Media Diet and a dose of reality

I've been in a bubble since 4 January. That was the last date that I actually read the news. Well, I have sort of skimmed the headlines on the BBC website most (but not all) days. But first I moved house and then I've been so busy finishing my book I've not had time for my daily round of at least 3 newspapers. I've not seen The Guardian at all, or The Sun, or much else. That'll change tomorrow as I fully intend for Normal Service to be Resumed!

The Media Diet got a bit neglected towards the end of last year - there was too much going on and, tbh, I started to run out of interesting media things to blog without repeating myself. It'll be back as an occasional feature from now on, along with PR Annoyances.

Anyway, the book MS was finally finished today - after being up till gone midnight last night then rising at 6 this morning to do the last bits - and has been dispatched to the publisher.

From tomorrow, it's back to the regular grindstone - I have 4 articles to write, 68 PDF pages to proofread for a client and a book MS to edit for another.

And now the dose of reality.

I've mentioned a few times lately how colleagues have been made redundant from staff jobs or seen regular freelance work dry up. I was foolish enough to blog about being offered work. Actually, I'm still being offered work. But I digress. Today I discovered I'm probably going to lose my biggest regular client - the one that gives me daily copy-editing work every weekday morning and a monthly cheque that covers my rent every month. Nothing's confirmed yet but it look ominous and I can't help wondering at the timing - I put my rates up for the first time in 4 years at the start of the year and now I expect to be dropped amid mutterings of taking work back in-house. But I can't not put rates up in the current climate, especially when I've carefully explained that clients have not had a rates increase in previous years and that I'm now simply catching up with inflation. So, it looks as though I'm going to be part of the statistics in my shrinking industry.

I might need that bar job after all. But not just yet.

Media Diet Week 36

Press: it's not long since I had a pop at The Sun's redesign. I still find it clunky and slow, but earlier in the week I dropped in to The Mirror's website and was reminded all over again why I hate it. It looks good - I love the mosaic of full-colour pix on the home page - but when I click on News, why does it take me to a page that offers only 3 main stories followed by 2 secondary splashes? There's another link that says "More News" so I have to click again to read all the headlines at a glance and see what stories I actually want to delve into. This is stupid, useless design - forcing readers to make extra click-throughs endears you to no one. Not even your most loyal readers. And I'm not one of those - the Mirror will remain a site I will only ever dip into when absolutely necessary because of its user-unfriendliness. Thanks are due to The Guardian today for the funniest film review I have read in years. Peter Bradshaw's linguistic tongue twistas had me in stitches. All reviews should be this entertaining. More please. And, lest I forget, R.I.P. Eve.

Blogs: I was pointed towards The Gentlemen Ranters a few days ago, which is an amusing collection of hack anecdotes and spoof features. Love it. More please! Fleet Street Blues has been strangely quiet for weeks but has broken its silence to let us know it's going to be even quieter for a couple of months - intriguing! Talking of quiet, the Churnalists also seem to have chucked the towel in (or should that be hung the towel over the beer pump?). Shame.

TV/radio: It's been a good week for telly. After watching Jerry Springer last week on Who Do You Think You Are, I felt it would be hard to top that for compelling TV but I was wrong. God On Trial was, quite simply, brilliant. It shone. Even as it shone a light into dark corners. Anthony Sher led a fantastic cast reflecting the cream of British actors. I leave it to Andrew Collins for a proper review, and I agree with his parting comment about the licence fee... God on Trial clashed, of course, with WDYTYA, which fortunately has a next-day repeat, so I was able to catch up with Esther Rantzen's trip into her past. Forget about it being a good week for telly, this was a great week for Holocaust TV. But how could the BBC film Rantzen standing in the centre of the long-razed Warsaw Ghetto and fail to place her at the stunning memorial to the ghetto uprising just around the corner?

Books: I am a failure. I've read none of Alistair Campbell's diary this week at all. Not even paragraph. I did pick up something lighter (relatively speaking - it depends if you like serial killer thrillers or not. I do). I started Michael Morley's Spider and have managed about 40 pages over the last nights. Not much has happened yet.

And finally... I can't leave this week without a reference to BBC News Online's Magazine, which published 20 examples of grammar misuse on Wednesday. They were all sent in by readers and what tickled me most was the number of complaints against the BBC itself for slack use of language on the website. Aunty, consider your wrist slapped.

Roy and Pete

Thanks are due to the inestimable Roy Greenslade, for giving me yet another plug on his blog. I'm still basking in the Greenslade effect from the last mention in despatches, so I hope to see another boost to my stats! I definitely owe Roy a few drinks at the pub of his choice...

Meanwhile, Pete Picton - editor of Sun Online, mailed me to say he was sorry I don't like the Sun's revamp and mentioned that the only thing changed in the left-hand menu is the shift from graphics to readable text. I disagree - whatever they did technically does not make the menu any easier to read, in fact the opposite. He didn't comment on my points about slow page loads and poor navigation - perhaps because he secretly agrees? As I said to Pete in reply, I shall struggle womanfully on every morning, bearing in mind that I can brew a pot of tea in the time it takes Bizarre to load...

Media Diet week 29

Ten shocking weeks since I last did this. Ok, ok, I have the excuse of a house move and a mountain of work, but...

Press: here we go. Not much has changed on my reading front. My daily newspaper round is still the Guardian, the Sun and BBC News Online. I hate the Sun's online revamp - you can tell it's been tweaked yet it doesn't look radically different. In fact, the left-hand menu makes it even harder to locate sections now and the whole site remains frustratingly slow when it comes to loading pages. Methinks they wasted a lot of money for nowt. Elsewhere, I have a pile of unread Press Gazettes building up. I simply haven't had time. Will try to blitz them this weekend.

Blogs: I'm enjoying Neil Baker's return to form after a long silence. He always has interesting things to say (see his post on why he never reads his work after it's been published, for example. I've also discovered the blog of a colleague who, like me, both writes and edits for a living. Check out Ms_Well.Words for her take on the news.

TV/radio: so, no more Doctor Who, the Nancys are finished, the Apprentice has been picked and the evenings are looking decidely quiet. If it wasn't for EastEnders, I'd be down the pub 7 nights a week. I toyed with watching Bonekickers, but managed to miss both the first two episodes. On the other hand, I stumbled into Britain's Missing Top Model and am really enjoying it. Usually, I find BBC3 irritating and dumbed down but for once it is screening an intelligent insight into the reality of living with a disability and the prejudices the disabled face on a daily basis. We could do with more telly like this. (I want Sophie to win, btw.)

Books: as with the press, there's not been a lot of spare reading time for books. Suffice to say I've just finished a crime novel so bad I contemplated lining the cat tray with the pages. I vaguely recall reading a review of In Cold Daylight somewhere, that insisted it was unputdownable. Au contraire. It was clichéd, badly copy-edited (I was endlessly distracted by shit punctuation) and the plot was based on conjecture in the protagonist's head. Thank gawd I have the latest Mark Billingham to get stuck into...

Media Diet Week 14

Press: once again I found myself buying the Guardian and the Sun to read on a train. I'm so used to reading online editions now that hard copies just feel, well, odd. The main plus is that I get to do the sudoku and crossword. I'm starting to like Look. I mean, what's not to like? It's a quid. It rounds up the best high street fashion each week. And it has short and snappy sleb features such as "Amy Winehouse: why I can't give up drugs". I bought another issue this week and feel drawn in. I tell ya, it'll be downhill from here on in.

Blogs: the hot tip right now is The Churner Prize. Sheer brilliance. As a hack who deplores churnalism, this blog really nails the culprits. Name and shame is my motto (well, one of them, anyway) and this does it admirably.

TV/radio: I've had a crazy busy week, leaving little time for much viewing and listening, but it has to be said, dahlinks, that this week when it came to TV, the star of the show was me. I got to sit in Jeremy Paxman's chair and be quizzed by the inestimable Race Noddy and, and, AND win the debate on points. What could be better? And thank gawd yet again for iPlayer, which will allow me to catch up on the Apprentice, EastEnders and owt else I've missed due to illness and propping up Aunty single-handedly. I did catch the finale of Torchwood - suffice to say I was shocked that Owen and Tosh got killed off. I guess they had better offers before season 3.

Books: I've started The Cipher Garden. So far so good, despite being only 100 pages in. I trust Martin Edwards not to let me down. I like the Daniel Kind and Hannah Scarlett characters, both of whom are developing admirably. Other crime-fic writers should take note. This is an easy, undemanding read yet with a very decent layer of complexity that requires close attention.