To fill space with really good reporting takes time, money and talent.” Although he still finds reporters he admires, like Barry Bearak of the New York Times, he is also bothered by columnists “being placed on a higher pedestal than reporters”. Hence the rise of office-bound reporters churning out researchlite material that is cheap to produce: “controversial” comments from B-list figures whipped up into “storms” that last for days, each story more derivative than the last; confected “say stories” presenting mild disagreements as “furious rows”, “lifestyle” reporting that has neither life nor style, “personality” political stories that are a cop-out from the issues, and “trend” spotting conducted with all the sociological nous of an unprepared GCSE candidate.Harold Evans, editor of The Sunday Times in its 1960s and ’70s heyday, shares such concerns. In the modern newspaper, there are more pages to fill and smaller staffs to do it. The downside is that by not having many reporters on the streets, you inevitably dilute the flavour of the story.”Today, a movie accurately depicting the work of most reporters would show them almost permanently seated at a computer in what appeared to be a call-centre. There are a lot of TV news channels and the web to monitor, and it’s more time-efficient to have reporters in the office. That wouldn’t happen now.”Michael Williams, the deputy editor of this paper, says: “In former times when a big story broke, I would automatically want as many reporters out on the story as possible Not now. Andrew Alderson of The Sunday Telegraph said: “I once did a story working with someone undercover We spent five months on it.

Too many papers are run by accountants for that to happen these days, or for the staffing levels which allowed general reporters to routinely spend entire days (or, in spectacular cases, whole weeks) out of the office. Gone are the days of the 1960s when Roy Thomson could arrive at The Times and find to his horror that its newsroom provided sheltered accommodation for a collection of registered eccentrics. Dorothy Parker’s excuse for missing a deadline – “somebody was using the pencil” – won’t wash any more.In return for such kit, reporters now have to tolerate working in a far more structured environment. Lap-tops, mobiles, sat phones, and the net give us the means to research any subject, trace and contact sources, pool knowledge via story archives and file from anywhere in the world. Can you stick to the colour and keep it to 700? There’s a royal story breaking.

Return to office soonest, please.”
When you’ve just written, as I have, a book that chronicles the greatest reporters in newspaper history, you’re apt to finish the task asking yourself questions about the directions reporting is going in Some of them, like technology, are positive. There he is in a bar, about to order another whisky, when his phone rings. “James, desk here, Bild website are saying flights are due to start. Can you re-nose your piece?”

Or William Russell in the Crimea, receiving yet another email from the office: “Bill, Sky coverage of Charge pretty thorough. Imagine, if you will, James Cameron reporting from the Berlin Airlift today. What’ve we done to deserve this? Whatever their beleaguered state of mind I wouldn’t expect too much form the Greening of McDonald’s Last year’s salads have gone already.