Morning all, it’s Monday 13th January.

Being a media trainer means regularly working with brilliant people doing interesting things. So you accumulate knowledge (and then promptly forget it.)

Which leads us to…



“Things Learnt (Then Forgotten)” – Week 1:

The week ahead:

Monday: Keir Starmer expected to unveil AI Opportunities Action Plan.

Joe Biden delivers final foreign policy speech.

Tuesday: Covid inquiry module 4 hearings begin.

Yoon Suk Yeol impeachment trial scheduled to begin.

Wednesday: Court of Session hears challenge to Winter Fuel Payment reductions.

Monthly inflation figures.

Thursday: Matt Hancock appears at Covid inquiry.

Possible no-confidence vote in new French government.

Friday: Retail sales figures published.

Sunday: Donald Trump attends DC inauguration eve rally.

Delayed Oscars nominations announcement.

“News organisations are braced for multiple challenges in 2025 that will likely include further attacks from hostile politicians, continued economic headwinds, and battles to protect intellectual property in the face of rapacious AI-driven platforms.”

An excellent piece from the Reuters Institute on challenges, opportunities, trends and predictions for the media year ahead.

READ MORE

Regular readers of the Briefing will be aware of our dislike for news vox pops. (They are lazy, unbalanced and uninformed.) Last week a report on the BBC 10 contained a vox from Oldham on the issue of child grooming.

Woman 1: “[I] think it’s all been covered up and will we ever get to know the truth?”. 

Reporter: “Do you feel like there’s more still to be heard?” 

Woman 2: “Oh, 100 per cent”  

Woman 3: “It has been looked into in Oldham, hasn’t it?” No, not as far as I’m concerned. As a mother and a grandmother, no. It’s been swept under the carpet for years”. 

As former news editor Bill Rogers wrote on his blog:

“Are these, then, expert witnesses? Have they knowledge they’ve shared with the authorities? Did the reporter ask for details? Dangerous stuff.” 

The Media Show teams up with Radio 4’s excellent crisis comms pod, When it Hits the Fan, to discuss what the big stories of 2024 tell us about how journalists and PR professionals interact.

LISTEN HERE

Quote Of The Week:

Former BBC correspondent Hugh Sykes on BBC Radio 4 Today’s review of the year:

“I’ve switched it off. It rapidly turned into an immature Amal Rajan/Nick Robinson mutual admiration session – managing to be both condescending and patronising at the same time.”

Footnotes:

It’s reported Kay Burley is set to leave Sky News after 35 years at the channel

READ MORE

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The top 6 Christmas Day shows were all on @BBCOne

1) Gavin & Stacey: The Finale 12.3m

2) Wallace & Gromit 9.4m

3) The King’s Christmas Broadcast 5m

4) Call the Midwife 4.4m

5) EastEnders 4.4m

6) Doctor Who: Joy to the World 4.1m

On this day: American, British and French fighter jets carry out a series of bombing raids over southern Iraq on this day in 1993.

Weather: 8 Degrees in Manchester, 7 degrees in Milton Keynes, and -5 in Montreal.

Mutts: Stan, looking majestic…

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 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

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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