A SPOOF story about the fugitive Raoul Moat has been reproduced as reality by the previously ‘respected’ AolNews website. Liverpool-based Robin Brown penned the article ‘”Nation ‘can’t wait’ for Moat shoot-out” for the satirical news web site The News Grind. Brown waxed lyrical about how 800 schools nationwide had closed in readiness for a bloody [...]

THE Daily Mail has struck yet another blow for jingoism and anti-Europe sentiment with its latest ‘exclusive’. The ‘EU is to ban selling a dozen eggs from our shops’, its headlines screamed at the weekend, starting a firestorm of protest all over the internet. The Food Standards Agency, the Federation of Bakers, the British Retail [...]

A RAY of hope for local newspapers this week as five redundant journalists team up to start their own publication. The five were all employed by the Manchester-based MEN Media before their papers were either shut-down or centralised miles away from their readers, in the wave of cost-cutting prompted by the recession and growth of [...]

WHAT next for local newspapers struggling to cope with the impact of the internet and the loss of advertising revenue due to the recession? One answer comes from politicians in Wales who are calling for public funding for new community newspapers. They believe, with some justification, that the widespread closures and redundancies amongst local newspapers [...]

SOUND Communication today proudly announces its (slightly intermittent) Annual Media Awards…. And already the nominations are flowing in. Step forward the Manchester Evening News, the first print publication to win a prized gong. For the most crass, offensive and distasteful contribution to the subject of mental health awareness, we have no hesitation in nominating the [...]

SHADOW Home Secretary Chris Grayling has been rightly castigated for his intemperate remarks which compared Liverpool and Manchester with the American city of Baltimore depicted in TV’s cult series, The Wire. Grayling suggested that the level of lawlessness in the two Northern cities was comparable to the fictional bloody, drug-ridden slums of the US city. [...]

THE presses will roll for the last time at the Liverpool Echo on Saturday morning as printing is transferred 40 miles outside the city, to Oldham. More than 100 jobs have been axed in the cost-cutting move by owners Trinity Mirror, which on Thursday announced half-year profits of £49.1million. The closure of the Old Hall [...]

CONGRATULATIONS  to journalists at Trinity Mirror in the Midlands for averting threatened compulsory redundancies at their newspapers. The threat of a one-day strike by journalists this Thursday, seems to have brought Trinity bosses to their senses. The strike has now been called off after Trinity, publishers of the Daily Mirror, agreed to withdraw compulsory job [...]

A FASCINATING insight into the workings of Government is provided by the right-wing Spectator magazine in its blog ‘Coffee House’. It tells how Cabinet Minister Ed Balls, a close confidante of Prime Minister Gordon Brown, rang up the magazine’s political editor, Fraser Nelson, to complain about an earlier article which had branded the Children’s Secretary [...]

THE Pope’s outburst about condoms and AIDS has understandably caused a firestorm of controversy. An online petition protesting at the Pontiff’s position has now been started by the excellent global campaigning organisation, Avaaz. It is clear about what Pope Benedict actually said about condoms on his flight to Africa, where 22 million people are infected [...]