A deadline junkie's rescue package: journalism books for Christmas 2

Fiction

This section of the last-minute shopper's guide shouldn't detain us long. For such an exciting and - some would say - glamorous trade, journalism has done badly in the world of literature. 

We are not good at translating our world into fiction - and nor are outsiders. Scoop, of course, stands supreme. It was written in 1938 and is completely farcical. Yet today we still recognise the characters in our own working lives, we still say 'Up to a point, Lord Copper', we still urge young foreign correspondents to make sure they don't forget their cleft sticks, and a modern incarnation of the Daily Beast lives on in cyberspace.

Waugh's mini masterpiece - it is only just over 200 pages - is unusual not just in its classiness, but in its choice of sending its central character to cover a war. An overseas posting is the dream of many young journalists, to be a war correspondent the pinnacle of that particular mountain. The men and women who bring us the news from the Middle East, Africa and Russia are our modern-day heroes, the best-known names in the industry.

Yet most fiction about newspapers seems to involve crime, fashion, politics. Few authors make foreign correspondents their protagonists. Even fewer try to create an ensemble novel based on the characters within a newsroom. And those who do tend to fall into the stereotyping trap - young floosie, curmudgeonly old editor/news editor/chief sub (usually Scottish), eager beaver young reporter who needs to be helped along by mother hen features writer. It's no surprise that these efforts tend to end up in the 99p dumpbin in The Works rather than at the top of the best-sellers' list.

Perhaps we fail because life in a newspaper office maybe pressured, but it also is pretty humdrum. Maybe we just don't think other people would be interested in our way of working. But we know, from the way that we get button-holed in every social situation, that that isn't the case.

Michael Frayn made hay with the stereotypes in his classic Towards the End of the Morning, removing every trace of glamour from Fleet Street as he walked straight past the newsroom, the features and the executives to focus on the crossword and nature writers. 

Jeffrey Archer must have written at least a dozen books before he turned his eye to the Press to produce the political novel The Fourth Estate. Ian McEwan won the Booker Prize for Amsterdam, in which one of the two central characters is a newspaper editor (reportedly modelled on Sir Peter Stothard, erstwhile editor of The Times). Yet he shows no understanding of the way a newspaper works - the notion that an editor would tease readers for weeks about some scandalous pictures he plans to print while still deciding whether to publish is bonkers.

So let us wish the current crop of writers good luck with their books, many of which are self-published. 

Liam Barnes, a junior reporter at the Stoke Sentinel, is out in front by a country mile with his e-book The Angle. The graduate wearing his knowledge on his forehead style of writing grates to start with, until you realise that Chris is supposed to be bumptious, up himself and world weary at 21. Here is a young reporter with ideas and ambition imprisoned in a world of cutting and pasting press releases, a world where nothing must rock the boat, no imagination encouraged. 

Our man's progress up the ladder to disillusionment is charted alongside the albums of the singer he loves from afar, their worlds meeting at key moments in their two careers. But this is a story not about a man's devotion to a woman but about his devotion to his craft.

The book is set firmly in the modern era, where there is no room for sentimentality. Barnes rails against a training regime that churns out graduates for whom there are no jobs and against the penny-pinching that means journalists cannot do their jobs properly. But he accepts the digital age, shares some of its tricks and admits in his footnotes that while he hopes he has written a book, he accepts that it's really just another blog. 

It isn't. And it's well worth £2.99 of anyone's money. But what a shame that publishers are so focused on cookery books, celebs and copycats that they have no room for books like this. Do we really need shelf after shelf of books with black covers and grey ties or black covers and red dresses?

Campbell Fletcher has actually got his book The One About the Editor into print - but again through a vanity publishing company. His central character is an overworked editor of commendable probity who has decided to say goodbye to journalism and say hello to his wife and the golf course. Of course, there has to be a last hurrah and this comes in the form of some dodgy photos that tax his ethics and a murder. See, crime just can't keep its nasty nose out.

The editor in Stephen Foster's  Red Top Blues  is also ethically challenged - he finds his boss in a compromising position with an MP, which would put anyone in a spot. This editor is described as the baby of Fleet Street - at 38? - and labours under the unlikely name of Tarquin Pratt. Circulation is falling and he needs a parachute; maybe the boss's paramour Piers Golightly will provide one.

And so to Ian Church and The Remains of the Living. This is what he has to say in his Amazon blurb, not having read the book SubScribe cannot comment further:

"Nick Paice is a newsman who has seen and had better times. Covering conflicts and disasters around the world brought its success, but at a heavy personal price. Being one of the best in the business was achieved by a ruthless and often callous pursuit of the story that left ruined reputations and broken lives, not to mention a wrecked marriage and estranged children, in its alcoholic wake.  

But disillusionment has set in. The world of news is changing, and, for Paice, not for the better. Can he change with it and does he want to? With his enthusiasm on the wane, the stories have stopped coming. But the job is his life, and his life is the job. He needs a big break to get them both back on track. When it comes it is in the form of a mysterious figure with a bloodstained past and a tale that could put Paice back on top. The passion for news that made him the best is rekindled and the old fervour returns. 

But Paice is bad at making friends and good at making enemies. A multi-millionaire fraudster, former Irish terrorists, and a genocidal killer from an African conflict count themselves among the latter. Only when the body count rises and the bullets fly does Paice realise that he may be pursuing a headline to die for. 

This is a story of financial fraud, old enemies out to settle scores, a covert military operation that went wrong, and powerful people determined to stop Paice revealing the truth at any cost."

And finally on the fiction front, Fleet Street reporter Geri Hosier also settles for the crime thriller genre with Hacked, which she, like Cameron Fletcher, has released through the CreateSpace 'independent publishing platform'. Hosier is clearly confident that she has created a character who will last, with a blurb describing the book as the first in a series:

"A dead hack, a private eye on the run, a sinister billionaire. It's front page news. Liv Paxton, whipcrack smart chief of London’s biggest murder squad, is hunting the men who slaughtered the reporter at the very heart of the celebrity hacking scandal.

As the killers claim another victim, Liv discovers the reporter had been tortured by professional interrogators before he died. What secret story was so dangerous that it cost him his life? Liv quickly finds herself of up against powerful and implacable enemies - on both sides of the law. Enlisting the help of her best friend, newspaper boss Louise Brighouse, Liv enters the world of a mysterious Tartar oligarch and crosses swords with a psychotic underworld kingpin who vows vengeance on her.

"Her own life is on the line as she peels back layers of deceit and treachery to unveil the most terrifying criminal conspiracy London has ever seen. Hacked is the first in the series of Liv Paxton crime novels."

Hosier has garnered some flattering reviews for her book.We can only say good luck.



Now it's time to move into the heavier non-fiction world of journalism. Next up: the state of the industry.


A new SubScribe website with archived blogposts and new features is being prepared and should be ready to make its first appearance early in the new year. If you have any ideas of elements that should be included - or avoided - please get in touch via Twitter, Facebook or email. Thank you.

email

@gameoldgirl

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A deadline junkie's rescue package: journalism books for Christmas 1

Season's greetings. So you should be partying all the way to next Wednesday, but you can't. You've got to work all over the weekend and you haven't even thought about shopping yet. Your nearest and dearest are pestering you for ideas on what you might like and you haven't got a clue.

Now SubScribe hates to promote Amazon over local bookshops, but at this stage in the game it's likely to be your best hope if you want one or more (and you will) of these books in your stocking. A few are current and may be available in a real walk-in shop, but most will need to be sourced online. So pour yourself a whisky, have a browse through this lot and you'll be the star of the show for coming up with an idea of what you want that's more interesting than a mascara wand or a pair of boxer shorts.

The collected works of...

Your mother taught you always to think of others before yourself, so here are a few Christmas 'specials' that might appeal either as gifts or to put by your guests' bedsides to keep them out of your hair for a few hours while you make the presentable after all the partying or snatch a lie-in for yourself..

"Yesterday I was snapped walking up Holland Park Avenue, going into Tesco, buying eggs, driving up the M40 and relieving myself in Oxford services. I'm not joking. I feel fairly sure that if I were to catch fire, no one would try to beat out the flames or find an extinguisher. They'd simply record the event on their phones.

And then you have those people who think it's a good idea to climb over the security fences at zoos. Maybe they think the leopard or the tiger looks cute but, of course, as soon as they're actually in there, they quickly realise that it wasn't such a good idea after all. Usually as the creature is eating their leg.

What would you do if you saw someone being eaten in a zoo? Throw things at the animal? Try to find a rope so what's left of the person can climb out? Yes, I'd do something like that too.

But most people, if the internet is anything to go by, whip out their cameras and make a grisly little film."

Jeremy Clarkson in full rant in the latest compilation of his Sunday Times columns. In Is it Really Too Much to Ask - the World According to Clarkson, vol 5  he seethes about everything from sheep rustling to women in the Cabinet, from the demise of the high street to the advent of HS2. The only problem is that these columns go back to 2010 and so seem out of date - as with the ash cloud - or dated - as with the 'everyone has to photograph everything' piece above. Everyone who is anyone has written about everyone having to photograph everything.

The Telegraph has brought out a whole terminus of omnibus editions. Terry Wogan's Something for the Weekend collection published last month is even more whiskery than Clarkson's, featuring columns published in the Sunday Telegraph as far back as early 2008.

Anne Cuthbertson's Charmers and Rogues avoids the problems of topicality through its timeless subject - the things people's pets do. Billy Bob the spaniel, for example, rugby-tackled the paddling pool in the middle of the puppy pre-school classroom and then proceeded to fill it. I'm sure everyone was in fits at the time, but does anyone other than Billy Bob's owner care? Or that he likes squirrels and baguettes, dislikes the fact that he can't reach the catfood and once ate a duvet? We all love our pets, just as we all love our children, but most of us are less keen on everyone else's. They have to be really special, like Marley, to make us want to read about them.

For sporting types, the Telegraph has its Book of the Ashes (probably not the ideal Christmas gift for a cricket lover this year) and the Complete History of British Football.

It has also raided that most productive archive - the letters department - to publish a fifth volume of correspondence that didn't make it into print. The chapter headings in Am I Missing Something are exactly what you'd expect of the paper's readership: royalty, politics, sport, radio and television, our roads and English grammar. There is also a section for family life, in which many correspondents appear to be pitching for that bottom right-hand slot:

Of course the archetypal writer of letters to newspapers is Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells. The blog of the same name claims that this was the pseudonym of a prolific correspondent to The Times before the Second World War. The Thunderer does not - and did not - publish letters anonymously, so it is posited that the author was someone high up in the military and/or Civil Service and was able to persuade the paper to withhold his name.

Locally, however, it is suggested that the phrase was coined by a 1950s editor of the Tunbridge Wells Advertiser, who told staff to make up letters and sign them 'Disgusted'.

Whichever you believe, the mix of serious issues and petty worries to be found in the Letters to the Editor page of most papers generally makes for good reading. Nigel Cawthorne has combed the Advertiser's files to produce a little loo volume - and called it Outraged of Tunbridge Wells. This immediately jars because it's not the phrase we expect and nor is it a clever play on words. Maybe there are copyright problems, maybe the printers made a mistake with the cover and dustjacket, or maybe the explanation lies in his introduction:

"They weren't just disgusted in Tunbridge Wells. They were also peeved, niggled, indignant, acrimonious, belligerent and, more often than not, outraged."

As with the Telegraph's offering, Cawthorne's chapters are each devoted to a particular gripe - town slackers, disorderly disasters, shopping hell, the war - to produce a portrait of a closeted community that is rather too pleased with itself and rather too judgmental of others.

We hear not only from Disgusted, but also from Disillusioned, Astonished, Anti-Grumbler, Confirmed Grouser, Another Grouser, Imperialist, Sympathiser, Outsider, Disbeliever, One Who Suffered in a Raid, Citizen, A Ratepayer, A Compound Ratepayer and A Taxpayer. Other writers sign with their initials or their occupation: a physician, eight milkmen, a trader. Indeed, there are four or five pseudonyms for every full name. Which makes the Editor's comment at the end of this letter so comical

It also seems that you couldn't trust those names that were published:

SIR - I was greatly surprised to find a letter in last week's paper giving my address and signed in my name. I beg to say I had nothing whatever to do with this letter; neither have I the slightest idea as to what person had the audacity to publish such a letter in my name. Hoping you will kindly insert this in your next week's paper.

Yours faithfully,

T. HICKS

57 Colebrook Road

May 4th, 1927

Other writers are appalled at the idea of sport being played on a Sunday, alarmed by the decline in common courtesy and ashamed that the town's public conveniences do match up to those in Eastbourne and that there is no public library as found in Enfield or Stoke Newington.

Some people are never so happy as when they have something to complain about.

Back to the present day for the Bedside Guardian 2013. This is an annual treat not only for the tofu-eating sandal-wearing bearded lefties but for anyone interested in good writing and firm opinions. It is true reflection of the character of the paper, with poetry, recipes, arts reviews and celebrity interviews as well as the expected coverage of Leveson, Snowden, Greenwald and Miranda, the polemics on the state of society and the reportage from Syria and beyond.

The milestones of the year, Mandela apart, are there: the new Archbishop of Canterbury, the new Pope, the death of Thatcher, the retirement of Alex Ferguson, Murray's Wimbledon win, the man who ballooned into space, and the last typewriter coming off the production line.

Here's a bit of Nancy Banks-Smith on The Archers

You don't have to agree with the writers -  indeed they may make you fume - but this book does a better job at encapsulating 2013 than any of the 'end of year reviews' that we'll be served up in the next ten days can hope to do. Light your fascist-leaning father-in-law's blue touchpaper and retire.

Charlie Brooker makes an appearance to say he's reducing his word emissions, but he also has his own anthology out with I Can Make You Hate. The Guardian has also published a book entirely devoted to Wikileaks,  but we have to wait until next year for Nick Davies's definitive account of the hacking saga.

Hugo Rifkind. Photograph: Evening Standard

Over at the Times, Hugo Rifkind has spent the past six years pretending to be everyone from David Cameron to Carla Bruni, not to mention the God Particle and Paul the psychic German octopus.

He discovered this talent for impersonation after an interview with George Brock, then the paper's managing editor now the head of journalism at City University and a professor to boot. Rifkind had recently been appointed the Times diary editor, but he was already tiring of celebrities refusing to speak to him, so he approached Brock to ask if he might indulge in some extra-curricular activity?

"Anything you like as long as it's not another of those columns in which people drone on about how they've spent the week. Because there are enough of those in newspapers already."

Brock has probably never spoken a truer word. It set Rifkind thinking. Perhaps he could write a column about how someone else's week, preferably without having to talk to them. And so My Week was born and this is a collection of the parodies the author thinks worked best.
Here's a snippet of his Mayor of London

Rifkind points out in his introduction to the book that not only did he pretend to be all these people, but he also had the surreal experience of Mohamed al-Fayed pretending to be him. His efforts also ended up in Pseuds Corner because, he says, Private Eye didn't realise he wasn't really a Spice Girl.

The magazine does realise when it's onto a good thing, however, and so it has again produced its Annual, as well as a Cartoon History of the past 50 years.

Cartoon collectors can also indulge themselves with Giles from the Express, the Best of Alex from the Telegraph and the best of all: the Best of Matt. (You can also buy Matt greetings cards, mugs and calendars, but this blogpost is about books.)

To finish this section, it may be worth mentioning a couple of older books that are still doing the rounds.  Most of us have had days when we've struggled to find anything to fill our bit of the paper, so we can feel for the poor reporters so desperate for copy that they are driven to write about a fire brigade not being called out on bonfire night. Whitstable Mum in Custard Shortage reproduces some sensationally banal stories from local papers and equally bizarre headings, such as

Ungrateful cow snubs rescuers

 and this old chestnut

Psychic show cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances

 Whether you regard the book as side-splittingly funny or a waste of money obviously depends on your sense of humour - and if you see local journalism as a laughing matter. Just don't expect to get hours of entertainment from it.

The same applies to this collection from the New York Post. It is branded as the best headlines from the paper, but it also includes a bit of history and a random selection of pages. Some of the page layout will look dated to a British eye, but here are a couple of covers that stand almost any test.

Oh dear, we haven't even got near the true journalists' Christmas wishlist. Best, I think, to break this books guide into sections. So that's the collections done. Next up, fiction.



A new SubScribe website with archived blogposts and new features is being prepared and should be ready to make its first appearance early in the new year. If you have any ideas of elements that should be included - or avoided - please get in touch via Twitter, Facebook or email. Thank you.

email

@gameoldgirl

SubScribe

Cheers all round

A quickie post to show that even if our MPs, bankers and business chiefs have collectively lost the plot, there are people out there proving that vision, brainpower and enthusiasm still work.

Tweet treat of the week had to be this rundown of how the media would cover the end of the world.

Tom Phillips of Buzzfeed produces the most stunning work week in, week out. His anatomy of a Twitterstorm took days to perfect and he said at the time that his head was spinning with all his different characters.

He also told us everything we needed to know about the Autumn Statement and a seriously good analysis of the 'forced caesarean' case. (That gave SubScribe an unexpected day off - what more could this blog say?)

This time, we can see apocalyptic print and web 'front pages' from the Washington Post to Buzzfeed itself, via the Times, Mail Online, the Stoke Sentinel, Farmers' Market and the dear old Express.

Phillips says he was working on the post for more than a month, although not full-time, which we can see from his other appearances on the site (take a look at www.buzzfeed.com/tomphillips).

If ever there was proof that talented people should be given their head and the time to bring their ideas to fulfillment, this is it. Read every word and weep - with laughter.

Buzzfeed was also on the money this morning when the N-Dubz singer-cum-X Factor judge Tulisa appeared in court to answer drug charges.

Few will forget Nigella Lawson's court appearance earlier this month when she had to defend herself against drug accusations - even though she was a prosecution witness in a fraud case.

Maybe Tulisa used Nigella as inspiration - but the big question is will the Mail make quite such a song and dance about her picture as it did with the original?

Who says standards of English are slipping? Thanks to the Evening Standard's Lucy Tobin for pointing out this bill for the Brighton Argus.

On to more serious matters and the Daily Mirror, which found its mojo this week with a succession of old-style Mirror front pages. The Cudlipp spirit has well and truly been resurrected and the paper is all the better for it.

And finally, SubScribe commiserates with the staff of the Liverpool Post, which closed today. 

The paper was published daily for 156 years until the end of 2011. It was then relaunched as a bumper weekly, but the change didn't work. And so today the staff live-blogged their way to the exit door, banging out the paper on their way.

As with many regional newspapers, the Post started out under the ownership of a local dignitary - in this case a former chief constable - and ended up as part of a huge national group - in this case Trinity Mirror.

When it was born as a morning daily, the Post cost 1d. When it died as a weekly, it cost £1.

Its younger sister the Echo survives selling 75,000 copies a night, but the death knell was sounded for the Post after its weekly circulation halved to about 4,000 in less than two years.

Announcing the decision last week, Steve Anderson Dixon, managing director of Trinity Mirror North West, said last week that it had been taken with a heavy heart.

'Sadly, the Liverpool city region no longer generates the demand in terms of advertising or circulation, to sustain both the Post and the Liverpool Echo.'

Sad indeed.  Liverpool is a city of half a million people and it can't support a daily and a weekly paper? Nor even the wider urban area with its population of more than 800,000?

Liverpool has suffered a huge drop in population over the past seventy years and is only now beginning to recover. Census figures show that about 100,000 more people lived in the city in 1971 than do today. SubScribe apologises for rubbing salt to the wound, but here are some ABC circulation figures for the Liverpool Post & Echo group for that era:


Evening Echo 389,367

Daily Post 96,396

Liverpool Weekly News 43,211

Birkenhead News (Friday) 41,562

Birkenhead News (Wednesday) 16, 289

Wallasey News 20,788

Bootle Times 13,403

More on this another day. For today, let's just congratulate the Post team for going out in style.

A new SubScribe website with archived blogposts and new features is being prepared and should be ready to make its first appearance early in the new year. If you have any ideas of elements that should be included - or avoided - please get in touch via Twitter, Facebook or email. Thank you.

email

@gameoldgirl

SubScribe