney let me know... I'll follow you.

This isn't your personal account so you own interests do not come into it. I simply typed out Hackney and clicked on everything that was relevant. Ditto: Shoreditch, Stoke Newington, Dalston, Clapton, Homerton etc etc.

Searches through the lists of people I followed added more names, venues and businesses. And within a few hours I had followed 400 people. So far, so good,

Remember to include a profile. A quick Google Street View grab and a vintage picture - distinguishes your account from Spam. A written profile encouraging people from the area to follow in return to a follow back yielded a few more.

And finally a first Tweet, in my case generic, in yours a shout out for news, stories, tips and photos.

Over the coming weeks I'll follow more people, Tweet out relevant news and RT stories

So anything interesting? Possibly and a few more things look like they may be shaping up.

Journalism Tips 48. Getting started on your patch: Building your contacts

If you started your journalism course at the beginning of the academic year you should have been given a patch or beat (that's an Americanism) to cover.

And by now you should have most of the important contacts in place. If you haven't then read on:

Let's start, as we always do, with the very basics. Now I am going to attempt to imagine the difficulty of being student reporter because press officers aren't going to deal with you.

This is a good thing because really all you want them for is the "you've got us bang to rights guv'" quote at the end.

Over the next few blogs we will look in detail about how you should be building up your patch. And how you should already be pitching to your local newspapers.

Today we will keep it simple.

Your (ahem) patch

Your contacts book should have at least 150 numbers in it by now. It may prove utterly useless to you when you finish the course but never discount them. I have hundreds of contacts in my book I've never called. But if I ever need them they are there.. or at least I know who I am chasing if the number turns out to be old.

We will come back to contacts but there are other things you should have done by now. You should have a Twitter feed for anyone in your area. By all means keep it separate from your personal account - it would help if you give it the name of your patch (or at least include it) and you keep it open. First tap out the name of your patch. See what comes up and follow them. Follow any obvious landmarks pubs, schools, local council etc. Make sure you include local councillors, the local MP and so on. Then using the advanced Twitter search that we saw in a previous post see if there is anyone less obvious you can follow.

Follow anyone that follows this Twitter account - if you've called it say My Whitechapel then the people will probably have an interest. You should be constanty tweeting from it asking for any stories always include the name of the patch. Inform people of the stories you are working on, give them updates, throw out more appeals for information.

Set up a special email account and link that to your Twitter feed.

On Google (I'm really not going to give you a link to that) set up Google Alerts, firstly for the name of your patch. But also the names of markets, major streets, the council, councillors, local celebrities etc etc.

Check out local news websites - even seemingly defunct ones which can spring back to life suddenly and for no obvious reason. Check also local bloggers - follow them and bookmark them.

Buy the local newspaper - yes, buy it every week! Again after a few weeks it will prove a wise investment (but I will come back to this).

Now all of this gives you a rolling news feed. It hasn't taken long - maybe one day of concentrated effort. But over the next few months this is the start of having some proper cuttings - AND possibly (just possibly) the start of making you real money for your journalism.

To keep up to date with future tips follow @journalismtips on Twitter or sign up below.

How to be a journalist 40. The death knock (Part Two)

In my last post I dealt with how reporters should deal with a death knock. As always there is nothing - or at least very much - revelatory for experienced journalists. But then these tips are aimed at juniors and trainees who may yet have covered one. Again this is not an exhaustive list and all comments, suggestions and observations are welcome.

This latest posting concentrates on how to build up a picture of a person's life in a few questions. Again every circumstance is different so while this tries to cover everything you will still need to think on your feet and listen to the answers given.

You will also need to be aware of any on-going police action and/or the potential to libel. It will be part of your job to explain why you won't be able to include all their quotes. You could not for example quote a claim that a widow that a driver involved in a death crash was not paying attention. That is up to a coroner/court to decide. If at all possible steer them to something that will make a more general point without being unusable.

All of this said you are still looking for a line. This is not about simply writing a formulaic story along the lines of:

A family last night paid tribute to....

We could/do all write this a hundred times over. Sometimes the tragedy in and of itself is simply enough but keep in mind the family details are not revealed straight away in most cases. It could come an edition or two after the original story.

By then the immediate family will be aware, so too many of the extended family and friends as well, possibly even wider still. Or it has been revealed by a rival news organisation. All of which means that sticking to the formula is no good and why you need another line.

So assuming that you have managed to get a chat with the family and have checked relationships of the people you are talking to and double checked the details given to you what should you be asking:

1. Establish all the immediate family members and their relationships. You need names and ages. Don't assume this is all the family. You will also need to establish length of relationship to a partner. If their parents are still alive, any other family. If they are young you want to know about boyfriends or girlfriends has the family spoken to them? You want to get the general reaction from the family. I try to avoid asking "How do you feel?" and try, "I can't imagine how you feel, how would you describe it?".

2. Can you describe their personality? This isn't all about facts, it's about pure emotion. It covers a great deal of very personal information and what you are trying to do is convey their life in a few words. This is a catch-all question it allows the bereaved to talk in an open-ended manner about the deceased.

3. What were their hobbies/interests? Again this is detail that fleshes out a life. It also, as with many of the questions, can provide fresh avenues to chase. Most of the time this will simply not be necessary but never rule it out entirely. It may be worth asking if there is anyone else they think it is worth talking to.

4. What did they do for a living? And previously? Again this is about establishing the person's existence. Not everyone is defined by their work but some are and - for good or for ill - many people will be able to create an image of that person based on their work. Did they go to university? Previous employment etc. It's a sad but usually true that if the deceased is young, public school educated and went to Oxford or Cambridge the story is more likely to be picked up by nationals. For older men (born before 1945) it's worth considering if they conscripted into National Service. For children you will want to be establishing the school and favourite subjects.

5. Were there ever any worries about the situation in which they died? Does the family think they will take any action - legal/civil - in regards to the death? For example, a cyclist may have always been concerned about the particular junction in which the accident happened and had voiced those fears. Or perhaps they had had several near misses over the years or been involved in a non-fatal accident not so long ago.

6. Were they from the area the family home is in? Essentially this is about establishing their deep background. They may have moved there for work, or an immigrant looking for a better life, or to study or any other of thousands of other reasons. If so how long had they lived there for? Or they may simply have lived there all their lives. In the case of children why did their parents move there.

7. What were their hopes and dreams? This is about showing 'a life interrupted' a life that could have been if it had not been struck by tragedy. This is particularly poignant of younger lives that have yet to reach full potential. If not married consider asking if marriage plans had been discussed.

8. Have they ever previously appeared in the news before? We're back to catch all questions but remember the person you are interviewing has been through a great shock. Without knowing anything about the deceased you have to cover as much ground as you can in as few questions as possible.

9. Can I have a photo? Preferably one with the family and ideally one of them looking smart.

10. And finally. Is there anything I have missed that was important to their life that you would like to get across? Personally I also add if they would mind me calling again and always ask for a mobile number. This is where explaining that if you can check back the details with them can be useful.

I think I have covered most of the important elements, as always, I may have missed something crucial and would appreciate any comments adding to this list.

To keep up to date with future tips follow @journalismtips on Twitter.

33. Always remember on a local newspaper someone will know when you’ve written crap. A bad reputation is not a good thing.

Really this is a continuation of my earlier post about sensationalism in the local Press.

I suppose the argument goes that since sales are in decline the way to reverse it is by aping the big beasts of Fleet Street. Of course the editors that go down this route don't then insist upon having the stories to back it up.

Instead they think exaggeration, the use of hyperbole and unnecessary drama is the key. In short they bullshit.

As I wrote recently, this is an appalling avenue to go down.

When I first took over a local paper I went to various bodies that I thought might be worth talking to. This included the local golf club (see a later point).

I asked to speak to the club secretary. He was only too pleased to meet me, so that he could laugh in my face. He then asked me to repeat what I had said to his assistant - he, quite spontaneously, laughed too, which sent the club secretary into gales of mirth yet again.

There was clearly a problem with the paper...as I hadn't even started.

The problem for too many local newspapers is that their staff are (usually) young. Not surprising given the wages. As a result many (though by no means all) leave to either enter the world of PR or head to bigger newspapers...many more quit altogether. A few (and by no means always the best) will get promotion and head up the management route.

Of course the problem with having so many young staff, especially if they are from outside the patch, is that they will make fundamental mistakes. They will not know the history of the area or the long running feuds, they will fail to understand the significance of an event or be unclear as to the impact of a decision.

And with the staff numbers being squeezed there is not enough time to learn. It is one of the reasons I advocate fewer stories written well.

Because simple mistakes - made too often - undermine the product.

So the junior reporter - along with everyone else - should remember that although they may be only a small cog in the paper's production, they may have a far longer term impact on its future.

And while you may only be passing through the jobs of others now and the future may be affected by simple actions. The loss of an advertiser and a few readers may not be the end of the newspaper (although I bet the advertiser is these days) but the cumulative effect may be.

To keep up to date with future tips follow @journalismtips on Twitter.

31. Sensationalism is rarely sensational, esp in local newspapers. You might get away with it once or twice but not forever.

The trouble most people have with papers like The Sun and formerly the News of the World can be encapsulated in one word: "sensationalism". That and the fact they are read by the working classes...dreadful bunch of people.

The chattering classes can ignore tabloids with a dismissive wave of the hand without ever really looking into them, naturally.

And contrary to what some former tabloid hacks will tell you I never had to make anything up (actually that's a lie I did work for ahem the Sunday Sport - I was young, I was naive, I needed the money, that's usually the excuse...actually I needed the money - and I confess that it is not true that Kangaroos played a football match or Sir Trevor McDonald's face was seen on the White Cliffs of Dover).

But oddly enough, even here I didn't need to make much up. Indeed I learned a lot in how to investigate real - if not particularly edifying - stories on shoestring budgets.

How to track down a Blind Date contestant using their first name, approximate area and clues such as: "I work in a bakery where we make all kinds of bread, if you were a loaf what kind would it be?"

(In my defence here it was the biggest show on television at the time. And I was told to find a story on it once a week. I did. Every week. In the face of the bigger tabloids.)

However the same techniques I learned there - that got me genuine stories - I applied to more productive use years later. Tracing people with few clues and not much of a budget.

The good tabloids do produce sensationalism, if you will, but that is the result of bloody hard work and months of it. And it is only very occasionally wrong. Even the best reporters can make mistakes.

On the whole though I saw a lot of investigation go into stories.

Now compare it to this story. On the face of it the front page headline is correct: Bridport: Pickpockets target market day crowds - enough to scare the wits out of any pensioner.

All well and good until you get to the quotes from anyone in authority who say they have no knowledge of such a crime even taking place. Actually it gets even worse...the purse was found and handed in to the police. Indeed one might wonder why this honesty isn't trumpeted and the answer is lazy journalism and sensationalist reporting. 

Quite frankly it looks ridiculous to almost everyone or just scares naive and gullible local people for no due reason. 

A personal theory is that because local people know their area they will soon know what is and is not true. So while you can get away with such headlines once in a while the cumulative effect is ever diminishing returns. Sales jump up year on year because the news has become so much more racy but like the boy that cried wolf people soon stop paying attention to them in locals.

For once you know someone who is connected to the exaggerated circumstances distrust, like damp in walls, creeps in. Bit by bit the foundations of a local newspaper are undermined and will crumble.

It doesn't help that people will accuse you of sensationalism if they don't like the story as happened in this particular case.

So when tempted to write over blowing the circumstances, taking that top spin a little too hard, just remember you will be caught out. And it won't look good.

28. Look for stories while at college, write it and tell the local paper. You never know if there's a job coming up there.

As a student journalist you should be writing news or taking photographs for the college newspaper/website/radio (obviously not taking photos for the radio station - that would be pointless).

Please note that I said news. Not reviews, not musings, not comment, not a column, not analysis, not poetry, not critiques, not op eds — just news. Let me be more specific local news.

Hard though you may find this to take no one is interested in your views on the unfolding crisis on Syria as you saw it two weeks ago but finally got round to writing it between lectures.

Neither are they going to read your 2,000 word piece on the plight of women in the Gobi Desert - even the friends who say they have, haven't.

(Press Gang: It's sort of relevant)

It's all very well wanting to be a Guardian journalist — but all you will learn by writing such articles is why the Guardian isn't very well read and how to haemorrhage readers...just like the Guardian.

(By the way unless you are reading this from Oxbridge they probably aren't going to be too interested in having you anyway - it's all rather patrician is our Guardian.)

You will learn nothing about journalism or being a journalist and will bore the pants off of any editor when they try to read your oh-so-worthy cuttings. Actually they won't even look at them and anyway the point of this blog is to steer you towards a job without much need for an interview.

And trust me it works. I know.

Like countless journalists my career began in the student newspaper. If anything it was a wheeze thought up by a friend to get us out of any real work experience (odd since three of us went and remain in the media - probably a far higher ratio than any who did it properly).

Since none of us had a clue about newspapers we went charging into it. Our first big story was that sabbatical officers had all been taking huge loans from the Student Union off the back of their wages - so large in fact that they wouldn't have been able to pay them back out of their remaining pay.

Thus fulfilling the first rule of student journalism (the paper was paid for by a Union grant)  - bite the hand that feeds you.

The fact it I had a source, we dug through files, we asked questions - if only we'd known it we had stumbled across investigative journalism.

The story made the front page of the local paper - and yup, I was hooked. Journalism was simple, fun and I enjoyed it. I've spent the next 20 years trying to maintain that...it hasn't always been easy.

But what does this all mean? The first step is that your student newspaper/website/radio is your first step to understanding journalism - you can make all your mistakes (hopefully not too many legal ones) and not too many people will care. More importantly you can learn the tricks of the trade.

Want to be a political reporter? Attend student council meetings. Get to know the student union, find out what's happening with the block grant.

Want to do investigations do general news and make contacts - they will soon start telling you things you can devote more time too.

And as for those worthy pieces?

I can assure you an article about Student Union bar price increases for next year will be read a 1,000 times more than a piece on the West's Imperialistic ambitions in a post-dictatorship Middle East. Honestly if I wanted to read that I'd pick up the Economist and read it by someone who has been there and interviewed the leading players not some spotty oik with pretensions of being an armchair John Snow.

This is not to stamp on people's ambitions. But to give a good grounding in the basics.

27. Carry a camera with you, even if it's just on your mobile and remember to take pix. Photographers can't be everywhere.

Sadly, as I've stated before on this blog, local newspaper photographers are an increasingly rare breed.

Given the fact newspapers rely on content - namely words and pictures - to fill in the gaps between the adverts you would have hoped that photographers would have been kept on.

Naturally that is asking a little too much - which is a shame because a really good photographer can make all the difference. So too can a really bad one.

I once watched a photographer at an awards ceremony half lift up his camera a dozen times and never take a shot.

When the proceedings were over he shouted: "All together now." Like sheep they all got together for the great group shot. That evening he took a single picture.

The following day I was sent it in all its blurred glory - looking like a slightly hazy portrait of the Adamms Family...only without the charm.

(We never used that photographer again under my editorship.)

At the same time we lost a great asset to the paper - one whose art and dedication made a difference to the pages.

Indeed I've seen and worked with many photographers on local newspaper I would gladly work with again.

But bit by bit we are losing them. This, in part, is due to the increasingly cheap technology becoming available. That, and the fact there is no need for a dark room any more.

(Reporters have never been trusted with dangerous chemicals - a fact that remains true today but is largely confined to the showbiz circuit. *feeble joke*)

Digital technology has certainly made it a lot  easier for any slob to pick up a camera and point it in the direction of an object or person who, in turn, is usually pointing at something themselves.

(This in part, but certainly not entirely, is why local papers believe they can do away with photographers - some are so bad or lazy that managers thought anyone could do what they do...the same, it must be said, of a lot of reporters.)

So the point: If you are a reporter carry a camera with you. The bigger, the better really. It helps too if you learn how to use it.

You never know what's going to happen and with locals to usually one - although quite often no - photographers it is essential you learn the skill.

I am a rotten photographer. I have no "eye"....or for that matter no steady hand either.

As can be demonstrated from one of my own efforts when a photographer was unavailable one Saturday morning.

The man in the picture was the Dean of Truro Cathedral, who had been the subject of a church investigation when he was accused of having an affair.

He denied any wrong doing and was allowed back to work. (Although than put on gardening leave). However despite being cleared rumours persisted that was indeed now living with the woman.

He was, and this shaky shot taken on a Canon D500 (I won't go into lenses it's too tedious but it was pretty basic) was proof enough to go to the church authorities.

The picture was used about the size here in the paper I was working for at the time. It got a slightly bigger show in the Daily Mail.

This is a rather extreme example but think because in theory we are always heading towards the story...or we are if we are doing our job right.

And with mobiles now packing half-decent cameras it's worth remembering to take them out if you are first at the scene.

A crap picture is better than no picture.

9. The real story doesn’t always come out at meetings. Spot key players for background details and off the record briefings.

Parish council meetings can be the most tedious events you will ever have to deal with - if you are unlucky you will find uninteresting characters, resentful that you have had the temerity to turn up.

They will be guarded, jealous of their village secrets, ensuring that everything they say and do will be as dry as humanly possible...and believe me with some of those agendas it can be more arid than the Arizona desert, on a particularly hot day, during a dry spell, in high summer.

(Scene from Norman Wisdom's film Press For Time: The most unusual thing about this is the fact there are TWO local newspapers at a council meeting.)



But worse, they will see you there with your notepad and start talking...if politics is showbusiness for ugly people, than parish councils are the provincial am drams and you are the critic. (And like all amateur dramatic groups they expect to see a good, non-critical write up in the local paper).

Never encourage this.

All which is very unfair. It's easy to dismiss most parish councils - I know, I've done it, ostentatiously putting my pen down when a councillor has gone on a little too long about the planning history of a bungalow.

Most though know their patches and local people very well. But it's not always the bloke who speaks the longest or the most eloquently who has the most valid points or reasoned arguments. Indeed I've seen councillors rambling on, only to read back my notes and find they've said virtually nothing.

Now putting aside the legal advantages of public meetings for just a minute (which should give me time enough to forget all about it as I haven't got a copy of McNae's Essential Law for Journalists to hand) most points can be perfectly summed up in a brief conversation after the meeting.

If nothing else this will help establish contact with the parish councillor - although no doubt our heavy handed police will arrest you for this on the grounds of some spurious corruption charge...so watch out.

But, moving on, parish councillors are better than 99 per cent of "community correspondents" those poorly paid (yes, there is someone in local journalism who is paid worse than you)  locals who write about the Yellow Pages being delivered to their village (I have read this in a paid for newspaper).

They understand what is going on with the community and with judicious cultivating may even share it with you.

However first you've got to know them - so don't be dismissive. See who the real players are and speak to them after the meeting. Don't be put off if they ignore you the first few times...they have no idea who you are.

So how do you win them over? It's simple, good journalism (it really does work).

Monday: How to impress the editor - or news editor (since so many newspapers feel editors are unnecessary) from day one.

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7. Photographs are very important. Always ask for them, don’t think your job is just words

Photographs (or "art" as it's called in America, at least from what I can figure out from The Wire - reporters call them smudges in the UK reflecting our differences and giving you some idea of how we value our colleagues with cameras) are as important than words.

And don't go believing that if you write 1,000 words you've painted a good enough picture - you haven't.

In theory every page lead should have a photograph to illustrate it - although this isn't always possible.

But don't make the mistake, as many reporters do, that your job is simply words.

These days your job includes everything - including securing the picture. Always ask for them.

Of course social media has helped a lot - the days of banging on lots of doors may not quite be over but it is very close. (This is not necessarily a good thing as we shall see at a later date.)

More importantly don't even take it for granted that your local newspaper even has a photographer any more...or at least one available.

For despite the fact that newspapers are made up of just two things words and pictures - the pictures side seems to being slowly forgotten. Many are working on eradicating the words side too.

Ah yes! but photographs still appear in newspapers. Indeed they do - usually taken by the readers themselves on cheap cameras, with red-eye and no composition, badly lit or slightly out of focus.

Most of the time these pictures are pointless - they get dumped under "community news" the catch-all phrase for putting in any old crap that people submit to the paper.

But once in a while that blurry shot taken half in the dark with the side of someone's head disappearing off the edge is...well, is gold dust.

It could be the perpetrator or the victim of a crime, the local lad who is now a star, the health guru with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth...the local MP on a protest march as a student.

And always be on the look out for potential pictures to use (oddly many local paper editors don't understand their importance but it is good to maintain an eye for these things).

Some years ago as editor of a local newspaper I was sorting through some boxes of old photographs one was a wonderful wide black and white shot of the local hunt meeting outside the town hotel with protesters and supporters.

A few weeks later the hunt announced it would be returning to a town for the first time in years - suddenly this historical photo taken 15 or 20 years before was the perfect illustration...a look back for older readers, a novelty for younger readers and a historical reference to others.

Tomorrow: Using the in-house library