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VACUOUS PRESS RELEASES (NO 2)
WOODY'S BEST, AND WORST...
UNFREE AT LAST: THE SEQUEL
A WAPPING DECISION...
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CARL BERNSTEIN, THE GUARDIAN
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CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: THE INDEPENDENT
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Vacuous Press Releases (no 2)
Wednesday, July 07, 2010  Send to a friend
This popped into my inbox a couple of days ago.
Chelsea Footballer Michael Essien forgot about the World Cup flop for the night and headed to Aquum in Clapham, recently voted Best New Bar at The London Club and Bar Awards, on Saturday night. He arrived with another male friend and joined a group that were already seated in the VIP. He spent the night in the VIP, drinking and chatting with friends, the group he was with were obviously having a good night as they were ordering several bottles of champagne and vodka all in one go, it was a great party atmosphere. He stayed for the majority of the night leaving with his friend just after 2:30am.
For more information please contact me.
Many thanks,
xxxx xxxx
Lifestyle Manager
Now I can sleep...
Posted by James Silver - On Wednesday, July 07, 2010
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Woody's best, and worst...
Saturday, June 26, 2010 Send to a friend
David Gritten has a list of Woody Allen's best ten and worst ten movies in today's Daily Telegraph, to mark Woody's fortieth full length release with Whatever Works starring Larry David. Woody (and David) are both heroes of mine, but Whatever Woks has had some stinker reviews. As for the list, I'd add Sleeper to the top ten probably at the expense of Stardust Memories, Deconstructing Harry might sneak in at 10th for me, and I'd probably say Match Point is one of the worst films I've ever seen, not just the 10th worst Allen movie. His fans wish he'd retired a while ago. But as for Allen's recent claim that he's not achieved greatness in his film-making. Well, that's palpable nonsense. For me, he's one of the comic greats of cinema. And comedy, as they say, is so much harder to do...
Posted by James Silver - On Saturday, June 26, 2010
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Unfree at last: the sequel
Monday, October 12, 2009 Send to a friend
Libby Purves of The Times can sound a touch head girlish on the radio, and R4's Midweek is knee-jerk switch off for me... But as a columnist she is often bang on the money. Today, in an elegant riposte to the Wolffs, Shirkys, Huffingtons, Andersons and other Sultans of Free, she explains why the Age of Free must come to an abrupt end. Key paragraphs below, but read it all...
It’s been fun: like a jammed fruit machine spewing free tokens or a whisky-galore shipwreck. But it’s got to stop. Content — whether music, films, pictures, news or prose — can’t be free and flourish. The music and movie industries are fighting: journalism, after the ego trip of gaining millions of online readers, is following. It has to. There is no alternative.
The labourer is worthy of his hire, time is money, pay peanuts and you get monkeys. Pay nothing and you get dumb (or worse, venal) monkeys. Nothing costs nothing. And to do a straightforward deal is better than to endure an oblique and more sinister levy: the selling of your attention to hidden persuaders.
Posted by James Silver - On Monday, October 12, 2009
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A Wapping Decision...
Wednesday, September 30, 2009 Send to a friend
OK bragging is unseemly. But in this case it's hard to resist: my very trusted News International source proved to be right on the money when they told me, in my piece for the conference edition of Total Politics magazine, that The Sun was poised to switch to Cameron - weeks before the story broke...
While Kavanagh declines the invitation to reveal The Sun's hand, a separate line of enquiry proves rather more fruitful. Asked whether the paper is set to switch allegiance to Cameron, a very well-placed source, speaking on condition of anonymity, says: "There is no way The Sun can support Labour and they've got to support someone. I don't think Sun readers would be too happy if the paper supported Labour this time. They've done it three times and I think supporting them again would be like supporting John major in 1997- Sun readers would have been absolutely appalled".
Posted by James Silver - On Wednesday, September 30, 2009
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E List Diary
Tuesday, September 22, 2009 Send to a friend
Of all the random press releases I've ever received...
From: Andre Dang
Date: 2009/9/22
Subject: Latest celebs spotted drinking Akvinta Vodka at tonight's London Fashion Week Parties.
To: Andre Dang
Good..well, morning now!
Just back from a few events tonight, and I thought you might be interested in who was where.
Tempereley London
The Sketch Gallery on Conduit Street hosted an exhibition of the Temperley Collection. Fashionistas sipped Akvinta Gold Cooler cocktails containing cloudy apple juice and the luxury Croatian Vodka. The gallery had a display of 20 mannequins, featuring the Spring Summer Collection. In the middle of the room, a giant spinning zoetrope – a 19th Century cylindrical toy of sorts that quickly projects a series of images on the wall so that they look like they are in motion – in the centre of the room.
Images that looked as though they came from a Twenties or Thirties circus flashed across the wall: a fashionable contortionist, an elegant tightrope walker, a polished trapeze artist… all dressed in Temperley’s spring/summer 2010 collection.
Guests included Amber Le Bon, Laura Bailey, Kimberley Walsh and George Lamb
Luella After Party
Bungalow 8 had queues going round the corner, with a host of London's cool crowd anxious to get in to the exclusive party. Guests including Will Young, Alexandra Burke and James Corden were served Akvinta Deep Purples (A vodka sour cocktail with curacao) and Elderflower Vodka Fizzes.
If you'd like further information, please let me know.
Andre
Andre Dang
Andre Dang Communications
T:XXXXXXXXXXX
andre@XXXXXXXXX
Posted by James Silver - On Tuesday, September 22, 2009
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'Property Remains A Good Bet'
Thursday, December 04, 2008 Send to a friend
Post Office-worker turned property investor on the state of the UK housing market
1:20pm UK, Thursday December 04, 2008
by James Silver, Online Media Reporter, Sky News Online
We all know by now what the industry experts and “talking-heads” think is going to happen to the UK property market in the coming months.
A typical recent view came from Richard Donnell, director of research at property consultancy Hometrack.
“A weak economic outlook and limited availability of mortgages are set to keep prices under downward pressure in 2009,” he said.
But how do ordinary, private investors – who put their money where their mouths are on a regular basis - view the current turmoil? And when do they think the market will start to bounce back?
One such “street-level” speculator is Stuart Gibson, a post office-worker with an ever-burgeoning sideline in property development.
The 42-year-old from North West London has bought and sold an average of one house a year over the last decade.
He said he was “bitten by the property bug”, ever since “scrimping and saving” to buy his first home - a one-bedroom maisonette in Edgware - for £42,000 in 1995. He and his wife sold it three years later for £73,000.
When this reporter first met the likeable Mr. Gibson – who still works for the post office - for a radio documentary in 2003, he seemed to embody perfectly the gung-ho spirit of the last decade’s property bubble.
“After that first sale, I knew there was no going back,” he said at the time. "Buying and selling property is like a drug. It’s in my blood now. I’m always scouring for my next investment.
Back then he was snapping up property in investment “hot-spot” Boston, Lincolnshire – an area where houses, according to local estate agents, nearly trebled in value between 2001 and 2004.
Five years on, Mr. Gibson – who admitted he was inspired by TV property shows – has plainly lost none of his verve or ambition.
Interviewed by Sky News Online in a coffee shop near his home, he said he is in no doubt that the market will soon start to recover, also arguing that “now is the perfect time to buy”.
He said: “Times are tight, but if I possibly can, I will buy more properties, because prices are coming down and interest rates are fantastically low and may get even lower.”
Singling out first-time buyers, he continued: “If you’re a first-time buyer – with a big enough deposit to get a mortgage - go and buy now.
“Between now and the end of next year is your opportunity to get on the property ladder – you’ve got an eighteen month window, I reckon. You won’t make a quick profit, but in three years time you’ll be quids in.”
So when did he think the market would bounce back?
“I think it will start to recover late next year or early 2010,” he said.
Mr. Gibson – who left school at 17 without any qualifications and once delivered pizzas for a living – was also highly sceptical about the current sense of doom and gloom pervading the property market.
“I think we were due for a recession, the years of growth in prices were unsustainable and people were getting mortgages without real deposits,” he said.
“But the way some people – and the media – are painting it, is that it’s Armageddon out there. Well, I don’t think it is.”
(Sky News Online, 4th December 2008)
Posted by James Silver - On Thursday, December 04, 2008
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'Movies set to boom in Recession'
Monday, December 01, 2008 Send to a friend
Movies Set To Boom In 'Recession'
10:26am UK, Monday December 01, 2008
By James Silver, media reporter, Sky News Online
With the latest instalments of big franchises on the horizon - including Harry Potter releases due in 2009 and 2010 - the film industry is predicted to prosper in the expected recession.
In contrast to the rest of the media sector that has been left reeling by the turbulent economy, analysts are forecasting steady growth in worldwide box-office revenues.
In a report covering 2008-2012, professional services giant PriceWaterhouseCoopers predicted that global box office spend would grow from £18bn to £24bn over the period.
The economic situation has forced PWC to revise some of their predictions for the media sector.
But Nick George - a partner in the firm's entertainment and media practice - told Sky News Online that he was standing by their forecast for the film industry.
"Box office cinema attendance in the past has held up well in consumer recessions," he said.
"That's because the film industry's performance tends to much less connected with what's happening in the wider economic cycle and much more driven by 'hits' - by original content and great marketing."
Going out to the movies, he added, was seen as an "affordable luxury" in tough economic times.
"It's high quality entertainment, at a relatively modest price," he said.
"It's a cheap night out when compared to, say, going out to a restaurant for dinner. And the younger demographic use it as a place to go that's out of the house, away from their parents."
Screen International's editor Michael Gubbins is similarly "optimistic" about the film industry's "resilience" during the expected recession.
He argued that big releases like Mamma Mia, High School Musical and the latest Bond movie "have all done incredibly well" - and he sees no reason why that trend should not continue in 2009 and beyond.
"The industry's got a couple of Harry Potters up its sleeve, the next Bond, the next Pirates of the Caribbean and people will keep going to see the big franchises," he said.
"But I'm not sure that will have anything to do with seeking escapism during economic misery. Big films have been working well over the last few years anyway."
He continued: "So, yes, I'm optimistic about the box-office numbers, there are enough films in the can to keep that going. And I've seen no evidence anywhere in the world that a recession will stop people going to the cinema."
However, Mr Gubbins warned that while the main Hollywood studios will thrive, the independent sector - often responsible for the most original movies - would find it difficult to raise finance during the recession.
"The studios have begun to concentrate on fewer, but bigger films, while the riskier, middle-tier projects will struggle to get green lit," he said.
"Over the next few years, I think you'll see a smaller number of very well-funded, well-marketed studio films and a lot of other stuff, a lot of quality independent projects, will simply drop off the end."
(Sky News Online, 1st December 2008)
Posted by James Silver - On Monday, December 01, 2008
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'Newspapers face carnage in recession.'
Thursday, October 30, 2008 Send to a friend
Five Papers Could Close In Crisis, by James Silver, Media reporter
As many as five national newspaper titles could close in a recession which looks set to cut a swathe through the UK media industry - so claims one of the most respected figures in broadsheet newspapers.
"The last time we had a really profound recession was 1990-91 and we lost three national newspaper titles as a result of it or a short time after it, because of the weakened state of the market," says Emily Bell, Guardian News and Media Group's director of digital content, in an interview with Sky News Online.
"The Sunday Correspondent, The News on Sunday and eventually Today, all closed back then.
"Now we're seeing a recession which could be worse than that one - according to the Chancellor, the outlook for the economy is at its worst for 60 years.
"So, if you think that we're now witnessing in the newspaper market a more rapid rate of decline in terms of circulation than at any time previously and add to that the fact that people are going to be very cautious about discretionary spending, which means they will buy fewer newspapers and buy fewer products - which means advertising will be driven down - then I don't think it's unrealistic to say that 25% of the nineteen mainstream national titles out there will go out of business," she says.
What's more, the notion that the newspaper industry, while in terminal decline, still has decades of life left in it, will be sorely tested, she continues.
"This recession is going to be a real test of that theory, because there isn't necessarily going to be a revival in the advertising industry on the other side in the way that there has been in the past."
Which newspapers does Ms Bell think are most likely to fail?
"Although you would pick The Independent titles as the ones with the lowest circulation, I don't think that means they are the most likely to fail, as they are not necessarily run for profit. So don't write them off.
"[Express owner] Richard Desmond, on the other hand, does run his papers for profit and they are still profitable.
"But if that ceases to be the case in the next few years, then I think you would look at the Express group and say what's its long-term future?
"Particularly as [mid-market rival] The Daily Mail is going to be aggressive and investing through the downturn.
She says: "Trinity Mirror has to turn a profit and return money to shareholders, which could leave its titles similarly exposed."
However, Ms Bell is more optimistic about the digital side of the business.
"At The Guardian well over 10% of our revenues come from digital now," she says, "but while [digital] is still growing, I'd expect the rate of growth to slow.
"Although revenue streams from web video advertising are holding up very well, we are seeing a stalling in digital display advertising.
"And if the recession is deep - and doesn't bottom out quickly - I think the answer for newspaper groups is to keep investing in digital, as that is where their growing revenues are going to be."
While it's a "grim time" for any business at the moment, she continues, the "core" UK newspaper brands are very innovative, and arguably better equipped to deal with economic upheaval than other sectors.
"News International are moving all of their assets onto one campus in Wapping. The Guardian Media Group are moving into a fantastic new building, where everyone will integrate and work together. The Telegraph have already done it with their move to Victoria.
"These moves are about getting much more out of your existing assets, to improve and expand your journalism into new formats."
So how gloomy is she exactly about the next few years?
"No one really knows where all this is heading," she replies. "But what we're certainly seeing is a shuffling of the pack. And that brings with it a lot of opportunities too."
Posted by James Silver - On Thursday, October 30, 2008
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'Is Brown on the up?'
Tuesday, October 14, 2008 Send to a friend
Has The Economy Revived Brown?, Sky News Online by James Silver
Has the Prime Minister's performance in the financial crisis revived his flagging political fortunes? It was only a few weeks ago that his premiership appeared to be on borrowed time.
Labour rebels were circling; the airwaves were abuzz with plots. Meanwhile, the Tories rode high in the polls.
Even some of his most influential supporters in the press were calling on him to go.
"The smell of death around this government is so overpowering it seems to have anaesthetised them all," wrote The Guardian's Polly Toynbee.
But since economic turmoil swirled across the globe, Mr. Brown's party foes have fallen silent and - in the wake of his rescue package for the banks - a poll for The Sunday Times revealed that the Tories' lead has narrowed to ten points.
Tellingly, the PM's dismal press coverage has begun to improve too.
The Guardian's Jackie Ashley, who only two months ago was calling on him to quit , noted on Monday: "There is already talk of a "Falklands" election - a quick poll if Brown manages to sort out the financial crisis."
The Brown-Darling rescue package has also won the PM a rave review for his statesmanship in the Financial Times.
"Gordon Brown gave the Europeans a lesson in political leadership, when other leaders were running for cover and reverting to spin-doctoring," wrote columnist Wolfgang Munchau.
And the fulsome praise was not confined to this side of the Atlantic.
In an opinion article in The New York Times, the Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman asked whether Britain's PM had succeeded in saving the entire world's financial system?
Even the Daily Mail's city editor, Alex Brummer, felt inclined to note: "The transformation of the Brown-Darling image from the ditherers of Northern Rock...must be considered remarkable."
However, if those around Mr. Brown now expect a dramatic turnaround in the polls to follow his improved performance in the hot-seat, they should not, perhaps, hold their breath.
As the Daily Mail's political editor Ben Brogan argued on his influential blog: "Economic pain will shape the views of voters in ways we cannot yet fully know."
In other words, the public has yet to feel the effects of the biting recession, forecast by many. And when they do, the Government will inevitably shoulder the blame.
"Mr. Brown may be enjoying the sensation of being a Churchill for our times, but it probably won't save him," declared a leader in The Independent.
Or as Sky News's political editor Adam Boulton put it: "This has been a good couple of weeks from the Prime Minister - but there is still the prospect of a very difficult year or eighteen months ahead, in which many of us will feel poorer.
"In the past, under those circumstances, many of us have voted for change."
Posted by James Silver - On Tuesday, October 14, 2008
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'New York Media Diary'
Sunday, October 05, 2008 Send to a friend
US Nominees Enjoy Superbowl Hype, by James Silver, Media reporter in New York, Sky News Online
If you thought politics were a turn-off, think again. Thursday night's well-mannered vice presidential showdown between Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and Senator Joe Biden proved to be a TV ratings winner of Superbowl proportions, with 73m Americans tuning in, according to Nielsen Media Research figures and PBS.
Not only was it the most watched VP debate in history - a whopping 61% higher than the tussle between Dick Cheney and John Edwards four years ago - but, embarrassingly for the main players on the ticket, it easily trounced the 52.4m who saw the first presidential debate a week earlier.
Of the TV Networks, ABC took the top slot with 13.1m viewers, just beating NBC (12.8m) and CBS (11.1m). Of the cable news channels, Sky's sister station Fox News led with 11.1m, while CNN clocked 10.7m.
"This ratings blowout exceeds industry expectations," noted Hollywood Reporter's TV blogger James Hibberd, as if talking about the new season of Lost.
THE RATINGS BONANZA was surely driven by viewers tuning in hoping to witness another Sarah Palin meltdown moment, but only this time ‘live on air’.
For days now, late night TV shows here in the US have been replaying clips of the Republican vice presidential candidate's toe-curling moose-in-the headlights interviews with CBS News anchor Katie Couric, which have also proved to be a ratings hit on the internet.
Out of her depth and flailing on Couric's camera, Palin's performances - and in particular her claim that being Governor of Alaska meant she had foreign policy experience - have turned her into fodder for TV comics and talk show hosts.
It all comes as a welcome triumph for 51-year old Couric, who was dismissed by some a 'news babe' when she took over CBS Evening News full time from gravel-voiced veteran Dan Rather - and his interim, fellow silver-haired, replacement Bob Schieffer - two years ago.
Reportedly on a $15 million-a-year deal, Couric has become the TV News star of the campaign so far and her employer has splashed out on full page advertisements in the main news pages of the New York Times to crow about it.
MEANWHILE, ONE OF the Times' rivals went out of business this week.
After a three-week search for new financial backers, the staunchly conservative - some might say Neo-Con - New York Sun stopped printing last Tuesday, leaving 110 full-time employees hunting for new work at a far from ideal moment.
The skinny broadsheet never really found much of a readership over its seven years in a city dominated by The Times and The Wall Street Journal and was reportedly haemorrhaging money.
It was launched by former Journal reporter Seth Lipsky, with the backing of a group of conservative financiers, initially including the disgraced former owner of the Daily Telegraph, Conrad Black.
Dismissed by a rival editor as "an intellectual vanity publication", Lipsky told this reporter in a telephone interview in 2003 that his newspaper's success would "be measured by whether it achieves both its idealistic and business goals".
Sadly, on the latter point at least, it's fair to say that it failed.
www.jamessilver.net
Posted by James Silver - On Sunday, October 05, 2008
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A bumper-sticker for recession
Friday, October 03, 2008 Send to a friend
Tricky Times For Advertising Firms, By James Silver in New York, Sky News Online
Is there any point in brand advertising when markets are in turmoil, financial institutions collapsing and consumers hoarding their cash?
Well, according to the experts the answer appears to be yes ... and no. No, because brands built on images of strength and reliability - from Northern "Rock" to the bull used in the logo of failed bank and brokerage firm Merrill Lynch - seem ridiculous now.
However, carefully-worded advertising messages, aimed at reassuring anxious investors and savers, do have an important role to play.
In a recent article on the marketing business - headlined "In Scary Times, Messages of Strength" - The New York Times reported a competitor of failed insurance giant AIG, New York Life Insurance Company, had been grappling with this conundrum.
Faced with reassuring a public mesmerised by doom-laden TV news reports and newspaper headlines, the company had ordered their advertising agency - Taxi - "to create ads that would play up the reliability of New York Life".
William Werfelman, first Vice President of the company, said: "At a time when well-known brands have gone by the wayside, we want to distinguish New York Life from the public companies and others that have had such difficulty."
But how effective will this approach be, given that the public's faith in the financial sector has been shattered in recent days?
It all depends what your message is, suggests Marian Salzman, recently-installed as Chief Marketing Officer and partner at PR multi-national Porter Novelli, after sixteen years at the top of the advertising business, latterly with JWT.
"Hyperbole is definitely out right now and reality needs to be part of all messaging," says Salzman, speaking in her new firm's downtown New York offices.
In the wake of this crisis, the public, she continues, will no longer accept glitzy advertising messages from the financial sector.
"People will be asking tougher questions from their banks from now on. Flashy brand advertising is just not going to work anymore.
"It's no use telling people everything's fine when it obviously isn't. Faith and confidence is non-existent; it's hard enough to persuade people to keep their money in a bank not put it under their feather pillow.
"So marketing from banks needs to start small and tell people that they've been around for a long time, their money's safe and they have a pathway out of this crisis. And on the other side, well-run financial services institutions will emerge."
What of her own former industry, collectively known as Madison Avenue - in a reference to the days when many of the biggest agencies were based on that posh New York Street? How badly hit does she expect the ad business to be from the fallout from Wall Street?
"I think Madison Avenue is going to feel the pinch in precisely the same way as other well-staffed service businesses," she replies. "Times will be tough.
"But everybody's going to experience tough times: Madison Avenue, Wall Street and Main Street, the man or woman who works from home and the big companies. Anyone who's been dependent on economic growth and cheap credit."
What's more the credit squeeze and continuing instability will have a major knock-on effect on the retail economy, argues the trend-spotter who spent years looking into the future on behalf of JWT.
"We're not going to be acquiring stuff rampantly anymore, even if we have the cash. The time for flaunting it is over. We're going to be a lot more conscientious about what we consume.
"This is going to be the era of home-made soup and spaghetti with tomato sauce," she exclaims.
Trust a marketer to come up with a bumper-sticker for a recession.
Posted by James Silver - On Friday, October 03, 2008
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Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Wednesday, October 01, 2008 Send to a friend
I've taken a long time to get round to reading Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke. What a dazzling novel it is... Hilarious, beautifully written, with characters that leap off the page. And gripping too... I can't remember the last book I enjoyed as much.
Posted by James Silver - On Wednesday, October 01, 2008
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'The New Age of Thrift'
Tuesday, September 30, 2008 Send to a friend
Sky News Online: Bail-out Vote: Tough Times Ahead in the US, by James Silver in New York
Flash holidays, designer labels and bling are out - cooking, home entertainment systems and "nesting" are in.
As the financial turmoil and its toxic aftermath seeps from Wall Street to Main Street, Americans are poised to enter a period of thrift and austerity, according to leading figures in the US retail and advertising sectors.
"Our target, middle American women, are really hurting right now," Ruby Anik, senior vice president and director of brand marketing at one of America's biggest retailers, J C Penney, told an industry forum in New York attended by Sky News Online.
"These women are forced to trade down because of the economic situation and the question for us is how we keep the emotional connection with the J C Penney brand and stop them shopping at discount retailers. It's a huge problem."
She added: "Our CEO said he has never in his 37 years seen an economy like this and we don't think we know yet what the long-lasting effects will be and what it's going to mean."
The high-level forum, which focused on business in the age of the female economy, provided a snapshot of the US retail economy as it teeters "on the precipice".
The audience of insiders also heard that US consumers now accept "the good days are over" and that marketers are currently tailoring their messages to the newly austere mood.
In trends that seem certain to be mirrored in Britain, retail industry figures suggest that "nesting" and home entertainment are on the rise, at the expense of restaurants, holidays and other luxuries.
Meanwhile, the US car industry, which has been reeling since 2007, will continue to be squeezed.
National sales have shrunk from 16-17 million units-a-year in 1999-2007, to a predicted 14.5 million in 2008.
The sector is also estimated to have lost 67,000 jobs since the end of 2007.
"What we're experiencing right now is something similar to what we experienced after 9/11," said Julie Gilbert, senior vice president at consumer electronics giant Best Buy.
"Instead of taking the big family vacation, what families are doing - and women are driving this - is making the home entertainment area much nicer, because they're going to be spending a lot more time in watching movies (and TV).
"They're also expanding their kitchens and buying new appliances, as cooking and entertaining replaces going out to restaurants.
"Any facet of the home is on a rapid increase and, from what we're seeing, big vacations and new cars - those kinds of things are on the decline."
However, the prognosis for the retail sector was not all doom and gloom.
Ruby Anik reported that J C Penney's cosmetics range Sephora was doing well despite the credit crunch.
"A by-product of what's happening in the economy and how people are staying at home more is that our women customers are really looking for the little treats, like lipstick or fragrance, which make them feel good about themselves," she said.
"So even though a large part of our stores are affected, we're finding that our accessories business, including Sephora, is doing very well and we're actually seeing very good business in that area."
Posted by James Silver - On Tuesday, September 30, 2008
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'Postcard from The Street of $creams'
Monday, September 22, 2008 Send to a friend
Sky News Online: Nightmare on Wall Street, by James Silver.
Against a backdrop of the New York Stock Exchange and shell-shocked commuters scurrying home from a week of Wall Street turmoil, the TV news reporter fixes his hair as he prepares for his ‘live’ spot on the evening news.
“Guys, please!” he snaps at a group of teenagers who have wandered into shot behind him, pulling faces.
“Hey, this is America, man!” one of them yells back, as they shuffle off into the crowd.
Nearby a lone preacher in a sharp blue suit and polished brown shoes is warning of the end of the world, over the roar of the subway. His words are oddly appropriate given the events of the past few days.
Beneath two American flags, fluttering in the warm evening breeze, police officers in helmets and flak jackets - their fingers on machine-gun triggers - stand watch.
By now the man from “ABC 7 Eyewitness News, New York” is in full flow, ‘live’ on air. An audience of bemused tourists have gathered and many are filming him too.
“...I’ll get to that in a moment, Bill, but first the [Government] bail-out,” he tells the studio host, referring to the Bush administration’s announcement of a $700 billion bailout plan for the struggling financial sector.
He pauses. “These unprecedented Government actions are a response to nothing short of a financial crisis here on Wall Street...”
The reporter’s brow knits grimly, as he cues up his video-taped report.
The tone of the media coverage over the past few days in New York has been relentlessly bleak.
Words like “Depression” and “meltdown” seem to trip off tongues, while reporters have been using ever-more dramatic language.
A typical example came from CNN’s septuagenarian buzzard-faced anchor, Larry King.
“Tonight, breaking news,” he declared in his ‘intro’. “Wall Street takes another nose-dive. Investors panic. Should you?”
Later in that show, he interviewed Donald Trump, who pronounced: “I think this has the chance to be the worst period of time since 1929. This is a really devastating period.”
The rollercoaster week was also depicted in garish headlines in the New York press.
“Bailout Is A Bust! Brace Yourselves!” cried the New York Daily News, after news broke that the US government would be bailing out insurance giant AIG. “Dow drops 449 as plan to save AIG fails to ease fear, with more big banks at risk.”
Or as the New York Post succinctly put it: “More Grief On The Street of $creams!”
Twenty-four hours later, the coverage had see-sawed, with the same newspaper declaring: “Back From The Debt: Dow Soars 410”, while the more cerebral New York Times wrote of the embattled US Treasury Department: “Washington Takes on The Feel of Wartime.”
On the inside pages, the press began reporting that the turmoil on Wall Street was already being felt in the wider New York economy.
The Daily News warned that “Cabbies gear up for bad times”, as taxi and limousine firms feel the pinch.
One Brooklyn-based cab company, Corporate Transportation, had particular cause for alarm, as it had a contract with failed investment bank Lehman Brothers.
“We’re getting hammered,” its owner Eduard Slinin told the paper. “Lehman was one of our biggest clients. We would do 800 rides a night. We never believed it would collapse. It’s like a bad dream.”
Posted by James Silver - On Monday, September 22, 2008
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A bitter pill
Saturday, September 06, 2008 Send to a friend
This piece of 'news' will go down like a cup of cold sick at Number 10 - especially when read alongside Polly Toynbee writing in The Guardian that Unseating Brown Could Be Labour's Last Chance. How little time it took for the storm clouds to gather over Gord's head once again, after the briefest of summer respites. The clock is ticking and the ticks grow ever louder. Now it's down to the conference speech in Manchester and yet another troublesome by-election...
Posted by James Silver - On Saturday, September 06, 2008
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Blond Ambition
Friday, August 22, 2008 Send to a friend
The Evening Standard have picked up on my forthcoming interview with Boris Johnson for Total Politics magazine. I'm glad to see I wasn't the only one surprised by his knowing use of Heseltine's "I cannot foresee the circumstances.." when asked whether he still harboured PM ambitions...
Update 24.08.08: Amid the hundreds of acres of newsprint coverage Boris has been garnering in the run-up to taking the Olympic flag from the Beijing mayor, the TP interview has also been name-checked in The Daily Mail, The Observer and three times in John Rentoul's column in the Independent on Sunday. Meanwhile, The People pulled a quote from the interview, but didn't source it to TP.
Posted by James Silver - On Friday, August 22, 2008
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Charisma bypass
Thursday, August 21, 2008 Send to a friend
"Jazzhands" Brown strikes again. As the New Statesman's Martin Bright points out, our PM - already upstaged by Mayor Boris over the Olympics - finally crawls out of the woodwork (and what was he doing during the Georgia crisis exactly?) only to declare of 'Team GB': "I think the whole nation is totally delighted and really proud of everything that's been achieved." How very press release. How do you feel, Gordon? No one's saying you need to become Oprah and rent your garments asunder, but sounding vaguely human would be a start.
Posted by James Silver - On Thursday, August 21, 2008
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Me, me, me
Tuesday, August 19, 2008 Send to a friend
Wonderful and revealing slip of the tongue from BBC TV news anchor Kate Silverton on the lunchtime news today. When introducing a correspondent in Georgia, she said: "Helen Fawkes is in Igoeti for me.."
Yes, love. She's in Igoeti for you ...
Posted by James Silver - On Tuesday, August 19, 2008
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Writing + wall
Monday, August 04, 2008 Send to a friend
For Gordon Brown, this piece in today's Guardian by one of his few remaining supporters in the press, Jackie Ashley, is the one that should worry him most...
Posted by James Silver - On Monday, August 04, 2008
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City of doll-houses
Monday, July 21, 2008 Send to a friend
One of those great cultural weekends, pretty much unique to London...
A strange mix of Japanese folklore, Noh theatre and a modern whodunnit served up in The Diver at the Soho Theatre, starring Kathryn Hunter... One too many swirling dream sequences for my tastes, but arresting and original nonetheless...
Then, to the Hayward Gallery on the south bank for Psycho Buildings, a fascinating exploration of spacial surroundings and our reaction to them - part of the iconic gallery's 40th birthday celebrations. Rachel Whiteread's doll-house town at night and the exploding building by Los Carpinteros particularly stick in the mind...
And then finally to the Curzon Soho to see the deeply disturbing Savage Grace starring Julianne Moore... Incest, identity and social climbing spun over four locations and 26 years... Perfect Sunday night fare.
Posted by James Silver - On Monday, July 21, 2008
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BBC Bonuses Again
Wednesday, July 09, 2008 Send to a friend
"BBC Bosses in Bonuses Storm" has become an annual media ritual/blood sport. This year there's an added piquancy given the dismal year the corporation has had with its phone-in scandals, fakery rows and redundancies. DG Mark Thompson was right to waive his bonus. And, I believe, this year, the rest of the board should have waived theirs too. The successes of the BBC iPlayer and Freeview are noteworthy, but in the end two factors should have weighed heavily on their decision. First, you don't slash the workforce and demand austerity from programme-makers and then fill your boots at the top; it sends out all the wrong signals. And second, I don't believe the BBC has had a great year creatively. The standard defence - when it comes to BBC executive bonuses - is that the private sector offers far richer rewards. But working for the public service BBC - while being very well paid by any reasonable standard (Jana Bennett, BBC Vision director earns two-and-a-half times as much as the PM) - should be reward enough for these guys. If they want more, then they know what they can do...
Posted by James Silver - On Wednesday, July 09, 2008
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Last one out
Monday, July 07, 2008 Send to a friend
Don't forget to turn out the lights...
Posted by James Silver - On Monday, July 07, 2008
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Blog Hall of Mirrors
Monday, July 07, 2008 Send to a friend
Former Gawker hackette and veteran blogger (at 26) Emily Gould described (in eye-watering detail) the risks inherent in blogging about your personal life in a fascinating recent cover story for the New York Times magazine. Gould’s piece predictably prompted a wave of keyboard-clattering from the Manhattan media bubble's finest, but also won her an impressive – and, I think, well-deserved - book deal. This week she hit back at her haters in a piece on her blog entitled ‘How the Emily Gould Gossip Sausage Gets Made’. I have never come across a better illustration of the hall-of-mirrors nature of the blogosphere... Mad dogs barking at each other in a paddling pool. Or as EG puts it people "who have been in the machine too long".
Posted by James Silver - On Monday, July 07, 2008
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British Library Blues
Saturday, July 05, 2008 Send to a friend
I yield to no one in my affection for the British Library, where I spend many hours working and in our (justifiably) twitchy age I fully understand the need to search bags on entry. (Although, let’s face it, the BL strikes me as quite a strange choice for a would-be suicide bomber... “I know, let’s murder the bookish!”) But the officiousness of some of the security-guards occasionally strays into farce, as they fumble self-importantly through obscure pockets and long-forgotten corners of rucksacks, yet don’t bother checking laptops and wave through people, wearing heavy winter-coats, as I have seen them do on many occasions. Give a man a walkie-talkie and he goes a little bit crazy. I’m waiting for the day a Jack-Bauer-with-a-library-staff-pass greets me at the door with the question: “Did you pack that pencil case yourself, sir?”
Posted by James Silver - On Saturday, July 05, 2008
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Greer on Dylan
Saturday, July 05, 2008 Send to a friend
I doubt I’m alone in my outrage at that hectoring-frump-turned-reality-TV star Germaine Greer’s bizarre assertion in The Guardian arts section that Bob Dylan is an over-praised and untalented lyricist. "It's not verse, not even doggerel," she declares. To bolster her (paper thin) case, Greer picks a couple of lines from "Visions of Johanna", a song which I would agree does not contain his finest work.
But take this extract from one of his most beautiful and haunting songs, Blind Willie McTell...
See them big plantations burning
Hear the cracking of the whips
Smell that sweet magnolia blooming
(And) see the ghosts of slavery ships
I can hear them tribes a-moaning
(I can) hear the undertaker's bell
(Yeah), nobody can sing the blues
Like Blind Willie McTell
Or these verses from the unbearably moving Who Killed Davey Moore?
Who killed Davey Moore,
Why an' what's the reason for?
"Not me," says the boxing writer,
Pounding print on his old typewriter,
Sayin', "Boxing ain't to blame,
There's just as much danger in a football game."
Sayin', "Fist fighting is here to stay,
It's just the old American way.
It wasn't me that made him fall.
No, you can't blame me at all."
Who killed Davey Moore,
Why an' what's the reason for?
"Not me," says the man whose fists
Laid him low in a cloud of mist,
Who came here from Cuba's door
Where boxing ain't allowed no more.
"I hit him, yes, it's true,
But that's what I am paid to do.
Don't say 'murder,' don't say 'kill.'
It was destiny, it was God's will.
... and tell me again that Dylan’s best work can't be described as poetry, Germaine.
Posted by James Silver - On Saturday, July 05, 2008
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Tusa on Wheeler
Saturday, July 05, 2008 Send to a friend
One of the finest reporters the BBC ever produced, Charles Wheeler died on Friday. The greatest exponent of the reporter-is-not-the-story school of journalism, his cool and authoritative voice will be badly missed. I wonder who John Tusa had in mind in his Guardian tribute, when he wrote: "Charles was the obverse of a puffed-up "personality journalist" - the kind of person who thinks his personal presence is our message."?
Posted by James Silver - On Saturday, July 05, 2008
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Jay-Z, finally
Saturday, June 28, 2008 Send to a friend
You've got to hand it to Jay-Z. After weeks of moaning from indie-fans and Glastonbury 'purists' (including Noel Gallagher) that the festival doesn't "do" hip hop, this year's headliner turned up on stage (very late) and stuck it to the Oasis star with a parody of Wonderwall... before erupting into his brilliant set with 99 Problems. He told his audience, (quite possibly the whitest he has ever performed in front of): "For those who didn't get the memo, my name is Jay-Z, and I'm pretty f***ing awesome!" Damian Hurst's diamond-studded skull glittered on a screen behind him...
Update: The critics are pretty much united over Jay-Z's set. He has officially been designated A Triumph. Case closed.
Posted by James Silver - On Saturday, June 28, 2008
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Hersh on Iran
Friday, June 27, 2008 Send to a friend
The great investigative reporter Seymour Hersh reveals in the latest issue of The New Yorker that the US government has launched a dramatic escalation in covert operations in Iran, intended to destabilize the Iranian government. It's the latest in a series of articles by Hersh investigating the Bush administration's plans for a possible attack on Iran. It's becoming increasingly plain to those who follow these things, that the Iranian nuclear issue has shot to the top of the president's foreign policy priorities.
2nd July update: During my interview for next month's Total Politics magazine with former Bush press secretary Scott McClellan and ex Clinton and Carter foreign affairs advisor Ambassador Marc Ginsberg, the latter revealed that "Israeli diplomats have been running around Europe and the US warning that if something is not done to stop the Iranian nuclear programme soon, the Israelis will act militarily." Sobering.
Posted by James Silver - On Friday, June 27, 2008
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Dumb or what?
Friday, June 27, 2008 Send to a friend
With Zimbabwe on 'election day' simmering like a cauldron, Britain's PM marking a year in office with another by-election fiasco/debacle and stock markets falling across the world, which story is - at the time of writing - the 'Most Read' on the BBC News website? Naturally it's some preening noise-in-a-hat called Dennis getting slung off Big Brother . And yes, it's the 'Most Emailed' too...
Posted by James Silver - On Friday, June 27, 2008
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Whopper with fries
Friday, June 13, 2008 Send to a friend
Irresistible, from Holy Moly:
This is the single greatest sentence I have ever put in the mailout.
A mole writes:
"I once saw Dean Gaffney crying in Burger King with his mum."
Posted by James Silver - On Friday, June 13, 2008
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Ole Poison Fingers
Wednesday, June 11, 2008 Send to a friend
It's hard not to feel sorry for our hapless PM. Impressive wheeler-dealing and nose-tweaking behind the scenes to squeak a victory over 42 days detention, following a confident performance at PMQs, and finally he gets to glimpse a chink of daylight.. Then some doofus klutz intelligence official goes and leaves some top-secret documents on a commuter train... And suddenly, Brown's rare-as-hens'-teeth good news story (Brown Stands his Ground etc) is bumped off the front pages/evening news. Some leaders are born lucky. Poor Poison Fingers Gordon simply isn't one of them.
Update: And then along comes rogue elephant David Davis...
Posted by James Silver - On Wednesday, June 11, 2008
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Lady Fenella and the Duke
Saturday, June 07, 2008 Send to a friend
With its tales of minor European aristocrats with unpronounceable names, feuds at Annabel's nightclub and endless features on Sloaney ponies-turned-models, the Evening Standard's glossy ES magazine is a true oddity. Perhaps its editor, Catherine Ostler, is confused and thinks she's editing Tatler. She clearly thinks her mag is read exclusively in the hair salons of Kensington and Chelsea. The truth is the typical Evening Standard reader is an accountant sitting in a smelly train back to Penge of an evening. What they make of Lady Fenella de Horseface and Duke Heinrich von Footstump's messy divorce heaven only knows. No doubt the Standard would say the mag is "aspirational". The truth is, if you check out the display advertising it carries - Calvin Klein, Porsche, Cartier, etc - it clearly brings in wheelbarrows of cash...
Posted by James Silver - On Saturday, June 07, 2008
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The Viper Room
Wednesday, June 04, 2008 Send to a friend
So that fat lady finally took to the stage and sung... In a mesmerizing speech, Obama has claimed the nomination, while HRC has all but conceded... I say 'all but' because she couldn't quite bring herself to do it... Now, Obama enters the Viper Room of a general election campaign. This is where it starts to hurt. Where the fight turns ugly as the Republican spin machine whirs into action. Don't expect McCain to do the dirty work himself. That's not really his style. But watch out for the rightwing bloggers; the pasty-faced nasties pecking away at worn-down keyboards... Watch out for the attack ads, the coded racist references, the character smears and yet more glimpses of Obama's rolling-eyed preachers-from-hell... Some have said Hillary fought dirty. Unfortunately, I think the Obama camp ain't seen nothing yet...
Posted by James Silver - On Wednesday, June 04, 2008
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Planet Clinton
Sunday, May 25, 2008 Send to a friend
It is surely, as serial Clinton-basher Andrew Sullivan points out, an extraordinary irony that while Hillary Clinton was awaiting a cataclysmic gaffe from Barack Obama to aid her cause, it is she who has fatally slipped. Even if her comments have been misinterpreted, simply raising the sceptre of Bobby Kennedy's June assassination while running against an African American candidate (as justification for staying in the race), could only backfire. The 'Clinton machine' has malfunctioned. The tyres are spinning in the mud. The media have been looking for a chance to kill off her campaign. Now they have it. Condemnation has been swift and fulsome.
Update: There's fascinating analysis here on the New York Times politics blog of what HRC actually said and how the media ran with it...
Posted by James Silver - On Sunday, May 25, 2008
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Brown's Rictus Grin
Friday, May 23, 2008 Send to a friend
Is it just me or has Gordon Brown's smile become even creepier recently? It's become a sort of death-bed twitch; part-grimace, part-flinch... It was particularly chilling on PMQs this week... The closest I can find online is this strange effort. One leading political journalist told me that when GB was chancellor an image consultant was shipped in to work on his 'smile'. But he kept smiling in the wrong places and, eventually, she just gave up... Perhaps she should be given another shot?
Posted by James Silver - On Friday, May 23, 2008
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A dish best served cold
Sunday, May 11, 2008 Send to a friend
John Prescott's remarkable vomit-spattered memoirs in the Sunday Times today reveal how Gordon Brown sulked and raged over what he saw as Tony Blair's mendacity about when the former PM would stand aside. When viewed alongside another shattering poll in the Mail On Sunday over the forthcoming Crewe by-election, Mr. Brown's fledgling premiership is starting to look unsalvageable. Blair endured swaths of bad press, often sustained for months at a time. But he had an ability to ride out the media storms; even the most damaging stories - 'cash for honours', the dodgy dossier etc eventually disappeared over the horizon. Setting aside a backdrop of economic woes, a string of mishaps and the undeniable sense of an administration gone stale, Brown simply lacks Blair's unique ability to project confidence. For years Brown brooded from the sidelines, briefing against the boss and stirring the pot. We even learn from Prescott that his jealousy led to him holding cash back from pet Blair projects. The top job was his by right and he wanted everyone to know it...
The result? Well, in 11 days time, the PM's reputation will take a further pummeling in Crewe. The fallout will be highly toxic. A defeat also looms in the Commons over increasing the length a terror suspect can be held without charge to 42 days. Talk of leadership challenges will dog him for the rest of his time at No 10, the sense of lurching - Mr. Bean-like - from crisis to crisis ever-deepening. Meanwhile, whatever he and his friends say in public - or indeed behind the scenes - when he draws the curtains at night, Mr. Blair probably allows the occasional wry smile to creep across his face. Not his trademark Cheshire cat grin, of course. Just a smirk which says 'I told you so'.
Posted by James Silver - On Sunday, May 11, 2008
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Downcast of Downing St
Friday, May 09, 2008 Send to a friend
A daily drubbing in the press, a mop of blond hair at City Hall, now a slating in The Economist and a doomsday poll in The Sun...there is nowhere to hide for the PM at the moment. And to cap it all, Brown looks so downcast... As if he's carrying a terrible secret he can never share with the rest of us. Good leaders in the media age provide the public with a narrative. The Blair/Campbell axis and the first Clinton administration wrote the book on this. Unfortunately for Brown, he - and the people around him - failed to read it. So as the car-crash of the-election-that-never-was unfolded, the narrative began to be written for him.. The ditherer. Mr. Bean. Now a dour man entirely out of his depth. And, tragically for the Labour party, with a by-election disaster looming in Crewe and Nantwich - which will spawn further torrid press amid more nightmare polls - there's not a thing he can do about it right now.
Posted by James Silver - On Friday, May 09, 2008
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It's all over now. Or is it?
Wednesday, May 07, 2008 Send to a friend
The media pundits are saying it's all over. The fat lady is clearing her throat. From the expression on Bill Clinton's face to Matt Drudge's simple caption under a picture of Obama - "The nominee", the conclusion is that the smooth-talking junior Senator from Illinois has prevailed. Take a look at this from Tim Russert, NBC's Washington Bureau Chief. So that's it then... We in the media hoped against hope for a few more months of nail-biting entertainment. But, as they say in the US: 'You do the math!' Obama has an overwhelming lead in terms of delegates and the popular vote. He will likely swing the super-delegates this week. And of course he's clinched the moral argument too. It's been a fantastic run that has gripped readers and viewers the world over and hopefully restored faith in America's democratic system after the debacle in Florida eight years ago. But it's all over now. Or is it? At the time of writing, Senator Clinton is vowing to fight on. Behind the scenes super-delegates' noses are being tweaked. And who knows what else Obama's Pandora's-box-of-a-pastor will say in the meantime... I have a sneaking feeling that this story has a twist or two in it yet... After all, two rules apply here. One: never bet against a Clinton. And two: it ain't over till it's actually over. Whatever the fat lady may be doing.
Posted by James Silver - On Wednesday, May 07, 2008
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Heather Gets Even
Monday, March 17, 2008 Send to a friend
Heather Mills' mad-as-a-box-of-tree-frogs performance on the steps of the High Court today was a master-class in how not to behave in front of a thicket of camera lenses. One yearned - for the sake of her child - for her to stick a sock in it. Yet for all its rolling-eyed self-justification and hysterical mentions of her charity work, it was an oddly compelling performance. Macca probably cringed so hard he gave himself a hernia. As Sky's Kay Burley put it, "Sir Paul doesn't perhaps enjoy the limelight quite as much as his ex-wife". Indeed. What price a reconciliation?
Posted by James Silver - On Monday, March 17, 2008
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David Simon & The Wire
Saturday, February 09, 2008 Send to a friend
Fantastic piece by Mark Bowden in Atlantic Monthly about The Wire - the greatest TV drama ever made - and the brooding personality of its creator David Simon. A former reporter on the Baltimore Sun, Simon (and his "chief collaborator", former cop and school teacher Ed Burns), cover a different aspect of their home city in each season of the show.
In the first, it was the drug trade - the futile cat and mouse game between the police and the dealers; the second homed in on the port, painting as powerful a portrait of the decline of industrial, blue collar America as has ever been shot; in the third, we see the city bureaucracy - and the politicians - in their full cynical glory; in the fourth (and the best, I think), it's the school system and the lure of easy money and respect to be found on the streets for African American kids; and in the final season, which I've yet to see, it's reportedly the spiritual bankruptcy of his former employer, the city's newspaper.
With its sprawling Dickensian narrative, searing language, beautifully-drawn (and largely African American) characters and extraordinary depth, The Wire is simply the greatest TV fiction I've ever seen. It's tough to watch, the plot meanders and you certainly don't watch it for the twists and turns - you watch it because it feels like you've strayed into a world that is as far away from TV Drama-land as it's possible to get. It's life lived hard; as it is lived by millions. And the truths it tells are universal.
Among its many great tributes was this from trade journal Variety: "When television history is written, little else will rival "The Wire," a series of such extraordinary depth and ambition that it is, perhaps inevitably, savored only by an appreciative few."
Posted by James Silver - On Saturday, February 09, 2008
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Slightly less Angry of Ohio
Tuesday, January 15, 2008 Send to a friend
I'm really not feeling the love from Mansfield, Ohio right now... In his email below, Mr. **** - I assume it's a 'Mr.', it certainly sounds like a 'Mr.' - points out that the Wright brothers were also from smalltown Ohio. But I fail to see what that's got to do with my description of Mansfield as "drab and depressing". In any event, I refer Mr. **** to my last post. And I'd also like to point out that my reference to the armed guard reading the bible, was (wholly accurate) 'colour'/
description. I was certainly not mocking her faith.
Dear Mr. Silver: What does the "appearance" of Mansfield, Ohio, "drab and depressing", have to do with a legal case? I found your description of the town, the number of churches and the reference to the Bible as nothing more than a humorous caricature. We are a little more sophisticated here in the "Buckeye" state than you describe. Please remember that two Ohio boys, Orville and Wilbur, invent flight after all. They were from another
"drab and depressing" Ohio town. Best Regards
Posted by James Silver - On Tuesday, January 15, 2008
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Angry of Ohio
Saturday, December 22, 2007 Send to a friend
It seems my description of Mansfield, Ohio as "a drab and depressing little town" has infuriated at least one reader, after it was reprinted in local newspaper The Blade. I can only apologize to Mr. *****, whose letter is below, and any others I have offended.
All I can say is I didn't set out to cause offence. From Ohio to Texas, New York to California I have found most Americans to be far more welcoming - and more open to answering questions from journalists - than many Europeans.
However, I'm afraid I really didn't care for Mansfield - though I'm fully prepared to accept that the town has "fine commercial architecture, homes, scenery, and thriving businesses" and I would add that there are hundreds of English and other European towns of a similar size which are equally "drab and depressing".
Regarding Mr. Richey, if Mr. ***** cares to read my original article on his case in The Observer, he will see that I never claimed that Richey was "a model citizen". Justice in Ohio failed Kenny Richey - and Cynthia Collins' family, to whom my heartfelt sympathy goes out - horribly. But the truth is he should never have been convicted in the first place... (again, read my original 2002 article).
We live in northwestern Ohio (that's in the USA) and the Kenny Richey case has recently made the news as he seems to escaping his previous death row fate. James Silver's account of his visit with Mr. Richey in Mansfield was reprinted in The Blade (Toledo, Ohio) and drew my attention. I am no advocate of the death penalty and I am glad he will not die at Ohio hands. However, this poor soul portrayed was hardly a model citizen. He was also convicted in a duly constituted court of law based on the evidence at hand then. The system, however slowly, has modified the outcome to refine justice. He has a chance at some kind of life, unlike the small child who died, Cynthia Collins. And did Mr. Silver do any research on the city of Mansfield, dismissed in the first sentence? At 51,000+ people, it is hardly small by Midwestern or even UK standards. It's "real significance" extends further than hosting a prison. A perfunctory visit to the Chamber of Commerce web site might have shown that. Yes (like the English and Belgian cities I have visited), it has its dreary parts as a recovering mill town. It also (like those) has some fine commercial architecture, homes, scenery, and thriving businesses. It is a place where people live, work, and yes, worship, and not to be dismissed so by one ungracious visitor. Finally, we here have all been been struck by the dearth of regret expressed by his family and his foreign fans on the death of this child, apparently due to neglect. A child died horribly because of boneheaded, self-involved carelessness (Richey and the mother both). Sure we Americans just breed more, but this child, like all the rest, was precious. Take your darling Kenny and your yellow press journalists both and have a nice Christmas. Sincerely, **** *****
Posted by James Silver - On Saturday, December 22, 2007
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The driving-instructor's carrot
Saturday, November 10, 2007 Send to a friend
Love this story in The Sun about the creepy driving-instructor who stuffed a 12 inch carrot down his trousers to impress his female students. The print edition helpfully printed a picture of a 12 inch carrot next to a ruler in case there was any confusion...
Posted by James Silver - On Saturday, November 10, 2007
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Mailer remembered
Saturday, November 10, 2007 Send to a friend
Not long after 9/11 I had the pleasure of interviewing Norman Mailer who has just died. He was 78 at the time and when we met he hobbled across his hotel suite at the Savoy in London with two canes, hearing-aids in both ears. Nudging eighty and infirm he may have been, but his cool analysis of 9/11, Bush, boxing, literature and the nature of 'celebrity' revealed a whip-sharp mind. He was a slight man with a huge presence. He lived the fullest of lives and will be missed.
Posted by James Silver - On Saturday, November 10, 2007
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NI goes cold on Brown
Wednesday, October 17, 2007 Send to a friend
As Roy Greenslade argues in today's Evening Standard, the real significance of what Irwin Stelzer said on Monday is that we can now expect a seismic shift in News International's press support for New Labour. Not only is Brown's honeymoon over in the wake of the election fiasco, but he has to brace himself for a drip drip of negative stories from here on in. Trevor Kavanagh, keeper of the Sun's political flame, is no fan of the PM's tax and spend instincts. And Kavanagh's politics are close to those of his ultimate boss. All this has proved what many Murdoch-watchers suspected all along; namely, that the News Corp chief's ardour for New Labour was conditional on Blair being PM. Whatever Murdoch's personal feelings for Brown (he admires his work ethic and puritanical streak), now Blair's gone, Labour can expect a rough ride.
Posted by James Silver - On Wednesday, October 17, 2007
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Ambushing Doris
Friday, October 12, 2007 Send to a friend
What a delightful old curmudgeon the novelist Dorris Lessing is. Just take a look at her reaction when a Reuters reporter informs her that she has won the Nobel Prize for literature (you have to put up with an annoying ad first). Her disdain for the media - and the prize committee - is undisguised. And check out the dude with the broken arm clutching root vegetables...
Posted by James Silver - On Friday, October 12, 2007
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Travelodge Nights
Tuesday, September 11, 2007 Send to a friend
What a gem of a story this is. I'd be intrigued to find out if they have their Christmas dinner in a Travelodge "bar cafe" where - according to the website - you can "unwind at the end of the day in comfort", or were they stuck with the vending machine at the end of their corridor?
Posted by James Silver - On Tuesday, September 11, 2007
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The end of the BBC 'lifer'?
Friday, September 07, 2007 Send to a friend
During my interview with BBC Vision chief Jana Bennett, we touched on the vexed issue of BBC 'lifers' - those programme-makers who spend their entire careers in the corporation's cosy cocoon. Bennett thinks they may be a dying breed as the coming years will see a greater flow of traffic to and from the independent sector which - thanks to the introduction of the Window of Creative Competition (WOCC) - will now have access to half of the BBC's qualifying commissioning hours.
"I do think the BBC needs to be a more porous organisation rather than seeing itself as some sort of citadel," she said tellingly. "That really isn't the shape of the industry these days at all. We should have fewer walls and accept that people will be moving in and out of different types of employment over their career."
Bennett herself - who was born in New York and grew up in New Hampshire before moving to Bognor Regis, of all places, as a teen - left the BBC after twenty years of rising through the ranks to work for Discovery in the USA where she stayed for three years.
It was probably there - or on one of those obligatory US business courses to which all BBC top execs get sent - where she started using the most extraordinary buzzwords and phrases when talking about TV and its various platforms. Phrases such as "three dimensional scheduling", "For Me content", "evergreen value" programming and "Big TV" are some of the ones she used during our encounter.
Jana Bennett is talked of, very sensibly I think, as a future BBC director general. But if she is to get the top job, then she'll have to ditch the buzzwords and management speak. As a former BBC staffer, I know that no one likes being addressed by a boss who refers to "evergreen value" when what they actually mean is good programmes that will last.
Posted by James Silver - On Friday, September 07, 2007
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Hacks, Booze and 'live' broadcasting
Sunday, September 02, 2007 Send to a friend
Lack of space (as ever) in last week's chat with Panorama's John Sweeney prevented me from exploring what he had to say about how years on the road as a war reporter drove him to drink. While reporting on the Soviet Union's war with Afghanistan, he says the only way he could get to sleep at night after interviewing Afghan torture victims, was by drinking a bottle of vodka and reading a PG Wodehouse book.
Sweeney says his drinking is now in check, however, at its worst, it made booking him for late night TV and radio appearances a gamble for producers. One night he was on Andrew Neil's late night TV politics talk show "during the dying days of the Major government", when he fleetingly passed out during a live studio debate.
"It was during my bad drinking days on the Observer," he recalls, "I was pissed and Neil turned to me suddenly and said 'What do you think'? I said: 'The last days of John Major's government remind me of one of Shelley's great poems..' and just as I was about to quote from it, my mind went totally blank and my eyes glazed over. The camera crew laughed which is a very bad sign. There was a fantastic silence for about ten seconds, during which I died. Then, thank god, I suddenly came out of my stupour and reeled off the quote. Everyone roared with laughter."
All of which reminds me of a late night radio discussion show on Five Live I produced a decade ago which featured, among others, the writer Will Self. The subject was food and Self rolled into the studio just as we were going live at midnight and promptly passed out face-down on the table, to the bemusement of the other guests and the thinly-veiled horror of the production team (me).
Occasionally the presenter - the wonderful John Diamond - would lob a question his way. But Self slept, indeed snored, soundly through each one. Then, just when everyone had forgotten all about him, he suddenly sat bolt upright as if someone had stuck a pin in his leg and joined the conversation silencing the panel with an eloquent and graphic line, as I remember, about Victorian toilets…before slumping forward on the table for the rest of the show.
Posted by James Silver - On Sunday, September 02, 2007
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The PM & Wake Up To Money
Sunday, July 01, 2007 Send to a friend
Interesting to note that in focus pieces by Nick Watt in the Observer and Patrick Hennessy in the Sunday Telegraph about our new PM's frenzied first few days in office, Brown is 'outed' as someone who rises at 5:30 AM of a morning to Radio Five Live's Wake Up to Money.
But just look at how similar their opening paragraphs are:
"As an early riser who likes to flick on his radio every morning on the dot of 5.30 AM for Five Live's Wake Up To Money, Gordon Brown..." begins Watt.
Now this is Hennessy in the Sun Tel: "Gordon Brown is a famously early riser, preferring to stir on weekdays to the sound of Wake Up To Money on Radio Five Live, which goes out at what most of his fellow Britons would consider to be the ungodly hour of 5.30 am."
Clearly this is coincidence rather than consipiracy, but is it stretching things too much to suggest that Gordon "we don't do spin" Brown's erm... spinner Damien McBride picked up the phone to both hacks to present his boss as an action man who, Thatcher-style, thrives on very little sleep....?
Posted by James Silver - On Sunday, July 01, 2007
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Paris Burning
Friday, June 29, 2007 Send to a friend
Respect to Mika Brzezinski, co-presenter of MSNBC's breakfast show in the US, who was so sickened by her station leading news bulletins with yet another story about Paris Hilton, rather than news events in Iraq and Washington, that she refused to read the intro and even attempted to set fire to and shred her script live on air. Check out the YouTube clip HERE. As protests against the dumbing down of news in favour of Heat-style reality TV gloop go, it was one which will stick in the memory far more than a hundred wordy op-ed pieces...
However, a couple of questions remain unanswered. Given stringent health and safety regulations in the US, how likely is it that news anchors would just happen to have a dangerous shredder and indeed a fag-lighter near the main studio desk? I'm not suggesting this was a fix, but hey MSNBC has got a huge dollop of global publicity out of it, thanks in part to YouTube. I don't think I'm alone in never having heard of Mika Brzezinski. I won't forget her in a hurry now...
Posted by James Silver - On Friday, June 29, 2007
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Carl Bernstein's Club Sandwich
Monday, June 25, 2007 Send to a friend
A sidebar to my encounter with Watergate legend Carl Bernstein. Interviewing a Titan of Journalism can be a nerve-wracking experience - particularly when it's someone with a reputation for being somewhat prickly, who has long campaigned against falling standards in this trade. With that in mind, I was wondering whether I should confess that I hadn't had the chance to take more than a quick peek at his 600-page biography of Hillary Clinton, as the interview was only set up at the very last minute and I'd had the book for little more than four hours...
In the end, I decided I knew just about enough about the Clintons to be able to busk it.. But as Bernstein - a man who is used to his audience hanging on his every word - chewed severely on his club sandwich in the reading room at Claridges, he kept referring to specific anecdotes or quotes in the book, saying things like: "As you'll know, on page 312, [some obscure US congressman] said..."
After twenty minutes or so, I decied it was safest to come clean. Setting down his club sandwich, he looked horrified. "You're kidding, right?" I told him, sadly, that I wasn't. He mumbled something about what it said about our industry and from then on had clearly decided I was some kind of imp, at one stage informing me with a wag of his finger that my time would be "best spent reading the book before I write the piece". I told him, gently, that I had 24 hours to write up the article and that provoked further dismayed head-shaking. "I'm not even going to ask why they won't let you write it a week from now.."
One of the best things about this job is getting to meet the occasional hero. One of the worst, is when the hero in question ends up thinking you are the journalistic equivalent of Homer Simpson...
Posted by James Silver - On Monday, June 25, 2007
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Sindy Redesign
Sunday, June 03, 2007 Send to a friend
After much hype about a radical revamp, the Independent on Sunday looks...well, pretty much the same to me. Yes, they've axed a magazine. And there's an ad on the back page. And the layout is a mite cleaner. Oh and there are now clickable words or phrases in the copy (I'm not sure what purpose that serves for buyers of the dead tree version?). Compared with the daily - and practically everything bar the Daily Star - it still feels incredibly thin, news-wise. News 'bites' are fine for a tube or bus ride. But at the weekend the evidence is that people want a Sunday Times-style doorstopper package. "Everything you need to know on a Sunday. Nothing you don't", declares the Sindy's new slogan. 'Less is more' is an attractive proposition (particularly for a loss-making title). But I'm certain it's not one which works when applied to the Sunday newspaper market.
Posted by James Silver - On Sunday, June 03, 2007
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Sudanese Goat note
Friday, May 04, 2007 Send to a friend
A sad postscript to A Goat's Tale. As readers of BBC News Online will know, the world's first superstar goat - named Rose - has come to a near-Shakespearean sticky ending. Rose, the Paris Hilton of the goat world, choked on a plastic bag.
Posted by James Silver - On Friday, May 04, 2007
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AA Gill's worst dining experience
Thursday, May 03, 2007 Send to a friend
There wasn't space in my AA Gill interview about restaurant criticism for this fantastic tale... Once when Gill was dining at a (now closed) Alistair Little restaurant in Notting Hill Gate, a drunk lurched in... Recalls Gill: “The layout of the place was like a train corridor with two sets of tables on each side. I was in there reviewing when this drunk reeled in through the door. Alistair went down to either eject him or give him ten quid and as he got there the man projectile vomited the entire length of the restaurant. But it was very neat, just down the central aisle. It just lay there like a foamy carpet. It was stuff that he’d eaten years ago. It was old Special Brew vomit. The smell was so terrible it's hard to know where to begin. Alistair just looked at me and went ‘Oh Fuck!’. It was such an unfair, awful mishap that I didn’t include it in my review...”
Posted by James Silver - On Thursday, May 03, 2007
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Blair's Legacy & The Observer
Tuesday, May 01, 2007 Send to a friend
Good to see Roger Alton, the editor of the Observer, stick to his guns on Tony Blair, with a full page leader in yesterday's paper which concluded that "after 10 years Blair has made Britain a better place". The lemming-like concessus on the prime minister around the kitchen tables of London's ciabatta-eating classes is that Blair is nothing more than a venal, peerage-flogging, Bee Gee-loving war-mongerer etc. But the Obs's leader argues that - the elephant in the room - Iraq, aside, the PM has much to be proud of...I won't list it all here, but it dovetails perfectly with what Alton said when I talked to him for the Indy in January '06, albeit in rather less ripe language. 'Blair is fucking good,' he declared then. 'I think the old chatterers will realise what a big loss he really is when he finally goes.' That, of course, is open to question. But it's hard not to admire Alton for having the cajones to stick his neck out once again... especially when you recall his decision to give the Observer's backing to the Iraq war and how it outraged the green tea-sipping firebrands of north and east London.
Posted by James Silver - On Tuesday, May 01, 2007
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Acting the goat
Tuesday, April 24, 2007 Send to a friend
Amazing how po-faced, killjoy-ish and downright dour some people can be... In a world of car-bombings, college shootings and tedious Labour leadership speculation, the story about the Sudanese man forced to 'marry' a goat is, I think, one that can be treated with a degree of light-heartedness. As I mention in today's 'short cut' in G2, it has remained one of the most popular stories on the BBC News Online website despite being written 14 months ago.
Nevertheless, some correspondents on the BBC News editors' blog deem the subject inappropriate. Writes Mark, apparently without irony: "So a story about a man committing bestial rape against a goat is one of the most popular on the BBC. I'm not sure that's anything to be proud of, but at least we can see for what purposes the license fee is being used." Not to be outdone in the humourlessness stakes, Toby opines: "It is a very sad state of affairs when the BBC as a supposedly reputable media organisation reduces such a story to be a laughing point and a source of humour. If the story is true, it is a sympton of the lack of education in some parts of the world and the fact that so many people find it so funny is a reflection of society today. Shame on us." Perhaps Mark and Toby are noted satirists, in which case I salute them. But somehow I think that's unlikely...
Posted by James Silver - On Tuesday, April 24, 2007
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NBC Cho VT & 'tragedy porn'
Thursday, April 19, 2007 Send to a friend
It's hard to disagree with the Virginia police department assessment that NBC News's decision to transmit Cho's hate-fuelled gun-toting multi-media video rants, which have aired all over the planet, "added little" to their investigation. Steve Capus, the network's news chief, said on the Today show "I'm not sure we'll ever fully understand why this happened, but I do think this is as close as we'll come to having a glimpse inside the mind of a killer." Hmm. The footage is of course 'good' TV, and amounts to little more 'tragedy porn' - the vile ravings of a deeply disturbed mind. However, although the editorial justification may be flimsy, one thing's certain. Few TV networks - or indeed newspapers - would have taken a different decision if the material had landed in their laps. Whatever we hacks might like to think, news is part of the entertainment biz and consequently a battle for numbers and eyeballs. By the end of today, virtually everyone with access to a TV or the Web will have watched the NBC-branded material...while complaining about 'the media' of course...
Posted by James Silver - On Thursday, April 19, 2007
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Anatomy of an American school shooting
Tuesday, April 17, 2007 Send to a friend
In 2000, I visited the quiet, conservative community of Moses Lake in Washington State (three hours drive across the stunning Cascade mountains from Seattle) for a radio documentary with my then BBC colleague Bill Law. The town became the backdrop for the first in the spate of school shootings which have blighted America over the past decade, when, in 1996, a troubled kid called Barry Loukaitis - wearing a black trenchcoat which concealed a hunting rifle and two handguns - walked into Frontier Junior High school and shot dead two 14-year old students and a teacher.
Loukaitis, who was also just 14 at the time, was disarmed by an astonishingly gutsy teacher, John Lane, and jailed for life without parole. We interviewed a brave and articulate girl called Natalie Heinz, who was 13 at the time of the shooting. Loukaitis shot her through the back. The bullet exited her right breast and then went through her arm. She only just survived.
What was so memorable and poignant about the encounter was that, despite her daughter's terrible ordeal, Natalie's mum, Shannon, refused to blame lax gun controls and the ready availability of weapons. "Do you blame [the availability of] guns ?" I asked her. "No, we don't blame guns whatsoever [sic]," she replied firmly. "We're gun-owners ourselves. The gun doesn't have a brain, it can't move itself anywhere. Someone has to use the gun for destruction. So it's the person who did this that we blame, not the gun." Natalie interjected at that point. "You can make gun-laws as strict as you want, but there are still ways. If you want to get hold of a gun [and kill], you can."
For me that exchange captured perfectly why America's estimated 200 million guns in private hands will never be surrendered. Guns, especially in vast swathes of rural America, are a fact - and a way - of life. Anyone who thinks the grotesque Virginia Tech massacre will act as a wake-up call and spark changes in the law is sorely mistaken. When the intelligent and reasonable mother of a school shooting victim defends the right to own guns, it tells you all you need to know...
Posted by James Silver - On Tuesday, April 17, 2007
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Simon Kelner and podcasts
Monday, March 26, 2007 Send to a friend
Last week's Guardian interview with Indy boss Simon Kelner seems to have stirred up a bit of a fuss - especially over his views on podcasts. The likeable Mr. Kelner apparently complained to the Guardian that the above headline differed from what he actually says in the interview itself ("I've never met anyone who ever listens to podcasts"). Whether he has a point or not I'll leave to others to judge, but I have since listened back to my recording of the interview... The quote is "I've never met anyone who ever bloody listens to them [podcasts]!" (Can't recall why I decided to drop the 'bloody'). However, he later appears to change his mind, conceding that "podcasts...do have their value..." He cites the Indy's own Angus Fraser's podcasts on the Ashes as offering "a service to the reader". So presumably he does occasionally listen to them after all...
Posted by James Silver - On Monday, March 26, 2007
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