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papers are as important now as they ever were and there is great journalism out there. Some of it is being performed by internet citizen journalists as well as print journalists. Tim Hicks Citizen journalist, North Yorks Enquirer and Real Whitby


Denis MacShane writes well for The Journalist Some months ago you published a letter from a member bemoaning the fact that you had commissioned and published articles by Denis MacShane. Since then, I have retired, relocated


to the other end of the country and, only now that everything around me has stopped moving, do I find time to respond. However, the delay is quite useful because I think I am right in saying that since publication of the aforementioned letter, nothing further from Mr MacShane has appeared in the magazine. There may be many reasons for this but if it is to satisfy your correspondent the reason is wrong. Our former president, who I have


never met, has surely made some mistakes and just as surely has paid dearly for them. I feel the law’s dealings with Mr MacShane should be the end of the matter and I, for one, find his contributions very insightful and I trust I can look forward to seeing more from him in The Journalist in the future. David Beake Cornwall


National papers’ tablet offerings disappoint My Kindle broke and I bought a new one, mainly because I missed having my daily paper waiting for me on it in the mornings. I thought a new machine might give me an upgrade on the experience too, but no such luck. I have been shopping around for better but so far The Guardian, The Times and The Telegraph have all continued to be disappointing in the same ways … 1) The pictures service is hopeless.


Essential pictures are missing all over the place, including, most recently, a photo that won an international competition; The Times gave me only the story. Clearly, big picture displays are not possible but surely I could at least have a full screen when a picture is merited. 2) The same applies to cartoons. 3) Presentation details are omitted so that I often read a comment column with no byline, or bylined only at the end or attributed to staff reporters. When I was last in a newsroom, most of us still regarded the online services as something for the late sub to lash together from what we had written for print, but I would have expected a bit more thought by now. Chris Benfield Devon PS: Since I first drafted this letter, The Times, at least, seems to be paying more attention to the comment bylines. Can’t say if it is a permanent improvement or just a better late sub.


‘Acceptable’ rates on magazines are too low In the last issue of the Freelance, day rates for shifts on magazines of between £120 and £160 are not labelled as below par. In my view, they are unacceptably low. I got between £100 and £120 over 20 years ago for subbing and/or layout shifts on various periodicals. I consider that, taking in overheads


etc, a freelance doing casual shifts needs to earn in three working days roughly what a full-time employee is paid per week if s/he is to net a comparable sum. Maurice Jay Life Member


Eddie Barrett was proud to be called a communist Francis Beckett’s warm and sensitive tribute to Eddie Barrett refers to him on a couple of occasions as a ‘socialist,’ which can mean anything or nothing. Eddie was proud to be known as a


communist for 20 years. Until he died, he was a member of the Great London East branch of the Communist Party. John Haylett Cardiff


Shorthand is far quicker than recording interviews Do people who use recording devices genuinely believe that this is the fastest method of producing interviews for print media? Or is their love of gadgets more because they couldn’t be bothered to learn shorthand?


Technology doesn’t necessarily make us more efficient; as Sarah Booker Lewis points out (Letters, February- March 2017). Listening to recordings and writing them up takes longer than transcribing shorthand notes. I do a lot of in-depth interviews and


I’m often asked if recording them might be easier than scribbling frantically for an hour. Well yes, but then I’d have to outsource the transcription – which costs money – or add an hour to the process by listening to the whole conversation again, including the inevitable ums and ahs, stop-starts and irrelevancies that a selective shorthand note would have ignored or edited. For me, the best results come from


dictating articles into the computer’s speech-to-text facility – condensing, re-ordering and paraphrasing my shorthand notes as I speak. This is quicker than typing, even given the machine’s sometimes comical lack of accuracy. Sue Fenton London Freelance branch


Best in years – but I still miss the Chief Sub The February-March issue of the Journalist was the best in years. Well done to all concerned, not least Steve Bell. His cartoon was inspired. But please can we have the Chief Sub


column back? Norman Burr Lancaster


STEVE BELL


THE OWNERS


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