Tuesday, February 19, 2019

Breaking News - Book Review

Alan Rusbridger was the editor of the Guardian from 1995-2015. This book is a careful analysis of what happened to journalism through those years as his newspaper team realised that print journalism was no longer marketable.

The journey of the Guardian in that time, from broadsheet to tabloid via Berliner, to one of the largest online news portals in the world, is brilliantly chronicled.

Towards the end there is a wonderful assessment of what journalism is today:

'...there is no one thing called 'journalism'; no single entity called 'news'; no single recognisable identity for a 'journalist'. (page 360)

He then goes on to compare Useless 'Proper' News - the scandal-driven red tops - with 'Proper' Other Stuff - a new generation of experts who have learned to use Twitter threads to make their points with links, sources and references: people such as Steve Analyst (@EmperorsNewC) and The Secret Barrister (@BarristerSecret).

Journalists may be able to write slightly better but good journalists always knew that the readers were the real experts.

This was a great read. It isn't a bleeding-heart liberal tome. It is a recent-history text book, fair to enemies, generous to friends. Slightly annoying number of typos but I may have got an early edition hardback (reduced from £20 to £7).

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