British Journalism Review

After all the innovations of the last 30 years, the media industry is returning to basic propositions that went out of fashion. It's looking to make money by selling advertising and selling subscriptions. Google and Facebook dominate advertising, but brands still want to buy space in trusted publications and connect directly with readers. The resurgence in advertising is most clearly seen in television and streaming, where companies are expanding their advertising businesses.

Peter Mandelson has never had a problem with being straightforward, which, of course, is not quite the same thing as being straight - that is, in the old-fashioned dictionary sense of telling the truth. For years I have retained in my memory, but never written, an exchange with Mandelson related contemporaneously which shocked me at the time, as it does today.

If you happened to be at Jupiter Artland, a private sculpture park just outside Edinburgh, last summer, you might have heard a peculiar sound. If you'd found the circular swimming pool designed by the installation artist Joana Vasconcelos, the sight would have been more peculiar still. Five art critics, swimming in circles, singing the Lord's Prayer to the tune of Auld Lang Syne, à la Cliff Richard. There was a good explanation, I promise.

A recent investigation by the Kremlin's Global Fact-Checking Network (GFCN) has uncovered an earth-shattering falsehood. The report debunks news that Punch, a baby Japanese macaque who captured global attention after bonding with a bright orange plush orangutan following his mother's abandonment, would be deprived of his new best friend by zookeepers at Ichikawa City Zoo. "Japanese Macaque Punch Will Not Be Separated From His Toy. It's a Fake News [sic]," declared the GFCN exposé.

Say what you like about social media, it tells you what people think. When Michael Crick invited journalists to remember occasions on which Peter Mandelson had tried to get them sacked, X – formerly Twitter – buzzed with memories of his attempts to unseat the uncooperative. Happily, editors emerged as heroes for ignoring his demands, their reporters as dedicated seekers after truth.

Odd, on the face of it, that the government’s recent choice of agencies to deliver £1.68billion-worth of what Campaign called “marketing and communications” across the public sector, received so little attention in the mainstream press. True, this spend will be over the next four years. But it would be enough for, say, two or three new district hospitals.

Last October, Ofcom published its new guidelines on politicians presenting news. This followed a High Court judgment in 2024, in which GB News had successfully challenged Ofcom rulings that two shows hosted by Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg in 2023 breached the impartiality clauses of its Broadcasting Code.

A banker acquaintance sent me a curt email. “So, I assume the freebies will dry up. How on earth will you survive?” he said, with discernible glee. “Not at all,” I told him, more in hope than anything else. He was asking because I had just stood down as travel editor of a national newspaper after more than 17 years in the job. Call me over-sensitive but his email irritated me.

Bill Hagerty, who edited the British Journalism Review for a decade from 2002, died on December 26. He had been closely involved with the magazine for most of its 36 years and was one of only three editors. He joined the editorial board in 1998, chaired it from 2012 until his 80th birthday in 2019, and then accepted the post of chairman emeritus. He never retired from journalism. He never tired of it either.