Examination of Witnesses (Questions 660
- 663)
WEDNESDAY 17 OCTOBER 2007
Mr Russell Whitehair, Mr David Newell, Ms Santha
Rasaiah, Ms Lynne Anderson and Mr Edmund Curran OBE
Q660 Lord Maxton:
Do you have any way of tracking your journalists' time out?
Mr Curran: The fastest way to know whether your
journalists are out and about is to walk out into your newsroom
and see how many of them are actually sitting at their desks.
I do think that that is one of the great changes that has taken
place in the past 10 years, that I would have walked out into
the newsroom of any of the major regional newspapers and I would
have seen a great army of people sitting there moving paper back
and forwards, designing pages, putting headings on stories et
cetera. To answer the first part of your question, I am not suggesting
for a moment that editorial budgets have suddenly soared. What
has happened is that the editorial budget has moved from paying
for this great army of people who have actually been designing
and putting headlines on stories towards people who are actually
writing and the content of the newspaper. Then newspapers are
being produced more efficiently. I am not suggesting for a moment
that they have suddenly vastly increased their budgets.
Q661 Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury:
I want to ask about the training of journalists. Traditionally
journalists have cut their teeth on local papers and indeed in
my generation and above I think all successful journalists started
off at local level. Is that still the case? Is there still the
opportunity for journalists to start off being trained on local
papers? Do you have training schemes? What kind of investment
are you putting into the training of journalists?
Mr Curran: I think the nature of the hiring
of journalists has changed dramatically since I began. For example,
I was saying earlier to one of my colleagues that in the 1960s
I think I was one of about two three graduates on the Belfast
Telegraph starting as a graduate trainee. That would probably
have been a reflection of the rest of the newspaper industry.
Today virtually all or a good number of the people that are hired
certainly by the larger regional newspaper groups are graduates.
Secondly, most of them will have done some kind of post-graduate
year in journalism. I have visited the University of Lancaster
recently where I think they have 700 people in the media department
in Preston. Obviously over the years the Thomson Organisation
had a great reputation for the training of the journalists which
has now passed onto the Press Association. So there are still
major journalist training centres but in most parts of the UK
as far as I can see there are, as some people would argue, almost
too many media courses now and far too many people are attracted
to do these and there not enough jobs to actually go round once
they have their degrees and diplomas.
Q662 Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury:
Are you saying that you now only take on graduates? I am thinking
of the late great Frank Johnson for instance.
Mr Curran: I do think there has been a change
from the days when people were employed in journalism at Belfast
Telegraph or Manchester Evening News level from the
University of Life. A number of our journalists over the years
started off as message boys in the newspaper. I do not think that
that exists to any great extent now, but most of the people who
are employed certainly in the large newspaper groups have some
kind of diploma or training before they even reach the newspaper.
Q663 Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury:
Going back to my last question, do you actually invest in training
schemes?
Mr Curran: Independent News and Media does not
have large training schemes but of the organisations that I did
work with Trinity Mirror certainly have and I think some of the
other large groups do.
Mr Whitehair: There are several levels of entry.
Companies will have their own training schemes; Trinity Mirror
has its own training centre. By and large we have now consolidated
as an industry into one training system under the NCTJ who are
administering the standards of journalism throughout the local
press industry. The investment in it is probably through that
going to be increasing. Again I do not have the actual figures
but we can supply you with the figures as we have them.
Chairman: Thank you very much indeed
for what you have said to us; you have given us a lot to think
about. If there are any areas that we have not covered that you
wish to say something about, do please feel free to write to us.
Thank you very much again; we really are most grateful to you
for the time you have given us.
| 
