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I've been having conversations online recently with new journalists. They ask me for advice occasionally, it happens - and I've had some positive feedback from the steers I've given them. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised after almost 20 years (next June) in the business, 19 years as a full-timer and almost 15 years (next May) as a freelancer.

So I've had this thought. I'm going to run an online course if the numbers are right.

At this stage I'm just trying to get an idea of the general interest. If I were to run a course in January, to last six weeks, after which you'd know some of the basics of freelance journalism, how to pitch, how not to annoy editors, how to manage your accounts, stuff like that, would you be interested? I'd be charging £75 per lesson or £400 if you ordered all six in advance. There will be assignments, there will be feedback and of course there'll be more detailed information on the course before I ask anyone to hand the cash over.

At the moment I'd like to see how many people would be interested - so if you'd want to give this a go, how about mailing me with 'freelance course' in the subject header and 'yes' in the body text? There is no question of any commitment on either side at the moment I promise - I'm at the feasibility study stage.

Thanks.

The media this week has been full of how TV is going to change radically. We're all going to download programmes from the Internet and suchlike and stream them around the house. Broadcasting as we know it is doomed, so you'd think.

I have my doubts. Any chance we could have a show of hands of how many readers would know where to start streaming telly around their house - or who have the right equipment even if they do?

Thought not...

Sorry, been a bit quiet, finished editing a book last week, have been up to my eyes in it. And exhausted.

Anyway, I thought you'd want to see this. It's the Sun's story about how Doctor Who companion Freema Agyeman is being axed, as they predicted.

Which is interesting because I've seen the same press release as they have. Which says that although she's not coming back in the next few episodes, she is indeed continuing on Doctor Who and appearing in the companion series, Torchwood. They even acknowledge this in the body of the story.

Far be it from me to criticise a fellow hack, of course. But how in heaven's name is appearing in two related programmes rather than just one equivalent to being 'axed'?

I was distressed to hear of the death of Banaz Mahmod at the hands of her father and uncle, as I'm sure were the vast, vast majority of people. Its implications are way beyond the remit of a small and self-appointed media blog like this.

What I do consider my business, though, is the reporting of it. Why is the media dignifying this and other filthy little murders with the term 'honour killing'? Every time a report mentions it this seems somehow to validate it, to give it a title it doesn't merit. Even if used in inverted commas, the term puts it into some sort of special category as if we have to understand something about the culture of these people before passing judgment.

It was murder, pure and simple. I suggest it's time to stop calling it and cases like it anything else.

So Tony Blair is calling the media a 'Feral Beast' with the Independent one of the worst offenders. The BBC report on the speech is here, BBC political correspondent Nick Robinson's blog entry on the subject is here.

Personally I think the media is an easy target. We're not always popular and when some sections of the press decide someone's day in the sun is over, it's not pretty - they do tend to go for them. But Blair here is talking about the Independent. It may not be a broadsheet any more but it retains broadsheet sensibilities.

I can only conclude that this is all about people disagreeing with him over central issues. The Indie was among those papers celebrating ten years ago when Blair became PM. I don't recall any complaints then. As the years have passed and the spin grown more blatant it's become disillusioned and critical but it's never been as venomous as, say, the Mail.

So what do we make of this attack on the Indie? With a little regret I have to say it looks like calculated spin yet again. The red-tops would have been easy targets for Blair but nobody really takes the news stories seriously anyway. The Mail is his sworn enemy so there's no point in going for them - it would be too predictable and non-newsworthy.

But the Indie? That's different. A left-leaning paper being criticised by a Labour PM. Yes, that's non-obvious so yes, that might hit the headlines if the speech is dressed up with a few spicy words. Sorry, does this sound cynical? It should. This is a PM who wants to make the maximum impact with a few words and that, I believe, is the reason he's rounded on this particular example. You could almost call him 'feral'

The Independent's site is silent on the subject as I type; typically, perhaps, the Guardian has reported the Indie's view instead. You couldn't make that up.

Following my little rant about how not to work with journalists a fortnight ago I've had my attention directed to this entry in Guy Kawasaki's blog.

It's well worth reading, particularly if you're about to pitch for some business in the area. My thanks to Ed Wills on the UK Press list for telling us about it.

I was interested to see Patrick Moore's comments on women in broadcasting plastered everywhere today - and indeed to be asked about them during my technology slot at BBC London.

Having thought about it since, my view remains the same. There may well be more women than men in charge of commissioning programmes at the Beeb, but they're actually commissioning a lot of blokey programmes. When it was primarily men in charge, we had Dallas, we had EastEnders commissioned for the first time, we had Blake's 7 and Doctor Who cancelled. Now we have the female of the species at decision making level and we have Doctor Who back, Life on Mars and its forthcoming sequel Ashes to Ashes, Hustle, loads of stuff.

It's actually a better balance than there's been for a fair while. Yes, there has been a female captain on Star Trek (one of Moore's gripes) but times have changed. It would have been strange if it hadn't happened. By all means there are a lot of makeover shows but in an environment where there are literally hundreds of channels, there's a demand for something cheap and this means reality TV (or 'TV where people will work for nothing' as I like to think of it).

Overall I find myself dismayed to say the women are looking after male interests on telly much, much better than the blokes had been doing for a fair while. I'd be interested to hear from any women with views on how we served them when the balance was the other way around a few years back.

The Shilpa Shetty/Big Brother stuff is coming to a head nicely - 21,000 complaints at last count because of racism in the house. There are arguments and counter-arguments; I'd have to agree on the surface that 'dog', which she has been called, is not actually a racist term of abuse, it's usually sexist, but in the context of all the rest it's probably been applied to her because she's Indian and therefore a "Paki" (although how that's supposed to work geographically I have no idea - presumably the bigots will find someone from Pakistan and call them an Indi in the interests of balance).

Personally I'm delighted by what's happening. Let me rephrase. I deplore what's happening to Ms. Shetty as an individual - nobody should have to go through that. On the other hand, in my experience most racists and bigots shout their abuse at people who are different then go home and forget about them. It rarely occurs to them that these people are individuals with families, feelings and rights. On Celebrity Big Brother the bigots can watch the abuse and no doubt find it jolly amusing - but then they have to watch the reaction. Probably for the first time they're sitting there seeing what happens after someone is abused simply for their skin colour and culture, when they're by themselves and quiet. I doubt that they would have realised the insult doesn't just go away once the aggressor has left the scene.

If one person, be they a builder or a ballet dancer, thinks twice about shouting abuse next time, or reconsiders their BNP membership as a result of watching Shilpa, this might have been worth it.

Initially my reaction was one of anger; he's been on the radio (something I'm keen to build on as long-term readers will know, so let's acknowledge the professional jealousy angle immediately) and talked about something of which he has little first-hand knowledge. And contrary to his blog's claim that Microsoft didn't send out any review copies of Windows Vista for review until January, I and loads of other tech journalists have been playing with the beta release for months (you get it by phoning the press office and asking).

Then I had another think. Isn't every journalist prone to review books or equipment turning up late? Can we honestly all claim that we've never done anything in a hurry with a slightly shaky brief? So how is this case different and why did I react angrily?

Two possible reasons spring to mind. One is simple professional jealousy. I'm not proud of my feelings here but I'd love to go on the World Service and if I've seen Vista and used it then a large part of me says that should have been my gig rather than that of someone who hasn't even seen the damned thing. The second, which is more serious to my mind, is in blogging the transgression afterwards. If someone found the broadcast interesting they might, for example, do a web search on the journalists involved. They might find the blog and then see the programme completely undermined by one of the contributors.

As a competitive journalist I'm annoyed at it for reasons of petty jealousy, I admit it. If I were the producer and found my programme being apparently dismissed in this way, I think I'd be furious.

Albeit only as a brand within the BBC, talking about tech stories under the auspices of Maggie Philbin. On a personal level of course I find this highly frustrating. Readers will be aware that over Christmas I did a little tech spot on BBC London and if all of the tech spots are now going to come under one banner then it's thank you and goodnight to me.

I'm looking forward to it, though, not because of the quality of the stories or the (deserved) resurgence in Maggie Philbin's career, but because they might start dropping clangers again. Does everyone else remember how we were all going to be wearing high-tech clothing made of old vinyl records by the 1980s (predicted in the 1960s)? Or how CDs were foolproof and completely indestructible?

Of course there'll be the sensible stuff as well, but personally I wish Maggie Philbin every success and courage in coming out with as much cock-eyed tripe as the new formats will take. That was always half the fun of the original.

The beeb says in its report that he gave the interview on the understanding that it was for background and would not be broadcast. It seems that now he's a murder suspect their undertaking is null and void. I'm not comfortable with this.

There are a few reasons for my unease. First, remember he's a suspect and has yet to stand trial. So by law he's assumed innocent until proven guilty. This means the BBC is trashing a promise to an innocent man for the sake of a story. The world now knows he pays for prostitutes.

Also, even if he's guilty - and please don't tell me his trial can't be prejudiced by the above disclosure - when did it become OK to break a promise of confidentiality just because someone's a criminal? I can see the logic of handing the interview to the police. Lives are being lost here so of course anything material should be disclosed. But publishing or broadcasting has nothing to do with preventing further killing. Instead it has everything to do with chasing a story no matter whose word is broken in the process.

But who's going to give the BBC a backround interview again? I don't think I'd trust them. And as always it's the viewer, whose stories won't be as well-informed as previously because of people holding back, who'll suffer.

It's back:

http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/article/051206/wilmington_buys_press_gazette_magazine_journalism_newspaper

The only question remaining will be how they address a readership whose members share less and less in common with each other.

For my money, after discussion with a number of fellow hacks, I'd agree that the nature of journalists has changed since the PG's heyday. In the 1980s desktop publishing started and with that came a whole bunch of DTP'd magazines. Many were about computers. This is important because these magazines brought with them a new form of journalist, one who popped up ready-formed rather than going through the traditional local press followed by national press route. This has spread way beyond the IT press by now.

This meant that a lot of journalists - many of whom are now pretty senior - have grown up respecting but taking no real interest in the regional press. This in turn made a lot of the content of the PG redundant for a lot of its readership.

I don't know what you do when your readers start to fragment, and by dividing its pages up accordingly PG did its best. Other issues contributed, though. As a former contributor I'll admit to finding it galling that the MD who took it increasingly into loss and then buried it was on £133,000 per annum while contributors were getting £190 per 1000 words. The commissioning editors often seemed embarrassed at the word rate and I don't blame them.

I'd like to think there'll be another trade mag for the press emerging at some stage, but the silo mentality - in which the magazine journalists are only interested in passing in the newspaper journalists and in which trade journalists don't readily identify themselves with their colleagues on the regionals- will remain an obstacle for anyone attempting to set it up.

And that's from an editorial point of view only. How you'd make a case for advertising in a mag that attempted to straddle all of those groups I just don't know.

http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/article/241106/press_gazette_closes_40_years_magazines_journalism

Dismal news. The UK press is now without its own trade rag.

If any of the staff are reading, I wish you luck in everything you go on to do.

I had a bad feeling about this when they started canvassing for new owners on their front page a little while back. I can only hope that someone's in there - no doubt waiting for the price to go down - and will keep the thing running.

Mind you, if someone does step in and buy it at bargain basement prices you can't help but imagine the rate they pay freelances, which is already unspectacular, will sink even further.

There is an excellent article on the subject here at journalism.co.uk. It's worth reading, and to the hints in there I'd add:

1. Try to understand what the editor has to do for a living. Make it simpler and you'll succeed.
2. Remember they can always buy articles from elsewhere.
3. Specialise in something - my own freelancing has only taken off since people have thought 'small business, we'll ask Guy'
4. Never take a rejection personally. The editor doesn't know you, they know your idea.

I've written for the PG on a number of occasions and agree the current arrangements aren't entirely satisfactory. It's co-owned by ex-PR supremo Matthew Freud and ex-Mirror editor Piers Morgan. And there has been a lot of controversy as a result, with editors boycotting the awards because of Morgan and soforth.

My guess is that they're doing the right thing in getting out. I don't know how they didn't see the difficulties coming in the first place. But the really awkward thing is, if you have to advertise for a new owner on your front cover as the PG is now doing, aren't you really admitting your magazine is in serious trouble?

The full story is in the Guardian and it's certainly a coup for the Murdoch empire. I can't help wondering though, whether it's actually too late. I watched the first few episodes and then sort of tuned out, and according to the Guardian's report |'m not alone.

It wasn't that the episodes had got worse or anything, I should add - just that forcing my wife to sit through the revamped Doctor Who was enough for her to bear and I decided to compromise somewhere (we;ll be recording Torchwood on Sunday, of course, what with Prime Suspect being so good last week).

But Lost shed a lot of viewers between seasons one and two. It's likely to do the same for season 3 and this effect will be magnified by a move to satellite. Has Sky done itself any favours? Personally I think not. Lost is the sort of series whose viewers will frankly already have satellite or cable in their homes. With Freeview coming around as a competitor, if I were in charge of the Murdoch channels I'd be looking for a way to bring new viewers in rather than appease those I already had.

The inevitable has happened - ITV has demanded the resignation of its chief executive, Charles Allen, or so the BBC says. For all I know he resigned to spend more time with his family.

The question will be where ITV goes from here, though. The ratings are in free-fall and so, I'm afraid, is the quality. Other than Corrie fans I find it hard to think of anyone who has a good word to say about much of its output. The question will not be whether they replace Allen with someone who can learn from his mistakes but whether a change in chief executive is going to be enough to turn the thing around.

As to who replaces him, one name not in the BBC's report but who's offered his services, albeit light-heartedly, is that nice Greg Dyke, late of the BBC. I wonder...

Let's accept for the moment that the Guardian has never had much of a liking for ITV. The news coverage from ITN has a right-wing slant which will be anathema to such a famously liberal (with a lower-case 'l') paper. It doesn't have the lofty detachment the BBC can afford because of its state-subsidised status.

Nevertheless, predicting the downfall of the channel could be argued as a bit extreme - until you look at the recent output. Philip Schofield's new show canned after a single episode. Love Island, give me strength...

ITV could, just about, pull it around except for one thing. It's announced big cuts in drama. The BBC's star is firmly in the ascendant precisely because of drama - Doctor Who, the forthcoming Robin Hood, Life on Mars, the more realistic stuff like Sorted, The Street - it's finding that people actually like well-written and well-produced stories and they'll watch in numbers.

ITV - which gave us The Sweeney, Jeremy Brett's Sherlock Holmes, Brideshead Revisited and the Jewel in the Crown, has instead pinned its hopes on formats that are by now proven disasters or cheap dramas with stars the BBC has already nurtured and established (which kind of reasserts the BBC's mastery over the television craft). I can't honestly see a way back. I hope to be proven wrong.

Let me say first that I have no idea whether or not the men accused of murdering Stephen Lawrence are guilty or not. The consensus seems to be that they are; the courts decided otherwise some time ago.

As I say, I have no idea. But I do feel, pretty strongly, that if there's new evidence then the place for it is at New Scotland Yard, or indeed Stephen Lawrence House rather than a TV programme. I have no doubt that the current incarnation of the Met will take the allegations very seriously - they'll also have to take into account that they came from a self-confessed bent copper - and investigate anything new that arises.

But the accused lawyers, should they come to trial again under the double jeopardy rules. will have a pretty cast-iron case saying that the men can't get a fair trial because the media has convinced everyone of their guilt in advance. I'm not entirely sure how that helps.

Incredible.

Last year ITV made itself look completely stupid with a show called 'Celebrity Love Island'. The premise was that a load of single celebrities went to an island, sunbathed, and, er, not a lot else happened.

Unbelievably they've brought it back but to make things really relevant and down to earth - yes, that's irony - they've reduced the celebrity content. That is to say they've taken the word out of the title so when you don't recognise any of the celebs, you don't mind so much.

And what do you know, it's a ratings disaster again. 3.2 million for a first episode.

Anyone with the least idea why they thought this tosh might be more popular a second time around is more than welcome to get in touch.

OK, it's all over the papers (fnar fnar), radio and TV - Jonathan Ross made a lewd comment to David Cameron about whether he fantasised about Margaret Thatcher on ye olden days when she was PM. The Independent's coverage is accurate and brief.

Personally I don't give a stuff whether Ross has made inappropriate comments - on balance he delivers the viewers which is what he's paid for, and if everyone's really offended they can soon find the 'off' switch on their telly (deprive him of viewers and listeners and watch that lucrative contract get rewritten). Three things, though, stand out for me about the whole affair.

First is the predictable and regrettable number of people chipping in on radio programmes and elsewhere with 'I didn't see it but my opinion is...' Look, if you didn't see it, shut up about it. It's that blunt.

Second is that it makes a good cover for the pretty unremarkable job Ross was doing of asking serious questions of the would-be Prime Minister. This leads me to the third point, which is that I don't actually understand the objectives of anyone taking part. Did Ross and his team think laugh-a-minute Dave would fall in with the ribaldry and make an all-singing and dancing smut-fest? Or did Cameron and his advisors think Ross would tone down what you might call the 'Ross quotient' and do a reasonably straight interview?

My best guess - and I stress 'guess' - is that actually, the outcome was precisely as predicted for both parties. Ross got a potential PM on the show, which was a coup. He's also in all the papers for a question which was broadcast in what was apparently a ten-minute extract from a longer, 40-minute, interview. Cameron, meanwhile, looks a bit fearless to the new Tories and has dealt a further one in the eye to the older factions who've been losing the party successive elections, and of whom he clearly can't wait to be rid so he can complete his new Conservative project just as Tony Blair could only complete New Labour once a load of the old left had walked.

Cynical? Me? OK, why else would he have agreed to go on a show so renowned for its laddish innuendo?

Sorry, been a bit quiet round here as I've been editing a book. All done now I'm happy to say.

And apparenty I haven't missed much. The big media story today seems to be the Guy Kewney not-appearing-but-a-taxi-driver-in-his-place story, which is causing much mirth and many headlines.

I blogged it last Thursday, as did Guy, you'll notice (see below). Nice to see the papers are on the ball as always.

Broadcast news should be different from newspaper journalism in one key area. The law says that broadcast news, because of its ubiquity, must be impartial. There are no such constraints on newspapers, hence the fact that MPs regularly moan about the BBC and never about the Daily Mail.

So I was surprised when last night the ITV News launched its Prescott Watch campaign, in which it plans to scrutinise the newly-disempowered DPM's activities and see whether they merit public money.

It might be an important issue. It might be worth investigating. But it's a vendetta against one individual and a pretty clear attack on the one party. Which isn't what ITN is supposed to be doing.

So I've decided to mount an occasional ITN Watch. Anyone with examples of non-news from ITN is more than welcome to comment or mail me.

In spite of the recent revelations about how much various radio presenters are earning (see the story in the Guardian here) I have decided my salary must remain a secret.

There are a couple of reasons for this. First, looking at the levels of compensation on display at the BBC, everyone will start calling me 'church mouse' if they find out what I earn.

Second, like a lot of jobbing freelances, I have no idea what I'll be doing for a living a couple of months from now. So my salary is a secret from me, too...

When is a story not a story? I'll tell you - it's when ITV News leads in on a Saturday evening with something about how 100,000 children might die if there's a bird flu pandemic but the Government might just be able to reduce that figure to 50,000.

These are horrifying figures until you dig a little deeper. As the news bulletin itself admitted, there has only been one case of bird flu diagnosed in the UK as yet and many of the signs are that it was an isolated incident. They didn't mention, although I'd suggest they should have, that even in the countries in which bird flu has become established there has been no pandemic.

The actual story was that the Government has been working through every possible scenario and the very, very worst is that could be a major problem with loss of infant life. It has therefore worked out how to reduce that loss, albeit leaving an appalling figure still doomed.

But this is what the Government should be doing at a time like this. It's highly unlikely that the worst-case stuff is going to happen. Massively so. Rather than panic, I find it reassuring that someone somewhere is working through just about every permutation of what might eventually take place and how best to increase my daughter's chances under any awful circumstances whatsoever.

Which, funnily enough, wasn't the rather tabloid tack taken by the ITV News.

You might have noticed that Apple Computer and the Beatles are back in court, arguing about who owns the rights to the 'Apple' trademark when it comes to music. Apple Computer says it can distribute digital content, the surviving Beatles are saying naff off Apple Corps set up in the sixties as a music company so music and Apple is ours.

I don't want to comment on a court case that's ongoing, of course, but the media's reaction is interesting. Suddenly Apple Computer is portrayed as the villain - they've had a few judgements in France going against them, too, about rights management, so they're ripe for a kicking.

This is all too familiar in the IT industry and elsewhere. You might remember 15 years or so ago that even starting a word processor wasn't all that straightforward - you had to enter the right commands, you wouldn't have had one at home, you'd probably need some elementary training. Micosoft put a stop to that with Windows; just about anyone can operate a computer now, and within a few years Microsoft was predictably being criticised for achieving this. Skip a few years and we come to Google, the golden people of simple searching, and who have met with adverse publicity as they've grown simply because they're big.

And now it's Apple's turn. In this instance there are no issues surrounding anti-trust rulings as in the Microsoft case, nor any pervasiveness in computing as in Google - but they're suddenly very successful as a music distributor. So the press is having a go.

One day we've got to stop doing this to companies unless we believe they've actually done something wrong...

The Prime Minister's comments reported this morning are clear enough - there's a video link on this page in which you can see him admitting that the announcement that he would not serve a complete third term may have been a mistake. That's not what the Express says he said of course; that paper says he said it was a 'total catastrophe' which, although he and some others might think it, is a complete misrepresentation of his actual words.

What I find hilarious about this is Downing Street's attempt to come into the story later and 'clarify' things. The radio this morning was full of whoever 'Downing Street' actually comprises. Currently Downing Street is saying what he meant was the announcement rather than the decision not to stand, which is fair. Earlier a report on BBC London said Downing Street had denied he'd said he made a mistake.

Unfortunately for Downing Street they've had to stop that, because what he said is actually on tape and the audio is now doing the rounds. My life as a reporter is frequently made difficult by people in PR or marketing telling me what was actually said in an interview they didn't attend. Years ago I was berated by the marketing manager of a computer distributor because one of his colleagues 'didn't say' something I'd quoted. Well actually, he did, I told them, and you weren't on the call so you wouldn't know about this. But I've spoken to him, came the reply.

It's easy to say something you didn't actually mean when you're put on the spot, anyone can understand that. During a media training session once I used the old 'silence' trick to see whether the MD would fill the gap by waffling, and he accidentally told me his company was in merger talks with a telecoms company (he watched the tape later in disbelief, conceding that he'd said it but stressing, even in confidence, that it just wasn't true and he didn't know how he'd ended up saying it). Had this been a real interview he would almost certainly have lost his job as a result. He was reasonable enough to concede that this would have been his own fault. Not everyone does so. On another occasion I was accused of fabricating a story that a printer manufacturer had been involved in a 'row'. There was no row, said the MD, this is a lie - when he'd stood up at a public press conference the week before and said there had been 'bloodletting' in the boardroom.

If people would be honest enough to admit they gave a wrong impression, over-egged a story to gain more attention or if they were to say they wanted to bring a bigger point out and hoped for a chance to do so, that would be one thing. If there are any PRs reading, though, please please educate your clients. Tell them that if they genuinely didn't say something they need to make this clear, but if they mean 'I wish I hadn't said that' then they need to take a vastly different approach if they want any sort of amendment published.

Forgive me for not beginning an entry with 'So', but this Norman Kember row - the one about whether he should have thanked his rescuers - is interesting from the media's point of view. In fact I believe it's entirely because of the media that it's become an issue at all. Norman Kember, you see, probably did thank his rescuers and his organisation is protesting precisely that today. What he didn't do was to thank them in public, and for that he is being criticised heavily.

Let's get the obvious out of the way first. I am glad that he is free. But why, do you suppose, did he not pay tribute to the armed forces immediately?

My own view is that this is media manipulation gone wrong. Kember's group, the Christian Peacemakers. pointedly thanked everyone except the soldiers who rescued him yesterday. There's only one possible reason for this omission: the group felt that they had an opportunity to promote their anti-war stance and this was the only day on which they could do it. Kember's release put them into the headlines and the story they didn't want to read was 'Thanks, Army' - they wanted their case to be put. And they had to do it yesterday because once he's home and safe he ceases to be big news.

So, with my media training hat on I can see why they didn't dilute their message. Thank the peacemakers and peace keepers, their media guru would have instructed. Don't mention the army or the Mail or someone will have an 'I needed the army after all' style headline. This is all standard interview practice; concentrate on three key points you want to get across and don't allow anyone to move from them or else your message will become confused.

Unfortunately they forgot to factor in that war was happening and lives had been risked to save Mr. Kember. With hindsight you wonder how they managed not to anticipate the huge and inevitable backlash they're now facing. This is what happens, I believe, when media manipulation is attempted by anyone other than an expert. Common sense has to play its part and you need to anticipate the negative aspect of any spin you try to put on a story.

So it is that Norman Kember has arrived home to a welcome but also to a controversy. He and his group are now claiming they did thank the armed forces and will do so again, but it doesn't sound all that convincing and the comments and statements from yesterday are still around for anyone to inspect. The army were not, repeat not, thanked in public.

This is spin gone disastrously wrong, and if Kember had a distinct point to make other than 'I don't like this war' it's been pretty much lost by now.

Those DVDs are catching up with the papers again. Today on the radio - not for the first time - the news said the newpapers are being asked to be clear about the certificate of the films they give away as promotions so that the newsagents don't end up selling 15s to minors, or whatever.

That's fine and laudable, and if any newsagents who happen to be reading can confirm they're being given training and extra money to handle the extra workload of examining everyone who so much as buys a damned paper I'll be very pleased. Surprised, but pleased.

The Guardian has launched its new comment site with bloggers selected from its columnists. Called Comment is Free you can find it by clicking on that link.

The writing is up to a professional standard of course, and the debate ought to be robust. Thing is, it's not. Hardly anyone had put any reactions down when I posted this entry, in the two days since it launched. OK, hardly anyone comments on this blog either but I don't have the marketing muscle of the Guardian behind me to attract readers.

A couple of things could happen. First it could get better, which I'd welcome. Second, though, we could be on the cusp of discovering that people prefer blogs from amateurs and papers from professionals.

That is of course a wild guess. But at this early stage we really don't know how this blog thing is going to pan out.

P. S. Davinia's ratings were down again last night - 2.3 million in spite of the timeslot change.

So, Tony Blair is being criticised for relying on God as a fallback for justifying the war in Iraq. OK, let's criticise the decision by all means, but let's also look at the context of Blair's comments - you can see them on Parkinson tonight in full.

From the clips on the news, however, Blair's initial statement was that others would judge whether he was right to send the country to war. Pressed a little, he was asked whether he had prayed. He said yes, and Parky - bless him - asked whether he'd prayed to God.

Now, whatever your religious standpoint, that's a daft question. If you're going to pray then by all means let's pray to God. He's well known for accepting prayers as some sort of divine right. If you insist on praying, God's the very man to act as recipient. It's better use of your mental energy than, say, praying to a cheese and tomato sandwich.

But Blair still hedged, saying he didn't really want to go into all that - and pressed again, he said yes, he'd prayed to God.

Then you get the headlines - Blair prayed to God about Iraq war, which makes it look as though he said it straight out and was using it as some sort of justification. And the criticism starts.

But that's not the way it came out. Blair may well have been appallingly wrong about the war, or he may not, but something of which he is not guilty is of dodging the notion that he's responsible for what has happened. From what I saw on the news from him rather than the headlines, he takes that very seriously indeed.

Do yourself a favour - watch the interview first, then check this article in the Daily Mail. By all means disagree with Blair, but there's no way that article or any of the others adopting its standpoint and tone reflects what's actually going on here.

...but this is a good one. The BBC is at last admitting it made a mistake in canceling one of its biggest hitters and reinstating the "Play for Today" strand.

People of a certain age, about 40 like me, will remember a lot of these plays very fondly. Generations of writers including Dennis Potter and (I think) Jack Rosenthal were able to present one-off dramas and it wasn't thought all that extraordinary that they were doing so. It was simply good quality drama, the sort of thing television was for. If you doubt it then look at the current run of "Play for Today" repeats running on BBC4.

New writers getting the same opportunity in 2006 is fabulous news. I can't help feeling, though, with the return of Brucie and Doctor Who to Saturday nights and now this, that the last 20 years have been a bit of a waste of time in cultural terms.

There's some sobering news for newspaper publishers on the Guardian's website here. It seems that changing format, whether to Berliner or tabloid, is likely to result in a long-term increase in sales of only one per cent.

This will be a blow to the Guardian's sister paper, the Observer, which has put on 30 per cent since shrinking in January and if the figure is right it can now watch that gain fade back to almost nothing. What will be most interesting, though, is whether papers that don't adopt a new format will see their circulations falling. The Telegraph and the FT are the only weekday mainstream examples covering the whole of the UK, with the FT being in a bit of a niche anyway.

My guess is that if the Telegraph doesn't do something it will find its market slowly ebbing away. If I'm wrong, of course, then it means the Guardian, Times and Indie have spent a fortune on putting on only one per cent.

I see The Scotsman has started video podcasting in a small way. It's hoping, it tells journalism.co.uk, that there will be a commercial angle to this pretty soon - people will realise they can watch videos on their iPods which tell them about their area and they'll be motivated. Also, if you have iTunes, you can subscribe to a thing called Mooky - which is a sort of comedy montage of video for mobile media.

This is all very interesting but what nobody has been prepared to say is 'THIS is how it's going to make money and here are some figures stacking up'. The technology to watch video on an iPod has only been around since September so maybe that's not a surprise.

On the audio podcasting front, Ricky Gervais continues to dominate with his offering through the Guardian - but he's about to start charging. I wonder how many of his registered listeners are people like me: I've downloaded every episode and honestly plan to listen to them when I get a moment, but the thought of paying for more will turn me off as a listener pretty quickly.

I have a feeling the serious test of the viability of commercial podcasting is about to start. I'll be keeping a close eye on it.

So, Yahoo! is going to launch a social networking site in the UK. This is presumably a kneejerk reaction to Rupert Murdoch's impending launch in the area and the hope that, like the American Murdoch site, they'll find an Arctic Monkeys all by themselves.

Well, maybe. On the other hand I can't help wondering why you need a special UK site. It's on the Net, everyone can log on - so what's special about appealing to a single country, as long as there's no language barrier? Also, for every Arctic Monkeys - well all right, there's only been the one - there have been thousands of groups not making it, social network or not.

It could be an age thing but I'm a little suspicious of anyone claiming they can revolutionise a social life through a computer network anyway. We'll see where it goes, but the idea of sitting in front of a computer any longer than is absolutely necessary sounds pretty antisocial to me.

There's a truly interesting piece in The Independent's media section on its website today - click to that link and it should show up. Essentially, as people who read the Press Gazette will already know, a load of people at the Guardian have been shifted across to work on Guardian Unlimited, the website of the same paper.

Editor Alan Rusbridger seems to believe the Web is the way people will want to read papers in the future. So he's throwing resources at it. It must be an odd time to be in PR; do you pitch stories at the website or the paper, and how do you explain your decision to the client?

What's really interesting, though, is Rusbridger's candour about not knowing how this is supposed to end up paying for itself. If I buy a copy of the Guardian I've paid 70p and so do thousands of others. If I don't, I don't and it's really no more complicated than that - except if I don't buy the paper the Guardian doesn't get a penny out of me. So, how do you finance future editions?

The obvious answer is to increase advertising rates, but is that going to work? You need a critical mass of readers in place before you can sensibly opt for that and the Guardian is going through transition rather than reaching millions on the web just yet.

I'm not going to claim I have the answer. If Rusbridger doesn't know, with all his experience, I'm damned certain I don't either. But after all the flannel we had in the nineties about how the Web was going to rescue everything, it's refreshing to see someone honest enough in a senior position to admit they haven't got a clue where this is going.

Yesterday I had a phone interview set up. The interviewee was going to talk to me about services for companies setting up overseas, funding available, that sort of thing. All good stuff, and it was only mildly disappointing when he turned out not to have much to say on that subject but plenty on something indirectly related. This is an occupational hazard - an overenthusiastic PR sets up a not-entirely-appropriate interview; it's their job to market their clients and my job to sift, that's fine. I started to make that point.

Hang on, he says. Can we see what you're writing before you publish.

OK, for the uninitiated, there is one absolute no-no to journalists, and that is submitting copy for independent magazines and newspapers to interviewees before it's published. Never ever. There are numerous reasons for this: it inhibits freedom of the press, which is a fundamental right in this country. It damages a story; people almost always try to water down what they actually said, so you end up with a distorted, sanitised picture of what happened. It sort of hints that the interviewee doesn't trust the journalist to do their job. It implies an agreement not to change a word afterwards, which would actually be in the hands of editors, subs and other people beyond the writer's control.

Normally I'd be sympathetic in my explanation of this, but this was a director of a public concern and he had a professional PR to back him up (and we'd already established I wouldn't be using his quotes, so what the hell he thought he was doing asking I don't know). He should have known better. So I basically told him no, in one word. I also told him no professional journalist would or should ever do such a thing. It's at this point he became really unco-operative. He'd 'done me the courtesy of his time' and I was being 'curt'.

Actually he was obviously not going to say anything of value once he'd established he wasn't going to be able to copy-check, so I didn't see the point of wasting his time any further. People who've dealt with me will mostly confirm I'm not habitually unpleasant. I think what really got to me was that he'd been paying PR professionals to brief him, to find out what a journalist would need and how long it would take (I'd never asked for more than a ten minute call) and he was still dropping such naive clangers with the basics. Makes me wonder what some PRs - not many - think their job actually is. Managing client's expectations strikes me as pretty basic.

* I suppose I ought to say something about those cartoons about the prophet Mohammed and whether they should be published in the UK. Moral and religious issues aside, no they shouldn't - I've had a look at the Net and they're sub-standard rubbish. The only possible reason to publish would be to cause offense or stir up controversy, and for that reason alone I'd urge everyone not to give them airtime. As long as the protests stay non-violent and legal they have my support - as above, peaceful protest is a fundamental right in this country.

There was a fascinating piece in yesterday's Guardian by the people at Endemol who bring us Big Brother. You need to register to read it, and you can find it here. Essentially Endemol head man Peter Bazalgette is crowing - understandably - about the success of the latest Celebrity captive show. The reality show isn't dead, he says, something profound is happening to TV these days.

Well, yes and no. The show was a collossal hit of course, and it gave us all a powerful insight into (for example) that nice Mr. Galloway. But it's not actually revolutionary or new. Putting people into extreme or odd situations and watching them has been happening since Candid Camera. Big Brother simply exaggerates it and spins it out for longer. The real revelation to media bosses over the last year is what's happened on Saturday evenings. Bruce Forsyth, Doctor Who, some music...these elements revived Saturday evening family viewing and made that time of the week primetime again.

And that tells us something profound. It tells us that contrary to the perception that we're all more sophisticated than previous generations of viewers, we're not. We're roughly the same and respond to the same mix in our entertainments. TV executives had, in short, mis-read their audience almost completely.

Funnily enough you don't see many of them writing articles saying so...

I had another one of those great calls this morning. Hello, they said, this is X from XX PR and we have a client who's right in your area. You're a leading journalist in our market and they're dying to meet you.

OK, I say, and we make an appointment. One more thing, they say. Could you send us some clippings and tell us who you write for so we can brief the client? Thanks, Gary.

So let's set ego to one side for the moment. I get called Gary a lot and I understand it's an easy mistake to make. I get called Chapperton, Clapton and Crapperton with alarming regularity. That's fine, they're understandable slips. And I have no particular right to expect people to be familiar with my work.

Unless, that is, they're a communications professional who's just told me how important it is to them. Then I might expect, say, that they've glanced at my website, done a Google search, whatever - I'm not difficult to find.