Edition 549

Good morning. It’s Monday 12th October. Already. Perhaps let’s all take a moment to ponder on the terrifyingly rapid passage of time.

Seeing tiredness as a superpower:


Positive news for the fatigued…

“…a lot of the people I’ve worked with over the last few weeks have also been tired. Some organisations were in crisis – people were putting in eighteen hour days, Some were academics who had just published a paper. One person had just come back from the party conference season. I mean that tiredness, trust me, stays in your bones for months.

So often when we engage with the media, almost by definition because of the circumstances, we can be tired. And the danger is perhaps that either we resort to a script, or we over-compensate and sound a little bit manic or hysterical.

So let’s try and see tiredness as a superpower. If it stops you being performative, great. It allows you to lean in to authenticity. Think to yourself, you know what, I’m not going to dazzle. What I’ve got is a good Top Line, and I just want to let that land. And I’m going to give myself space in my delivery, and I’m going to lean into certain words. I’m not going to flatline, but I’m not going to perform. And I’m going to use tiredness as a route in to authenticity…”

Monday: No Confidence vote in the NI Assembly over Michelle O’Neill’s participation in Garvaghy Road protests.


Tuesday: MPs question AI Safety Institute, OpenAI and Anthropic on AI adoption and safety.


Wednesday: Dominic Cummings gives evidence at Lords Committee on UK constitutional safeguards.


Thursday: FIFA Council meets in Zurich for World Cup debrief.

Friday: IMF debate on AI and the global economy..


Saturday: No Kings protests across the US.


Sunday: East Midlands rail core contract expires.

Number 6/20: 



“The conventions are clear in terms of where you look during interviews. In the studio you should keep your eyes on the presenter and you start from the moment the introduction begins, not simply when you’re fielding the questions. It can look evasive if your eyes move. When doing a remote – that’s when you are in front of the camera but your presenter is elsewhere – look at the lens. That can take serious effort as our eyes can wander when we think. It can help to visualise someone rather than simply staring at that unresponsive fish-eye lens.”

The list of Radio 4 programmes being axed is gutting, not just because they are often a good listen, but because so many of them are such brilliant platforms for academics. Not least Thinking Allowed and Free Thinking.


I’ll always defend the BBC. Tho it feels harder these days…

Best of luck to Rachel Jupp, appointed as the BBC’s Head of News. 

(She’ll need it.)

Margaret Sullivan’s latest take on Trump and the media is always worth a read.

Headline of the week came from Politico’s London Playbook email:

On This Day… A bomb exploded at the Conservative Party conference in Brighton in a direct attack on the British Government on this day in 1984. (Rory Carroll’s book Killing Thatcher is a gripping account of that event by the way)

Our Week: Mostly online with a London session and some studio work for us this week. 

The MMB Soundtrack: Edition 549 was compiled mainly listening to Dolly’s Coat of Many Colors album. (Spotify) (Tell us what to listen to next week)

The Mutts: Stan in all his pomp…

Be part of the MMB. Thoughts on this week’s content, or interviews you’ve seen, heard, or (best of all) done, please let us know.

Back on Monday. Have a brilliant week.



All at Inside Edge

Edition 548

Good morning. It’s Monday 5th October.

“My comms team say I’m a safe pair of hands”. 

A reflection from someone I was working with last week. To which instinctively I replied “well that’s great.” Because of course it is. 

But this is a stepping stone on the way to being an effective spokesperson. Being a safe pair of hands isn’t an end point. 

In many ways this extends the theme I wrote about a couple of weeks ago and keep returning to: the “imperfect excellence” of (in that case) live music. 

A really good media training session is about establishing a framework of control for an interview as quickly as possible (and it can be done relatively quickly) to ensure you are what every comms person wants: that safe pair of hands. 

But then within that framework the audience need to hear character. Spokespeople should differentiate to get noticed. Not in a way that compromises credibility, and it is never about putting on an act. But there is an inherent expectation of uniformity in what we see, hear and read. And challenging that in an understated and natural way is an on air superpower. 

As I keep stressing there’s a risk to developing those qualities without a robust framework in place. But once the foundations are there we can move to the fun bit: finding what makes someone distinctive in the audience’s minds. 


I’ve been doing this for a while now, and increasingly I think it’s the part of a coaching session where I can have the greatest impact.

Monday: Nobel week kicks off with announcement of the medicine prize.


Tuesday: Lionel Messi’s farewell game for Argentina.


Wednesday: Kemi Badenoch delivers leader’s speech at Conservative conference.


Thursday: Holborn and St Pancras by-election.

Friday: Nobel Peace Prize.


Saturday: National March for Palestine.


Sunday:  Manchester City face Liverpool in their first league game since guilty verdict announced.

(1) The Nerve, the “small and punky” publication launched by five former Observer journalists, has reached 5,000 paying subscribers in its first year (£6.95 a month).


(2) Some wise words from Will Holdaway, the editor of The Oldham Owl (£12 for 12 months)…

(3) And some bananas numbers from the FT, which has been pushing a subscriber model for longer than most. Revenue is up 5% last year to £566 million. And average revenue per subscriber is now said to be a whopping £412 per year.

Number 5/20: 



“We want your true character to come through in an interview as real people interest audiences. One thing that drains personality away is speaking too fast. Speed flattens feeling, as delivery becomes more uniform. It’s a common problem, but can often be fixed by thinking ahead and deciding what you want to emphasise. Underlining key words will naturally slow you down and bring colour back into your voice.”

“There was a point not so long ago when someone on the Opinion desk relayed to me that someone in the legal department had said: “really the best person at legalling Marina’s column is Marina”. First: no. But second: this honestly might be the greatest compliment I ever got. It’s like the old proverb goes: legal a woman’s column and you feed her for a day. Teach a woman to legal her own column and you feed her for a lifetime.“

Marina Hyde signs off at the Guardian after 25 years. Read her final column.

On This Day… Bill Clinton’s Grand Jury testimony about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky was released to the United States public on this day in 1998.



Our Week: Geneva, London and Brighton for us this week. 

The MMB Soundtrack: Edition 548 was compiled mainly listening to Joshua Bell playing the Barber violin concerto. (Spotify)

The Mutts:

Be part of the MMB. Thoughts on this week’s content, or interviews you’ve seen, heard, or (best of all) done, please let us know.

Back on Monday. Have a brilliant week.



All at Inside Edge

Edition 547

Today we launch a new online course: Newsroom Insider. It’s built around a simple idea…

The skills of a great newsroom make us all better at our jobs.

Across five modules people meet an editor, a correspondent, a producer and a newsreader, then try newsroom skills for themselves.

They translate into tangible, transferable skills that help us think more clearly, communicate with more impact, handle tough conversations and make better decisions under pressure at work.

We’ve worked so hard to bring the feel of our live coaching sessions into the course. Crucially, it’s designed for people across an organisation, rather than just comms teams or spokespeople.

It’s been a real labour of love, and I’m proud of the result.

I trust the Monday Media Briefing hive mind, so any feedback (and I know you don’t hold back) will be very gratefully received. 

And spread the word. If you have colleagues in HR or Learning and Development who might be interested please forward this to them.

OK. On to the usual business.,,

Good morning. It’s Monday 28th September.

Rory Stewart went viral last week for this nightmare-inducing display of excessive eye contact during a Newsnight panel…

Monday: John Healey delivers speech at Labour conference.

Pope Leo concludes France trip with speech in Metz.


Tuesday: Andy Burnham delivers leader’s speech at Labour conference.


Wednesday: GDP National Accounts figures released.


Thursday: New energy price cap takes effect.

VAT removed from electricity bills.

Friday: Zack Polanski addresses Green Party conference.


Saturday: UEFA Nations League: England v Croatia.

Sunday: Conservative Party conference begins.

Presidential and legislative elections in Brazil.

NFL London.

Number 4/20: 



“Our intention is not necessarily to catch you out by keeping it brief. We know short questions encourage shorter responses. If you are long-winded in what you say, you might well get more quick-fire posers back. Whatever our motive however, the fact remains that the short question gives you little time to think. So you need to create time. Take a pause. It’s incredible what difference an extra second or so makes – you are likely to muster a more cogent answer in that space.”

“The BBC is at risk of entering an inescapable doom spiral if it continues in this direction.“
Laura Davison, general secretary of the National Union of Journalists

Friends and former colleagues tell me the current mood in the BBC newsroom is both desperate and mutinous. More job cuts were announced last week with more detail of where the axe will fall expected soon. (BBC Sport and local radio in particular are braced for further bad news.) 

Laura Kuenssberg’s interview with BBC DG Matt Brittin is worth a listen.

“For the very first time in my experience the President of the United States will have no television network cameras with him when he leaves the office. This is unprecedented.”
The New York Times’ Peter Baker

Although the bar is already stratospherically high, the ongoing battle between the White House and (parts of) the media scaled new heights last week.

Here’s the latest, as of Sunday afternoon.

Still want to be Prime Minister? 

Andy Burnham’s pre-Conference regional TV interview schedule (c/o Politico)

The BBC’s former Africa Correspondent Mark Doyle died last week at the age of 67. 
He was so beloved in West Africa that Sierra Leone made him an honorary citizen.

Finally I’m aware last week I teased more content from Ofcom’s 2026 News Report. it’s coming I promise!

On This Day… The Warren Commission concluded there was no conspiracy surrounding the assassination of President Kennedy and gunman Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone on this day in 1964.



Our Week: London, Brighton and Glasgow for us this week.

The Mutts

Be part of the MMB. Thoughts on this week’s content, or interviews you’ve seen, heard, or (best of all) done, please let us know.

Back on Monday. Have a brilliant week.



All at Inside Edge

Edition 546

According to Ofcom UK adults now spend how many minutes per day consuming news?

(answer in the footnotes)

Good morning. It’s Monday 21st September. 


Bonnie Greer died last week at the age of 77. As a radio producer I’d always try to book her for panels. Warm and authentic, but also newsworthy. (A brilliant combination.) Wore her expertise and her intellect lightly. 


I’ll remember her most for her appearance on that extraordinary edition of Question Time in 2009 with Nick Griffin, then leader of the BNP. I was on shift at Television Centre on the day of the recording. There were hordes of furious protesters outside, and I vividly remember us being put into lockdown for a couple of hours when it looked as though the situation might turn really quite ugly.


It’s fair to say the Beeb’s editorial decision to give Griffin such a platform hasn’t aged well. Happily he did himself no favours on the night, but Greer, who later described sitting alongside him as “probably the weirdest and most creepy experience of my life”, was superb. She knew her facts, stayed completely unruffled and never rose to the bait. 

The perfect guest to sit alongside him.


It was a very big moment in broadcasting, and I think her part in it deserves to be remembered.

To Mock Or Not To Mock…

Following on from last week’s briefing, you are (as ever) completely divided. 

Regarding whether a mock interview in advance of going on air is a good thing or not 56% of you said yes, it helps. 44% said it didn’t.

Thanks as ever to all who took the trouble to vote.

Monday: G7 foreign ministers hold informal meeting on the margins of the UN General Assembly.

Prince Harry attends the WellChild Awards.


Tuesday: Andy Burnham and Donald Trump among speakers on the opening day of the UNGA general debate 
(Burnham and Trump expected to hold their first bilateral meeting).


Wednesday: Harvey Weinstein sentenced in New York.


Thursday: Donald Trump holds White House talks with Xi Jinping.

Friday: Pope Leo begins visit to France, meeting with Emmanuel Macron and visiting Notre Dame.

Oasis tickets go on sale.


Saturday: England kicks off Nations League campaign against World Cup champions Spain.


Sunday: Lucy Powell speaks as Labour Party conference begins.

Number 3/20: 



“It can feel a bit counterintuitive, but maximise your effectiveness in an interview by digging into the detail of your subject rather than building a rounded overview. In the limited time you’ve got on air, investing in specific illustrations will pay off, as it is the tangibles that provide what we call “stickiness”. These nuggets not only make sense of what you’re up to, but hook in the minds of your audience so they remember what you’re about – beyond the interview itself.”

All The News That’s Fit To Print:

(1) The Observer has raised £10 million to finance its plan to create a financially sustainable Sunday newspaper. (You might remember the title was sold by the Guardian to start-up Tortoise Media in April last year.) Since then circulation has fallen from around 114,000 to 90,000. 


(2) Meanwhile The Guardian’s latest results provides more evidence that the future of news publishing may depend less on chasing the biggest possible audience and more on giving people a compelling reason to come back, engage and ultimately pay.

Revenue from paying online readers increased by 17% to a record £126m in the year to March, with the number of recurring paying digital supporters rising by 116,000 to 1.4 million.

(3) Finally a very happy birthday to the New York Times, which turned 175 last Friday.

One in five people in the UK say they now use AI apps as a source of news.


Ofcom interviewed 5,397 adults for its 2026 News Report and, for the first time, asked them if they had used AI to access news over the past month.


This is a big deal for publishers because they generate very little click-through to original sources.

(If I have time to read it) I’ll pick out some more content from the report in next week’s briefing, but as for the question we posed at the top?


Ofcom estimates that UK adults spend 72 minutes per day consuming news.

On This Day… Bill Clinton’s Grand Jury testimony about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky was released to the United States public on this day in 1998.



Our Week: Brighton and Liverpool for us this week.

The Mutts

Be part of the MMB. Thoughts on this week’s content, or interviews you’ve seen, heard, or (best of all) done, please let us know.

Back on Monday. Have a brilliant week.



All at Inside Edge