Great truths of our time By Donald Walker ‘Don, you don’t understand what I’m trying to do with this newspaper, do you?’ Anne Robinson said to me one afternoon. ‘No, Anne,’ I replied (though these may not have been my exact words), ‘I don’t understand. Does anyone understand? Do you

Dab hand at murder By Stan Solomons Detectives probing the brutal killing of a kind old lady who ran a tiny corner shop thought it was only a matter of time before they tracked down the killer. They had found a vital clue at the murder scene – a set

Sticky situation By Derek Roylance Reading Tom Brown’s piece on intros in Ranters last week reminded me of one of the best I have seen… and it was on a media release! To set the scene. I and my good mate the late Bob Cornish were operating as captains in

This Week The intro-writing thread continues this week with a short from Derek Roylance, who started work on the old Rhyl Leader and was on the Rugeley Times, Staffordshire Advertiser, Express & Star and Lincolnshire Echo before emigrating to Oz where he became a PR for the army – a

Like the plague… By Geoffrey Mather As any writer knows, falling foul of a cliché is easy as pie. Annoying, too, which means that you tend to flip your lid, let the fur fly for Pete’s sake, go through the roof, get your knickers in a twist, climb walls while

Piece of cake By Ken Ashton Half-time in a World Cup soccer match, the crowd is going bananas, one team is smiling to the gods, the other looks shell-shocked. And my mother, bless her, is sitting in the stand and wondering whether to patent her fruit cake… created during World

This Week   As we swing into election mode here at Ranters, with our usual deadline-beating panache we launch a new book – From Bevan to Blair, Fifty Years of Reporting From the Political Front Line, by Geoffrey Goodman. When it came to politics or industry, Geoffrey was the experts’

What’s it about? By Revel Barker Fifty years ago Malcolm Barker (no relation) was the best writer on the Yorkshire Evening Post and in the intervening years, I haven’t encountered many who were anywhere near as good. When, as a teenager in the reporters’ room in Albion Street in Leeds

Tomorrow’s fish and chips By Geoffrey Goodman Being a journalist is a kind of alternate for a job in an entire range of semi-skilled, perhaps even unskilled, trades. I am thinking especially of jobs such as the secret intelligence services – incidentally, a much over-rated occupation; a bookmaker (much under-rated),

Wild about Harry By Mike Gallemore The world of journalism has lost one of its most respected characters and one of its few genuine socialists. Harry Conroy, former FoC of the Daily Record and general secretary of the NUJ, died in hospital in Glasgow last week. He was 67. For

The funny side of The Street By Colin Dunne Of all the responses that Kit Miller could inspire – and among these I include friendship, admiration, and riotous laughter – there was one that was never far away. Alarm. So when Kit said he was interested in renting the basement

Butter for parsnips By Tom Brown So I am joining the debate on intros. Where to start? At the beginning, of course. As Maria von Trapp sang: ‘A very good place to start …’ At the very beginning of what is laughingly called my career, I was inspired by a

Blackshirt lifters By Revel Barker On the run-up (or should that be run down?) to the general election, there’s never been any doubt where those two centurions of Fleet Street would position themselves – the immigrant-bashing Daily Mail, rabidly right-wing and pro-Tory, and the Daily Mirror (perhaps a little less

Memoirs of a foxhunting man By Alan Whittaker Ron Mount took the call in the News Room around 10.30 on a rainy Saturday night. The caller introduced himself as ‘Foxy’ Fowler the escaped jailbird; the will o’the wisp criminal hunted by every police force in Britain. And he wanted to

Ordinary blokes By Roy Stockdill Geoffrey Mather’s piece on intros reminded me of a couple of stories from the old News of the World – the broadsheet NoW, that is, with the lovely scroll-type masthead, long before it became a tabloid publicity sheet for bed-hopping actresses and models, druggie pop

Life on Mars at the typewriter By Matt Huber If you want one take on the recent state of British journalism and to laugh rather than cry, Colin Dunne’s story of his life and times on the road, at lunch and at the typewriter is the book to buy. He

Fun with phones By Anthony Peagam Don Walker’s tales of the wonky telephones in Room 404 of the Mirror building brought to mind a lovely chap for whom I worked in the early 1960s and who had the wit to commission the likes of Alan Coren, Michael Parkinson, Maurice Wiggin,

This Week  Alan Whittaker’s tale this week involves the wonderful Vic Sims, with whom I shared an office for a while on the Sunday Mirror in the 70s. It’s the sort of experience that seemed to happen often in Victor’s life – stories were always going wrong, falling down… nothing

Scoop and scooped By Desmond Zwar Every desk in the Daily Mail newsroom was suddenly deserted, with sub-editors, reporters, and photographers jammed around a Foreign Room teleprinter clacking furiously. A sub dashing back to his desk said an astronaut, Yuri Gagarin, had been launched into space by the Russians. The

Room 404 By Donald Walker As if we didn’t have enough to do, there were endless problems with the phones. Well, actually we didn’t have enough to do, that was the real problem. There were some fifteen or twenty of us in the same room on the fourth floor of

This Week Where to start? That’s always been the problem. We were debating tabloid intros in the Stab once after I had been moaning that I couldn’t get anything into the paper about the Cold War unless I could work in a connection to Coronation Street. Somebody said the perfect