Good morning – it’s Monday 8th January 2024. Happy New Year.

London’s tube network is set to grind to a halt this week as thousands of TFL workers who are members of the RMT union go on strike.

Again, Happy New Year.

The rest of the week ahead…

Monday: First commercial lunar mission Peregrine 1 launch scheduled

Tuesday: Copernicus publishes 2023 Global Climate Report

Wednesday: First PMQs of this election year

Thursday: Hunter Biden arraigned on tax charges

Friday: UK GDP monthly estimate

Sunday: Closely-watched presidential and legislative elections in Taiwan

“I think this means BBC News is skint.” 

One BBC journalist’s verdict on the New Year message sent to all staff by Deputy CEO Jonathan Munro and seen (inevitably) by Broadcast.

Here’s the killer line:

“Undoubtedly more of our cash is earmarked up front than in any year in recent times…We are going to need some patience. We won’t be able to back every idea or service every request. The bar for discretionary spending will have to rise.”

READ MORE 

“Praised and pilloried.” (Press Gazette)

Journalist John Pilger has died at the age of 84. (READ MORE)

“A role model of rare value”.

Professor Paul Rogers

“There is no diplomatic way of saying it but, in his journalism, Pilger was a charlatan and a fraudster.”

Oliver Kamm

“I admired the force of his writing, even when I often didn’t support what he wrote, and he was always warm when we met.”

John Simpson

A stat which would have interested Pilger enormously:

779 journalists were jailed at some point in 2023, and 547 spent new Years Eve in prison.

China, Myanmar, Belarus and Vietnam were the 4 biggest offenders.

Source: @AlexCrawfordSky

One of my favourite quotes of 2023:

“One lesson I learnt on April 26 was don’t give an interview on the BBC on only two hours of sleep”

Brad Smith, President of Microsoft

CONTEXT

And without question my favourite Breaking News alert from the Christmas period:

Footnotes:

The papers may be packed with predictions for the year ahead, but what about predictions for 2024 made back in…1924? (My favourite being that the car will cause human legs to atrophy from lack of exercise). Archivist Paul Fairie works through some crackers on Twitter/X.

READ MORE

A Boeing 737 airplane crashed onto the M1 motorway near East Midlands airport, killing 46 people on this day in 1989.

Highs today of 5 degrees in London and 4 degrees in Hexham.

That’s it. Just time for the obligatory dog photo. Snoozing into 2024. Start as you mean to go on, lads…

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

For context: READ MORE

Good morning – it’s Monday 11th December.

The week ahead…

Monday: The Covid-19 inquiry kicks off the final week of Module 2 hearings with an all-day session with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak

Tuesday: The government’s flagship immigration policy heads back to the Commons for a second reading

COP Final Agreement

Wednesday: UK GDP monthly estimate

Thursday: European Leaders meet (and Friday)

Bank of England interest rate decision

Friday: Jon Venables parole decision deadline

Sunday: Chile holds referendum on new constitution

Writer and poet Benjamin Zephaniah was remembered (quite rightly) as a “titan of British literature” after his death last week aged 65.

But here’s a reminder of how The Sun wrote about him in 1987 when he was being considered for a poetry professorship at Cambridge.

(Source: @SamiraAhmedUK)

“Hey everyone, yesterday just before the top of the hour I was joking around a bit with the team in the gallery…”

…is the start of a sentence that never, ever ends well.

“I was pretending to count down as the director was counting me down from 10-0…including the fingers to show the number…When we got to1 I turned my finger around as a joke and did not realise this would be caught on camera.”

Maryam Moshiri, an icon and figurehead for our times.

“A woman from West Reading whose parents owned a Christmas tree farm has been named Time’s Person of the Year.”

Excellent work from the Philadelphia Inquirer, well and truly putting the “local” into a global icon.

READ MORE

On the Inside Edge website – Tony’s A-Z of media training: 

E is for Edge:

A word that’s close to our hearts of course, and an ingredient that every good on air conversation contains. It’s the things that sharpen a guest’s contribution, that cuts through all the stuff people might be doing to reach the audience. It can be in the way you talk – that concern you bring to a troubling subject for example. In terms of content – that specific and telling example or a stonking stat are both ways to sharpen the conversational flow.

Footnotes:

Russian president Boris Yeltsin ordered ground troops into Chechnya after a failed two-week bombing campaign on this day in… (answer below the dogs)

Highs today of 10 degrees in Norwich and 13 degrees in Swansea.

That’s it. Just time for the obligatory dog photo.

…1994

That’s your lot for 2023. Hope you have a lovely break over Christmas and we’ll be back in January.

Best wishes

All at Inside Edge

“Newsnight is our Hotel California. All of us who checked out never really left. We lived through extraordinary times with the most incredible team spirit.”

Emily Maitlis 

“If as many people who have voiced an opinion about Newsnight actually watched the show then they might not have had to change things,” 

BBC staffer, quoted in The Times

As we sprint/limp (choose your mood) into December, good morning – it’s Monday 4th.

The week ahead…

ASLEF train drivers undertake a series of one-day strikes at different train operating companies across the week.

Covid-19 inquiry – Boris Johnson (Wednesday and Thursday) 

Monday: Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan is expected in Qatar

Tuesday: Turner Prize winner announced

Wednesday: TIME Magazine Person of the Year

Challengers to Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination head to Alabama for the fourth debate

Thursday: EU-China Summit

Saturday: TUC hosts a special congress in London, the first such gathering since the height of the labour movement’s battles with the Thatcher government in the 1980s.

Sunday: Egypt presidential election

The brutal cuts to BBC News had been in the offing for a while. Last week’s announcement went further than many expected.

• Newsnight to become a 30-minute “interview, debate and discussion show”

• Our World is axed

• An extended hour-long edition of BBC News at One relocated to Salford

• BBC Breakfast, also broadcast from Salford, extended by 15 minutes

• A restructure of the BBC News story teams in the UK, less TV packaging and more of a “focus on digital storytelling and live coverage”

Ahead of COP, Climate Science Breakthrough released a film with UCL’s Professor of Earth System Sciences Mark Maslin and comedian Jo Brand. 

It’s worth a watch. Classily produced, genuinely funny in bits, and its ambition – to bring the climate emergency to a new audience – is to be applauded. 

My issue is with how the concept is being framed. Firstly look at Good Morning Britain’s strapline…

On Professor Maslin’s Twitter/X post he writes, “Jo Brand translates my climate science for real people.” 

Hang on. “Real people?” “Clearing up scientist Geek Speak?” 

Watch the film. I don’t think there’s a single line Maslin says that so-called “real people” wouldn’t understand. Yes, they may be fatigued by the subject. Yes, translating the science into witty 1-liners is a good tactic. But the implication here seems to be that scientists need to simplify to be accessible. 

Part of our campaign next year is going to encourage experts to re-claim complexity. Not in a way that baffles or alienates. But the idea that simplicity is the only way to communicate effectively is a trope that needs to be called out. 

The extraordinary grip of The Rest Is… brand on the podcast landscape in the UK tightens.

The latest addition to the stables is The Rest Is Entertainment with Richard Osman and Marina Hyde.

READ MORE

On the Inside Edge website – Tony’s A-Z of media training: 

D is for Deadpan:

An over-mobile face can lead you into trouble. What you think is simply an animated expression can morph into revealing too much of what you’re thinking or feeling.The grimace that signals “that went badly” the smile at something contentious: “oh here we go – I was nervous that might pop up” are just two unnecessary and unhelpful give aways. Instead focus on energy and animation coming through your voice. Aim for stillness in how you look.

Footnotes:

The birth control pill was made available to all on the NHS on this day in… (answer below the dogs)

Highs today of 3 degrees in Bradford and 4 degrees in Aberdeen.

That’s it. Just time for the obligatory dog photo. Sorry for stealing that biscuit.

…1961

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

2024 will be the Year Of The Expert…

What does a scientist look like?

Children are drawing more women than ever before.

When asked to draw a scientist, kids in the United States are increasingly sketching women. A new study compiled information about over 20,000 pictures drawn by 5 to 18 year olds over 5 decades.

READ MORE

Good morning, it’s Monday 27th November.

The week ahead…

Monday: Global Investment Summit, London

Tuesday: Deadline for bids in Telegraph sale 

Wednesday: UN Security Council Middle East debate

Thursday: Matt Hancock gives evidence to the Covid-19 inquiry (and Friday)

The world’s leaders convene in Dubai for COP28

Friday: King Charles delivers the summit’s opening address

Brazil assumes G20 presidency 

Saturday: Pope Francis becomes the first pontiff to attend a COP summit

Sunday: ASLEF train drivers strike action on four lines

“The first month of the Israel-Gaza war is now the deadliest month for journalists since we began documenting fatalities in 1992“

Since October 7th at least 53 journalists and media workers have been killed in the Israel-Gaza war.

READ MORE

According to numerous reports over the weekend Huw Edwards is set to step down from the BBC after an internal inquiry.

READ MORE

BBC Radio 4 Today programme’s Christmas guest editors this year will include:

Andrew Malkinson, wrongly jailed for 17 years

Ellie Goulding

GSK boss Dame Emma Walmsley

James May

NASA Head of Science Dr Nicky Fox

READ MORE

It’s rare the Daily Star gets much of a mention in the MMB, but the paper’s bizarre and long-running obsession with the word boffin has reached dizzy new heights...

On the Inside Edge website – Tony’s A-Z of media training: 

C is for Collateral Damage:

A term to drop in the file marked “sanitising language” and then leave it there. People use bland language to cover up the messy, the nasty and the worrying. The audience immediately are sceptical of any spokesperson who peppers their sentences with such phrases and the interviewer feels entitled to dig deeper and challenge the guest on what they really mean. “Efficiency savings” should be filed too.

Footnotes:

John Major won the Conservatives’ leadership elections, becoming Britain’s new prime minister on this day in… (answer below the dogs)

Highs today of 9 degrees in Southampton and 1 degree in Berlin.

That’s it. Just time for the obligatory dog photo. Spooning Part 2:

…1990

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