Saturday, August 01, 2009

Biting backs...


Bless the Hull Advertiser, the weekly newspaper circulated around the city and its surrounds by my former employer. The Advertiser is a free sheet which has, at various points in its time, had its own editorial staff but is now a compilation of the HDM's daily content in the form of '60 second' glorified nibs. Which is no bad thing, although it doesn't always inspire a reader to read on. One headline did do the job this week though - BBC bites backs in 'ageism' row. For me, it brought to mind images of Paxman, Clarkson and Anne Robinson sinking their teeth into old folk. Turns out it's nothing more than a simple typo (the kind of literal I used to introduce into newspapers during my relatively short tenure - sometimes for fun, sometimes because my attention to detail was somewhat distracted by holding play readings somewhere else in the building). If anyone's going to take a lump out of anyone's back, it will, I read, be Government ageism tsar Dame Joan Bakewell (no gags about tarts, please, although a couple of extra consonants and a sub with a sense of humour could have seen to that), who ain't happy about the way the Beeb banishes female presenters over-50. And rightly so. Of course, I'd already seen/heard the story elsewhere but it wasn't presented so well - a two deck headline atop three paragraphs. One of those paragraphs - the first - was a bit shoddy too: The BBC hittting back at accusations "of that it is"... The poor subs over at the HDM are somewhat under the kosh at the mo' due to whole Centre of Excellence reshuffle that's ripped through Northcliffe. My thoughts are with them.

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