.
THE THINGS THEY SAY
Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad — Miles Kington
TODAY’S PAPERS
CARTOON OF THE DAY
Andy Davey, Torygraph
Is this the dawning of a station called SunTalk?
What to do with the runt of the News UK broadcasting litter, namely Talk, asks Popbitch. Perhaps another name change?
The radio station that was once known as Talk Radio, switched to a TV format called Talk TV with a LOT of money spent on it (it lost £150 million in two years) then reverted to a bizarre radio/online hybrid called Talk, is rumoured to be getting refreshed and linked more closely to The Sun newspaper.
Don’t be surprised to see it re-emerge as SunTalk, complete with more Reform Party-esque views than its current more pluralistic incarnation.
Two former Express journalists, Mike Graham and Julia Hartley Brewer, are big names on the station — at least they were when we last checked.
Er … do you mean terracotta?
WE humble hacks on the Drone are no experts on horticulture but we know a terracotta pot when we see one and this definitely ain’t one.
Former Express sub Nick Hill, spotted this offering while surfing the interweb for gardening requisites.
He said: “Shouldn’t that be Terrence?
“I think we are enduring roughly the seventh generation of illiteracy. When we worked, we were enraged by it. Now it can be simply… amusing.”
Yep, spot on Nick, you win today’s star prize for being our top cotter spotter.
Send our regards to Terrence. The world’s gone totally potty.
STAFF OUTRAGE AT REACH
Hard-pressed subs and newsdesk to be told to work across all three titles
EXCLUSIVE By RICHARD DISMORE
BOSSES at Reach are set to merge subbing operations and news desks on their three national titles, the Express, Mirror and Star, say sources at the troubled news group.
The claim comes soon after the Daily Drone revealed that sports desks were being combined into a central hub, with the loss of 50 editorial jobs.
The latest money-saving move by Reach executives is partly triggered by the reluctance of sub-editors to work on copy for other titles than their own.
They claim that stories often have obvious holes in them because print reporters have been pulled off them early to reboot them for the online operation.
One sub said: “I preferred it when we were owned by dodgy Desmond. At least he realised people won’t pay £1.30 for a newspaper that’s full of crap and padding with giant showbiz photos.”
Reporters are also worried that they will be asked to work across the titles. They already complain that they are “run ragged” working for a dual online and print news desk.
Journalists are dismayed at the harm Reach is doing to its top titles. “The Mirror political desk, which broke Partygate, now just doggedly reproduces No10 Press releases, with no analysis or criticism. It’s a farce,” grumbled one.
Reach has yet to confirm the speculation but it is so rife that journalists on the newspapers are receiving messages from friends on rival publications asking if it is true and when the merger is happening.
THE POWER OF DRONE Bailiffs demolish Park Lane shanty town a day after we pointed out the disgusting mess shaming London
Alan Frame’s column Saturday’s Daily Mail
The World’s Greatest Online Newspaper wins again! Just a day after Daily Drone columnist ALAN FRAME pointed out the mess created by an encampment of Romanians in one of London’s most exclusive streets, bailiffs moved in to throw the intruders out.
It is encouraging to know that the authorities are at last doing their best to stop Britain resembling a third world country. We can only hope it’s not too late.
Did the Drone really inspire the clean up? We really don’t know, we like to think so— but we do know that Lord Drone’s Mighty Organ is widely read in the media industry and in the country’s smartest salons.
Short shrift for staff as Reach blows the whistle on 50 more sports jobs
WE don’t like to crow but we are going to anyway. Just a few days after the Drone published these identical back pages of the Express, Mirror and Star, publisher Reach has announced the loss of 50 editorial jobs in sport.
The three pages indicated that something was amiss with staffing levels and were an ominous warning of what was to come. Now the unthinkable has happened.
Shocked staff were told yesterday that management has proposed major changes to how its sports journalists work, merging many of its national and regional teams in England into a central hub.
One sports sub told the Drone: “Reach is so utterly miserable I may volunteer to go and do proper journalism.
“They are utterly clueless. We are all being flogged to death as so many staff have gone and they reward us with this.
“There is a feeling of utter fury in the Reach office especially after the clueless new CEO says he wants to replace journos with Bots.”
Reporters will write across any of its national and regional titles in an attempt to end writers in different newsrooms covering the same events.
A team of specialist journalists will continue to be dedicated to the “most popular” football clubs and certain specialist sports like F1 and tennis but will write across Reach brands instead of for one title.
The things they used to say on the Boulevard of Broken Dreams
By PAT WELLAND
With nothing better to do, I’ve been re-reading a couple of books about the Boulevard at a time now seen – as one of the authors remarks – “as remote as the Byzantine empire”.
From political commentator Alan Watkins’ excellent A Short Walk Down Fleet Street, two conversations between Jack Nener, “a foul-mouthed bow-tied Swansea boy” who was Mirror editor 53-61, and his deputy, Dick Dinsdale:
1. “What we need on this paper, Jack, are a few Young Turks.”
Nener: “I can see we could do with a few new faces about the place, but why in fuck’s name do they have to be Turkish?”
2. “The sub-editors, like most people who work long shifts in unchanging company, had a number of catchphrases, or joke sentences. One of them – it comes from the film of Tom Brown’s Schooldays, rather than from the book itself – was: ‘Flashman, you are a bully and a liar, and there is no place for you in this school.’
Nener was overheard asking: ‘Who’s this Flashman, then, Dick?’
‘Flashman? Flashman? I don’t think we’ve got any one of that name on the paper, Jack. Is he a reporter or a sub?’
‘I don’t give a fuck what he is, but get rid of him fucking quick. He’s a bully and a liar’.”
3. From Matthew Engel’s equally enjoyable Tickle the Public – 100 years of the popular press: “There is a story that around 1926 John Logie Baird went into the Express office anxious to show his new invention (TV, as any fule kno) to the editor (Beverley Baxter). Baxter, in keeping with the paper’s reputation for percipience, sent down the message ‘Get rid of that lunatic. He may have a knife'.”
NEW TODAY
Much pious wailing and gnashing of teeth over Gaza. Israel’s retaliatory killings, the destruction, the deprivation have, truly, been terrible. So much so that Hamas must surely regret its deliberate, systematic attack on October 7 targeting innocent Israeli non-combatants. The brutal slaughter, rape, hostage-taking. The cruel sexual violence, the mutilation, the annihilation of whole families, the youngest just 14 hours old. Just think, if Hamas hadn’t committed acts which have been classified as crimes against humanity and war crimes bordering on genocide, the Israelis would not have been provoked into bloody revenge. Thousands, now dead, would be alive today.
MP Materials. Hardly a company name on everybody’s lips. Yet last week its stock soared 50% in one day after the Pentagon bought a $400 million stake. Then, Apple weighed in with a $500 million deal adding another 19% to MP’s share price, meaning it has quadrupled since the start of the year. What’s going on? The company, based in Texas, operates the only rare earth mine in the US and produces magnets vital to producing military weapons and other tech. Cautionary note: China mines 70% of the world’s rare earths and refines 90%. Yikes!
I hope t’lads at that iconic Labour gathering, the Durham Miners’ Gala, are proud of the fact that 30 women were heckled, jostled, assaulted — one was head-butted by a trans activist and needed police protection when they demonstrated at the event. Rose Reeve, of the Northern RadFem Network told Sp!ked: ‘Unions have failed to support female members who have been victimised, harassed and disciplined — in some cases even losing their jobs — simply for stating that men can‘t change sex.’
Tebbit anecdotes abound since his death. He once perceptively observed that there is a built-in mechanism preventing prime ministers holding power for more than a decade. Working with Thatcher, he watched as the list of ministers she had sacked for policy differences, or their inadequacy, lengthened. There was also a growing number of wannabes who had ‘never been invited to serve’. Eventually, as prime minister, you have more enemies and friends.
Les tricoteuses are busy at the Beeb: latest head on the block is MasterChef’s John Torode, sacked for uttering the N word (which he says he doesn’t remember) at an after-work gathering seven or eight years ago. Richard Osman says it was ‘the worst racial slur there is’ although it’s not clear what the fuck it’s got to do with him. Calm down! Calm down! We’ve all sat through films where the word has been used liberally, such as 12 Years A Slave, directed by black director Steve McQueen, and Tarantino’s Django Unchained where it’s used about 100 times. And for the more mature, it’s just the name of Guy Gibson’s dog in The Dambusters.
BBC Climate Editor Justin Rowlatt presents a TV report on the drought and the prospects of a hosepipe ban in the Midlands in persistent rain in his shirt sleeves. Shouldapackedamac.
Proving that there’s little more tedious than a coffee bore, comes the news that summer’s buzziest drink is the Hojicha Latte. Said to be matcha’s ‘toasty cousin’, it is made from charcoal-roasted green tea leaves that provide a ‘nutty, earthy, caramelised’ flavour. Matchado in Chiswick, a favourite for Drone SCCs to gather to swap ideas for their outpourings, offers (wait for it) ‘a silky-headed Hojicha with the depth of flavour you’d find in a hot chocolate, minus the sweetness, and with a bit more forest floor.’ It’s all bollocks, isn’t it? (Yes, I’ve tasted Hojicha, it’s disgusting — Ed)
Hot news: No wonder hacks at the Guardian look anxiously at the weather forecast. In this heatwave summer, they’re hoping for a cold snap. According to Popbitch, every time it gets hot outside an email is sent to staff saying that in order to ‘protect the landlord’s air conditioning system from damage’ their AC has carried out an ‘automated controlled shutdown’.
If you doubted that we live in the Age of Bollocks (official): Up-market grocers Erewhon in Los Angeles are offering ‘individually wrapped’ strawberries at $19 each. It’s part of a boom in ‘luxury fruit’ which has included a $395 Costa Rican pineapple and Japanese Crown melons, known for their sweetness and texture, which also go for hundreds.
A reader writes: ‘I was puzzled by a reference to the phrase “Double fuck off” scratched on Steve Wood’s Art Desk slide rule’. Spike Diver explains: ‘You will be familiar with the phrase “Never darken my door again” which is the vanilla/missionary position version of Double FO. This simply means: Fuck Off and when you’ve Fucked Off, Fuck Off again.’ (That’s more than enough of four-letter expletives masquerading as your actual serious satire — Ed).
The largest chunk of Mars (the planet, not the choc bar) on Earth has been sold for $5.3 million at Sotheby’s. The 54lb rock was discovered by a meteorite hunter (who knew?) in the Sahara. It is believed to have been propelled the 140 million miles there after an asteroid struck Mars.
CountryFile: Mixed reaction to the tale of a neighbour shooting magpies in his garden. Some smelling salts waved, it is true, but most feel the culling of these vicious, nasty predators which terrorise smaller, cuter birds is permissible. Mind you, shooting is considered rather effete by regulars in the Lurcher Lounge of the Dog and Muffler. One rustic made a trap which caged the magpies. At the end of the day he’d go out, wring their necks and chuck ‘em in the bin. Latest score: Neighbour 5, Magpies 0.
Around 1,500 venomous Tarantulas are found packed into individual plastic boxes at Cologne Airport. The spiders were dispatched from Vietnam. Most failed to survive.
PhraseOfTheYear: Early runners in the Drone’s exciting new contest (brought to you in conjunction with Tena Re-usable Boxers For Light Leaks): In Short Order (as applied to ‘one in, one out’ migration); You wouldn’t expect me to write the Budget on live television; At Pace (as applied to any action initiated by Labour); I’m not going to give a running commentary. Late flash: Starmer does a lap of honour at PMQs repeating last year’s winner: £22 billion black hole.
NMPKT: The remains of the Curia Pompei in Rome, where the Senate assembled and where Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC, is now a cat sanctuary.
TechTip: In reply to a reader confused by password requests: when they ask for eight characters plus a capital, they don't mean: MickeyMinnieDonaldPlutoGoofyTiggerEeyorePigletMadrid.
CrazyExoticBylines (All genuine): Tashan Deniran-Alleyne, Casey Cooper-Fiske, Rebecca Speare-Cole, Henry Saker-Clark, Lauren Del Fabbro, Mathilda Grandjean, Rueben Rosso-Powell, Charlotte Horsfall Page.
LittleWhiteLies: I’ll certainly give that some thought = In one ear and out the other, matey.
TheThingsTheySay: ‘Our new agreement with the US will save thousands of jobs in our car industry.’ Sir K, writing in the Mirror, May 8. ‘Jaguar Land Rover is swinging the axe — up to 500 management roles are set to go.’ — News item, July 17.
ThisSportingStrife: In 2013 when the British and Irish Lions won the series decider against Australia, there were 10 Welsh players in the XV; today, as the 2025 Lions play their first game against their hosts, there is none — the first time that has happened since 1896. O na bawn i both wedi gweld y diwrnod hwn!
ONLY IN THE DRONE
Our top columnists
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Stand and Deliver
By Hermione Orliff
NEW
The spending splurge continues: civil servants forked out a total expense bill of £85,934.14 negotiating the Chagos surrender deal, claims Guido Fawkes. Foreign Office officials spent £79,253.31 on flights, £3,557.95 on hotels and £3,122.88 on ‘other expenses’. Not forgetting, the sell-out will cost taxpayers £30 billion. But, hey, it’s only money.
Glug, glug, glug cont: Cheshire Police have spent nearly £4,000 of public money on ‘appropriate low-value presentation items which included glassware and ties’ presumably for those who took part in the Lucy Letby investigation, reports P. Hitch in the MoS.
Starmer, Reeves and Co spent one of the hottest days of the year on a Chequers ‘away day’. No doubt the fact that the economy shrank 0.1% in May was discussed. Rache dismisses it as ‘disappointing’. Contrast her reaction to a 0.1% GDP dip in 2022 when the Tories were in charge of the cash box. Then she thundered that ‘anything less than an emergency Budget would mark total failure’. As Kissinger said: ‘In politics, short memories can be convenient’.
A reader writes: ‘My father-in-law has just celebrated a significant birthday. My wife and her two sisters, living in different parts of the country, visited three different shops to buy a card for him. They selected the same one. What are the odds against this?’ Our geek on what was the Art Desk, using a slide rule marked ‘S.Wood — double fuck off’, says: ‘Up to 100 to 1, depending on inventory overlap and randomness of selection.’
Outpourings from one of the Drone’s SCCs are credited with precipitating the forced tearing down of a Migrant Shanty Town (TM: Daily Mail) in Park Lane. The Home Office refuses to confirm or deny that he has now been asked to turn his attention to Smashing the Boats, Stopping the Gangs, Shooting the Smugglers, or whatever, to prevent them coming here in the first place.
Trump thought he was being very diplomatic and friendly by condescendingly praising Liberia President Joseph Boakai’s excellent grasp of English at a White House meeting. Ahem, Liberia’s official language is… English.
Congratulations to the Daily Mail Cliché Club for managing to go the whole of Wimbledon without using the term ‘Oh, I say!’ For young (Eh? — Ed) readers, this was a catch phrase veteran telly commentator Dan Maskell regularly trotted out about anything slightly out of the ordinary between sips of Robinson’s Barley Water. The fact that Dan last employed the phrase shortly before his death 33 years ago didn’t prevent lazy Mail headline writers rolling it out ever since. Until this year. Now how to stop them saying ‘crashing out’ when some no-hoper you’ve never heard of predictably loses on Court 193.
Someone called Heidi Alexander, the Transport Secretary, is interviewed by Trevor Phillips on the telly. She starts the vast majority of answers with the word So. That tells us all we need to know, don’t you think?
A motorist pulled over by police in California not only had an open container in his cup holder but also 70 empty Bud Light cans scattered around his car. ‘The fact that he was only three times over the limit tells you how piss-poor Bud Light is,’ avers my man with the glassy eyes clutching a pint of Delirium Tremens in the back bar of the Flying Fuck.
CountryFile (genuine) A rural reader writes: I’m worried about my neighbour. I popped around to return some Tomorite I’d borrowed to find him sitting in his potting shed reading a book, listening to the cricket on TMS and occasionally shooting magpies with an air rifle. What should I do? Duck — Ed. (Latest score: Neighbour 3, Magpies 0).
An RAF pilot who buzzed the Commons in a Hawker Hunter jet and then flew between the towers of Tower Bridge within feet of a red double decker heading south on the road below has died aged 89. Flight Lt. Alan Pollack’s maverick buzz in 1968 was in protest against the Government’s failure to recognise the 50th anniversary of the RAF. He flew so low that Thames-side office workers could look down on the grey-painted fighter. And as he revved up the jet’s engines as it passed the House, MPs were, coincidentally, debating aircraft noise. He was never court martialed for his protest.
A Cabrales cheese received top marks in a competition in Spain and earned a Guinness World Record when it was auctioned for $42,232. The 5lb cheese, created by the Ángel Díaz Herrero factory, was bought by a restaurant. It was made with cow's milk and aged for 10 months in a cave 5,000 feet above sea level.
Local authorities in Yorkshire, where a hosepipe ban has been imposed as drought worsens, have been urged to close at least two lanes of swimming pools to save water.
More than 300 people from all over the States and Canada dressed in Tyrannosaurus Rex costumes and competed in a dinosaur race at Emerald Downs racetrack in Auburn, Washington state. A crowd of more than 6,000 cheered them on.
CrazyExoticBylines (All genuine): Lauren Defreitas-Brady, Sami Lorking-Tanner, Summer Raemason, Benedict Tetzlaff-Deas, Demetria Osei-Tutu, Zasha Whiteway-Wilkinson, Antony Clements-Thrower, Angel Cordova-Todd.
TheThingsTheySay: ‘Father, you don’t understand anything about tennis.’ — Promising tennis player Leo Borg to his father, Bjorn, winner of 11 Grand Slams, who had suggested: ‘Maybe I can teach you a few things…’
Apropos the above: most adult heart rates are 60 to 100 beats per minute. When Bjorn was winning Wimbledon his was 32 bpm.
LittleWhiteLies: I think I might be right in saying… = I’m totally sure of my facts so please don’t argue.
Hickey editor who was sacked for his addiction to lunch
FORMER William Hickey editor CHRISTOPHER WILSON remembers his predecessor Richard Berens, friend of royalty, habitué of Boodles, who was seldom spotted at his desk.
WHEN DID HE GO TO LUNCH? LAST TUESDAY, SIR
Maguire quits Mirror
DRONE EXCLUSIVE
Kevin Maguire, associate editor of the Daily Mirror, has been made redundant, the Drone understands.
Although he is leaving his highly-paid post, he will continue writing his column and will carry on with his TV appearances. Maguire is a frequent guest on Jeremy Vine’s Channel 5 daytime TV talk show and he appears Monday–Wednesday on the ITV Breakfast programme Good Morning Britain with the Mail’s Andrew Pierce.
Backbench wizard Peter Sloan dies aged 73
Peter Sloan, one of the most delightful Fleet Street characters you could ever wish to meet, died of cancer on May 1 a day before his 74th birthday.
Former Express and Mirror sub Pat Welland told the Drone: “Sloanie will be well known to Express Newspapers hacks as he served honourable time in the 80s as Night Editor of The Star before rejoining the Mirror. A lovely bloke who will be much missed.”
Nick and Fiona top the BBC fat cat pay charts
Nick Robinson and Fiona Bruce are now the highest-paid journalists at the BBC after the departure of Huw Edwards, according to the BBC annual report for 2024/25.
Robinson was paid between £410,000 and £414,999 (up 19% year on year) for work that included presenting the Today programme on BBC Radio 4, the Today and Political Thinking podcasts, and UK general election leadership interviews for Panorama.
Bruce’s pay was within the same salary band (up 1% year on year) for work including Question Time, news presenting on BBC One, and general election coverage.
One other journalist was paid more than £400,000: BBC Radio Ulster’s Stephen Nolan, paid between £405,000 and £409,999 for work that also included Nolan Live on BBC One in Northern Ireland and the Stephen Nolan Show on BBC Radio 5 Live.
Private Pie Lookalike
HISLOP PIE
Mmm, delicious, don’t you agree ladies? Everyone likes a pie especially one that looks like that nice Mr Hislop from Pie-vate Eye, which claims to be a satirical magazine, we understand. The Drone warmly recommends it as a cure for insomnia — we’ve never finished one yet. The Eye, that is, not the pie. Bring back Ingrams! Oh, and some custard.
On second thoughts is it a pie or a tart? Or a meringue? (old Express in joke).
Lord Drone is honoured for 20 years of his Fleet Street organ
LORDING IT: Drone as imagined by Scott Clissold of the Sunday Express
THE Daily Drone is 20 years old? Shurely shome mistake. Believe it or not it is true and to mark the anniversary His Worship Lord (Bingo) Drone was presented with a magnificent caricature hand-tooled by Scott Clissold, talented cartoonist of the Sunday Express.
The ceremony took place in front of disinterested diners at the Boulevard Brasserie in London’s Covent Garden, the venue for numerous drink-sodden gatherings of the World’s Greatest Lunch Club.
The brasserie is a favourite with WGLC members not just for the excellent cuisine but also for the fact that Le Patron provides old-age pensioners with half-price food.
Lord Drone gave a long address of thanks to gently sleeping members which can be summed up as “thanks awfully chums”. He left shortly afterwards in a sedan chair after proffering his fondest thanks to Roger Watkins (chairman), Terry Manners, Dick Dismore, Alan Frame and Pat Pilton for their generous gesture. (Will that do M’Lud? — Ed)
Former Express subs get the beers in
THE strange thing about former Daily Express sub editors is that they never seem to get older.
So it was just like old times when they met on Wednesday, 18 June, for a few ales at the Royal Oak in London’s Borough Market.
Pictured here are Bob Watson, Deborah Stone and a youthful Ray King, looking not a day over 80.
The three amigos
PUB CHUMS: Craig Mackenzie, Tony Boullemier and Alastair McIntyre
It was Easter, so it must have been time for lunch, although to be honest, when isn’t it time for lunch?
Former Express and everywhere else chums Tony Boullemier, Craig Mackenzie and Alastair McIntyre glanced in to the Flintgate pub in Oatlands, Surrey, for a glass or two and a catch up. Tony was visiting family up the road in Weybridge and as Mackenzie and McIntyre live locally a meeting was a no-brainer as they say these days.
There’s not much more to report except that a good time was had by all and old stories and jokes were told and laughed at as if they were new (they weren’t).
Picture: RIC BOULLEMIER ric@generatemedia.co.uk
MANN OVERBOARD
Last of the Reach print editors axed as Daily Star’s Denis is shown the door
(but at least he outlasted the lettuce)
EXCLUSIVE by SPIKE DIVER
DAILY STAR print editor Denis Mann, who dreamt up the Liz Truss lettuce campaign, has been fired by Reach, after only three months in the chair.
An insider told the Drone that he turned up for work, was summoned to a meeting and told to go home. His work email was immediately disconnected.
Mann, pictured, a former night editor of the Daily Express, is the last of the Reach print editors to get the chop.
His predecessor Jon Clark was shown the door in January after seven years as editor and replaced by online editor-in-chief Ben Rankin. Mann, formerly deputy editor, reported to Rankin as print editor of the Daily Star and Daily Star Sunday.
Clark said of Mann’s lettuce brainwave: “Denis spotted a line in The Economist about the shelf-life of a lettuce and mentioned it to me at the start of the day. We instantly saw the potential of pitting a real lettuce (60p from Tesco) against Wet Lettuce Liz Truss to see who would outlast the other. The video team threw their all at it and Lettuce Cam was born.”
Daily Herald subs c1928
This scene from the late 1920s is fairly typical of any newspaper office up to the 1980s when computers took over. There are spikes, paste pots and a boy to take copy to the printer. Note the young man, top left, making a call on a candlestick telephone. At this time the Daily Herald was owned by the TUC before it was sold to Odhams. In 1964 Odhams revamped the paper and renamed it the Sun. In 1969, with sales still falling, it was sold to Rupert Murdoch — you know the rest.
Good lord, m’Lud, it’s our old watering hole thriving in 1884
The date is 1884 in this fine painting by Wilhelm Trübner shows a bustling Ludgate Circus at the foot of Fleet Street, complete with Victorian steam train chuffing over the bridge.
Fascinatingly, the King Lud public house, a favourite watering hole for journalists right up until the 20th century, can be clearly seen.
In 1981 the pub changed its name to the Old King Lud to distinguish itself from the New King Lud which had opened a few doors away.
A brief period of closure in the early 1990s was ended with the pub re-opening in 1993 as the Hogshead in Ludgate, owned by the Whitbread Brewery. It is now part of the Leon restaurant chain.
Trübner was a celebrated portrait and landscape artist who was born in Heidelberg in 1851 and died in 1917 aged 66.
WE DON’T DO HARD NEWS, REACH BOSS TELLS STAFF
It’s all down to robots now
PRIVATE EYE reports
DESPITE having dispensed with almost all pretence of being a serious newspaper publisher, instead chasing online clicks by any means necessary, Reach “content hub” boss Jon Livesey told staff ruefully this month that “we’re finding traffic harder to come by at the moment”.
Why so? Livesey blamed changes to the Google Discover algorithm, which feeds headlines to web and phones but now downgrades the stories about health scares and miracle cures that Reach staff have long been ordered to focus on. But there was good news, too, as “anything we write about Jeremy Clarkson and travel or holiday warnings” continued to perform well.
It was a different picture over on Facebook, however: “While it’s great to see Facebook giving articles a bigger show in feeds again, it’s largely harder news stories — which we rarely cover — driving the audience on the platform.” The idea of actually using some of the good journalists who still remain on titles like the Mirror, Express, Liverpool Echo, Manchester Evening News and countless other local titles to provide some of the harder news stories readers want does not seem to have occurred to management.
Instead, new Reach CEO Piers North has a cunning plan: hand it all over to the robots to sort out. “It feels like we’re on the cusp of another digital revolution and obviously that can be pretty daunting, but here I think we’ve got such an opportunity to do more of the stuff we love and are brilliant at,” he told dismayed staff across the company last Friday. “So with that in mind you won’t be surprised to hear then that embracing Al is going to feature heavily in my strategic priorities... we’re going to refocus to deliver on them. I’ll start to talk to you over the coming weeks about accelerating AI and technology.”
PIC OF THE WEEK
Gone to the dogs
Look, we go to all the trouble of triple checking a pic by spending at least 30 seconds on Google Streetview when some smart arse has to saunter along and spoil it.
We described the above pic, published yesterday, as a genuine street scene in March, Cambridgeshire. We said the veracity of the pic had been checked by the Drone Verify team who had declared it genuine by looking it up on the Interweb.
Enter Pat Prentice, who, unfortunately for Drone Verify, lives in March. He sent this pic of the current street scene….
As you can see, The Pet Shop has gone to the dogs. It is no more. It is extinct. It is an ex-pet shop. It has shuffled off this mortal coil and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible.
Pat told the Drone: “Alas, M'Lud, sorry for Being Boring, but To Face the Truth, It's a Sin to rely on mere internet checks. It is Always on My Mind that our local pet shop closed some time ago.
“Rumour has it that the owners were So Hard that they had no Heart and put the Rent up to seek better Opportunities.
“Now when I seek cat food and dog chews I Am Left to My Own Devices. What Have I Done to Deserve This?”
Jack the Lad, March, Cambs. (SWIDT?) (No — Ed)
Toner of the Sunday Express dies aged 81
Michael Toner, former political editor, diplomatic correspondent and leader writer at the Sunday Express, has died at the age of 81.
He joined the paper as leader writer covering many of the controversial topics of the 1980s and 1990s including articles about the IRA, the miners' strike, the Falklands War, child abuse and the war crime allegations involving Kurt Waldheim. David Alton described Toner's approach to Alton's anti-abortion bill as "thorough and fair”.
Michael was born in Bedfordshire in 1944 and educated at Bedford Modern School and the University of Cambridge. He began his career in journalism at theStoke Sentinel before moving to the Sunday Express where, in 1981, he interviewed Margaret Thatcher with fellow Express journalist Keith Renshaw.
Following his period at the Sunday Express, Toner became chief leader writer at the Daily Mail, a position he held until 2006 when Tom Utley succeeded him to the role.
He is survived by his second wife Lynda, five children and eight grandchildren.
They may be under the cosh from job cuts and extra work demands but never let it be said that Express journalists have lost their sense of humour.
This great cartoon of Gregg Wallace was drawn by one of their talented number
Utley and Ruth Sunderland get heave-ho from the Mail
From PRIVATE EYE
ANOTHER night of the long knives at the Mail, where high-profile columnists and two senior editors are among those given the chop as part of Lord Rothermere's determination to slash costs yet further and prioritise online performers over the increasingly pisspoor paper offering.
Craig Brown (Who he? — Ed) has been told his services are no longer required, while the avuncular Tom Utley, who stepped down as a leader writer seven years ago, has opted to make his retirement complete by giving up his Friday column, much-loved by readers, as well.
Dominic Lawson has lost his regular column, although he is being kept on a retainer for occasional contributions. His Monday slot is to be filled by the paper's veteran voice of disapproval Stephen Glover — whose son Alex is, awkwardly, one of those being jettisoned from the paper's features desk.
Features staff responsible for, ahem, "polishing" the column that appears under the byline of recent star signing Nadine Dorries remain in place, as does the Mail’s most expensive signing of all Boris Johnson. But on the financial desk, group business editor Ruth Sunderland and head of money Sarah Hartley are both out, along with the section's long-serving and loyal PA.
This latest bloodletting comes just months after almost a third of the Mail's hacks were made redundant in the forced mashing together of the newspapers and the online operation which has done so much to diminish both successful separate brands (Eyes 1642 and 1643).
While proprietor Lord Rothermere (dividends taken from parent company last year £213m) had continued to grumble about wanting yet further savings, hacks believed they might be safe in their jobs until at least September.
Black Lubyanka voted the world’s greatest art deco building
(As if we didn’t know …)
OLD Express hands have always known that their Fleet Street offices were one of the greatest art deco buildings in the world. Now it’s official.
Time Out has published a list of the best examples of the genre and the Black Lubyanka has come out top. The list was compiled with the help of art deco aficionado Dominic Lutyens.
Lutyens writes that the building’s exterior is ‘adorned only by gleaming, slimline chrome bands forming a subtle grid’, but the interior is far more glam. ‘Its lobby is sumptuously decorated’, he says, picking out highlights such as steel furniture designed by Betty Joel and gold and silver murals by sculptor Eric Aumonier.
As part of a redevelopment of the surrounding site the building, which is GradeII* listed, was entirely refurbished in 2000 by John Robertson Architects. The foyer was recreated largely from photographs and the façade completely upgraded. The concrete portal frame structure, designed by Sir Owen Williams, was preserved.
London was the only city to boast three entries in the list. Also listed were Eltham Palace and the Hoover building.
The Daily Drone is published, financed and edited by Alastair ‘Bingo’ McIntyre with contributions from the veteran journalists of old Fleet Street, Manchester, Glasgow, Welsh Wales and the worldwide diaspora. Dedicated to scribblers everywhere.
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