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Email to: journalist@nuj.org.uk Post to: The Journalist 72 Acton Street, London WC1X 9NB Tweet to: @mschrisbuckley


H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H I often feel the magazine, especially


Smokescreen hides the real pay disparity


The article in the August/September Journalist issue, while briefly acknowledging the issue of BBC pay disparity at the lower end, is like many others a victim of the clever smokescreen created by the government, the BBC and other media by focusing on the plight of the multi-millionaires. Even Raymond Snoddy’s more considered article in the same issue worries about people earning over £250k pa. For my part, I don’t give a hoot if one of them, gender, race or


sexual preference notwithstanding, is earning more or less than the other. They are all earning obscenely from the public purse. it all makes great theatre, but while we are obsessing about celebrities we are avoiding the real issues. So little, including in The Journalist, is said about pay and


discrimination at the bottom. Let the multi-millionaires pretend to care about discrimination, as in reality they laugh at others below them. Even if some tinkering is done, it is likely to raise the rates of the slightly less absurdly rich to those of the more absurdly rich, while the status quo continues. Regrettably, of course, this would not have


been a news story had it not been about the snout-in-trough class at the BBC. Robert McKay London


Ands and buts and the straight and narrow As someone who left school at 14 and never ad no education I was helped on my way in journalism by my purple prose being treated with what my news editor Roger Bagley called “sympathetic subbing” and “never to start a sentence with a conjunction” I now find such a rudiment of grammar challenged by my betters. Not very well though. In “Nothing


wrong with ands or buts” (Letters, August/September). Peter Williams, quotes RL Trask as warning “However, he warns of over use,” leaving aside the not needed “however” the problem is that ands or buts are battered to death in today’s newspapers. John Mahoney makes his case “for”


22 | theJournalist


£30 prize


letter H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H


by giving examples “But last night the smirking attacker was not laughing as he was..” and “And last night police confirmed they were still hunting for ...” Neither of these “Ands” which, I contend, adds nothing to the reader’s understanding. The Morning Star stylebook, written


by award winning typographer and Journalist editor, Alan Hutt, says “not many buts, only a few howevers and never a meanwhile!” Unfortunately (Wynford Hicks- may I


call you Wyn?) we are not all Keith Waterhouses and keeping to the simple rules stops us getting onto altogether slippier slopes. PS (Just in case) Most of the mistakes


are on purpose. Roy Jones Life member


Ands and buts, yes, but for is a different matter I quite often start sentences with the words and or but. I find this can provide emphasis in a way that it would not mid-sentence. However, as an alternative to but, I sometimes use yet. And however. Yet one word I don’t like to see at


the start of a sentence, but which is commonly used in local newspapers, is for. For that really annoys me. Owen Ralph Manchester


Hurray for positive takes on digital journalism I wanted to say how nice it was to read two positive features about digital journalism in this edition of The Journalist.


the columnists, can be pretty doom and gloom about the threat digital poses to the industry. For younger NUJ members like myself who have only worked in digital journalism, it’s encouraging to see these two pieces published (plus they’re excellent reads). I know digital does pose difficulties to the industry and NUJ members, but I hope to see a few more pieces like these in the future. Daisy Wyatt London


Someone’s got to do it I spent literally seconds this morning scratching my head before realising why Sir Alan Moses has agreed to stay on in his £150,000-a year, three-day-a- week job chairing the Independent Press Standards Organisation! John Mahoney Manchester


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Denis MacShane @DenisMacShane 7:57 AM – 13 Aug 2017 Fascinating @AndrewSparrow account of how he does his Gdn politics livestream blog in @nuj The Journalist @mschrisbuckley


Tony O’Shaughnessy (@tonyonthephone) 09/08/2017, 14:26 In praise of live blogging by @AndrewSparrow in the latest @NUJofficial magazine “... it’s a broadcast, not a publication”. Great read. pic.twitter.com/zltcHD1mSr


TIM ELLIS


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