The director of Tate Britain, Penelope Curtis, is leaving London for Lisbon, to take charge of the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian. After a week of speculation in the Portuguese media, the Gulbenkian foundation confirmed Curtis's appointment today, 31 March, making her the first foreign director of the small but prestigious museum, which opened in 1969. Housing highlights of the 6,000-strong, collection amassed by the Turkish-born, British-educated and largely Paris-based Armenian oil magnate, Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian (1869-1955), works on show range from his antiquities, Islamic art and Old Masters to René Lalique jewellery—purchased so long as they were “only the best” in the collector’s eyes. For example, Rubens’s portrait of his second wife, Helen Fourment, once belonged to Catherine the Great. Gulbenkian bought the painting from the Soviet government in 1930 when it was selling works from the State Hermitage Museum to raise foreign currency.
The Gulbenkian foundation’s trustees were seeking a director of international standing who can "work across the breadth of the collections". The job description also mentions “fostering collaboration with the Centre de Arte Moderna (Cam),” which has its own director, Isabel Carlos. In a statement, Curtis says: "I want to keep all that is good about the museum, which I admire deeply, while developing ways in which it can make more of its context and position, especially in relation to the neighbouring Modern art centre, and more widely.” The foundation's Modern art gallery, which is in the same parkland setting as the Gulbenkian Museum, has a collection of Modern and contemporary Portuguese, British and Armenian art. The Lisbon-based foundation has strong British ties, as well as French ones, with offices in London and Paris.
Curtis, who became director of Tate Britain in 2010, oversaw the £45m refurbishment of the gallery of historic and contemporary British art, which was completed in 2013 and greatly improved circulation routes and created new focal points and vistas. A chronological installation of the collection replaced displays that were often thematic. The combination of long-term chronological hang and smaller, changing displays has given the gallery variety without the jarring juxtapositions of works in different styles and from different eras that were the hallmark of Tate Britain when it was launched in 2000.
A few of Tate Britain’s recent exhibitions have aroused the ire of some critics, including the current show “Sculpture Victorious” (until 25 May) of mid- to late-19th century British sculpture. The criticism has verged on a vendetta, downplaying the merits of the presentation of the permanent collection and well-received temporary exhibitions, such as ones of Turner’s late works, Lowry’s cityscapes, and a survey of British folk art. The gallery’s annual attendance has hovered around the 1.4 million mark, compared with around 5 million who visit Tate Modern.
Curtis has co-organised the exhibition of Barbara Hepworth’s sculpture, which is due open this summer (24 June-25 October).
She moved to Tate Britain from the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, where from 1994 until 2010 she organised a series of historical and contemporary sculpture exhibitions. In 1988, Curtis joined the new Tate Gallery in Liverpool as exhibitions curator.
The director of the Albertina Museum in Vienna is calling for a time limit on all Nazi-loot restitution claims on art in public collections.
“The international community should decide on a sensible time frame of 20 or 30 years from now,” says Klaus Albrecht Schröder. “If we don’t set a time limit of around 100 years after the end of the Second World War, then we should ask ourselves why claims regarding crimes committed during the First World War should not still be valid; why we don't argue anymore about the consequences of the 1870-1871 Franco-Prussian war, and why we don't claim restitution of works of art that have been stolen during previous wars?”
Schröder believes claims on Nazi-looted art in public collections have generally been handled sensibly by museums in countries, including Austria, which signed up to the Washington Principles. These non-binding guidelines, issued in December 1998 following a conference in Washington, DC, established a standard of good practice for institutions.
The principles have been a huge help to claimants (in many countries the legal right to claim looted art has long expired), Schröder says. Since Austria passed a restitution law inspired by the Washington Principles it has returned around 50,000 works of art and objects from public collections to the heirs of collectors whose works were looted by the Nazis.
This restitution process has been just and necessary, Schröder says, but the more time passes, the more difficult it becomes to establish accurate provenance for works. Even thorough and prolonged research sometimes fails to establish the facts, he says. Schröder also points out that works by many artists have escalated in value since the Second World War, and, in some cases, the prices paid by museums to keep works now recognised as Nazi-looted are higher than what could be achieved on the open market. He cites the case of Egon Schiele’s 1912 Portrait of Wally, which the Leopold Museum-Privatstiftung in Vienna paid $19m to keep.
“Until now we have done the right thing in Austria by disregarding statutes of limitations on art looted during the Second World War. Nevertheless, without ever forgetting the ferocious crimes of the war, I think we must come to the point in which history is accepted as history and it can be laid to rest,” Schröder says.
The Austrian-Jewish community disagrees. “In our country the debate on restitution started very recently, too recently, and litigations have been strung out far too much. We have an immense obligation towards the Holocaust era. The discussion should not be about time limits but rather on how provenance research can be carried out as efficiently and rapidly as possible,” says Danielle Spera, director of the Jewish Museum in Vienna.
Oskar Deutsch, the president of the Jewish Community in Vienna agrees with this view. "The systematic confiscation of assets was part of the Nazi persecution in Austria and elsewhere. With the exception of looted art, Holocaust victims and their heirs are no longer able to claim for compensation of seized property. Provenance research remains one of the few ways that the family history of Nazi victims can be reconstructed and it also keeps the memory of the victims alive.”
While some public museums in Vienna declined to comment on Schröder’s proposed statutes of limitations for Nazi loot claims, the Leopold Museum-Privatstiftung says in a statement: “We try to find fair solutions [to claims] inspired by the Washington Principles. We have therefore not considered any time limits for claims and will not do so in the future.”
The passage of Robin Williams left millions of people with a broken heart, but no one suffered as much as the children of the actor.
But Zelda Williams came in a rare appearance on Friday with his mother Marsha Garces to Noble Awards in Beverly Hills.
And although, of course, wants to keep the memory of her father alive - she admits is basically unlikely to ever forget the bigger man than life.
[Related: Zelda Williams Legacy Father recalls Robin Williams' In his first sit-down interview since his death]
Here's what he said:
"For me it's easy to remember someone who is impossible to forget."
Zelda also talked about back in the spotlight and like something I felt I had to do was. She explained:
"It is not difficult, it's just a strange feeling. Nothing happens, that will be fine, but it's a transition. It is recognizing that you have to stop feeling that there is a world out there, because for a short period of time doesn "t."
You may remember Zelda has a beautiful tattoo of a hummingbird in memory of his father, and she explained that the tattoo to her, saying:
"If you saw it fly, and if you know a bit about them, are impossible to keep in one place. Whenever people see them not as they say, 'Oh, my God, a hawk for a hummingbird -flor, and that was the reaction that my father has, kids, fans, old people, and that's what always hummingbirds meant to me. "
Robin Williams and Marsha Garces really did a wonderful job with their children and Zelda is a shining example of his father.
She is only 25 and yet she is so wise at this point in your life. Robin Williams would be very proud of it.
For example, during a basketball game, many analogies can be made to what happens in the life of a person. There are ups and downs, challenges endless, constant adversity and what it takes to find them in the head.
The dynamics of the game of basketball really correspond to what happens in life. As in basketball, so in life:
1. Understand and master the basics of the game. Before you can play the game of basketball you should learn the basics or fundamentals concepts - how to play the game, how to pass, dribble, run the floor and shoot the ball. You have to develop the skills to play at an acceptable level.
Lesson: In life must also learn the basics. You must establish what (life), what does it mean for you and you want it. Then you must develop the skills and strategies needed to achieve this.
2. Be prepared mentally and physically. Elite athletes know that they can not work optimally or win games if you are not prepared mentally and physically. You must be physically fit to withstand a basketball season long, tiring and demanding. Equally important, you should have a mental fitness. Includes a positive mental attitude, willing and winning mentality. One without the other will not win games.
Lesson: Being prepared mentally and physically is essential in life.
3. Be selfless and a team player. Basketball is a team sport, which means it requires the contribution and cooperation of all members to play well and win. Everyone should concentrate, work together and fulfill their individual roles for the common good of the team. team player
How big of a player Michael Jordan era, he did not win any championships until he learned to involve his teammates, trust them and distributing the ball.
In one of the biggest score of his career games, scoring 63 points and set a playoff record, his team lost to the Boston Celtics. In a sport where individual greatness is measured largely by winning a championship ring, personal glory does the job. Lesson: The same goes for life. To contribute, cooperate and share.
4. Be alert and aware. Anticipating the game. The best basketball players have been credited with extraordinary vision and court awareness. Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, and other great players knew exactly where everyone was on the court, the trends of the other players, and performs work against different teams. The ability to anticipate and be ready for a game made active, rather than reactive, players in a match. It is a factor that separates the great players from good players.
Lesson: Be aware and conscious in life sets the stage for the performance.
5. If the parties are not working, reset the game plan. Every great basketball player knows that when its parts are not working you have to adjust, then adjust a little more. The strengths and different styles of different opponents require different tactics. You must be able to withstand and respond to any opponent attack uses on you. Lesson: Life presents many challenges for which we have to adjust our game plan.
6. Never leave the game. Persevere. never give up Another feature common to the brilliance of Larry, Magic and Michael was to never give up on a play. When they missed shots that would be the ones to recover their own rebounds, diving for loose balls, outwit defenders and make every last second count (he often did). They were willing to do the little things that statistics do not reflect. Many a dagger was thrust into the heart of an opponent when the game result seemed a foregone conclusion. How? Because we never gave up. Not in the game, not the game, not themselves!
Lesson: Persevere. Never, never, never give up.
7. win more games than you lose, but accept victory and defeat with grace. No matter what sport you play, you can not win every game. In a series of 7 championship game two balanced teams often win only one more than they lost game. Blood, sweat and tears to win a championship is needed. If you give everything I have, no matter what the outcome, you can keep your head up. Learn what it takes to win and come back and try again. Before they won, Larry, Magic and Michael lost many games and championships. Before they understand what it took to win, they had to learn to accept defeat.
Lesson: The same goes for life. Everything will not always go your way. There will be two defeats and victories. If you give all your best shot and learn lessons along the way, you will come out a winner.
Two high-profile museums are being unveiled within days of each other this week in Málaga. The southern Spanish port city is due to open the Centre Pompidou Málaga on 28 March, having inaugurated the State Russian Museum on Wednesday, 25 March, making the city the first to host foreign outposts of the Paris and St Petersburg institutions.
The mayor, Francisco de la Torre, wants to “make the city the most dynamic destination in Spain”. Since becoming Málaga’s mayor in 2000, he has made culture a key part of the regeneration of the city. Málaga boasts several art institutions, among them a museum in Picasso’s birthplace, the Casa Natal, the Museo Picasso Málaga, which opened in 2003, the Centre for Contemporary Art (CAC Málaga) and the Carmen Thyssen Museum, which opened in 2011. The city has invested €6.7m in preparing “El Cubo”, a converted space on the waterfront, to house the Pompidou’s collection, and another €580,000 to refurbish La Tabacalera, an old tobacco factory, for loans from the St Petersburg collection. The last week in March was the only available time to celebrate official state acts between two local elections, a spokeswoman for the city confirmed, insisting that both institutions would be ready in time.
De la Torre, who is up for re-election during May’s municipal elections, has been criticised for pushing the museums to open this month. “The mayor is running out of time and will pay anything for the inauguration photo,” a spokeswoman for the Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) told the newspaper El País when the city announced that the budget for El Cubo had been increased. The mayor responded to his critics by insisting that there is “no project like it”. The Centre Pompidou Málaga will be the first to “pop up” outside France, as part of the outgoing Pompidou president Alain Seban’s ambitious plans to establish temporary venues far beyond Paris. For Seban, Málaga represents a “laboratory” to experiment in and “a window into a concept envisioned to develop globally”. It is unclear whether his successor will pursue the same policy as energetically as Seban.
The Spanish city and the Pompidou have agreed to a renewable five-year collaboration where temporary exhibitions could travel from Paris to Málaga in addition to the permanent collection. Around 100 works from the Pompidou’s 20th and 21st century collection will be installed in the 2,000 sq. m space for two years, while a smaller area will be used for temporary exhibitions. Portraiture and the influence of Picasso will be among the subjects explored in the permanent display, organised by the Pompidou’s deputy director Brigitte Leal. Highlights will include works by Giacometti, Magritte, Calder and Brancusi, and contemporary works by Sophie Calle, Bruce Nauman and Orlan. The city of Málaga has commissioned Daniel Buren to create a large-scale installation within El Cubo.
The Málaga outpost of the State Russian Museum opens with a year-long display, “Russian Art of the 15th-20th centuries”, featuring Medieval icons and works by Repin, Kandinsky, Tatlin, Chagall, Rodchenko and Malevich. The first temporary exhibition will be dedicated to the Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev (1872-1929) and the avant-garde artists who collaborated with the Ballets Russes. The Pompidou in Málaga aims to generate €18.5m a year and attract around 250,000 visitors, says a report by the Auren consultancy. “The cultural mediation between art and the public will give impetus to the formation of the tourism sector”, De la Torre said in a press release, while also pointing out that the Museum of Fine Arts and Archaeology will open before the end of the year. The museums’ management is being centralised in a public agency led by José Maria Luna, which also manages Picasso’s Casa Natal. The city has approved an annual budget of almost €10m for all three institutions, and the public agency will oversee everything from museum security to marketing and education. The city of Málaga will pay the Paris institution €1m a year for the brand and the use of the collection, El País reported. The city, however, is not the sole backer of these projects. The mayor announced in February that he had secured nearly €3m for the Centre Pompidou Málaga from six private sponsors, including €1.25m from the savings bank Unicaja.
Among the surprises in the British Museum’s exhibition on Greek sculpture is an important early 20th century bronze copy which most archaeologists assumed had been destroyed during the Second World War. It is a reconstruction of the famous Doryphoros (spear-bearer), made in around 1920 by the German sculptor Georg Römer. He based it on three Roman marble copies of the lost Greek original by Polykleitos of around 440 to 430 BC.
Römer’s copy has had a chequered history. In 1921 it was used as a focal point of a First World War memorial in the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich. In 1944, during the Second World War, the building was bombed by the Allies.
Although the bronze was rescued from the rubble, archaeologists assumed after the war that it had been destroyed. “Even today it is usually written that the Römer copy was lost,” says Ian Jenkins, curator of the British Museum exhibition. The statue had indeed lost its lower legs, eyes and spear, but it was restored in the 1950s and quietly put back in the reconstructed university building.
The Römer bronze is being lent for the first time, to the British Museum’s “Defining Beauty: the Body in Ancient Greek Art” (26 March-5 July). In London it is dramatically spotlighted in the introductory section of the exhibition, alongside the Parthenon Marble of Ilissos, which has just returned from loan to the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg.
The case of the Sun journalists charged with paying public officials for information has been a troubling one in many respects. It is, we think, good that they were acquitted last week, but the prosecution leaves many difficult questions both for the police and prosecutors and for News Corp.
First the good news. Jurors are reluctant to convict journalists when they see even the slightest evidence of a public interest being served by their stories. Some of the material purchased by the journalists was tittle-tattle. But other tipoffs led to legitimate stories that should have been published.
It was unwise of the Crown Prosecution Service not to recognise the distinction; the director of public prosecutions will no doubt study these verdicts before sanctioning any other trials of reporters for paying public officials – whether for conspiracy or “aiding and abetting”. The police, too, should reflect on the unfairness of keeping so many potential suspects on police bail for so long while deciding whether or not to prosecute.
For News Corp, the ultimate owner of the Sun, the cases raise at least three serious questions that should be considered at the highest levels of the company. The first is a question of responsibility. There was a nasty taste at the trial – not for the first time with this company – of the small people being thrown to the wolves while the big people, living expensive lives far away, were sheltered. It was no secret that the Sun paid public officials, including police officers – the former editor Rebekah Brooks told parliament as much a dozen years ago. The cash payments were signed off and known about by senior executives. And yet, at the end of the day, it was the foot soldiers who were sent for trial while the officer class watched from afar.
This leads to a second, even more troubling, aspect of the company’s behaviour. For years it denied knowledge of, and obstructed all attempts to discover, evidence of industrial scale phone hacking within another newspaper in its stable, the News of the World. When that game was finally up – and maybe partly motivated by a panic desire to save senior editorial and corporate skins – the company did an extraordinary thing, unprecedented in the annals of responsible journalism. It handed over millions upon millions of editorial emails to the police, thereby compromising numerous confidential journalistic sources. This was done – without the consent or knowledge of the reporters – by a company that had sanctioned the payments in the first place. That was a terrible and hypocritical thing to do and one that should never be forgotten.
The final troubling question is this. While we welcome the acquittal of the journalists, there are a number of public officials who have served, or are serving, jail sentences as a result of News Corp’s behaviour and the betrayal of their relationship with the Sun. We have limited sympathy for them. Public servants shouldn’t sell stories about the things they see in the course of their duties. No one welcomes the thought of their nurse or police or prison officer selling personal information to the press. Genuine whistleblowers act from a desire to expose injustice, not to make a few quid on the side. Yet there is something uncomfortable about journalists walking free while their sources, betrayed by their own company, do the time.
This ought to make all newspapers think twice about their approach to paying sources. In the past journalists have defended the practice on the grounds that (a) everyone’s always done it; (b) there’s a market in information, just like anything else. It’s also the case that newspapers sometimes pay for perfectly justifiable stories – like the Telegraph’s payment for MPs’ expenses details. But the recent cases involving Sun journalists show the dangers.
The relationship between source and reporter is complicated enough without adding the element of moral compromise which is introduced by handing over money. If payment is involved, it is strongly arguable that this should be declared at the time of publication. This may be an area on which the new press regulator Ipso might wish to issue guidelines. Meanwhile there needs to be a clear and consistent public interest defence to the entire battery of laws aimed at journalism, including official secrecy.
For a few years at the end of the past decade, they were ravaged. Some of the UK’s main media owners were rendered bystanders as the ongoing effects of digital transformation were compounded by an economic crash that, for some, all but wiped out entire revenue streams.
As spring sunshine dawned on the Changing Media Summit 2015, however, “old” media companies – following their cuts, contortions, restructuring and digital extensions – looked far better set for their future.
Magazine publisher Hearst UK’s CEO Anna Jones, speaking in a panel I moderated, described developing media strategy as “like white water rafting”. But, when you observe the increasing maturity of media companies’ digital efforts, along with the increasingly competent and balanced management of their diminishing analogue cores, it seems that owners exert far more influence over their future direction than might have been said over the past decade of the summit’s history.
At least one major bump in the road lies ahead, however – the growing shadow cast in the market by progressively larger, nimble and instinctively digital publishing rivals. For all their strides, media leaders’ underlying fear during the summit’s second panel was palpable.
Hard to keep up
“How well can we compete with heavily venture capital-backed, digitally-obsessed companies?” asked Keith Hindle, digital and branded entertainment CEO of X Factor and American Idol maker FremantleMedia, conceding to strike “a negative note”.
Hindle said: “We’re talking here about how we’re managing to move towards a more digital-focused model in our core businesses. But, actually, there are many players out there – Vox and Vice, BuzzFeed – who have no other dream, they have no core business that they’re trying to fold digital into. They are digital at their core.
“When you’ve got that coupled with venture capital money that says, ‘Here’s $50m, we don’t want you to make a profit for eight years, go and build a business’, that becomes a challenging thing to compete with and I think that’s the real challenge to us.”
By fiscal contrast, Johnston Press, whose CEO Ashley Highfield also spoke on the panel, remains saddled with large amounts of debt, as well as print operations that continue to draw costs. The old guard are scrabbling to finance their forever dream home, while having to work increasingly hard to maintain their crumbling current abode.
Nothing ventured
Guardian News & Media deputy chief executive David Pemsel, was equally apprehensive about the upstarts.
“When I have been on panels with BuzzFeed and others, they sort of try and say ‘the industry of which we are a part’,” he said. “Some of those platforms have been around for three years and we’ve been around for 200. They try and step into our space.
“I look at them and say, ‘It’s an algorithmic sort of search social platform’. I’m not entirely sure where the value sits within the types of content that they create. I say, ‘Look, you’re obsessed with valuation and we’re obsessed with value’.”
Perhaps the digital VC money – of which, Vice Media has an estimated $580m, BuzzFeed $96.3m – is not the panacea old-line media bosses believe. Online postmortems of the recent collapse of tech blog Gigaom, at which I was a senior editor until 2013, have converged to blame a reliance on venture capital, of which it reportedly raised $25m.
This pack-like finger-pointing at the very dollars that fuel the digital economy is unusual, and counterintuitive for the Silicon Valley herd, for whom raising funds is a rite of passage and a reason to pop open champagne. Yet, it also overlooks many potential factors, including that the site was wound up not by investors but by bankers at SVB - suggesting the nail in the coffin may have been debt, or at least venture debt, not necessarily venture capital.
“We’re obsessed by what we give our readers and we’re not obsessed about exiting in three years’ time to return the VC money that came,” Pemsel added. A shrewd delegate might have pointed out, of course, that by virtue of being operated by a trust, the Guardian, like those VC-backed digital-native publishers, is also not compelled to make a profit; at least, not this year.
Digital veterans become frenemies
Regardless of the perceived disparity in available resources, at this point in the evolution of media, it is telling that the biggest fear of the old guard is reserved not for the traditional behemoths of the “GAFA” quartet – Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple – but for this new line of BuzzFeeds, Vices and their ilk.
“Facebook often drives about a quarter of our traffic,” said Highfield during the panel discussion. “We’ve just become Google’s fastest-growing partner because we sell Google AdWords into small businesses. I think we’ll continue to partner with the Facebooks and the Googles of this world – I think it’s when we start to lose that we’re in trouble.”
If BuzzFeed today is a threat, the GAFA seem firmly in the “frenemy” category. Even the Financial Times chief information officer Christina Scott, whose publication has just shaken up its payment strategy but remains absent from Apple’s iOS platform, did not rule out a return: “As with anything, you have to keep reviewing, you never know.”
Likewise, FremantleMedia is among the biggest independent production suppliers on YouTube. Hindle sees Google’s video platform as “absolutely critical for us”, making up 60% of viewership. But he sees it primarily as a discovery mechanism, for pushing viewers elsewhere. It is destination sites such as Vice, with which Fremantle recently signed a production deal, where Hindle sees the biggest monetisation potential.
Stay paranoid
They may enjoy the online traction and advantages the analogue set can but dream of – but even the new wave of pumped-up digital content rivals might want to start watching their back. There is a lesson for everyone in the world’s biggest digital beast, Pemsel suggested.
“When you listen to some of the narrative that comes out of Google, however successful they are and however much money they continue to make, there is a restlessness that’s at the heart of that organisation, in terms of how they deal with innovation,” he said.
“They are paranoid because they know ... given the opportunities that digital presents itself, someone could come along and just eat them alive within a few years.
He added: “I think we need to look at that and realise that, if they can be paranoid and slightly scared and anxious then I think, given from where we’ve come from, we should probably have the same attitude.”
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A business owned by the Barclay brothers restructured a £1.25bn debt with assistance from HSBC in the period when their newspaper, the Daily Telegraph, failed to publish a negative story about the bank, the Financial Times reports today.
The paper’s study of financial filings in Jersey by the Barclays’ retail business, Shop Direct, revealed that costs involved in a debt securitisation programme soared by 72% between October 2012 and September 2013 because the main buyer of its notes ran into funding difficulties.
The securitisation programme is crucial to the Shop Direct business owned by Sirs David and Frederick Barclay. It includes Littlewoods and Very.co.uk.
The FT reports that the filing shows that HSBC participated in the programme, starting in 2008, through a special purpose vehicle, Regency Assets. By the time the costs had increased, Regency Assets was purchasing up to £200m of the repackaged loan notes, roughly one-fifth of the total, on a rolling basis.
The timing of the securitisation programme’s increased borrowing costs in 2013 coincided with the period during which Peter Oborne, the Telegraph’s former chief political commentator, alleges that the newspaper avoided, or played down, negative stories about HSBC.
When Oborne resigned last month, he alleged that a November 2012 investigation by the Telegraph into HSBC’s operations in Jersey had been prematurely ended when “lawyers for the Barclay brothers became closely involved”.
He wrote in an OpenDemocracy blogpost that critical stories about the bank were discouraged from the start of 2013, claiming that this was linked to the paper’s advertising contract with HSBC.
He quoted an unnamed former Telegraph executive as saying of the bank it was “the advertiser you literally cannot afford to offend”.
The Telegraph Media Group has strenuously rejected Oborne’s allegations, arguing that it has maintained a distinction between advertising and editorial operations.
The FT article quotes a spokesperson for the Barclay brothers and Shop Direct as saying: “For anyone that understands financial markets or media to think that the editorial decisions of a newspaper can possibly influence the credit committee of a large multinational bank . . . is misguided and just plain wrong.
“Shop Direct’s securitisation programme . . . currently has six large, quality banks, of which HSBC is not the largest lender”.
The New York Times is to launch a Chinese-language news magazine, Chinese Monthly, in Hong Kong and Macau.
The 24-page publication will launch on 1 May with a print run of 50,000 copies and will be available in hotels, airline lounges and upscale residential complexes as well as newsstands.
Aside from world news, opinion and lifestyle material, about 20% of the content will be devoted to local news and events.
It will be produced by the International New York Times, in collaboration with the paper’s Chinese-language website, whose editor-in-chief, Ching-Ching Ni, will be in charge.
Craig Smith, managing director in China of the New York Times, said: “Our Chinese audience has grown enormously through cn.NYTimes.com and we are excited to complement our digital offering by bringing high-quality coverage of world affairs, business and culture to our Chinese readers in print”.
There can’t be much doubt about the story of the day: the Mail on Sunday’s revelation about a Tory candidate’s bizarre intrigue with the English Defence League.
Afzal Amin, standing for Dudley North constituency, was suspended by the Conservative party after the paper exposed his extraordinary plot. The story then dominated the news agenda on radio and TV and was followed up on news websites
Amin is accused of suggesting to the EDL that it should announce a march against a new mosque in Dudley. Then he would step in, the march would be scrapped, and he would take the credit for defusing the situation.
In return for this favour, Amin allegedly promised that he would be an “unshakeable ally” for the EDL in parliament and help to bring their views to the mainstream.
Amin has strenuously denied that he did anything wrong, but the six-minute tape recording on Mail Online, in which he outlines his scheme, is damning.
He may be correct in saying that his statements were plucked from a much longer conversation. Of course they were. He is missing the point. It is the fact he said them at all that matters.
The Mail on Sunday ran five pages on the story Photograph: Screen grab
Even if we were to accept that he was talking about a fantasy rather than a practical proposal, he needs to explain what possessed him to meet the EDL in the first place.
The EDL is a far-right Islamophobic group with a record of violence in Dudley (see here) which has been in decline over the past couple of years.
Amin was selected to stand against the sitting Labour MP, Ian Austin, in the general election on 7 May. With Austin winning Dudley North by just 649 votes in 2010, the seat is regarded as a key marginal.
Anyway, hats off to the Mail on Sunday, a paper that supports the Tory party, for a scoop that embarrasses the Conservatives. It has certainly given prime minister David Cameron one big headache.
Sources: Mail on Sunday/PA via the Guardian/Stourbridge News
Serious newspapers are seriously complex beasts, a mesh of history, contacts and personalities: which is why Lionel Barber at the FT, John Witherow at the Times, Amol Rajan at the Indy, Chris Evans at the Telegraph and Zanny Beddoes at the Economist were all essentially appointments from within. And now, after much worldwide headhunting and advertising, the inside wins again, as Katharine Viner emerges as editor-in-chief at the Guardian, the first woman in that role.
It has taken three months to find Alan Rusbridger’s successor: roughly the same time as electing a new Labour leader, with manifestoes and hustings in a Scott Trust effort to give staff a voice and outside applicants a chance. But, in the end, the new boss will be one of Alan Rusbridger’s longstanding deputies, beating former deputy and rival Ian Katz in a last round.
Too many twists on a road to produce the answer many first thought of and the staff overwhelmingly endorsed in an indicative ballot? Perhaps. Next time the contest will probably be shorter and sharper. There are longterm dangers in making newspapers feel too much like political parties, with their ideological cliques. Editors will of course be democrats: but democracy has limits in the 24/7 rush of deadlines.
Viner has done many jobs over the past 18 years. She’s a known, experienced quantity. She has the staff behind her. There’s a popular will to make this new page of history work. And the Guardian she inherits, like the one Rusbridger inherited, is hugely changed and hugely challenging. So newsroom support isn’t some optional extra: it’s the bedrock of whatever the future brings.
A former police chief widely seen as the architect of new restrictions on press-police relations has urged for a review of reporters being brought to trial, following the acquittal of Sun journalists last week.
Andy Trotter, a former head of the Association of Chief Police Officers, said the world has changed since the investigation into newspapers was launched in 2011 following the phone-hacking scandal.
In an interview with the Times, he also said he was troubled by the use of a common law offence of “misconduct in public office” to prosecute officials who may have done something that warranted the sack but maybe not a criminal trial.
“I have had my anxieties for some time about the expanded use of the offence of misconduct in public office,” he said.
“We need to recognise too that the world has changed. I think the press has changed its behaviour and public officials have learned that leaking or selling confidential information is totally unacceptable behaviour.
“In the context of the lessons that have been learned and other pressing demands, I think a review of how we do these things would be timely and appropriate.”
Trotter, who retired in 2014 after 45 years in the police, helped forge media policy for Acpo in the wake of revelations about dinners and drinks between News of the World editors and the Met police chiefs.
He told the Leveson inquiry “that on-the-record briefings from named people as opposed to a regime of tip-offs and leaks” would amount to a “new era of openness and transparency”.
The Metropolitan police investigation, Operation Elveden, was spawned in the wake of the hacking scandal at the News of the World in 2011.
It was fuelled by News International’s decision to hand over millions of internal editorial emails to police revealing payments to hitherto unknown public officials who were paid sources for the Sun and other tabloids.
So far 24 journalists have been brought to trial with just three convictions.
Four senior editors of the Sun – deputy editor Geoff Webster, chief reporter John Kay, executive editor Fergus Shanahan and royal editor Duncan Larcombe – were cleared last Friday of all charges in relation to payments to two public officials.
It is understood some 30 police officers are still on Elveden duties, mainly managing court cases.
His producer calls it the kennel, and when James O’Brien is on his own in his cramped studio, he does sometimes look a bit like a bulldog chewing on a wasp. Today on LBC, he’s taking calls about the news that Ashya King, the five-year-old whose parents were detained by police after taking him abroad for brain tumour treatment, has gone into remission. As he sets out the terms of the discussion, asking listeners if the development makes them sceptical about received medical wisdom, producer Michael is getting excited. “He is a bit of an alsatian,” he says, chucking another dog into the mix. “And sometimes we take the lead off.”
“Gavin’s in Farnham,” O’Brien says. “Gavin, what’s made you pick up the phone?” Gavin, it turns out, is an enthusiastic believer in the internet’s ability to cure cancer – it’s something to do with acid in your blood – and he thinks doctors are being sent to prison for telling the truth. O’Brien, his eyes fixed to the desk, has been stroking his chin and bobbing his head throughout this explanation, but at the last bit his head snaps up, and you can almost see his hackles rise.
When he thinks about his approach afterwards, he’ll say that he’s not as fierce as he used to be – that turning 40, and coming to terms with the death of his father, have given him a different perspective. But just at this moment, he has only one target in mind. “Doctors are being sent to prison?” he says, something ominous in his control. “Can you remember any of those examples?” “Not off the top of my head, no,” says Gavin, and O’Brien is away.
Related: Nigel Farage's LBC interview – the key moments
“Oh, you had so much off the top of your head,” he says. “Can’t you remember any doctors who’ve been sent to prison for giving good advice to patients? ’Cos that, as a journalist, even with my ludicrously ill-equipped news antennae, that’s got scoop written all over it.” Before long, the caller rings off: Gavin, from Farnham, is vanquished. “You have to be very strong,” says Michael, and although he’s talking about the demands on the production team, you suspect it applies to the callers as well. “If you’re not, he’ll ride roughshod over you.”
This is what a lot of people think of when they think of talk radio: affirmative outrage, the world set vigorously to rights. O’Brien, a rare creature in this game, coming as he does from the left, has been doing it for a long time now, with a fulltime slot on LBC for more than a decade. But in the last year or so, at the age of 43, something has clicked.
The hyper-articulate takedowns of his less thoughtful callers – such as Richard, who demanded British Muslims apologise for the Charlie Hebdo attack, and was asked when he would be apologising for his namesake, the shoebomber Richard Reid – are endlessly popular online, but it was the application of the same forensic haranguing to Nigel Farage that really brought him to a wider audience. In 20 minutes of electric radio, O’Brien made a more compelling case for the prosecution than any other interviewer had managed – so successfully that the Ukip leader’s PR man felt compelled to enter the studio and cut things short. Once, his best-known clip had been an awkward conversation with Frank Lampard, when the footballer called up to complain that O’Brien was traducing him on the air in the aftermath of his separation from his girlfriend; now, the attention was of a very different sort. Before long, an invitation to guest-host Newsnight arrived, and with it considerable speculation that he was a dark-horse candidate to replace Paxman.
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James O’Brien interviews Nigel Farage on LBC radio in May 2014
While that didn’t materialise – Evan Davis’s more honeyed tones being preferred in the end – it remains clear that O’Brien’s star is on the rise. He’s back for his latest guest gig on Newsnight this Thursday. And, more importantly, he’s been given his very own property on ITV: a two-week test run of a daily daytime debate show, with the prospect of a more permanent slot in future if it all goes well. O’Brien has been previewing the electoral debates on LBC this time around; with a bit of luck and a following wind, it’s not impossible to imagine him hosting one next time, instead.
Over a sandwich shortly after the show ends, O’Brien is self-effacing about the combative style that has brought him this success. “Partly it’s just … I have all this stuff to say. And I want to get as much of it out there as possible.” But the funny thing, he says, is that he’s not such a firebrand any more; that version of his work is a bit out of date. And his show, it’s true, has much more to it than mere bombast.
“If your feelings are high and you’re adrenalised, sometimes you can go in a little too hard,” he says. “I reserve that now for racists and homophobes. But it’s a work in progress.” If he was doing the Lampard segment now, he says, he might refrain from using words such as “scum” and “weak” that so exercised the footballer. Explaining the change, he mentions the death of his father, also called James. It’s not the only time he comes up. “Losing my dad shortly after I turned 40, that shook everything up, really. I loved him to pieces, and all I ever wanted to do was make him proud. And then … I can’t now.”
Related: James O'Brien's upcoming ITV talkshow features only 'extraordinary' guests
He looks away and out of the window, his eyes visibly pricking with tears. “My certainties got shaken up. Since that happened, I just think – if you’re not being mean and you’re not attacking someone else, you probably don’t deserve to be attacked. Whereas previously, winning the argument was the absolute dog’s bollocks. It was everything I cared about.”
It was while listening to the Today programme in the car with his dad that his career ambitions formed. “Journalist,” he says, smiling. “Yeah. Like my daddy. It’s all I ever wanted to be.” But in the early days, the definition didn’t include talk radio host. His ambitions lay in book reviewing, and a career as a Fleet Street political correspondent. Instead, he found his way in through the gossip columns, and wound up as showbiz editor of the Daily Express. “You rush through whatever door is open, you clamber up whatever ladder presents itself,” he says. “But then I started to think: would you rather be writing about Norman Cook or Norman Lamont? I couldn’t understand why anyone went into the politics side of things.”
There are those who hear a thwarted intellectualism in his broadcasting – his almost parodically elevated vocabulary, his tendency to give a running commentary on the value of the format as he goes along, his preference (excepting the occasional Gavin) for the callers with authority on their subject. But O’Brien says this is just snobbery. “There’s a subtext I don’t like – which is, oh, a phone-in show, here’s someone sounding clever, getting clever callers on – that’s a turn up for the books. No it isn’t. Why on earth wouldn’t clever people call a show like mine?”
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James O’Brien in the LBC radio studio Photograph: Katherine Anne Rose
Things will be a little different, he admits, on the TV show, in which two experts will debate an issue along with an on-the-fence observer and an audience that includes a number of people with relevant experiences of their own. “I have a fondness for absurdly long words which I can indulge in a three-hour radio show,” he says with a smile. “I don’t think my sesquipedalian tendencies would fit quite so well into an ITV daytime show. You have to be a bit more sledgehammer than scalpel on the telly. But I like using the sledgehammer sometimes.”
It is, again, not a view his 21-year-old self would have taken. But doing diary shifts for a tabloid and a broadsheet, and hearing the difference in the voice of a colonel on the other end of the line depending on which outlet he said he was working for, awoke a contrarian urge to step away from the establishment. And it spoke, too, to the son of the man who never quite fitted in on Fleet Street. O’Brien may be a privately educated LSE graduate, but he carries the slights he feels were inflicted on his father – who left school at 15 – with him to this day, and the contrast in their experience of social class weighs heavily on him.
“My dad came up by a tough route,” he says. “The Hull Daily Mail, the Shipley Times. And then he paid for me to go to a posh school. And if he hadn’t, I don’t think I could have called the Express and told them they should jolly well give me some shifts. I don’t think I would have had the front. My dad bought me a golden ticket because in his own career, the fact that he had a Yorkshire accent, and maybe didn’t quite fit the Telegraph way of doing things … ” he breaks off, and his voice cracks again. “I think maybe Dad felt he didn’t fit in. And he got made redundant. And he sent me to a school that gave me all the attributes that the people who looked down on him had.”
He pauses again, and it feels like time to end the interview. “I didn’t realise I was going to get emotional,” he says, suddenly a bit embarrassed. “Soft old sod. It’s my fault. When he used to answer the phone, we used to take the mickey out of him, because he’d just go: ‘O’Brien.’ And now that’s the name of my show.”
•O’Brien starts on Monday 30 March at 12.30pm on ITV.
Former Daily Telegraph political commentator Peter Oborne has launched a scathing attack on the advertising industry, calling it “objectionably consumerist sewage”.
Oborne resigned from the Telegraph last month claiming that the newspaper’s lack of coverage about the HSBC tax story was a strategy to protect its valuable advertising account.
“Advertising is not just the sewer – it is the sewage as well,” he said, speaking on a panel at the Advertising Week Europe event on Tuesday. “Advertising is objectionably consumerist, selfish, driven by commercial considerations which conflict with wider society considerations like family and decency. Advertising is about nakedly libertarian capitalist as you can get.”
Oborne argued that the advertising industry is full of “snake-oil salesmen”, and argued that it is “essential politicians intervene” to protect society.
“I think certainly it is completely legitimate that politicians should comment on advertising and how it works, that’s their job,” he said. “It is not a political football [to discuss the role of advertising in society] politicians are there to articulate moral concerns about how society works. Any decent politician with an ounce of morality should comment on it.”
Lord Bell, Margaret Thatcher’s favourite PR man and the co-founder of ad and marketing group Chime, jokingly suggested that Oborne had “got up on the wrong side of the bed”
“I’ve never heard so much drivel in my life,” he said. “Politicians should never intervene.”
Oborne cited Labour using Trevor Beattie, the ad man behind work including French Connection’s FCUK, as an example of an uncomfortable pact in political advertising.
“One reason you knew from the start that New Labour was fishy was Trevor Beattie, responsible for FCUK, now FCUK clever ad slogan that degraded our high streets. There are massive moral issues.”
At the end of the one-hour session, hosted by ITV’s Tom Bradby, Oborne softened his stance, admitting to a questioner from the audience that advertising has its place in funding media.
“Advertising for hundreds of years has been part of a package which funds newspapers, and now television,” he said. “I’m not against advertising as such, I’m strongly in favour of it. I’m just asking questions about the wider social questions. Politicians need to look at the way advertisers conduct their business.”
Oborne also said that the media was stacked against Labour leader Ed Miliband, with Rupert Murdoch’s titles out “for revenge”, and the Tories in a stronger financial position.
“The other thing Miliband did which is so splendid is to attack the rich,” he said. “No wonder the Tories have so much money to spend on vicious attack ads. It is the most one-sided election, the most uneven playing field we’ve had since 1992, much worse actually.”
Bell rejected this assertion arguing that there are various parliamentary laws that stop a spending mismatch in the official election period ahead of polling day.
“There are rules about what can be spent,” he said. “The suggestion that the Conservative party is much better funded than Labour party is just not true. It is better funded in the pre-election period. But there is a restriction on what you can spend and what you can’t spend [in the election period].
“So the idea that the Tories are spending lots and lots of money and Labour is spending very little, if that is the case, that is their choice. The amount is capped by Parliament. Let’s leave the myth out that all these rich advertising men pour money into the Tory party coffers.
“They should spend everything they possibly can on it, as much as they can on it because the most important thing people will do is make a decision on an election campaign.”
I read somewhere that bobs are back. What does this MEAN?
Desperate newspaper features writer, UK
This is a question that urgently needs addressing, so address it we shall. You see, it turns out that a few attractive young women in the public eye have, at some point in the past year, cut their hair short, so obviously features need to be written about this because it allows us to use photos of said women.
The Sunday Times was first off the starting blocks with an article about how the rise of short hair proves that the economy is back on track. Of course! Can’t argue with logic, right? The reason behind this, the journalists patiently explained to the slower among us, is because short hair is more expensive to maintain, requiring more frequent cuts – ergo, austerity is soooo last season. As is the way with these features, a hairdresser was duly found who was happy to claim in a national newspaper that, yes, tons of women are now spending hundreds of pounds a week with him maintaining their Robin Wright-like hair, and so should all Sunday Times readers. Total proof there! Like I said, you can’t argue with logic.
As it happened, earlier that week I’d read another article, one that had nothing to do with short hair. It was an article about what it’s like to be a writer for Mail Online and it was published on the US website gawker.com. In this piece, the author described an organisation where, as he puts it, “the editorial model depends on little more than dishonesty, theft of copyrighted material, and sensationalism so absurd that it crosses into fabrication”. This will not surprise anyone who’s ever glanced at Mail Online but, still, quite something to come from a former insider, no?
A few hours after reading the gripping story about the correlation between bob haircuts and economics in the Sunday Times, I noticed that a new story (which is very different from a “news story”) had popped up on Mail Online. What’s this, I asked myself, pushing my spectacles up on my nose? “Rise in shorter hairstyles! It’s a sign of the economic recovery,” read the headline. What astonishing synchronicity. Even more incredibly, the Mail cited many of the same celebrities as the Sunday Times did: Cheryl Fernandez-Versini, Rosamund Pike, Sienna Miller, Kristen Stewart, etc and so forth. The only difference was, the Mail used more photos of the women. To be fair, there is a grudging acknowledgement of the Sunday Times in the story, perhaps because even the Mail is cognisant of the power of Murdoch’s lawyers. But I think the thing to take away from this is not the sheer desperation of certain publications, which merely rehash already dubious stories from other papers, but that, clearly, this rise in bob haircuts is a very, very important story.
I am, I must admit, intrigued by the idea that celebrities have waited until they felt we are at the end of the Age of Austerity to get their haircut. This does seem a tad improbable, not just because celebrities are generally untouched by economic concerns, but because they usually get things such as hair maintenance, makeup and fashion for free and so are not reliable bellwethers about such matters. In fact, Cheryl Tweedy, I mean Cole, I mean Fernandez-Versini, is what is grandly referred to as “an ambassador for L’Oréal” (it’s just like being the ambassador to Iraq, but with more free shampoo), so it’s hard not to suspect that her haircut has more to do with the fact she has to keep her hair jazzy as part of the L’Oréal deal, and therefore keep it in the news. (I imagine that is exactly what a L’Oréal contract stipulates when you sign on to be an ambassador: “must keep hair jazzy”.)
As loath as I am to puncture the media’s fondness for justifying the use of photos of attractive young women with the claim that they’re making a social commentary (see also: short skirts mean economic strength, skinny models are evil, etc), the fact that a few celebrities have cut their hair does not strike me as possessing any more meaning than the story that Eddie Redmayne recently went to the dry cleaners (“Eddie dry cleans his clothes! Austerity is over!”) If this has led to a few non-celebrity women also having their hair cut, this seems more like a comment on the power of celebrity than the weathervane-like qualities of women’s hair in predicting economics.
But snarking is SUCH a bad look, and it turns out that – according to George Osborne, who himself appears to have had a haircut – this country’s financials are really turning around. So Sienna Miller’s bob was right after all! No wonder two newspapers felt the need to run two identical stories on this gripping development.
Post your questions to Hadley Freeman, Ask Hadley, The Guardian, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. Email ask.hadley@theguardian.com.
A portrait of Rubens’ young daughter Clara Serena, recently deaccessioned by New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, is going on display at the Rubenshuis in Antwerp. In 2013, it was auctioned as by a “follower of Rubens”, with an estimate of $20,000-$30,000. Now upgraded as authentic, it will hang in the artist’s own house, in the exhibition “Rubens in Private: the Master Portrays his Family” (28 March-28 June).
The earliest certain provenance of the portrait goes back to a New York collector in the 1930s and it was considered authentic until the American specialist Julius Held downgraded it in 1959. The following year it was donated to the Met, where the late Walter Liedtke catalogued it as a copy after Rubens, probably 17th century. In 2013 it was deaccessioned by the Met, along with 15 other Old Masters, to benefit the museum’s acquisitions fund.
Entitled Portrait of a Young Girl, possibly Clara Serena Rubens and catalogued by Sotheby’s, New York, as by a “follower”, it fetched $626,500 (including buyer’s premium), nearly 20 times the high estimate. This suggested that at least two bidders thought that the painting was the real thing. It is now owned by a London collector, who has offered it on long-term loan to the Prince of Liechtenstein for his collection in Vienna and Vaduz. This is an appropriate loan, since the prince already owns an undisputed portrait of Clara, dating from around 1616.
Ben van Beneden, the director of the Rubenshuis, has accepted the former Met painting—now cleaned—as authentic. He dates it from 1620 to 1623, the year when Clara died at the age of 12. Katelijne Van der Stighelen, who wrote the exhibition catalogue entry and is working on a catalogue raisonné of Rubens’ portraits, also accepts the attribution.
The painting’s display in Antwerp, alongside the Liechtenstein portrait, which is also on loan, will give other specialists an opportunity to assess the former Met painting. However, David Jaffe, a London-based Rubens specialist (and former National Gallery senior curator), says he remains “doubtful” about the attribution to Rubens.
Works by international and local contemporary artists owned by Yarat, an Azeri non-profit organisation, are due to go on show on 24 March in its new home, a former Soviet-era naval building in Baku, the capital of oil-rich Azerbaijan. Called “Making Histories” (until 1 October), the inaugural show at the Yarat Contemporary Art Space will feature works by more than 20 artists.
New works by the Iranian-born artist Shirin Neshat (below) will also go on show, including The Home of My Eyes, 2015 (until 23 June). The commissioned piece includes 55 portraits of Azeris “to create a tapestry of human faces which pays tribute to the rich cultural history of Azerbaijan and its diversity,” Neshat says.
Aida Mahmudova, an artist, arts patron and niece of the country’s first lady, Mehriban Aliyeva, established Yarat in 2011. The non-profit is making its presence felt at contemporary art events worldwide. In May it it is due to launch a collateral event at the Palazzo Barbaro during the Venice Biennale.
Mahmudova has amassed the Yarat collection in the past three years. She says: “[It] is at an early stage and will continue to grow.” A portion of Yarat’s annual budget funds acquisitions and commissions. Its main funding comes from corporate sponsors, individual donors and part of the proceeds of works sold by the Yay Gallery in Baku, which is run as a social enterprise.
Celebrities believe in all kinds of crazy things, like The Secret or Xenu or yoga. But there is an invisible line that will not happen, because if they do, they know that turn public opinion against them so completely that totally ruin his career. This line is the occult. You can spot Tom Cruise like energy spirits Spago, but you will never pick up a beloved artist directly to worship the devil. Wait, that's what you say, paragraph immediately below?
5. Sammy Davis Jr. Worshiped the devi
The 1960s were a simpler time. Soda cost a dime, ladies wore poodle skirts, and the whole country was in love with a buzz, one-eyed, black Satanist.
Better than a flying purple people eater.
That's right:Better than a flying purple people eat.
But: For many years, Sammy Davis Jr. was a member of the Church of Satan. As expected, Davis had to keep all this very private matter or the truth could ruin. Alternatively, you can choose from any direct and featuring first sitcom in the world to hell. Davis chose the second way and took the lead role in a pilot called poor devil, also starring Adam "Batman" West and Christopher Lee as Saruman fucking Lucifer! The show is not today, it is undeniable that the Nielsen ratings system is manipulated test. Alas, the poor fellow was too perfect to live. But the brave choice of roles Sammy has attracted the interest of Anton LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan, who is the Associate Artist with the right card.
To cause more voluble God of public opinion, Sammy Davis Jr., has also published a swing album called Satan, Baby! He had songs like "Sympathy for the Devil" and "Devil in Disguise" and a duet with himself LaVey, who hope that sang in a beautiful falsetto voice unwavering, because how amazing would it be?
4. The Lincolns Summoned the Dead
According to the Boston Gazette in 1863, Abraham Lincoln held a meeting at the White House damn. Abe, Mary Todd two Cabinet secretaries, a journalist and a half-trance named Charles E. Shockle sitting in the White House (basement?) Contact with the spirit world. There is no report if Lincoln's mother interrupted with pizza rolls.
"Moooooooooom, get out!"
Channels Shockle a group of people killed in the Great Liberator of Native Americans worried Henry Knox - Secretary of War George Washington. Meanwhile, Abe does not seem to take seriously. He pitched softball political issues in death and joked about their answers. Then there was Mary Todd Lincoln (taking it all very seriously), two uncomfortable stunned political journalist and the president of the United States loitering, mocking ghosts casually. The Shockle was so stressed that he passed up - twice. I think I was a little nervous pulling parlor tricks a giant angry superpower with control of a whole nation. You will understand.
The session was probably a PR coup - judging by the jovial approach to both Lincoln and the fact that heinvited a journalist - because spiritualism and table readings were a popular pastime in the western world. Equaled the time to go bowling, or "drink a beer with a soldier." But whatever the opinion of Abe, Mary Todd Lincoln was balls deep in the underworld. The supernatural was a perpetual interest in it, but after the death of Abraham, was full bore. Maria began to attend readings of tables and meetings throughout the country, hoping to contact her dead husband. The media obviously use this unseemly obsession with his reputation and Mrs. Lincoln began using pseudonyms. It is not enough: only surviving son of Mary Todd, Robert, had a brief stay in a sanatorium waste your money on this sense spiritualist, among other things.
3. Joan Rivers: Ghostbuster
Frederick M. Brown / Getty Images Entertainment / Getty Images
In early 1990, comedian Joan Rivers lived in an apartment in New York, she is said to be haunted. He complained of strange noises, temperature changes, and unexplained scribbles porn popping up everywhere. For some reason, she attributed to "ghost" instead of "New Yorkers and New Yorkers."
"Everyone is at a loss to know why the bodies of all of New Jersey and Red Sox fans continue to come here."
2. Daryl Hall Is a Warlock
Remember when your mother crazy evangelical played all their albums in a fire because they were "devil's music"? There was a bit of Hall & Oates up there? Do Not? He always had this copy Eyes ofPrivate collecting dust on the shelf? This is probably why black magic Daryl Hall and wanted
Lawrence Lucier/Getty Images But all I had to do was ask, Daryl. All I had to do was ask.
Daryl Hall, also known as "the most beautiful" (sorry, Oates - you look like someone shrunk Edward James Olmos and gave half of his mustache Tom Selleck), promoted interestthat hidden long-term peaked around its first album solo, sacred songs. The album refers directly Aleister Crowley Magick Without Tears in his last song, "no tears". He also alluded to own grandfather Hall is a kind of magician or sorcerer - a fact recalled in the interview.
Hall describes a six or seven years, from about 1974 - to be recognized as the height of the success of Hall & Oates - where he studied "Chaldean, Celtic and Druid traditions" and techniques to "talk inner flame. "Obviously, there was a sort of pact with the devil he goes. Now, Hall & Oates is a punchline of pop culture in cracked article. Indeed, Satan gives and takes.
1. The Reagans Ruled Through the Power of Numerology
Quick: Think of Ronald Reagan.
You will notice two things. A: I do not get an erection. Two: You imagine a good man want to look faded blue suit. It is the image of normality.
Wait, what if you still have an erection?
But that's only because you do not know very well. Ronald Wilson Reagan was well read about the occult, and he and his wife Nancy is formed in astrology. When he was elected governor of California, Ronald Reagan programmed his oath of office will be held at 12:10 in the morning to enjoy a significant alignment star. After Reagan was shot in 1981, Nancy began visiting astrologer Joan Quigley remarkable California. The influence Quigley stellar dictated everything to talk about Reagan calendar cards for landing and takeoff exact hours of Air Force One.
Finally, beliefs Los Reagan "was mostly harmless superstition. - It was not sacrificing virgins to please Almighty economy or anything, but breaks his image a little more to think a certain extent, the Air Force One was slowed on the track, all completely silent cabin forward, as Ronald Reagan was on his watch then, suddenly, the President of the United States shouted. "STARS AND DEMAND taken at this time" and all the world was in a frantic action.
The price Rafael Marques de Morais has paid to be a journalist is high.
Dedicating his career to investigating corruption Angola, in 1999 he published The Lipstick of the Dictatorship, a significant criticism of Angola’s long-standing president José Eduardo dos Santos. The result was 43 days in jail – 11 of which were spent in solitary confinement without food or water.
Undeterred, he continued to write and publish where he could, and in 2011 after years of investigation he revealed the horrors and corruption of the country’s diamond trade.
Today he faces a $1.6m libel trial brought by seven generals he exposed in the book Blood Diamonds: Torture and Corruption in Angola.
We have to fight, inch by inch, for the right to do our job
The book is a harrowing read detailing 500 cases of torture and 100 murders of villagers living in the vicinity of the diamond mines in the Cuango and Xá-Muteba districts.
Marques de Morais filed crimes against humanity charges against the seven Angolan generals as a result of his investigation, but is now being counter-sued for $1.6m. The trial – which has been looming over him after several postponements – finally begins next week.
“I lodged the criminal complaint against them because it’s the norm that leaders in authoritarian countries persecute and prosecute their citizens for telling the truth,” he said during a trip to London, where his defiant reporting is being honoured by Index on Censorship, who have shortlisted him for a journalism award.
He’d spent years convincing victims and witnesses to go on record. “This is the kind of journalism that’s needed in a place like Angola, where reporting and investigating alone are not enough. You have to take it to the next level, to act on behalf of your sources and the subjects of your stories.”
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Rafael Marques de Morais in London. Photograph: Index on Censorship
Ten journalists have been murdered in Angola since 1992, including a pro-opposition radio presenter, Alberto Graves, who was shot in 2010. The country scores low on civil liberties and political rights according to Freedom House who have catalogued “state-backed intimidation of protest leaders, scores of arrests, and the violent dispersal of demonstrations.”
Human rights activists have also been targeted: in November last year student Laurinda Gouveia was beaten for two hours by a group of police officers for taking part in an anti-government demonstration.
In this climate of oppression, free expression is nearly impossible. “A journalist has first to fight, inch by inch, for the right to do his or her job. So, you have to be an activist in order to be a journalist,” he says.
The internet could be the last frontier in the battle for freedom of expression
And the situation is getting worse. “In the early days we had a small, close-knit but vibrant community of journalists who were extremely vocal and very open in denouncing what was happening in the country. It was a force to be reckoned with,” he says.
Many, tired by threats and economic pressures, have given up and “few have remained adamant to continue to speak for those who don’t have a voice,” he says.
He has mixed feelings about reporting on the internet: the potential audience is bigger, but he has doubts about the quality of reporting online.
“Ironically, with social media you have more people speaking out through networks, but they’re not articulating information that can be of greater benefit to the public,” he says.
Related: 'No politician, however strong, will stop me doing my job'
But it could also be what he calls “the last frontier in the battle for freedom of expression.” He has set up the website Maka Angola to continue his reporting . “I cannot work for a newspaper in the country, I can’t get a job in the newsroom because of who I am, regardless of the skills I have.”
Angola is one of the world’s richest countries in natural resources, with large oil and diamonds deposits. But the effects of this wealth are not felt far beyond the ruling elite. Reports estimate that between 2007 and 2010 $32bn in oil revenue went unaccounted for in government ledgers.
It’s these resources and incredible wealth, Marques de Morais claims, that help Dos Santos evade international scrutiny and opposition, despite having ruled since 1979.
The constant battle has taken its toll on the journalist. “It’s diverted a great deal of my time which could have been applied to more investigations,” but he remains defiant, too: “it’s also made me stronger. In the same way I have committed to the case, and to fight, the generals have also had to commit to it.”
“Four years on, thanks to this court case the reports that I published about corruption and human rights abuses are still a much-talked about and important issue in Angola.” This is his victory.
The winners of this year’s Index on Censorship awards were announced on Wednesday evening at a ceremony in London
The Sun has launched a standalone site offering a lighthearted take on politics that readers do not have to pay to access.
SunNation.co.uk has launched with “A day in the life of Dave”, a video shadowing David Cameron including shots from a camera the prime minister wore. Other articles on the new site include “How to cook like a prime minister” and “Katie Hopkins snog, marry, avoid leaders special”.
The top of the homepage features an election countdown and latest polling for the five main parties.
TheSun.co.uk editor Tim Gatt said Sun Nation was aimed primarily at giving the newspaper a louder digital voice during the election. Commentators have suggested the Sun’s decision to begin charging for online content – called Sun+ – in August 2013 could diminish the political impact of its journalism online.
“We wanted to create a platform that would allow the Sun to be as loud and disruptive and influential in the digital sphere as we are in the paper during the election campaign,” said Gatt.
The site is being created by casual staff and journalists from the Sun newsroom, overseen by a “coalition of editors” including Gatt, Sun political editor Tom Newton Dunn, head of social James Manning and deputy head of publishing Dan Silver.
The site does not currently have any ads, and features no promotions for Sun+. However, Gatt said it could run ads in the future, and would generate traffic and potentially subscribers for the core Sun digital offering.
He said no decision had been taken over whether the site would have a future after the election: “We are treating this as an experiment. We wanted to be involved in the election, and we wanted to do it in a way true to the values of the Sun team.”
“At the minute, the main aim is being heard and people seeing what the Sun is saying.”
SunNation follows the launch last Summer of Redbox, a free politics-focused email from the Times, also published by News UK.
Both projects offer the newspapers a way to reach digital readers who are not paying subscribers.
What’s trending, come election time: the rise or fall of the national debt, of school success and hospital failure, of politicians’ broken promises and malign newspaper influence? Trends seem to nail the future for you.
So it’s natural, and instructive, to take the facts and figures of newspaper circulation (from the latest Audit Bureau of Circulation returns) and use them to answer two questions. If the underlying story of print decline and digital growth continues, what will Fleet Street look like in five and 10 years’ time? (Will it even exist?) And the “Tory press”: how will that stand two elections down the line? Prepare for a little future shock.
I’ve used the six-monthly average figures from February’s ABCs to get a more balanced take, and I’ve rounded up or down the percentages they show. What about bulks, misty overseas distribution and all the grey arts of circulation managers? No allowances made: this is rough trade figuring. But the basic points are sharp enough.
The Sun ended February with an average print sale of 1,941,000 a day – some 9% down on the same six-month period last year. So if that rate of decline continues on trend, it will be selling just over 1.2m in five years and around 760,000 in 10.
The Mirror had a 922,000 record in February and a percentage decline of 7%. Make that 640,000 in five years and 450,000 in 10. The Mail – with Paul Dacre retired at last, I guess – is sliding currently by only 5%. That gives it 1,280,000 or so in five years and a 990,000-ish figure in 10: add a few bulks to keep the million.
Print may have less and less economic clout, but it will still have some headline salience as the ballot boxes open
Upmarket a bit, the Telegraph has a 493,000 print figure and a 9% decline rate: so just over 307,000 in 2020 and 190,000 in 2025. The Guardian, on 179,000, posts a decline of 10%: so 105,000 in five years and 62,000 in 10. The Independent, at 61,103 now, can anticipate 38,000 and then 22,000. And the Times, with only a 2% decline record, will see its current 393,000 head towards 320,000 over a decade.
There’ll be casualties, of course. That 22,000 Indy figure is not far from the 16,000 bulks the paper gives away already. I haven’t included the FT because, sliding at 9%, the 36,000 copies it sells at full rate in Britain and Ireland won’t amount to a row of beans: think full transition to subscriptions online and digital triumph instead.
Of course compensatory digital growth is a factor. The Mail, the Guardian, the Mirror, the Telegraph and (perhaps) the Indy are all showing great growth rates there. But how does global coverage on mobile weigh against thunderous editorials in print as the ballot boxes open? When will the broadcasters mount a morning roundup of online opinion? Print may have less and less economic clout, but it will still have some headline salience as the campaigns get going.
There’ll be a residual Bun booming away. There’ll be a Mail with almost a million buyers to keep it warm (along with astronomic visitor numbers on the net). There’ll be the Times, still topping 300,000, and a Telegraph fighting to get back over 200,000. Politically, a mass-circulation Mirror without much mass doesn’t seem much of an answering voice for Labour: and, as for the Guardian, determined to become a worldwide liberal champion on the back of formidable digital investment, does 60,000 copies a day at home constitute continuing print viability?
Keep the caveats coming, of course. Pricing policies, which have driven so much of the decline, could change. The internet is not some stable, steady state; any number of technical developments could have transformed it by 2025. There’s no consistency to the variations papers record within an overall decline of 7.6% a year. Anything can, and probably will, change.
But the stated determination of some owners –Murdoch, Rothermere, the Barclays – to hang on in print for as long as possible extends more than a token future there, and possibly a critical mass of largely rightwing opinion that will still have political clout. The squeeze comes at the other end of the spectrum. Will it be possible, before 2025, to abandon print and complete transition to a digital future that underpins editorial resource with clear profitability? Nothing, alas, is quite that clear. Those few transitions attempted so far, from Seattle to Des Moines to Reading, feature much-diminished reporting resources and thin trickles of money: they could be dying falls, not bold leaps into a new world.
It’s all work in progress, of course. It means – on the strength of last 10 years. never mind the next 10 – a future full of convulsions. But at least it’s worth gathering the statistics and bending the trends before they bend back to surprise you.
■ Mathew Ingram of influential website Gigaom is a terrific prophet and pundit. He told the New York Times how painfully slowly it was going digital only a couple of weeks ago. But next week? There’ll be no Ingram because there’s no Gigaom. After nine years, the great blogging network has run out of cash and folded all unawares. No one, including Ingram, saw it coming.
No one said that top bloggers had to join bigger all-singing, all-dancing sites now because blogworld is collapsing faster than print. But that’s the harshest cyberspace law of the lot. What goes up, soon comes down again: falling fast.
I cannot imagine these talks between Trinity Mirror and Northern & Shell over a possible acquisition by the former of “certain newspaper assets” owned by the latter will bear fruit.
A sale at a good, or even reasonable, price would be an achievement for N&S owner Richard Desmond. But what’s really in it for Trinity’s chief executive Simon Fox?
Both men are publishing national titles with declining print sales and - despite ever-improving online audiences - are dealing with declining revenue.
But Fox’s newspapers - the Daily and Sunday Mirror, and Sunday People - are in better shape than Desmond’s Daily and Sunday Express, Daily Star and Daily Star Sunday.
So there is no point in Fox, who is pursuing a digital strategy anyway, taking on print products that have no realistic hope of being turned around.
I can understand why he is - to use the phrase in an email to his concerned Mirror staff - “evaluating certain” N&S assets. After all, it’s sensible for a company to accept the opportunity to peep into a rival company’s books.
But what possible value would there be in, say, acquiring the Daily Star? It would be absurd to merge it with the Daily Mirror. Aside from the fact that both are red-tops, they are beasts of a different colour. The content, the culture and the politics are entirely distinct.
Anyway, the lesson of newspaper history is that the merging of titles does not result in greatly increased circulation. It may look attractive to add the Mirror’s current 886,390 average sale to the Star’s 425,614. In fact, the likely outcome would be no improvement whatsoever to the Mirror total.
Just as unlikely is a Mirror-Express merger. The latter’s 448,256 buyers would hardly wish to switch to a pro-Labour and pro-European Union daily.
I know people don’t necessarily buy pop papers for their politics, but the Mirror’s USP is its support for the Labour party. Express readers will not find it acceptable.
I suppose it’s just about possible to make out a case for merging the Sunday People (now selling 379,943 copies an issue) with the Daily Star Sunday (301,377 copies). But that would be a marginal matter, hardly worth the trouble, and would only delay the death of the People rather than save it.
There is, of course, another important aspect to take into account should any deal be done: the reduction of ownership diversity. Would there be a competition problem in allowing Trinity Mirror to swallow, or even take a slice of, Express Newspapers? I think not.
Then there is the money. Desmond is renowned for driving hard bargains. Despite Trinity Mirror’s recent financial improvement and Fox’s hint about going on the acquisition trail, can he afford it?
I suppose the Express Newspapers’ £85m pension deficit could be accommodated in spite of Trinity Mirror’s own £301m deficit, but (as a Mirror pensioner myself) I wonder if that would be wise.
Overall, no deal involving any of the Express titles makes sense for Trinity Mirror. It would appear that both Desmond and Fox are engaged in fishing expeditions. But neither looks likely to make a catch.
The splendid journalist Dennis Barker was the only person I encountered at the Guardian more clueless than I when it came to computers. He had left the paper then, but would often come in to complete a piece and, having eyed me conspiratorially, would ask, not very sotto voce, for cutting-edge tips on how to log on, or range left. The technology escaped him, yet the copy was, as David McKie wrote in his excellent account, “quick, fluent and deft”.
I first encountered Dennis in the early 1970s. He was covering an Islington housing story – of which there were then plenty. A caring landlord had removed the frontage of a property to incentivise the tenants to go, leaving the unfortunate family as the inhabitants of a huge dolls’ house. Dennis meanwhile was being berated about class struggle and the Guardian’s many iniquities by an extremely formidable OAP, billed I think by my then employer, Socialist Worker, as “battling Margaret Ryan, the pensioners’ friend”. Dennis, pen clutched in hand, dogged, bewildered, hapless and resigned, continued note-taking while Margaret, adoring owner of a rather aggressive cat, expressed her firm, radical opinions in brisk, no-nonsense terms. Dennis was, indeed, a professional.
An award against the Sunday Times of £180,000 libel damages to the former Conservative party co-treasurer Peter Cruddas has been cut by the appeal court to £50,000.
The businessman had sued Times Newspapers and two members of the Sunday Times’s Insight team - Jonathan Calvert and Heidi Blake - over three articles published in March 2012.
Today, three judges allowed the group’s appeal on the claims for libel and malicious falsehood in relation to the allegation that, in return for cash donations to the Tory party, Cruddas offered to sell the opportunity to influence government policy and gain unfair advantage through secret meetings with prime minister David Cameron and other senior ministers.
They dismissed its appeal in relation to the allegation that Cruddas made the offer, even though he knew that the money offered for such secret meetings was to come, in breach of the ban under UK electoral law, from Middle Eastern investors in a Liechtenstein fund.
The newspaper also failed in its appeal over the allegation that, to circumvent and thereby evade the law, Cruddas was happy that the foreign donors should use deceptive devices, such as creating an artificial UK company to donate the money or using UK employees as conduits, so that the true source of the donation would be concealed.
But the Sunday Times issued a statement after the hearing to say that the court’s decision “completely vindicated” its reporting that Cruddas had corruptly offered access to Cameron and other leading members of the government in exchange for donations to the Conservative party.
The statement said the court of appeal ruled that it was “ unacceptable, inappropriate and wrong” for Cruddas to make such an offer. It continued:
“This was an important public interest story. Our journalists acted with professionalism and integrity and with the full support of the newspaper’s editors and lawyers. They and the newspaper have fought this case for three years.
Today’s judgment confirms that journalism, and in particular undercover journalism, plays a key role in exposing the conversations behind closed doors, that feed public mistrust. In so doing, it serves a vital purpose in a democracy”.
Calvert and Blake also issued a joint statement in which they spoke of their delight “that the overwhelming allegation in our articles has been found to be true”.
They argued that the offer by Cruddas “was an affront to the fundamental democratic principle that money does not buy power and every citizen has an equal stake in the governance of their country”.
They continued: “We believed passionately in the importance of publishing our undercover work and have fought for three years to defend this case”.
The journalists were critical of the original judgment made by Mr Justice Tugendhat - as reported here in the Sunday Times - and claimed it had been “found to contain glaring errors, and in our view it was astonishingly one-sided”.
The Calvert/Blake statement continued: “His finding of malice was a devastating attack on our integrity as journalists, which we reject absolutely. We were motivated at all times by our desire to hold power to account and stick up for ordinary, decent citizens by seeking the truth and we are delighted that our reports on the cash-for-access scandal have been vindicated by the court of appeal.
“We believe that the Lord Gold inquiry, which was set up to examine the Conservative party’s relationship with its donors in the wake of our story and then mothballed when Peter Cruddas began his legal action, now needs to be reopened as a matter of urgency”.
Cruddas said he was “disappointed that the court of appeal has allowed part of the Sunday Times’ appeal”. But added that “it is some consolation that I remain the overall winner of my action”
In his statement, he said: “The court has said that the newspaper failed ‘by a wide margin’ to justify their suggestion that I was prepared to break UK electoral law by accepting foreign donations.
“What is more, they have confirmed that based on the judge’s assessment of the oral evidence which he heard from the Sunday Times journalists, there is no basis for overturning his decision that they were malicious and knew that suggestion to be untrue”.
He concluded: “This is no victory for the Sunday Times when they still have to pay me damages, and their journalists remain condemned as malicious”.
Sources: PA Media Lawyer/Times Newspapers/PR for Peter Cruddas
As I mentioned in the article on 
The 1960s were a simpler time. Soda cost a dime, ladies wore poodle skirts, and the whole country was in love with a buzz, one-eyed, black Satanist.
