A FAVOURITE occupation as the year bows itself out is looking back over what has happened since January 1. And what a year this has been!

So spare some thought for the task facing producer David Plowright and his What The Papers Say team as they get down to preparing their annual end-of-the-year awards list.

This time they won’t need a newspaper file to remind them of the big stories of the year. They really have been big.

Choosing the outstanding features of the year’s Press, David and his collaborators will be working while they eat … for a dinner has been arranged “somewhere in London”

“It is over the dinner table that we shall go through the list and make our decisions,” said David.

“We all have our nominations to put forward, and our task certainly isn’t going to be easy.”

Dining with David will be Brian Inglis, Bernard Levin, Michael Frayn and Harold Evans. They have all been prominent in the programme, and they will all have ideas on who or what merits an award.

None of them may be expected to give way to a rival claimant without a struggle. They are an argumentative lot, especially on their favourite subject, newspapers.

Over dinner they will be sorting out the best cartoon, columnist, scoop, news reporting, background story and the best newspaper.

“Yes, it has been an amazing year for news,” said David. “You have only to think back to the beginning of January, then let your mind run over what has happened since. At home the year, of course, has been dominated by one big story — the Profumo affair, with all its implications and ramifications.

“Linked with that, you have the shake-up on the political front, the departure of Mr. Harold Macmillan to make way for Sir Alec Douglas-Home, and the death of Mr. GaitskelL

“With so little time left before the year ends we have another staggering change in the international scene with the assassination of President Kennedy.

David added: “Most of the events which have been big news in the year have been shared by every newspaper and every other news medium, but there is always ample scope for individual talent to reveal itself and win an award.

“In the sports field there have been racing and football scandals and the lighter side of our national life has brought us the Beatles, a great source of news stories and likely to hold their place on the front page for a long time yet.”

Brian Inglis said that, for him, the West Indians role in leading a real revival of interesting cricket was perhaps one of the brightest features of the year.

“It is particularly cheering to look at the cricket field when so much else in the sporting world goes on under a cloud,” he said.

“I am thinking of racing and the doping scandals, and of football with its rowdiness and vandalism, and the effects on the game of increased gambling.

“For the New Year we are looking with interest to the constitution of the new Press Council and wondering if it is going to be more effective than the old one.”

Michael Frayn put his finger on a trend which has become more apparent as the months have gone by.

“In a year when the papers have been almost overwhelmed by the volume of news, they have found themselves being outstripped by rumour,” he said.

“That is what happened in the Profumo affair, in the crisis over the Conservative leadership. It even happened in the assassination of Kennedy.

“I ask you, how did you hear of the death of Kennedy? Through the papers? Through television? Or did somebody tell you? Many people I know say ‘Somebody told me’.”

Harold Evans barely repressed a shudder when I asked him to look back on the last 12 months. “Newspapers,” he said, “have never had a year like this. I hope they never have another.

“There has been high farce — a Great Train Robbery and a Tory leadership mumbo-jumbo.

“There have been successes — the nuclear test-ban treaty was one of them.

“But it has been a tragic year with the death of Kennedy and Gaitskell.

“And it has been a squalid year with Profumo, Keeler, and Vassall. A busy year.” He added: “Our eyes have been on the stars and our feet iIn the mud.”

Last year the What The Papers Say awards went to: Picture – Daily Mirror (taken by a reader, Jim Meeds of Hutfield, Herts.); columnist -Peter Simple, Daily Telegraph; scoop — Walter Terry, Daily Mail (Cabinet changes); behind the news — Roy Jenkins and The Observer (I.C.I. — Courtaulds story); news reporting — Clare Hollingworth, The Guardian (from Algiers); paper of the year – Sunday Times colour supplement; cartoon — no award.

This year’s awards will be announced by Brian Inglis in a special edition of What The Papers Say on Boxing Day.

The post Choosing what the papers said BEST appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

NEWSPAPER editor Alastair Dunnett stood at the window of his New York skyscraper hotel, looking over towards the Manhattan waterfront.

A mile away clouds of oily black smoke billowed up from a dockland fire. Flames ripped through the packed floors of giant warehouses.

Forty-nine-year-old Dunnett, who presents Granada’s What the Papers Say this Thursday, turned from the window, walked across the bedroom, and switched on a coin-in-the-slot TV set.

“What came over was the most thrilling television I have ever seen,” he told me. “The station had scrapped its scheduled programme. Every available outside-broadcast camera had been rushed to the docks to cover the blaze. Cameramen were as close in as the firemen fighting the flames. Commentators were everywhere.

“Smoke-blackened and dazed workmen were interviewed as they staggered from the blazing store sheds — even before ambulance men could give them first-aid. It was enthralling. Anybody who saw that fire on TV would read a very pale version of it in his newspaper later.”

I asked Dunnett, if, as a newspaperman, he considered TV a rival. “I think TV and newspapers are complementary to each other,” he said. “There is room for both. One does some things better than the other.

“News coverage, for instance. If a TV camera can be on the spot when a big story breaks — like that New York docks fire — then it scoops the newspaper.

“But TV’s advantage — on-the-spot immediacy — can also be a disadvantage. If the viewer sees it, all well and good. But it is over in a second. If the viewer has missed it, that’s too bad. Television is a matter of time. You must take it when it is there for you to see. A newspaper is always at your elbow. The printed word is with you for all time. If you haven’t time to read a story in your paper, you can fold it up and slip it into your pocket to read on the bus on the way to work.

“But I’m convinced that newspapers must change their techniques to meet the challenge of TV. They must become more interpretive of the news than descriptive. They will have to tell their readers why certain things happened, not just describe them.”

Can What the Papers Say criticism be damaging to newspapers? “They can take it!” said Dunnett. “It certainly is easy to criticise a newspaper. I’m an editor, and I have to do it every day.

“It is easy to forget what a tremendous technical achievement a newspaper is. You start off with, say, 16 blank pages, and they must be filled to the last quarter-inch. Everything you have done before just doesn’t matter. This must be new.

“It is so terribly easy to say next morning ‘I would have played up this story in a big way. I would have put that picture there.’ But somebody has worked through the night, making sudden decisions and spot judgments to produce it. A remarkable performance, a newspaper.”

Dunnett started his working life in a bank. “I did, in fact, take my professional bankers’ examinations. But I had always been interested in journalism. Even while still at school. I had written for newspapers. I eventually left the bank and moved into journalism.

“During the war I moved to London to be Press officer to Tom Johnston, then Secretary of State for Scotland.”

Dunnett was for 10 years editor of the Glasgow Daily Record before becoming editor of The Scotsman three years ago.

The post A newspaper man’s view of television appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.