Beware the serial-skiller

Multi-tasking is a vogue phrase and should be consigned to the corporate training manual.

OK, so this from someone who used to take shorthand notes, dash down the steps of St Albans Crown Court, grab the 35m Practica he'd left with the copper on the door (bottle of Jack Daniels at Christmas) and snap away at the defendant as he left for the night.

That was the murky and highly-competitive world of the seventies stringer but it does bear me out on one point: had the copy I filed to that night's Evening Standard been as dodgy as the snatch shot that emerged from the darkroom, I'd have starved to death years ago.

The point is that you can take multi-tasking too far. And in the scramble for change that is newspapers today, I fear that's just what may be happenning.

It's one thing to have your reporters appreciate they have more than one publishing platform (I forced it down their necks at the Telegraph for years) but quite another to imagine you can create a Universal-Soldier-style journalist of the future whose "skill sets" (one more for the manual) slot perfectly into any task. They can't and they shouldn't.

I once pulled a sub out of the pub in my Mirror days because his "touch" was perfect for a late feature; I hand-picked the writer I wanted to cover a complex fraud trial on my local paper and I once stood aside, as a reporter when an editor decided an older face was needed on a doorstep.

As a digital editor, I became the subject of pub gossip when, having promoted one guy into the highest production role on the site, I later refused to consider him for news editor. His organisational, technical and "people" (yup, one more for the manual)skills were superb. He just hadn't got the same track record in breaking news. Others, who I'd placed behind him at the time of his earlier promotion, had. Sadly, he quit.

Everyone who worked for me in the past five years multi-tasked - but in the technical sense. I had people who could do things with photographs a passport forger would be proud of. But I wouldn't want them writing tomorrow's splash. And I've heard some of the best writers around express real fears over the prospect of sitting in front of a microphone.

At the highest level, specialist skills developed over years, are what makes a newspaper or magazine great. Mix and match and you dilute.

OK, so there are those who take to absolutely everything like ducks to water. And don't we just love them. But the key is to get the fit right: playing to your strengths by playing to their strengths.

When we win the World Cup with Michael Owen in goal, Paul Robinson dancing past defenders on the left wing and the first-team physio stepping up for that deciding penalty, I'll eat my words.

Followed the link from my old site to the virtual cock-ups highlighted by Doh the humanity and, not for the first time, thought: there but for the grade of God.

The great thing about Web publishing is the way the errors can be lost forever with a single trouch of the refresh key. Not like the time I spent as an agency reporter filing over a noisy phone to a rookie copytaker that a defendant claimed that he was "in Spain at the time".

Greatful thanks to the sharp eye - and enormous bollocking - from the Evening Standard's copytasting legend Joe Dray who realised that the accused's Alicante alibi did not mean he was "insane at the time".

But my far and away favourite was the time one of the TV text services (honestly, can't recall which) managed to mash together the first two pars of the Lee Bowyer, Johnathan Woodgate affray hearing with the third and fourth pars of a totally unrelated - and far more serious - stabbing case.

No refresh button there. As we assembled round the screen in ever greater numbers - on several floors as word got around - the whole lot pixelated before our eyes. Never seen that before.

And I guess there's one text producer who sincerely hopes we never will.

Spent the evening talking to students at Epsom College last night. I was one of a dozen or so wheeled in from the outside world to help 15 and 16 year olds decide on a career path.

I just sat among them chatted for a few minutes about how the media is expanding; how new platforms are changing the skill requirements and so on - then left them to fire questions at me. The thinking being: if they want to be journalists, they need to get used to asking questions.

Bearing in mind parents pay £20,000+ for them to be there, I was expecting them to come thick and fast.

It may have been a sign of the confidence in that sort of education that none of them asked me about the qualifications required. Every time I've spoken at a state school, they're mad keen to know the minimum entry requirements.

Apart from the usual, 'how well does it pay?', I was quizzed on doorstepping adventures, being shot at, sued, receiving death threats and working seven days a week. I left the first group feeling rather guilty, having concluded by asking: "well, whaddya think?" And getting a unanimous shaking of heads. "Sounds far too stressful," said one.

After a short break and a glass of wine with the oither speakers I returned for the second session - and talked about meeting famous people.

I've been out of full-time work for two months now. Apart from a 14-day period at the outset (August - everyone on holiday) my feet haven't touched the ground. I've just completed 14 days on the trot - yes, weekends too - and am looking forward to a day off tomorrow when I will get up late, go for a jog, probably relax in the bath to The Magic Flute , try not to watch even the opening scenes of Mutant X on Freeview and, come 11.30ish, log on.

Not to write but to read: about the latest in news aggregation, multi-media convergence, mediamorphosis, digital demographics and delivery mechanisms and the emergence of moblogs.

Does anyone remember the days when journalism teaching meant showing people how to write?

One example I won't have to look far for is that of an idle blogger. But then again, I have an excuse.

You can only teach so much journalism in class. For years, I’ve been taking the pick of my students on work experience placements and being told: “I learned more there in three weeks than I did in three years at college.”

Of course you did, I say. Three weeks of doing is worth three years of listening in anyone’s money, certainly when it comes to getting a practical feel for the job. And especially if you are pressed to actually work - and not just make the tea.

Which is why I always stuck to certain guidelines when sifting the request from third years: only take the ones who sit at the front, turn up on time, every time, read the stuff on the reading list, hand their work in on time, every time - and get (by and large) the best marks.

I used to berate those who strolled in mid-lecture and ask at the close of play for notes. And I used to refuse entry on project work to those who drifted in at around the third week having decided their first choice was boring.

So imagine how I felt on Saturday when a mature MA student who drove every day from his home in Kent to Harrow for 9.30 to ensure he was ready for a 10am start on a previous course was the only one waiting for me for the start of the next.

Of the nine booked to study online journalism, another turned up at 10.20, another at 10.45 and two more at around 11.30. I asked each when they “thought the course was due to start?” and had little by way of reply when the chap from Kent questioned whether he was getting value for money as he waited for the course to begin four and three-quarter hours after he left home.

Perhaps they should all be offered work experience and given set tasks from day one. The almighty bollocking they’d get for daring to enter journalism without any regard for deadlines would be the best lesson they could have.

I now have five courses running at two universities. The latest sees me travel to Surrey once a week to teach print media in the digital age to 60-odd students. The day begins with a lecture on the top floor of an eight-storey tower and then taking smaller seminar groups in a series of rooms in another building.

The module is in its second year and I'm delivering it from someone else's handbook which means downloading the reading list each week and bringing myself up to speed on the slow train from Waterloo. Provided the students follow suit, we're all on the same page. Problem is, not enough do. Students eh?

This week the topic was convergence. Easy call there. Told some of the keenest to go to the Media pages at mediaguardian.co.uk and search for Telegraph and digital newsroom. Wish I hadn't. Lots of discussion. Not much about digital/print convergence though.

Missing the Blackberry more and more.

A week since the last blog. A week since I snubbed a princess. Two digital strategy documents, an internal review of a B2B company, a handful of PR 'chats' and 160 students at two universities later, I am knackered in a way I never knew when I was 'working' full time. Two regrets: my appalling time management (I have snubbed friends like you'd never believe) and my lack of Blackberry. Time to address both.

Tough call on Monday: it's either drinks at the Hurlingham with the Princess Royal or standing in front of 60-odd undergrads at Kingston University. One sees me learning more about a highly worthwhile charity, the other teaching print media in the digital age. The coin is in the air. Heads it's her Royal Highness, tails it's the one where I get paid. Watch this space. . .

I was in Cambridge yesterday for a speculative PR chat. Love the city to death. I was twice offered reporting jobs there at the Cambridge Evening News - in the seventies and eighties and turned them down.

They got their own back a few years ago by refusing to shortlist me for the editoriship. I wasn't too surprised. Many regional publishers are wary of the ex-Fleet Steet Factor. Even so, as I sat in the sun in King's Parade discussing weblogs and their role in direct marketing, I couldn't help contemplating my Keep Cambridge Tidy/U's for the Premiership/keep cyclists safe campaigns.

Former Express editor Richard Addis did some interesting sums for the media Guardian in making a business case for all papers going free within 10 years.

He’s right on the percentages (most of the revenue comes from ads, not circulation), bang on when he talks about the consequences (you spend more on printing, less on marketing) and makes a valid point about the lifting of restraints to web publishing.

But I did a double-take when he said a £1m cut in the freelance bill could be justified by “making better use of citizen journalism”.

Last year I launched a publishing economics module for MA students at the University of Westminster. It ran over two days and was project-based. On day one, we produce a business plan and saw a make-believe magazine through to the newsstands. On day two, we deal with the consequences of over-spending, under promoting and wishful thinking.

There’s a lot to be said for widening the information net . . . but replacing bona fide freelancers?

I’ll see if I can work that into the next course. I’d love to see what a few bright minds could make of that.

So, an A-level in media studies will not do much for your chances of getting into Cambridge, according to its director of admissions, Dr Geoff Parks.

A degree in the same subject will not help you get a job on the Evening Standard, because editor Veronica Wadley who reckons she’s never even interviewed a media grad.

I know what they mean, but as someone who spends much of his time teaching this stuff at various universities, it may be worth pointing out that I took half a dozen media grads out of school and into the Telegraph’s digital newsroom in the five years I was running it and I’d have taken any of them with me if I’d anywhere to go.

There were a couple from the university of Westminster, a trio from Cardiff media school, a few from City University and I recall one from Bournemouth who would have made the grade had she not been tempted elsewhere.

To be honest, media as an academic subject, provides just that: an academic exercise. It produces candidates of degree standard. It’s the approach that matters.

One of the Cardiff trainees made his best pitch when he approached me after I’d addressed 300 of them in one of their lecture theatres. He listened, fired testing questions and fronted me up at the end with the words: ‘I want a bit of that. What do I do?’

The question for me at moments like that is not so much, can he speak three languages, quote Browning or name every King since Cromwell, it’s how would I feel if I were a punter and he was a reporter? Better still, how would I feel about the organisation he represents - and I run?

Okay, I'd prefer ay media grad to have an advanced understanding of how the industry works than the influence of EastEnders plotlines on racial equality but the clincher is the look in the eyes that says 'I would slay dragons for this job.'

There's only one caveat. They have to be able to write.

And surprisingly few can do that these days – whatever they’ve studied.

Just back from a few days off, having been caught by a speed camera for the second time in six years and the second time in my life.

The first time it happened I was doing 60 in a 30 mph limit – fast enough to face a ban.

I got off with a £400 fine because the magistrates were parents and understood what it must’ve been like to see my 11-year-old’s face crumple as he waited to catch an early morning train for his first lone school trip and realised his overnight bag was still in the living room.

I showed them a letter from the deputy head confirming I’d had 20 minutes to dash back or follow the 6.15 to Fort William, produced a Met report showing how safe the conditions were, photos of the empty road at 6am and even a couple of articles I’d written condemning dangerous driving.

They yawned, signed, winced a little when I addressed them ‘may it please your worships’, told me to ‘please sit down’, and bunged six points on my licence.

The latest flash came as I the M1 in Bedfordshire in a flash new Saab Sport doing a tad over 30 as I slowed into a village. Everyone told me no-one gets done for doing less than 38. The penalty notice arrived two weeks later: I was doing exactly 38. Not 39; not 37. Jesus.

I admitted the offence and didn’t try to blame it one worries about my 11-year-old’s travels.

He’d turned 17 and was in Istanbul with his brother on the week the bombs went off. I did phone the Foreign Office helpline from the car as news came though on the radio.

Please note: it was on a hands-free set.

It's been more than a week since I left full-time employment and I'm having withdrawal symptoms. With no wire service, no 24-hour TV, no news schedules to stare at every waking moment, I'm reading everything that comes through my door.

I live in a village and, once a month, The Voice of the Village is delivered. Last month's had a carnival picture on it and I threw it in the bin with the Indian menu and neighbourhood watch stuff. This month's had a picture of cricketers on the green opposite and I read it cover-to-cover.

It's citizen's journalism in print. Seventy-two pages of A4 folded in half, full of snippets, profiles of local people, listings, what feels like a 200gsm glossy cover - and all printed by a bloke down the road.

It covers what local papers call parish pump: Ofsted praising a local school, plans for a phone mast, the usual yellow-lines controversy and even an appeal for neighb ours to be considerate when lighting barbeques.

But what makes it worth reading is when it tries its hand at traditional reporting. A two-page spread on PC's (sic) winning bravery awards carried a hiilarious account of a potentially serious incident in which local bobbies "attended the scene", tried to "locate the offender" while "maintaining a position at the front of the premises". On another page, they report that a local "male" is being held in custody on driving charges.

It's full of companies vacating premises, people working in commercial units and living at residential addesses and littered with minor mistakes. But it's absolutely packed to the rafters with ads from estate agents, glazing firms, pubs, restaurants, garages, builders and hairdressers.

I can see the bloke down the road vacating the village soon for the sun.

One of the benefits of being suddenly freelance is that people you may have entertained from time to time now insist on paying for lunch. A downside is that it cuts your day in half and, without a schedule to fit it into, leaves little time for anything else.

It does mean you're still plugged in to what's happening in the world though. It also means you get to see lots of new restaurants and, like a driver suddenly in the passenger seat, begin to take note of your surroundings.

I've written before about being a Blackberry addict. I've lost count of the times I've gone from office to pub to Tube to taxi rank and rarely raised my head from the screen in my hand.

My eyes are slowly opening. I now know the name of a church I have passed 1,000 times and stopped to study a roadside tourist map instead of Googling Streetmap.co.uk on my mobile. I even gave directions.

If the weather holds, I'll maybe set up as a tour guide . . . or a restaurant critic.

Friday saw me step aside as editor of telegraph.co.uk after five years in which the media landscape changed beyond recognition.

And for the first time in years, I took a Monday off. I went for a jog in the sun, read a book in the bath, sat down in front of the TV - and watched England win the World Cup.

How's that for a delayed-drop intro?

Anyway, there was no more surfing the Net for news, reading the weekend roundup from Lovelace, listening to Five Live in the traffic on Holloway Road. I just sprawled out to re-live the full 120 minutes I saw live in 1966, in colour at the cinema a few years later and on video 10 years ago when son Andrew was old enough to appreciate sporting nostalgia.

And did the memories come flooding back? Sadly not. From the moment Kenneth Wolstenholme - as BBC posh as Sir Alf was plummy - began talking us through England's greatest sporting moment, all I could think about was how far we'd come in broadcasting.

Here was this legend among commentators sounding like a kindly uncle talking you through a changing of the guard while adding little in the way of critical understanding of the game. The match drew millions of new fans, particularly from the middle classes who'd never stood on rain-lashed terraces. You couldn't wish for a better moment to bring them into the fold.

But what did they get? Apart from a few name checks, not a great deal. I wondered what my old colleague, Alan Hansen, would have made of George Cohen haplessly trying to dribble out of his own box, or Ray Wilson 'gifting' the Germans their opener and what Gary Lineker would have said about the space Geoff Hurst had to grab an equaliser. Never mind 'gole! It's a gole!' Where was the bloody defence?

That competition was my induction to the beautiful game I grew up thinking it was OK to toe-poke passes to the other side, fall flat on your arse and repeatedly whack left-footed bloomers into the photographers from 25 yards.

Okay, so the players were on a tenner or two a week, their wives went to Tupperware parties and the balls weighed a ton in the wet. It wouldn't have been fair to critise every flick and turn. But it would have been nice to have known what was what.

I've got the full Leicester City box set to get through. Even the Foxes greatest moments video: no silverware, but plenty of action. And the 1998 season highlights that sums up almost every season: So near, yet so far.

I'll still swear at the dodgy decisions - but I'll never knock Mottie again. We rhink it's all over? Well it is for me. For now.

Let's see what tomorrow brings.