have written – not, say, as far off as two months later. The same or more is true of those


replying to letters. According to the dictionary, repartee is a witty retort, delivered promptly. If it takes two months for answers to surface, it’s like when you think of the perfect riposte after a debate and the protagonist is in Italy. A letter’s relevance generally has


to be grasped by the reader without research as to what it’s about. The most gripping of The Journalist’s items fade soon enough from the memory. All of this applies to tweets but more so. Is there then a way of keeping letters


(possibly online) that would meet the needs above? Roy Jones North Wales Coast Branch


Overworked journalists may have too little time From reading articles in your esteemed publication and by talking to local journalists, I gather that the arrival of digital technologies means that newsrooms have fewer staff and journalists have to work even harder than I did when I gained my National Council for the Training of Journalists’ proficiency certificate in the early 1960s and wrote stories for The Croydon Advertiser on a typewriter. Perhaps they no longer have the time


to contribute to their own magazine’s Letters column although the Thurrock Gazette’s one is lively enough and currently includes an ongoing post- Brexit spat between me and a woman in my village. I would hate The Journalist to lose


its letters and feedback pages but, as far as tweeting goes, I leave that to the birds! By the way, I greatly enjoyed


Sarah Lonsdale’s article on novels and films about journalism. My recommendations would be George Gissing’s 19th century atmospheric novel New Grub Street and this year’s Oscar-winning film, Spotlight, about the Boston Globe’s investigation into paedophile priests. David Savage Life Member Ockendon, Essex


I’ll keep the letters pages stocked single handedly Having just read your appeal for letters and comments for your disappearing


24 | theJournalist


Letters page, I would like to offer my services as an experienced letter- maker-upper. In my time as a reporter and subeditor with a range of regional titles (whose names will be withheld to protect the guilty), I was responsible on many an occasion for making up the submissions for our regular letters pages. The most successful ones – if I


remember rightly – were those that provoked outrage (and therefore some actual, real letters) from readers. If you would like me to supply you with a plethora of thought-provoking or controversial letters, please ask. I charge a minimal fee, am currently unemployed after being made redundant a year ago, and every penny counts. Pamela Parr Wirral


In praise of a Soviet-style lionisation of real workers Here in The Shed, we can always turn out 200 words for £30. At the moment, we are considering Britain’s performance in the Olympics and wondering why we take pride in sweat in sport but not in work. It would be good for the nation


to extend the subsidies for hard physical labour to cover measurable productivity in low-technology activities such as: the quarrying and transport of slate and stone; the gathering of crops; and the maintenance of roadside hedging. If you had a system which would pay, say, £10 an hour per head to teams hitting an average output and a bit of a bonus for being better, you would offer a way out of dole dependency which would be admired and copied. The output would be worth


something. The contribution to carbon reduction would be worth something. A Soviet-style lionisation of the


real worker would do the working class more good than degrees and self-improvement videos. And the creation of a minimum wage for the strong and able would do more good than trying to introduce one for everyone.


• The Shed is where Chris Benfield


produces news for horrabridge.org. uk and other things in the hope of avoiding manual labour. Chris Benfield Devon


Should we campaign for better fiction portrayals? I enjoyed the recent feature in The Journalist on how those in the media are portrayed in novels and films and the changes from truth-seeking heroes to liars and scumbags with the excesses of tabloid and online journalism in fabricating and distorting stories for the pursuit of circulation. It’s a good article with points raised about flawed journalists making better fictional characters, Rich Peppiatt’s comments on journalists starting off wanting to do the right thing and Manchester and Salford branch’s film club which is a good counter-initiative to publicise. This theme is something I have raised


before within the NUJ but mostly with reference to TV dramas. I think TV has a far wider and more insidious reach – week in, week out – with the public and stereotypical and lazy negative depictions of the media including reporters and photographers, particularly in TV police dramas, do great damage to the public image of our profession. As a Guardian article said back in June 2008, “Because we’re a species of storytellers, we find movie-plot threats uniquely compelling. A single vivid scenario will do more to convince people that photographers might be terrorists than all the data I can muster to demonstrate that they’re not.” Despite recent media scandals including phone hacking, bad or criminal behaviour by the media is the exception rather than the rule as we work to produce news coverage every day.


Should the NUJ lobby our fellow


trade unionists in the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain and any other relevant organisations to ask that they produce more balanced portrayals of the media when featured in dramas? Simon Chapman Bristol branch and chair of the Journalist Editorial Advisory Board


Let’s show the popular press as a force for good I was fascinated to read Sarah Lonsdale’s article on journalists in film and books. I am a journalist who has also written fiction, and a character in my novel Without the Moon is based on a real journalist who was very much a hero.


Hannen Swaffer was dubbed “the


Pope of Fleet Street”. A pioneer of photojournalism whose idea to print shots of the fugitive murderer Crippen on the front page of the Daily Mirror helped bring about his arrest, he campaigned for the suffragettes in the pages of that same paper. During World War II, when my story is set, he worked for The Daily Herald frequenting the blitzed East End to campaign for deep shelters. He was also a Spiritualist, defending the medium Helen Duncan at her Old Bailey witchcraft trial in 1944. I discovered him while researching Duncan and was amazed that someone who had been so popular is now largely forgotten. I hope that in resurrecting this man, who believed so strongly in the next world, I can also help to revive an appreciation for elderly socialists and the power of the popular press as a force for good in this one. Cathi Unsworth London


Where was Towards the End of the Morning? I can only assume that your otherwise inexplicable omission of Michael Frayn’s Towards the End of the Morning from your list of 10 Best British Novels about Journalism was a deliberate provocation designed to end your letters drought. It worked. David Brindle London


Proctor’s Brexit column was all too accurate Chris Proctor’s last column was spot on, so here’s some mitigation for next time the Code Police arrive. I tried checking my facts for a piece


called Borexit? Boris Johnson: Then and Now. “Then” was Boris the referendum


campaigner, representing our net EU contribution as an “underestimate” at £350 million a week. “Now” is Boris the foreign secretary, representing our country to the EU. With Boris at the Foreign Office, is the UK using his claims or the Cameron administration sums? Or a new set? Has Boris changed his mind? And, if not, can he remain in


the Cabinet without accepting collective responsibility for whatever the current estimate is? Will it be: Exit Boris, pursued by a barefaced “underestimate”? No one would accept Boris’s numbers


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