Morning all, it’s Monday 25th November. The week ahead:

Monday: Sturgess inquiry hears evidence on Russian state involvement

Joe Biden pardons his Thanksgiving turkeys (one for West Wing fans)

Tuesday: MPs debate Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Wednesday: Tusk Conservation Awards

Thursday: Statistics on migration and irregular migration

Sixth form college teachers strike

Friday: First debate on assisted dying bill

Republic of Ireland holds parliamentary elections

Emmanuel Macron visits Notre Dame Cathedral ahead of re-opening

Saturday: Alex Salmond memorial service

Sunday: South Africa assumes G20 presidency

At the heart of our media training is the concept of the Top Line – the angle you draw out of an issue or piece of research to hang an interview on.

With that in mind, a question. If you had undertaken research into peoples’ ability to spot a fake accent (which received extensive coverage last week), which of these top lines would you opt for?

The Times is on the left, and The Guardian on the right (unusually)…

Results in next week’s Briefing.

The Times reports that the superb Mishal Husain is to leave Today after an 11 year stint.

Her last programme is expected to be in January.

READ MORE (no paywall)

Journalists at the Guardian Media Group will go on strike next month in protest at a planned sale of The Observer.

“My colleagues are unable to speak up or voice their opinions because their mortgages are literally on the line. So allow me: we believe @tortoise simply does not have the cash reserves. We believe this is the death of a 240-year-old newspaper.”

Carole Cadwalladr

READ MORE

__

Meanwhile Jay Rayner, The Observer’s restaurant critic for the last 25 years, is leaving to join the Financial Times in the same role, amid the escalating backlash.

We’ll bring the curtain down on Year Of The Expert next week but for now the final chapter of Part 5 – So What’s Stopping You? I loved this question so saved it to the very end…

“The thing that stops me engaging with the media is this – why should I just give up my knowledge? The decades (and it is decades) I have spent on this subject – it just feels like that body of knowledge deserves more than 5 minutes at ten o’clock at night on BBC 5 Live.”

LISTEN HERE

“When I do die, after 50 years in politics, all they will show on the news is 60 seconds of me thumping a fellow in Wales.”

John Prescott, in 2019.

He was wrong. His death dominated the news cycle for 24 hours – however this is one line you may have missed…

(Source: Popbitch)

Footnotes:

On this day: The funeral of the assassinated President, John F Kennedy, took place in Washington on this day in 1963.

Weather: 10 degrees in Manchester, 11 degrees in Morecambe, 29 degrees in Muscat.

Mutts: Stan, in younger days…

Be part of the MMB. Thoughts on this week’s content, or interviews you’ve seen, heard, or (best of all) done. We’re @insideedgemedia or just reply to this email. 

Have a brilliant week.

All at Inside Edge

Morning all, it’s Monday 18th November.

For the final few episodes of Year Of The Expert we’re ironing out lingering doubts about media engagement.

This week…The Big Freeze. What happens if I go blank during an interview?

“If this was a series called Year Of The Politician this would be difficult to answer. If it was a series called Year Of The Scandal-Hit-Celebrity this would be difficult to answer. If it was a series called Year Of The Dodgy Chief Executive then this would be difficult to answer.

But it isn’t…and what this comes down to is audience expectation and how the audience expects the interviewer to behave.”

LISTEN HERE

The week ahead:

Monday: Brazil hosts G20 summit

Tuesday: Farmers’ protests in London

Volodymyr Zelenskyy address to European Parliament to mark 1,000 days of war

Wednesday: CPI inflation data

Thursday: Matt Hancock gives evidence to Covid-19 inquiry

Friday: 50 years ago: Birmingham pub bombings

Final day of COP29

Sunday: Ruben Amorim takes charge of first Manchester United match

Presidential election in Romania, Presidential election run-off in Uruguay

“Negativity drives online news consumption”

A journal paper in Nature finds, “negative words in news headlines increased consumption rates (and positive words decreased consumption rates)”

It’s quite a technical read (to put it mildly) but a fascinating bit of research.

READ MORE

“If a government is to succeed it must be able to manage the media while also telling a simple story to the country about why it is taking decisions – connecting what it is saying with what it is doing.”

Lee Cain

The former Downing Street Director of Communications argues the PM needs a total overhaul of his No.10 media operation.

READ MORE

“The more I get retweeted on @X the more followers I lose; and my whole feed just prioritises @elonmusk over everything else. It’s not a town square for everyone, it’s just a platform for him alone”

Ben De Pear 

Former Editor, Channel 4 News 

We’ll do more on this in the coming weeks, but for now an interesting piece from Sky News on the apparent X-Bluesky migration 

“We are beginning to see this sort of fragmentation, this diaspora of what used to be a singular platform, into communities split into multiple places.”

READ MORE

Footnotes:

On this day: The film world celebrated the wedding of the year as Michael Douglas married Catherine Zeta Jones on this day in 2000.

Weather: 8 degrees in London, 4 degrees in Leeds.

Mutts: Leo, photographed yesterday…

Be part of the MMB. Thoughts on this week’s content, or interviews you’ve seen, heard, or (best of all) done. We’re @insideedgemedia or just reply to this email. 

Have a brilliant week.

All at Inside Edge

Good morning, it’s Monday 11th November.

“We won’t mince words – the next Trump administration poses a serious threat to press freedom.”

Reporters Committee

“Everything we know about the next US president suggests the press in America will be under siege in the next four years as never before.”

Margaret Sullivan

READ MORE

“”Legacy media “is officially dead,” The Daily Wire podcaster Matt Walsh wrote on X overnight. “Their ability to set the narrative has been destroyed. Trump declared war on the media in 2016. Tonight he vanquished them completely. They will never be relevant again.”

CNN’s Brian Stelter reports on how the election bruised the media’s credibility.

READ MORE

The week ahead:

Monday: COP29 opens in Azerbaijan

Keir Starmer attends Armistice Day service in France

Jonathan Reynolds and Kemi Badenoch give evidence at the Post Office Horizon inquiry.

Tuesday: Booker Prize winner announced

World Leaders Climate Action Summit at COP29

Wednesday: Wes Streeting addresses NHS Providers conference

Thursday: Climate Action Tracker annual update

OECD International Migration Outlook

Friday: Jake Paul v Mike Tyson

Supermoon

Sunday: Uranus closest to Earth

Part 5 of Year Of The Expert – So What’s Stopping You? deals with any final doubts and niggles before we bring the curtain down. This week we address an email from Jill who writes:

“What if they ask a question I simply don’t know the answer to? This has happened to a colleague and it still haunts the department.”

LISTEN HERE 

“No other country has anything like this. Public service broadcasters lie at the heart of our social and cultural life, and they are worth fighting for. And, to be frank, the fight is on.” 

Samir Shah

The “fight is on” for the future of British programming at the Beeb, says the corporation’s new Chair in his first big speech.

READ MORE

“In case you haven’t come across BBC Verify, it is that pompous team of BBC fact checkers who the news bulletins switch to when they want to reassure viewers that something they are about to tell you really is true, seemingly oblivious to the corollary that the rest of the channel’s output must by extension be BBC Unverified.”

The FT’s Robert Shrimsley takes a waspish swipe at BBC Verify

READ MORE

BBC Radio 4 Today’s Mishal Husain received the prestigious Charles Wheeler Award for Outstanding Contribution to Broadcast Journalism.

And the next morning they surprised her by talking about it on air. The image below shows her reaction…

Footnotes:

On this day: Yasser Arafat died in hospital in Paris, aged 75, on this day in 2004.

Weather: 11 degrees in Hartlepool, 12 degrees in Halifax, West Yorkshire, and 10 degrees in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Mutts:

Be part of the MMB. Thoughts on this week’s content, or interviews you’ve seen, heard, or (best of all) done. We’re @insideedgemedia or just reply to this email. 

Have a brilliant week.

All at Inside Edge

Good morning, it’s Monday 4th November. Big week ahead…

Monday: National Audit Office report on dangerous cladding

Budget debate begins in the Commons

Tuesday: US presidential election

Wednesday: First PMQs for new Conservative leader

Thursday: Interest rate decision

Friday: GRAMMY nominees announced 

Saturday: Two-day Tour de France Criterium in Singapore, expected to be Mark Cavendish’s final race 

Sunday: King Charles leads Cenotaph Remembrance Sunday service 

Part 4 of Year Of The Expert – The Studio is now packaged up as a 20 minute audio montage.

LISTEN HERE 

Next week we start the last lap of our 12 month journey with Part 5- ‘So What’s Stopping You?’

A number of you have been in touch and we’ll address your thoughts in the weeks to come. But for now, let’s take this one from Kristin:

“Chris, what’s stopping me is the fact I am constantly ditched at the last minute by the media. I clear my schedule, prepare loads, and all for nothing.”

One of the episodes in last year’s Scenarios series addressed this very point. I thought it was worth digging out…

“You’re not in the news business. You’re in the ad business. And you’re failing at the ad business.” 

Marina Hyde 

Reach is a vast media operation. They own nationals like The Mirror and The Express as well as a stable of regional titles. You may remember this quiz question from the Briefing a few weeks ago….

The answer – improbably – was 8, and Marina Hyde gives that both barrels in a blistering segment on The Rest Is Entertainment podcast. 

Churnalism. Local news that isn’t local. News that isn’t news. Journalists that aren’t journalists. AI-generated copy. And ultimately a failed business model. 

“There are important investigations in the Mirror or the Express. But it’s difficult to find them when there are also 40 stories about Martin Lewis.”

We’ve also written a number of times about the future of local journalism being on Substack, and this is something Hyde and Richard Osman also cover.

LISTEN HERE (or wherever you get your podcasts). It’s 18 minutes in.

“I couldn’t cry over my children like everyone else”

Nesrine Malik’s long read about Palestinian journalist Wael al-Dahdouh is extraordinary.

After his wife and two of his children were killed in Gaza the Al Jazeera journalist became famous around the world for his decision to keep reporting. 

“He was no longer seen as just a high-profile reporter, but a bearer of Gaza’s grief and a symbol of its people’s character.”

READ MORE

The Media Club podcast picks up on two stories we’ve covered in recent Briefings: the Washington Post sitting on the presidential fence, and the BBC World Service’s potential funding deal.

LISTEN HERE (or wherever you get your podcasts)

Footnotes:

On this day: Ronald Reagan won the US presidential elections by a landslide on this day in 1980.

Quiz: Not sitting this week (this is getting embarrassing…)

Weather: 11 degrees in Galashiels, 12 degrees in Grimsby, and 21 degrees in Grenoble.

Mutts:

(PS please give fireworks a miss this year.)

Be part of the MMB. Thoughts on this week’s content, or interviews you’ve seen, heard, or (best of all) done. We’re @insideedgemedia or just reply to this email. 

Have a brilliant week.

All at Inside Edge