At its best, the UK press is a riotous carnival offering a panoply of news and views. Obsessed with celebrity and often oblivious to privacy, the UK press is part William Hogarth, part Damien Hirst. It can never be accused of taking itself too seriously but it proved far more hard-nosed in its assessment of the case for going to war against Iraq.
That's a view of the British press from Lionel Barber who writes in the FT of his experiences of journalism.Lionel joined the Washington Post back in 1985 which he describes as
like walking on to the set of All the President’s Men.
Can you imagine now
Reporters were given days, often weeks, to research stories. The editing process was exhausting: copy passed through at least four pairs of hands. The other eye-opener was the access that Post journalists enjoyed. A fat Federal government directory provided telephone numbers for officials, high and low. More often than not, they answered the phone.
Whilst many journalists will no doubt like to reminisce about the past,it is Barber's take on the present that is most interesting
the mainstream press lost touch with its audience at the very moment when technology, via the internet, was dramatically lowering the barriers to entry. Whether this was an unhappy coincidence or complacency is unclear. What is undeniable is that public trust in newspapers started to slip,and today he describes
a broken business model overly reliant on classified advertising revenue that has now moved online; a mistaken notion that post-1945 newspaper staffs of 800-plus journalists were the norm rather than a historical aberration; and, crucially, a stultifying failure to innovate because of the lack of competition
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