When Piers met Alan

I get the impression that Piers Morgan is not a great fan of Guardian Editor Alan Rushbridger after reading an interview between the two in the Indy yesterday.

Mr Morgan talking about his nemisis:

"Guardian hacks would think nothing of exposing some errant politician's personal peccadilloes - and then going home and doing exactly the same thing themselves.

The paper's editor, Alan Rusbridger, is the prime exponent of this art form. He spent a decade filling his boots with salacious material from papers I edited while pronouncing regularly about how disgusting it all was."

GQ magazine sent Piers Morgan to interview him.Try reading the whole thing it makes interesting reading

Here are some snippets:

On circulation

PM: How is your new Berliner-sized paper actually doing?
AR: It is doing, more or less, what we expected.
PM: That's what I used to say when things went badly.
AR: Do you want to see charts?
PM: No. I always used to bamboozle my critics with charts. How did you sell last week, then [December 2006]?
AR: About 386,000.
PM: And what were you selling before the Berliner redesign?
AR: We were down in the 360s, 370s. The one mistake we made was to take out 10,000 bulks, which made the figures look worse than they were.
PM: But you did that to make the relaunch look better than it was.
AR: No, we did that at the time of the relaunch.
PM: I thought you did it a couple of months before the relaunch.
AR: Er, well, we took them out a few months before and didn't put them back for the relaunch.
PM: So I was right. You did it deliberately. It's an old trick.

ON EXPOSURES

PM: It amuses me when you "serious" editors claim you don't do private-life stuff, because you do. You wait for the tabloids to do the work and then pile in, repeating the juicy bits while condemning the tabloid intrusion. If you feel that strongly about it, why repeat the original invasive material? Did you cover the Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott's dalliance with [his secretary] Tracey Temple?
We did in the end, yes.
PM: Why "in the end"?
AR: There isn't a pat answer to that. There are very few of my broadsheet editor colleagues who, if someone came to them and said, "I've been shagging the Secretary of State for, er - I'm trying to think of a department that doesn't exist - er, pensions and culture, are you interested?", would say "yes". None of us do that kind of stuff as original journalism. But, once stories are out, then if your job is to report what is going on in society at large then there comes a point when you can't ignore them.

On the distinct between public and Private

PM: What's your house worth?
AR: I don't want to talk about these aspects of my life.
PM: You think it's all private?
AR: I do really, yes.
PM: Did you think that about Peter Mandelson's house? I mean, you broke that story.
AR: I, er... it was a story about an elected politician.
PM: And you're not as accountable. You just reserve the right to expose his private life.
AR: We all make distinctions about this kind of thing. The line between private and public is a fine one, and you've taken up most of the interview with it.