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What a Journalist Isn't

I'm sick and tired of the abuse journalists are getting at the moment. They don't deserve it, at least real journalists don't - ...

21 August 2013

IR News - What's The Point?

There are only two reasons to provide news on British commercial radio. Because owners have to, or because they want to.

Thanks to the cack-handed and haphazard way the industry has been regulated through much of its forty-year existence commercial radio news has come to be regarded as a burden rather than as an opportunity to grow audience, and particularly audience loyalty.

Worse, those who don't understand news are all too often in the driving seat, forcing journalists to do their job badly.

This post will attempt to flesh out some of these arguments.

13 August 2013

Memo to PD: Shedding a Journo is a False Economy

When hard choices have to be made in commercial radio it's always tempting to sack a journalist.

They're expensive, after all, being trained in all that legal stuff and knowing how the council works when all the punters really want to know is what we think of Paxo's beard.

So if the choice is between (say) a sod-off-and-die on-air competition in the autumn, or keeping an extra body in the newsroom, which is it to be?