Journo-no-no

Fascinating - if thoroughly depressing - insight into ethical journalism, Daily Mail-style:

http://nosleeptilbrooklands.blogspot.com/2011/01/true-story-of-daily-mail-lies-guest.html

It's a rotten tale: a life knackered for a tits-and-hay-bales space filler, precision engineered to give a cheap thrill over the breakfast kippers.  I assume it's also completely unremarkable to anyone with a working knowledge of newspapers.

Before I almost became a top advertising executive, I almost became a Pulitzer-winning journalist.  Well, I did two weeks work experience at the Leicester Mercury.  I thought by the third or fourth day I'd be wearing a mac, standing under a streetlight in the rain and sucking a pencil over a chalk outline.  In fact, I sat next to a fax machine which spooled out press releases about village fetes and rugby teams/firemen/accountants/coroners doing humorous naked calenders for charity.  I reduced them to 50 words and sent them to a sub editor, who then swearily complained about all the spelling mistakes and major factual errors.

It wasn't all that dull.  I went to the press conference where Martin O'Neill unveiled Tim Flowers, his new signing at Leicester City.  Tim was glad to be there, the lads had already been triffic, he really looked up to the gaffer and at the end of the day he just wanted to perform week in week out.  I also handled some pretty major features - when the Queen Mum turned 98, they came to their hotshot young trainee to find some heartwarming stories from Leicestershire oldies of the same vintage.  I called every nursing home in the phone book to find a sum total of no one of the right age and mental capacity, and we had to fill the space with an expanded nugget from the fax machine ("County magicians wave wands for AIDS calendar").

I subsequently rose to the heady heights of Sports Editor on York Vision at university, earning a nomination for Best Current Affairs Journalist at the York Media Awards along the way (I ran unopposed for Sports Editor, and nominated myself for the award).  This mainly comprised trying to get photos of streakers and thinking of puns for headlines ("Pool as a Cue-cumber" above a dreary article on a pool tournament still stands out as a prime example of 'hilarious at 4am, less so later').  The lowest point journalistically was undoubtedly inventing a story that the women's squash team were considering playing in sports thongs, solely as an excuse to feature the photo below of saucy g-string pioneer Vicky Botwright on the back page.

Imagine my excitement just moments ago when I noticed that Vision are still shoehorning Vicky in 10 years later (State of Squash).  I'm a pioneer.

I didn't become journo in the end, although several of my chums from Vision did and now spend their days shouting through Jordan's letterbox.  It might have been fun, but I've got no regrets.  After all, I've still got a box full of yellowing Leciester Mercury clippings to remind me of my days in the thick of it.