This was sent to me by a former pen-ller. Thought it would be of general interest -- the triumph of finance capitalism! Paul P
Why labour reporters aren't working Peter Wilby Monday March 05 2007 The Guardian Among the 50 or so journalists who have applied to join the Independent's latest voluntary redundancy scheme, I gather, is the labour editor, Barrie Clement. If the company agrees to let him go, he almost certainly won't be replaced. Except for the Morning Star and an "employment correspondent" on the Financial Times, Fleet Street will have seen the last of the labour correspondents. That will mark the end of what, barely 20 years ago, was a reporting elite that came second only to the political lobby. The story tells us much not only about how Britain has changed but also about newspapers, how they treat their readers and how they interact with politicians. In 1986, the Independent launched with a labour desk of three, and nobody thought it excessive or unusual. Since 1945, labour stories - strikes, pay claims, negotiations, sackings - had rarely been off the front pages. Because prolonged disputes and high wage awards could break governments, an intimate knowledge of the unions and their labyrinthine politics was sometimes even more important than knowledge of Westminster and Whitehall. Unions sat on official councils and commissions. Their general secretaries were Labour party power brokers. Many Labour frontbenchers came from a union background. Harold Wilson wooed and briefed the labour correspondents as assiduously as he did the political correspondents. The labour reporters have declined along with the fall in union membership (now barely half of what it was in 1979), the withdrawal of governments from industrial relations and the withering of union power. Their work has been subsumed into other specialisms, usually the industrial correspondents - who traditionally covered manufacturing as a business story - but sometimes, as at the Guardian, the political lobby. Even Clement now combines his job with covering transport. The labour reporters' true successors, however, are the finance and economics correspondents. Britain's present prosperity comes from shuffling money around, not from making things. Governments try to get bankers and venture capitalists onside, not union leaders. Newspapers need a cadre of reporters who know about hedge funds and derivatives, rather than labour reporters who understand the difference between a stevedore and a docker. Meanwhile, as the Daily Mirror columnist and former Times and Independent labour editor Paul Routledge points out in the current British Journalism Review, a kind of inverse Parkinson's law has operated. The unions, which rarely used to bother with employing press officers, have bigger and slicker media operations than ever, with 11 media staff working at the TUC alone. Lacking their old industrial muscle, they need to shame the bosses through bad publicity. Hence the growth of such stunts as sending a camel to greet the boss at his local church (think rich men and eyes of needles), or giving demonstrators sick bags when private equity holds a dinner to launch a charitable foundation. Newspapers now get industrial relations stories, as they get many of their other stories, from PRs. Other specialists may be tempted to enjoy the fall of the labour correspondents, a group of men (with few exceptions) among whom testosterone, alcohol and arrogance flowed freely. They should ponder instead the growing tendency on all papers to devalue specialist knowledge. Editors argue, with some justice, that specialists can get too close to the people they report on, and eventually become their tools. But the change has been encouraged by politicians. _________________________________________________________ More at http://www.mediaguardian.co.uk -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.446 / Virus Database: 268.18.7/713 - Release Date: 3/7/07 9:24 AM
