Article in the Times Educational Supplement
An article about this blog, and why I write it, appeared in “The Times Educational Supplement” today (available online here). Apparently a survey says that 10% of British Headteachers write blogs, but I was one of the few they could find and identify.
Producing the article was strange. I had a short telephone interview, which was supposed to continue later, but no-one phoned back. One photographer came and took an hour with various set-ups. I flatly refused to pretend to orienteer while wearing my work suit, but various parts of my study were strewn with maps and compasses. We also did some more arty shots where he blurred the background while keeping me sharp. Apparently, the picture editor did not like any of these, so I had another hour with a different photographer, with several set-ups. The photo they used was made by having kids jump around while I kept still in the middle.
I thought the article was reasonable, in a “vaguely interesting, soft news” sort of way, but like so much of modern journalism it is only loosely related to what I said in the interview and, I think, to what I actually write about here. At least online you can judge that for yourself. The photo is very contrived, but how do you photograph “blogging”? I thought the headline was nasty and insulting: I guess the sub-editors had a competition to see who could get the most “b”s in a bottom joke.
I despair of British journalism at all levels. The culture where journalism was fundamentally about reporting i.e. going out and trying to understand something well enough to describe it to the readers, has long gone. Now the culture is about providing the readership with entertainment or selling the paper’s “take” on things rather than trying to convey something that the reader can respond to him/herself. I see this even with our local paper. Reporters are looking for an angle – which can be either sensational or humorous (there is no other angle allowed in local journalism) – instead of simply gathering the facts and telling the story clearly. About the only real journalism left in this country, in my not-so-humble opinion, is on the BBC’s “from our own Correspondent” and, most of the time, on “the World this Weekend“.