Media Editorials

David Nicholson reveals why there has never been a better time to sell journalism online.

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by Rebekah Law

‘That’s it, it’s over! The free press is finished!’ declared Ian Hislop on Have I got News for You. With daily reports across the media the Leveson Inquiry into the culture, practice and ethics of the press has been the cause celebre in recent weeks. It has brought the question of the freedom of the press vs. individual privacy to the fore. Whatever the future of journalism, rarely has there ever been such interest in the profession not just for the news it supplies but also for its own sake.

It's important to keep the content brief, write in clear, plain English, and give the reader a sense of how you are different (and better) than the competition.

Companies increasingly want their websites to resemble the more credible and authoritative sources of information, aware that the public has become tired of empty marketing rhetoric.

Subsiding into a bearded grump, the glowering Gowers ended with the reflection that online journalism doesn't even seem to pay very well.

With the growing hegemony of the internet the lines between journalism, copywriting and PR are becoming increasingly blurred. Companies are realising that they no longer need to hire advertising or PR companies to transmit their messages for them.

Listening to a sex chat line on your phone is a private affair. Looking at pictures or videos of couples at it, doing all the many-splendored things which internet porn artists do, could provoke more deeply-held objections.

Collins, turning 60 in June, has more money than time. She is at work on her third novel (working title Hell Hath No Fury), having ditched her fourth husband in favour of an old Etonian art dealer. She eats mini-Mars bars in a modest dressing room, Michael Medved's Hollywood versus America sharing the shelf space with a Scrabble dictionary and her second novel, Love and Desire and Hate ("You have a degree in literature? Well you'd better not read it").