Welcome to the weekly wrap from How-Do - the website for North West media and creative industries. If you enjoy this service please forward it to a friend.
The wrap’s guest editor this week is Joe Riley.
Riley is a columnist, the arts editor and a leader writer at the Liverpool Echo. He has been at the Echo for 35 years. He also publishes a blog ‘The Life of Riley’.
Yes, we all know the media loves the media. I am one of the most fascinating people I know. And I know that because other journalists have told me so. By reading my articles.
And so the carousel keeps going around.
I was drawn to two particular interviews about people I know: Jane Wolstenholme, former editor of the Daily Post, and Gordon Burns, presenter of BBC1’s North West Tonight.
Jane has now done a J K Rowling (more about HER later) and gone off to write children’s books. Ironically in the albeit loquacious presentation of the Wolstenholme CV, there is a section devoted to how Jane saw the streets of London potentially paved with gold, and landed an early job as a sub-editor on the Daily Mail.
Jane, 33 ( yes, print and online are obsessed with ages in a way that radio and TV are not) was duly recalled to the provinces by then Liverpool ECHO editor John Griffiths (sic)....oh dear, that should really be Griffith (misspelling is a cross JG has long had to bear).
Unfortunately, not least because of the efforts of other journalists whose boast had been as sticklers for detail. But what we learn most from the piece is that regional journalism is what matters most: that ability to give detail and substance beyond the ephemeral.
The article on Burns , meanwhile, belies his tough past. He was a reporter in Belfast during the troubles. Not just Mr Krypton Factor, or sitting on a red settee charmingly coping with the not infrequent production failings of his Manchester colleagues. But it reminds those not in the know that for years, Gord was an ITV person and not a BBC institution.
At least he hasn’t sold his soul to PR, which is where real journalists go when they die.
Interestingly, I see our dear Queen has turned to a Macclesfield public relations firm for a bit of spin: not with her rod on the salmon river, but with coping with her 13th century property portfolio, which extends to 16,000 hectares in Lancashire, Cheshire and High Peak. It’s taken 700 years to get the story - but now Her Maj will have to give up immunity to planning applications and ask the council in the ordinary way if she wants to build so much as a brick barbecue.
Really rich people can be annoying (that’s jealousy kicking in). And non more so than Harry Potter’s creator (tom-arto, tomato; pot-arto, potato; J.R Tolkein, J K Rowling) obsessed with strange happenings in even stranger places). She does not need Waterstone’s to help save themselves by persuading her to write another Potter tome.
Seven will be enough. It’s unlucky to go beyond that figure. Remember the plagues over Egypt.
Elsewhere on How-Do this week, lots of new jobs and events posted plus:
A first for the North West - How-Do's Top 100 Marketers. These leading professionals help drive the creation and generation of prosperity in the region. READ
The North West’s media folk who wield the greatest combination of influence, power and employment, primarily in the region but also, in many cases, well beyond. READ
Working with Hill Dickinson, the CBI and the CIM, How-Do reveals the region’s leading brands across a variety of business sectors and categories. READ
The How-Do poll
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