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have captions identifying them all (left to right). This seems to be no longer always the case and the reader is left guessing which is which. Maybe this is now considered unimaginative, but I yearn for the return of the simple informative caption right next to the picture it is describing. Mike Pentelow Press and PR Branch


Above: Seen sharing a joke in a local pub (left to right) pint and Mike Pentelow


Keep on going Abigail! Experience is the key Abigail Lofthouse’s first person piece was really interesting from the point of view of a student trying to get started


out in journalism. I would like to add that that having been a freelance journalist for the past 17 years and having written for most of the women’s UK market in that time, I really don’t think that where you were educated or which family you were born into really matters that much to editors. Privileges might give you the contacts, but all editors need people who can write to deadlines, write to house style and to the readership the publication caters for. Rejection is part and parcel of a freelance journalist’s day, but you soon build up a bank of editors who will rely on you for content. Another piece of advice I would like to offer to aspiring journalists is to be able to write ‘to order’ but also have a specialist subject (health, politics etc) that editors can draw upon when they need to. Keep going, Abigail; experience counts more than anything in this job. Deborah Durbin Bristol


Ed Jones is right – bid farewell to the gloom Ed Jones’ plea to “call time on spoon fed black and white reporting” concentrates on newspaper journalism


with the need to print truly interesting articles, and journalism that refuses to toe the line by depressing and tear– inducing copy.” Hear! Hear! “I refute” he says “that we love to learn about misery and despair,”asking “Why so melancholy? The broadcasters surely are worse. BBC Wales news seems wedded to gloom, while nationally death worldwide, by design or accident, is sought and broadcast to supplement our own tragedies. It must be the pictures. A word though for Channel Four news which does feature less run of the mill stories and expands news with added interest. Roy Jones Colwyn Bay


Misleading labels for website coverage Congratulations to Graham Noble (May Journalist) for his trenchant attack on the use of ‘Look’ and ‘Listen’ by politicians and others taking to the airwaves. To redress tbe balance, though,


would newspapers please call a halt to the ridiculous practice of emblazoning their website coverage of running


stories with banners claiming that such coverage is ‘live’ or even ‘LIVE!’ No, it definitely isn’t. ‘Live’ is what journalists do on the telly and on the wireless, sometimes. There’s quite a lot of it on BBC News


24; some of it is really rather dull, but it can sometimes add to one’s understanding of a story, if not to the gaiety of nations. When broadcasting first began to


offer serious competition to print in the pursuit of news, the more thoughtful newspaper editors and their staffs – both broadsheet and tabloid – recognised that they needed a new quality in order to attract readers. That ingredient was ‘analysis’ or ‘in depth’ reporting. The idea was that print journalists


would develop a deeper understanding of the background to the story on which they were working. And the idea worked quite well. Well, at least it did until many


newspaper proprietors decided that making staff redundant was a better way of making money, if not of serving the public. Barry Williams London


STEVE BELL


THE OWNERS


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