Blurred Keys

Journalism is often described as a trade, but freelancing is more like an art. Or at least the process of pitching to editors is an art form.

Adam Maguire talks about the it here, following up on the boards.ie News & Media thread on the same subject here. While below are letters from the NUJ’s magazine,  the Journalist, shows a few different views on the issue…

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Below is a link to a survey on crime coverage in Irish
newspapers that I compiled for other reasons but might as well publish here. A sample week was taken in which all crime articles were recorded in
the national daily morning newspapers.

Here’s some of the main or interesting points…

• The Irish Daily Star and the Irish Examiner had the most
  crime articles with 127 and 114 stories respectively in total for the week.
• The Examiner also had the highest recorded amount of crime
  articles in any one newspaper on any one day, at 31 stories for Wednesday. The
  next two highest are 27 and 26 for the Wednesday and Thursday editions of the Irish Daily Star.
• The Irish Independent and the Irish Daily Mail had the
  least amount of crime articles with 47 and 38 respectively.
• Out of the eight
  daily papers and nine Sunday papers, there were a total of 57 covers. Just 18
  of these covers had no crime coverage on them; the vast majority – 68 percent –
  had crime on the cover page.
• Across daily
  titles, Monday has the lowest amount of crime stories. The low amount of crime
  reporting on this day can largely be linked with the covering of Court proceedings. As there are no normal Court proceedings on Sundays, there are no
  such stories available for the newspapers on Mondays.
• Of the 22
  percent of the articles that related crimes in other countries, of that only
  four percent related to those with a substantial link to Ireland.
• The Irish Mirror had the highest weekly
  percentage of international stories at 38 percent. It also had the highest
  single day percentage, accounting for 59 percent, with 7 Irish and 10
  international stories.
• The Irish Times
  had the lowest amount of international crime articles at under 15 percent,
  while the other newspapers had around 20 percent
• With a sample breakdown of the types of crimes covered there
  was a large difference between newspapers. With murder, the Irish Examiner published the largest
  amount (25) of related articles, while the Irish
  Independent had less then half that amount (11). With rape, the Irish Daily Star published 11 stories, more
  than any other paper for the week, while at the other end of the scale the Irish Daily Mail had only one rape
  story.

The report, ‘Newspaper crime coverage in Ireland’, is here (PDF). Skip to part two for the survey. The content of part one has mostly been mentioned on this site before.   

According to the Irish Times, the latest Joint National Listenership Research shows RTE Drivetime programme coming out in top over Today FM’s the Last Word.

But the Last Word and Newstalk’s the Right Hook also saw growth.

MORE: RTE has top nine radio shows (subs reqd)
MORE: JNLR/TNSmrbi Reach and market share (PDF)

(Photo by Andrew Bardwell, used under CC Attribution-Share Alike 2.0)

Apologies for the lack of updates recently, here’s a bit of a news round-up…

- Broadcast Bill carries ‘right to reply’
- Bill proposes single broadcast regulator
- Irish paper group seeks £8m help
- Press Council member quits over policy *
- Council’s suppression of dissenting voice forced me to quit *
- Clarify Privacy Bill’s limbo status - FG*
- O’Brien-backed group puts case for DTT licence*
- Metro director to leave paper 
- Sir Anthony scoops Media Person of the Year award
* = (subs reqd)

Or at least that’s what Gayle Killilea wrote for the Sunday Independent after seeing a group of Irish newspaper reporters staying quite at the former Taoiseach’s address to Congress…   

…I made my feelings clear about the media behaviour to Charlie
Bird when I met him on Wednesday evening. He said that he had clapped. And
I believe he did, the broadcast media were seated in a different section of the
house to the print media, and did not seem to be infected by the same
negativity.

However, he defended their behaviour by asserting that it is normal for
journalists to sit impassively during such occasions. This suggests that it is
normal for the Irish media to be impartial and detached, which of course they
are not. The Irish media are not impartial or detached, the articles that they
write demonstrate that…

- Gayle Killilea, Sunday Independent

‘Blogging: some ethical issues’ is to be the possibility controversy topic of the last Cleraun media forum before the autumn.

It takes place this Monday, May 19 at 8pm, and all are welcome.It’ll
be chaired by Tony Allwright, an engineer and occasional columnist with
the Irish Times, who blogs on international and national issues at www.tallrite.com/blog.htm.

Meanwhile, the 12th Cleraun Media Conference will take place on
Saturday and Sunday October 18 – 19, 2008. More details are due closer
to the event.

For more see cleraun.com.