Morning all, it’s Monday 2nd December. (You’re on the home straight.)

After 46 audio diaries, our work is done.

The week ahead:

Monday: Keir Starmer delivers foreign policy speech at Lord Mayor’s Banquet

Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year

Tuesday: UN General Assembly meets on Gaza

Turner Prize

Wednesday: Court of Session hearing on challenge to Winter Fuel Payment reductions

Thursday: Annual stats on police use of force

Baby names 2023

Friday: Vladimir Putin visits Belarus for talks with Alexander Lukashenko

Saturday: Pope Francis inducts 21 new cardinals at consistory

Sunday: Taylor Swift’s final Eras Tour show in Vancouver

Results of last weeks poll. Which of these is the best Top Line?

143 of you took the time to vote (thank you), and it was actually pretty close.

81 opted for The Times

62 opted for The Guardian

We reported last week that Mishal Husain is to leave Today after an 11 year stint.

We now know where she is heading: Bloomberg Weekend Edition, as their Editor-at-Large. According to the press release she will,

“…host a brand new flagship multi-platform global interview series, to be launched with audio, video and in digital, as a central feature of Bloomberg’s recently launched weekend offering.”

READ MORE

Journalists at the Guardian Media Group will go on strike for 48 hours from Wednesday over the planned sale of the Observer newspaper to Tortoise.

The NUJ motion said: 

“We believe the transfer is a betrayal of the Scott Trust’s commitment to the Observer as part of the Guardian News and Media family. The trust should protect a vital element of the UK and international liberal media and not seek to throw it overboard.”

“Just when Twitter appeared to be losing its lustre for the mainstream media elite, along comes an account that has got Britain’s biggest newsroom talking.”

Deadline’s Jake Kanter on a waspish anonymous poster from inside the BBC.

READ THE ARTICLE

FOLLOW @NerosSlacker

Footnotes:

On this day: Nick Leeson was sentenced for financial dealings which contributed to the fall of Britain’s oldest merchant bank on this day in 1995.

Weather: 9 degrees in Nuneaton, 10 degrees in Norwich, 25 degrees in Nairobi.

Mutts: Those teeth…

Be part of the MMB. Thoughts on this week’s content, or interviews you’ve seen, heard, or (best of all) done. We’re @insideedgemedia or just reply to this email. 

Have a brilliant week. Back for one more next Monday.

All at Inside Edge

Morning all, it’s Monday 25th November. The week ahead:

Monday: Sturgess inquiry hears evidence on Russian state involvement

Joe Biden pardons his Thanksgiving turkeys (one for West Wing fans)

Tuesday: MPs debate Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Wednesday: Tusk Conservation Awards

Thursday: Statistics on migration and irregular migration

Sixth form college teachers strike

Friday: First debate on assisted dying bill

Republic of Ireland holds parliamentary elections

Emmanuel Macron visits Notre Dame Cathedral ahead of re-opening

Saturday: Alex Salmond memorial service

Sunday: South Africa assumes G20 presidency

At the heart of our media training is the concept of the Top Line – the angle you draw out of an issue or piece of research to hang an interview on.

With that in mind, a question. If you had undertaken research into peoples’ ability to spot a fake accent (which received extensive coverage last week), which of these top lines would you opt for?

The Times is on the left, and The Guardian on the right (unusually)…

Results in next week’s Briefing.

The Times reports that the superb Mishal Husain is to leave Today after an 11 year stint.

Her last programme is expected to be in January.

READ MORE (no paywall)

Journalists at the Guardian Media Group will go on strike next month in protest at a planned sale of The Observer.

“My colleagues are unable to speak up or voice their opinions because their mortgages are literally on the line. So allow me: we believe @tortoise simply does not have the cash reserves. We believe this is the death of a 240-year-old newspaper.”

Carole Cadwalladr

READ MORE

__

Meanwhile Jay Rayner, The Observer’s restaurant critic for the last 25 years, is leaving to join the Financial Times in the same role, amid the escalating backlash.

We’ll bring the curtain down on Year Of The Expert next week but for now the final chapter of Part 5 – So What’s Stopping You? I loved this question so saved it to the very end…

“The thing that stops me engaging with the media is this – why should I just give up my knowledge? The decades (and it is decades) I have spent on this subject – it just feels like that body of knowledge deserves more than 5 minutes at ten o’clock at night on BBC 5 Live.”

LISTEN HERE

“When I do die, after 50 years in politics, all they will show on the news is 60 seconds of me thumping a fellow in Wales.”

John Prescott, in 2019.

He was wrong. His death dominated the news cycle for 24 hours – however this is one line you may have missed…

(Source: Popbitch)

Footnotes:

On this day: The funeral of the assassinated President, John F Kennedy, took place in Washington on this day in 1963.

Weather: 10 degrees in Manchester, 11 degrees in Morecambe, 29 degrees in Muscat.

Mutts: Stan, in younger days…

Be part of the MMB. Thoughts on this week’s content, or interviews you’ve seen, heard, or (best of all) done. We’re @insideedgemedia or just reply to this email. 

Have a brilliant week.

All at Inside Edge

Morning all, it’s Monday 18th November.

For the final few episodes of Year Of The Expert we’re ironing out lingering doubts about media engagement.

This week…The Big Freeze. What happens if I go blank during an interview?

“If this was a series called Year Of The Politician this would be difficult to answer. If it was a series called Year Of The Scandal-Hit-Celebrity this would be difficult to answer. If it was a series called Year Of The Dodgy Chief Executive then this would be difficult to answer.

But it isn’t…and what this comes down to is audience expectation and how the audience expects the interviewer to behave.”

LISTEN HERE

The week ahead:

Monday: Brazil hosts G20 summit

Tuesday: Farmers’ protests in London

Volodymyr Zelenskyy address to European Parliament to mark 1,000 days of war

Wednesday: CPI inflation data

Thursday: Matt Hancock gives evidence to Covid-19 inquiry

Friday: 50 years ago: Birmingham pub bombings

Final day of COP29

Sunday: Ruben Amorim takes charge of first Manchester United match

Presidential election in Romania, Presidential election run-off in Uruguay

“Negativity drives online news consumption”

A journal paper in Nature finds, “negative words in news headlines increased consumption rates (and positive words decreased consumption rates)”

It’s quite a technical read (to put it mildly) but a fascinating bit of research.

READ MORE

“If a government is to succeed it must be able to manage the media while also telling a simple story to the country about why it is taking decisions – connecting what it is saying with what it is doing.”

Lee Cain

The former Downing Street Director of Communications argues the PM needs a total overhaul of his No.10 media operation.

READ MORE

“The more I get retweeted on @X the more followers I lose; and my whole feed just prioritises @elonmusk over everything else. It’s not a town square for everyone, it’s just a platform for him alone”

Ben De Pear 

Former Editor, Channel 4 News 

We’ll do more on this in the coming weeks, but for now an interesting piece from Sky News on the apparent X-Bluesky migration 

“We are beginning to see this sort of fragmentation, this diaspora of what used to be a singular platform, into communities split into multiple places.”

READ MORE

Footnotes:

On this day: The film world celebrated the wedding of the year as Michael Douglas married Catherine Zeta Jones on this day in 2000.

Weather: 8 degrees in London, 4 degrees in Leeds.

Mutts: Leo, photographed yesterday…

Be part of the MMB. Thoughts on this week’s content, or interviews you’ve seen, heard, or (best of all) done. We’re @insideedgemedia or just reply to this email. 

Have a brilliant week.

All at Inside Edge

Good morning, it’s Monday 11th November.

“We won’t mince words – the next Trump administration poses a serious threat to press freedom.”

Reporters Committee

“Everything we know about the next US president suggests the press in America will be under siege in the next four years as never before.”

Margaret Sullivan

READ MORE

“”Legacy media “is officially dead,” The Daily Wire podcaster Matt Walsh wrote on X overnight. “Their ability to set the narrative has been destroyed. Trump declared war on the media in 2016. Tonight he vanquished them completely. They will never be relevant again.”

CNN’s Brian Stelter reports on how the election bruised the media’s credibility.

READ MORE

The week ahead:

Monday: COP29 opens in Azerbaijan

Keir Starmer attends Armistice Day service in France

Jonathan Reynolds and Kemi Badenoch give evidence at the Post Office Horizon inquiry.

Tuesday: Booker Prize winner announced

World Leaders Climate Action Summit at COP29

Wednesday: Wes Streeting addresses NHS Providers conference

Thursday: Climate Action Tracker annual update

OECD International Migration Outlook

Friday: Jake Paul v Mike Tyson

Supermoon

Sunday: Uranus closest to Earth

Part 5 of Year Of The Expert – So What’s Stopping You? deals with any final doubts and niggles before we bring the curtain down. This week we address an email from Jill who writes:

“What if they ask a question I simply don’t know the answer to? This has happened to a colleague and it still haunts the department.”

LISTEN HERE 

“No other country has anything like this. Public service broadcasters lie at the heart of our social and cultural life, and they are worth fighting for. And, to be frank, the fight is on.” 

Samir Shah

The “fight is on” for the future of British programming at the Beeb, says the corporation’s new Chair in his first big speech.

READ MORE

“In case you haven’t come across BBC Verify, it is that pompous team of BBC fact checkers who the news bulletins switch to when they want to reassure viewers that something they are about to tell you really is true, seemingly oblivious to the corollary that the rest of the channel’s output must by extension be BBC Unverified.”

The FT’s Robert Shrimsley takes a waspish swipe at BBC Verify

READ MORE

BBC Radio 4 Today’s Mishal Husain received the prestigious Charles Wheeler Award for Outstanding Contribution to Broadcast Journalism.

And the next morning they surprised her by talking about it on air. The image below shows her reaction…

Footnotes:

On this day: Yasser Arafat died in hospital in Paris, aged 75, on this day in 2004.

Weather: 11 degrees in Hartlepool, 12 degrees in Halifax, West Yorkshire, and 10 degrees in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Mutts:

Be part of the MMB. Thoughts on this week’s content, or interviews you’ve seen, heard, or (best of all) done. We’re @insideedgemedia or just reply to this email. 

Have a brilliant week.

All at Inside Edge