Angela Gordon in The Times [£]: "During the newspaper’s bicentenary celebrations in 1985, I remember the Queen came to visit The Times and there was a terrific hullabaloo because in discussions with Paul Routledge, the Labour editor, she suggested the miners’ strike was down to one man — Arthur Scargill. Paul demurred. This was picked up and all hell broke loose. I later recall being in the editor’s office where I saw a telegram from Buckingham Palace saying the Queen had apologised to Scargill. I realised it was top secret and never told a soul. It would have been a sensational story. I reckon I can reveal it now under the 30-year rule."
Guardian readers' editor Paul Chadwick in the paper's Open door column on Jeremy Corbyn and 'traingate': "The video of Jeremy Corbyn sitting on the floor of a train, disclosed exclusively online on 16 August, was mistakenly treated by the Guardian more as freelance journalism than what it actually was: a kind of gonzo news release by two Corbyn supporters...The Guardian was told at the outset that Corbyn had obtained a seat during his journey, but the information was not included in the news report which accompanied the video...Although the Guardian did not intend to mislead readers, that was the effect for some time. Its pre-publication checks and balances failed in some respects. Post-publication, it was not quick enough to fix what it could, and to explain."
Simon Kuper in the Financial Times: "Unfortunately, the year I became a journalist, Microsoft produced its first web browser, Internet Explorer. Suddenly you could go online and find out almost anything for free without buying a paper. The number of journalists has been shrinking since, and most new jobs are for 25-year-olds willing to work for peanuts. My people are going extinct like dodos or factory workers. For now I’m hanging on, still on the island, grazing on one of the last patches of grass, but the waters are rising around me. One day my children will say: 'My dad was a content provider. He worked for an app called FT, I think'.”
The Guardian in a leader: "Mahmood built his career as the 'Fake Sheikh' of Sunday tabloid stings in the grey area between that which is in the public interest and that which interests the public. That distinction is not often interrogated enough in newsrooms when handling a 'good' story, which might be a commercial judgment before it is an ethical one."
Peter Preston in the Observer: "Not all Mahmood’s yarns were worthless tat. Think cricket match-fixing for one. Stings have a place in the history of newspaper investigation that can’t be gainsaid – and shouldn’t be regulated out of existence."
The Mail in a leader: "The BBC — which is now bitterly regretting its admirable impartiality during the referendum and has returned to type — is leading the Remain charge. Quite why it devotes so much airtime to the embittered pro-EU ramblings of the wet-behind-the-ears ex-Tory ministers Nicky Morgan and Anna Soubry, only it knows. For the Mail’s part, we know both women were unceremoniously sacked by Mrs May in July and have axes to grind."
Hugo Rifkind in The Times [£] on working on the paper's gossip diary:"You never truly stop being a diarist, though. It puts you in a tribe. Diarists are the journalists of journalism; the people hacks regard with all the wary disdain with which the rest of the world regard hacks themselves. I’m proud as anything of having run a diary, and in a way that will perhaps make absolutely no sense to anybody who never has. I don’t miss it, though. Not even a bit."
Tim Montgomerie ن @montie on Twitter: "Thank goodness for newspapers and investigative reporting. @NYTimes found Trump's old tax return and @WashingtonPost this video."
Newsquest editor quoted by the NUJ ahead of strike in South London: "The entire newsroom is at breaking point; stressed, overworked, underpaid and completely demoralised. Newsquest's response to this is to cut staffing levels further. I am appalled by the company's complete disregard for the health and well-being of its employees, indifference towards quality or public-interest journalism, and lack of respect for readers and advertisers, who Newsquest simply hope will not realise the dwindling amount of relevant local content that is published in its papers. I can no longer work for a so-called news organisation that sees its journalism as nothing more than, in the words of one senior manager, 'information to sell adverts'."
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