Ian Hargreaves, former editor of The Independent, the New Statesman and deputy editor of the Financial Times came in to speak to us aspiring journos last Thursday. Understandably we were all excited to hear from a man with such an astounding C.V. The first part however, was just a tad dull.
He proceeded to take us through pages and pages of Ofcom research about where people like to access news from and other such related topics. In my opinion this was an area of his speech which should have taken the form of a handout. Although I did find one of the study's results particularly fascinating. More and more people were recorded as saying that they wanted less celebrity news and yet we, in the UK, are one of the biggest consumers of it. Hargreaves quite correctly pointed out that this chasm between what people say they want and their actual actions, reveals a side of people that they don't really like about themselves.
What does it boil down to? We hate admitting that we enjoy mindless celebrity gawping. Not only do we enjoy it. We bloody thrive off it. Methinks it is time for the hyprocrisy to end.
The latter part of Hargreaves's talk was the best part though. Namely because away from data, this is a man who knows journalism, can spot the trends and most importantly, the future too.
Apparently us journos who want to make some fast cash need to be capitalising on the lack of local news coverage there is both in print and online too. It seems ridiculous that it is easier to access news about a small village in India than it is to find out any information about the goings-on at your local chip shop.
So move over moghuls...the locals are about to land it big.
Emma Barnett latest stories
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments:
Post a Comment