Trendsurfing: Sponsored weddings (The Times)

By David Rowan

It's the new wedding-day checklist: flowers ... rings ... oh, and what about the corporate sponsors? With typical wedding bills now well into five figures, enterprising couples are increasingly turning to business sponsors to recoup their costs. And while you might expect Donald Trump and Melania Knauss to trade wedding PR for free food and photos, ordinary couples too are turning their big day into unapologetic marketing opportunities. Traditionalists may sneer - but bride and groom, particularly in the States, are finding private backers ever more willing to say "I do".

Christina Vincelli and Jevon Gantner have already raised almost $20,000 in sponsorship, and they are not getting married until May 14. "We've been offered a $2,500 video, flowers worth $3,500, and a four-tiered wedding cake," explains an enthusiastic Vincelli, a receptionist for an office-rental company in Atlanta. "We have a Plan B in case some items don’t get donated - I've bought the wedding dress - but things are going pretty well. We’ve just got our truffle lady. She’s going to put chocolate truffles in 200 boxes labelled 'Welcome to Jevon and Christina's wedding'."

In return, businesses are promised "subtle advertising from the couple before, during, and after their wedding", according a contract both sides must sign. A list of sponsors will be included with the invitations, signs at the reception will explain who has given what, and during the dinner each will be given a "verbal thank you" by bride or groom, delivered, as the contract specifies, "in a clear voice and directed towards the guests". Sponsors will also be able to solicit business with discount vouchers. "Vendors can attend the wedding and market to our guests," Vincelli explains, "though they know they can’t be to heavily sales-focused. I don’t really feel uncomfortable about it at all."

It is nothing new for celebrity weddings to be sponsored. Anthea Turner's career may not have recovered from her being photographed enjoying a nuptial chocolate bar, but that has not prevented stars such as Britney Spears or Tori Spelling accepting gifts or discounts in exchange for publicity. Star Jones, a US television hostess, even had an "official airline" for her much-trailed wedding last November.

But now unknowns are turning their weddings into PR blitzes. Todd Weiss and Debbie Lay tied the knot last June in Kansas City without paying for catering, reception hall, even the groom's ring. Like most successful couples, they were inspired by another couple, Tom and Sabrina Anderson, whose own 80 per cent sponsored wedding attracted widespread media coverage and around $30,000 worth of donations - including T-shirts featuring sponsors' logos.

Christina Vincelli learned about the Andersons' success on Oprah Winfrey's show, and contacted Tom for advice. She promises potential sponsors "an entire page" on the official wedding website, but persuading them has not, she admits, been easy. "I’ve probably emailed 3,500 letters since last January, and you get one yes out of every 200 sent," she says. She has had only one rude reply - from an offended master chef - but she was not deterred. "I don't feel I'm begging, just asking. We could afford a very small wedding without it."

Now she is advising British couples to cash in on the trend. "You just have to sell yourself," she says. It is also important to ignore people who call you tacky. "I don't think I'm compromising," she reflects. "I really am having the wedding of my dreams. And how many people can say that?"

(The Times, London, January 29 2005)

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Interview: David Mannion, ITV News editor in chief (Evening Standard)

By David Rowan

IS ITN facing its final bongs? Just weeks after Sky News took over as Five's news provider, now ITV is threatening to dump its journalistic partner of 50 years. With the network finally under his control, chief executive Charles Allen warned this week that if he didn't gain control of ITN, the company would lose its biggest customer when its contract expires in 2008. Some in the City saw Allen's threat simply as a ploy to drive down the price of the 60 per cent of the news organisation that he doesn't own. But in ITN's Gray's Inn Road headquarters, it only added to the uncertainty that in recent years has brought morale low.

So it must be reassuring for staff to have such a relentlessly upbeat boss as David Mannion. In his airless basement office, the ITV News Channel beaming out of a wallmounted screen, Mannion, 54, exudes the convivial optimism of a man entirely unflustered by crisis. "The future of ITN has been uncertain for as long as I can remember, and I've been around ITN since 1979," he says cheerily. "We just get on with our jobs."

Any suggestions that the company has been weakened by redundancies, budget cuts, regional closures, the loss of Five - well, they are just wrong, Mannion suggests. "It might look like ' weakening', but it's not," he replies. "The cuts were some years ago and now we've recovered. I've also persuaded ITV to invest millions more to cover the war in Iraq, the tsunami, our new studio set. When Charles Allen says news is at the heart of ITV, he has certainly put his money where his mouth is."

Still, Allen's intentions towards ITN are causing some anxiety. In a new book by Richard Lindley, ominously titled And Finally ... ? the ITV boss insists: "We will not renew the [ITN] contract." Unless he can force the three minority shareholders - Reuters, United Business Media and the Daily Mail General Trust - to sell him their stake, Allen says: "We will undertake to produce our own news in-house".

Some commentators see this as a "death knell" for the organisation, which has already dropped its onscreen identity in favour of "ITV News". But Mannion, appointed editor-in-chief a year ago, insists that nothing much, in practice, is likely to change. "It can go one of two ways," he says. "Stay as we are, with ITV owning 40 per cent, or at some point we become wholly owned by ITV again. Either way, the provision of network news to ITV will continue out of that newsroom. On a workaday basis, it doesn't matter much, to be honest."

What concerns him more is Lindley's interpretation. "Richard has got it into his head that were we to be wholly owned by ITV again, that would compromise our independence. If I may use the vernacular, that's bollocks. For 37 years, ITN was wholly owned by ITV. Did anyone then suggest that Aidan Crawley, Geoffrey Cox, David Nicholas were anything other than completely independent editors? Why should I or anyone in my position be any less independent under ITV's ownership?"

BUT isn't the concern that shareholders would press for more audience-grabbing news stories, as with the US networks? "There is not a shred of evidence to back that up," he says, reddening. "I find it slightly insulting that this is being put around. If owners or shareholders appoint someone as editor, they do that because they believe they make the right judgment calls, and, yes, because they believe they'll deliver the best possible audience. But once you start to interfere, the whole thing starts to collapse. It would be bad for business were they to try it."

Even if ITV took full ownership, it would make commercial sense to keep ITN as a separate division, he believes. "It's an internationally renowned brand. Charles Allen, I'm sure, is aware of its value."

The loss of Five was a knock, he admits, but financially "it has not damaged us". Besides, there is enough "good news". The two per cent increase in viewing between 6pm and 7pm since last year, for instance, while the BBC's news audience fell: "People talk about declining news audiences, but we've put bums on seats."

So what of Roger Mosey's comments, some time ago, that Sky, not ITN, had become the BBC's main competition? "If he doesn't see us as the competition, he's blind," he responds. "We outstrip the BBC with far fewer resources."

Still, not all Mannion's plans have succeeded. Last year, he forecast that the ITV News Channel would overtake BBC News 24 by Christmas. "Ambitious bastard, aren't I?" he grins. "I didn't make it. We're well third. But the news channel is still a baby, and has a fraction of the budget of Sky or News 24."

As for the steady, if not startling, viewing figures for a revitalised News at 10.30pm - around three million last year, against a 4.8 million average for the BBC - he blames viewers' unfamiliarity with the new schedule, as well as ITV's mid-evening programmes "not performing particularly well".

He is infuriated by suggestions that ITV's bulletins have softened, increasing showbiz coverage, for instance, to boost ratings. "Show me," he says. "To say we've dumbed down is nonsense. None of the so-called critics have ever managed to find any evidence."

What about his practice of paying interviewees - most recently Monica Lewinsky - to talk about Bill Clinton's book? "If we think the story is of sufficient public concern, and the only way to deliver that story is a payment, we won't shy away," he says. "Besides, the BBC does it. They acknowledged that last year." He appears to be referring to a comment by Peter Horrocks, the BBC current affairs chief, regretting an interview fee paid to George Best in 2002.

As proof of ITN's serious journalism, Mannion cites foreign coverage - greater now, he says, than ever. This has involved tragedy: a photo of Terry Lloyd, a friend killed in Iraq, is by Mannion's desk. His responsibility to his correspondents in Iraq, he says, is "one of the few things that put me off my sleep". With three crews currently there, he reviews their safety "hourly". "It's always a balance between the journalistic compulsion to cover the story and the safety of your teams. I know I'm putting people in danger. I never stop thinking about it."

HE LIVES in Fulham, is married, and has a 21-year-old son. Growing up in Derbyshire, he chose not to go to university, but, without telling his parents, took a job on a local paper, the Long Eaton Advertiser. This led to work in a news agency, local radio and television, and finally ITN. Apart from stints editing GMTV and Tonight with Trevor McDonald, most of his career has been in news. With McDonald, he famously scooped the first interview with Nelson Mandela after his release from jail. His secret: warning Mandela's minders that thousands of journalists would be descending, and offering to "organise them" in exchange for a meeting.

McDonald remains a friend who will be "impossible to replace". His successor, Mannion hints, is likely to be a current presenter. "We have a tremendous amount of talent inhouse. They'll take some beating."

You would expect such loyalty from a man who has made his life here. "I am proud of ITN's history," he reflects. "But I do think, particularly through Richard [Lindley]'s book, there's a bit of looking back at the past with rose-coloured glasses. The journalism today on ITV News - the work of John Irvine covering the tsunami, of Bill Neely, Mark Austin, James Mates - these are wonderful essayists. In 50 years we'll look back and say these were the golden years of ITN."

Assuming, of course, it still exists.

(Evening Standard, January 26 2005)

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Trendsurfing: Car clubs (The Times)

By David Rowan

Fancy driving a new car without paying for one? You'll get your own local reserved parking space, never have to worry about maintenance or road tax, and even have your insurance and petrol taken care of. Each time you need it, you simply borrow the neighbourhood Corsa or Focus and pledge to return it at a pre-arranged time. And if that doesn't persuade you, there's always the moral superiority you'll gain from helping minimise pollution and urban congestion.


The secret? A network of local "car clubs" that is quickly spreading across Britain. For around £15 a month, club members gain access to communal vehicles based nearby that they can book in advance by phone or over the net. Then, whenever they use one, they typically pay around £3 an hour plus an all-inclusive 18p mileage fee. The idea is proving so popular that Smart Moves, the biggest UK operator of car clubs, is expecting to triple its membership by December.

Adrian Mantle, a Bristol fire officer, is absolutely persuaded. Mantle, 41, has always preferred cycling to work, and now he borrows his local club's car only when he needs it. "This afternoon I had it for three hours to visit a friend, but when I went to the pub last night it made more sense to take a cab," he explains. "I can choose whichever means of transport suits me at the time, without having to worry that I'm responsible for a car that's just sitting outside for days at a time costing me money." The Bristol club's two-year-old Astra is parked a short walk from Mantle's home, but for that minor inconvenience he cites plenty more benefits. "Compared with having to fix your own car, or finding your insurance premium going up, it's a whole lot less hassle, and much cheaper," he says. "I'd like to see car clubs on every street corner."

It is a vision that Chas Ball shares. Ball is joint managing director of Smart Moves (www.smartmoves.co.uk), which currently runs schemes in Edinburgh, Bristol, Brighton and London - where local authorities such as Islington are encouraging car-sharing by offering dedicated parking bays. "We'll hit 100 cars by March, and by the end of the year we'll have 150 cars and at least 3,000 members," he says. "To make it work, you need about 15 users per car, but you try to get 20 - each of whom will be saving £2,000 to £3,000 a year by not running their own." Members are anywhere between 21 and 70, he says - ranging from ex-owners "fed up with dealing with maintenance and costs" to families learning to do without their second car.

Similar schemes in Switzerland and the US have convinced Ball that car-sharing will boom as politicians demand an ever more "integrated" transport policy. "In Switzerland, two per cent of drivers use these schemes, so it's not out of the question to have 500,000 drivers signed up here," he says. "I don't want to pick a too ambitious target, so as not to outrage the Jeremy Clarksons, but we're looking at 10,000 members by 2007."

Still, there are a few stumbling blocks to overcome. "When I tell people I don't own a car, they assume I'm a bearded geography teacher with weird green ideas," Adrian Mantle admits. "There is that status thing. But once people get over the idea of car ownership being cool and trendy, it's going to take off. Why shouldn't you have a mix of tools available when you need transport?"

(The Times, London, January 22 2005)

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Evening Standard: Analysis - Daily Mirror in decline

By David Rowan

IT is crunch time for the Daily Mirror. Having lost 10 per cent of its circulation in the past year, the biggest drop for any national daily, the paper's future within the Trinity Mirror group is this week looking more uncertain than ever. With editorial morale at a low, and another damaging price war in sight, City analysts are warning that Sly Bailey's promised "turnaround" strategy appears to be failing.

Is Bailey, as Trinity Mirror's chief executive, shrewdly trimming costs in order to offload Mirror Group Newspapers for the optimum price? Or, as disillusioned Mirror insiders are suggesting, does the former IPC magazine boss simply fail to understand newspapers?

The numbers tell a dismaying story of decline. In the year to December, the Daily Mirror's circulation dropped to a historic low of 1.7 million, a loss of 200,000 copies. The Sun lost fewer than three per cent of its sales, to finish the year at 3.2 million, albeit a quarter of those at cut-price.

Part of the Mirror's loss may be attributable to revulsion at the faked pictures of British soldiers "abusing" Iraqi prisoners, which cost Piers Morgan his editorship. Yet the falls have only accelerated since Richard Wallace took over in June - and now his 35p paper faces competition from a 15p Daily Star and a 20p or 30p Sun.

"Time is running out," warns Simon Baker, media analyst at SG Securities. "There's an enormous task ahead if Bailey is to deliver on the promised turnaround of the national papers' decline. The circulation falls we're seeing now are going to increase the pressure on the company to act, whether by breaking up Trinity Mirror, or some other strategy. Do they sell the nationals? Do they try again to reposition the Mirror for its umpteenth rebirth?"

Among editorial staff, a consensus is growing that management has abandoned any interest in making the Mirror succeed, and is now simply seeking to reduce costs for an inevitable sale of the three national titles - the Daily and Sunday Mirror and the People. This would leave Trinity Mirror to focus on its highly profitable regional papers.

Mirror journalists who spoke to the Standard on condition of anonymity questioned Bailey's commitment to the "seriously good popular journalism" which she promised to invest in after Morgan was removed. At the time, the paper lost specialist reporters, not to be replaced, as well as its colour magazines, M and The Look, and Morgan's imported columnists such as Christopher Hitchens and Jonathan Freedland. In their place, the Mirror boosted its celebrity coverage, launching a magazine based on the 3am spread. Now even that has closed.

"The paper's dying," according to one experienced Mirror journalist. "Morale in the newsroom has collapsed. They need to do something pretty quickly. There's so much damage being done that the paper might never recover." Bailey's only strategy, the journalist claims, is "simply to run it into the ground and sell it. They're just waiting for someone to come in at the right price. Sly Bailey's sole purpose in life is to show growth to her shareholders, and to do that in a declining market means hack-and-slash. She hasn't the faintest idea what the paper is meant to be. The result is to produce a worse version of The Sun and charging 5p more for it."

Trinity Mirror declined to offer a response from Bailey or any other executive.

A former senior editor at the Mirror, in regular touch with its journalists, says that Richard Wallace should not shoulder the blame. "Richard's a nice bloke, but these problems are greater than any individual can solve and he probably realises it too," the former staffer says. "Nobody knows what the paper is about any more."

Although popular, Wallace was an unexpected choice as editor. A day before his appointment, insiders understood that Phil Hall, the former Hello! editor, would be given the job. But a major complication was the role of Ellis Watson, the former Sun marketing boss who, as the newly promoted MD, would be the national papers' editorial as well as commercial supremo. Now that he had ultimate editorial power, journalists complained, he was using his "market-research dossier" to decide which stories to run.

"You've heard of papers edited by committee - well, now it's effectively edited by market research via a bloke with no experience of editing," the former senior editor says. "He'll decide if, say, an Ian Huntley story should be pulled because last time round a Huntley front page sold three per cent fewer copies than usual." Trinity Mirror's press office points out that Wallace still makes the editorial decisions.

So what went wrong? Bill Hagerty, former deputy editor of the Mirror and now editor of the British Journalism Review, dates the decline to David Montgomery's time running the Mirror Group after Robert Maxwell's death. The cost-cutting and redundancies "destroyed a lot of the paper's ethos", Hagerty claims. By the time the current management took over, journalists such as Paul Foot and Alastair Campbell had left. Cost-cutting, meanwhile, had become the norm. The only way to rescue the paper, Hagerty believes, is bigger editorial investment.

Trinity Mirror's response to its critics is to demand patience, claiming that the "true circulation picture" will emerge in the summer. It also points out that year-on-year comparisons are misleading, as far less money was spent on marketing in the more recent circulation period. "The metric we use to judge success is market share," a spokeswoman says. "And though the whole market is declining, the Daily Mirror's market share, at around 19.5 per cent, has not changed in the past six months." Under Wallace, the spokeswoman adds, "already the paper's brighter, more consistent, more balanced". The company insists there are "categorically no plans whatsoever to sell the national titles".

Still, the vultures are circling. Before Christmas, there were reports of a planned £2 billion offer for Trinity Mirror by CVC Capital, a private finance house. CVC firmly denied the bid, and some observers suspected the suggestion owed more to Trinity Mirror's internal needs: it coincided with a falling share price, which it served to boost.

But other prospective purchasers are rumoured. Axel Springer, the German media giant, is one name doing the rounds - that would certainly be payback for Morgan's "Achtung Surrender!" front page before England's Euro 96 clash with Germany. Springer has been looking to enter the British market, and failed in its bid for the Telegraph. Sources in the company, however, are playing down any interest.

Yet selling off the Mirror Group would not be an easy solution for Bailey. Its price would be artificially high because the national papers are bound in with the more attractive regional-newspaper business. And no venture capitalist wants to pay over the odds.

In the meantime, despite circulation challenges, its national papers continue to make a comfortable and rising profit for Trinity Mirror. And journalists, the company likes to point out, fail to understand that newspapers are not cultural icons to be protected, but hard-headed businesses.

(Evening Standard, January 19 2005)

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Trendsurfing: Toy-hacking (The Times)

By David Rowan

Anyone can play with a battery-powered toy as the manufacturer intended. But only the truly cool will re-engineer the toy itself, taking apart its circuitry to create something entirely novel. The hobby is called toy "modding" or "hacking", and it has grown with each new Furby or Sony Aibo that cried out to be electronically modified. Yet only now, thanks to a best-selling 14-inch robot, has the toy hack become a truly global phenomenon.

From Seattle to Strathclyde, amateur hackers are taking apart Robosapien, the hot toy last Christmas, and proudly sharing their "improvements" on websites and bulletin boards. Out of the box, the £80 remote-controlled robot is already programmed with 67 moves, allowing it to walk, dance, kick, and even burp and break wind. But with a little imagination, hobbyists are teaching their Robosapien to be walking video camera, to dance the macarena, even to play competitive football.

Jamie Samans, 34, a writer in Seattle, has spent almost six months of his spare time fitting his Robosapien with a wireless camera, a radio frequency audio receiver and a stereo system, all controlled from his PC or over the internet. He now sends his robot walking around his house to send back images of whatever he sees. "On its own the toy is not that great, nothing more than a remote-control car," Samans says. "But if you apply some creativity - well, there's nothing stopping you. I've fitted a wireless radio and created Robosapien surround sound, so he walks around playing whatever music I'm listening to. I've turned him from a toy into a tool."

His obsession has earned Samans a contract to write a book about Robosapien, as well as a £275 prize in a magazine competition for the best robot hack. He is not, he insists, one of the hardcore "brain replacer" hackers who feel driven to reprogram every move: he is more of a soldering-iron hobbyist than a technical expert. In fact, he studied intellectual medieval history at Oxford before finding work as a political lobbyist in Washington. Toy hacking just seemed to fill the creative gap.

Now the hobby is spreading across the world. At the University of Freiburg in Germany, researchers are building a Robosapien football team, equipped with cameras and PocketPC computers, to take on a team from the University of Osnabrück. For Mark Craig, a robot-hacking student at Strathclyde University, it all comes down to making a personal statement. "You are effectively taking something which is a clone from a shop and turning it into your own," explains Craig, whose website is packed with "bad photos" of his reconstructed Robosapien. "Some may settle for customising it with stickers or painting it, but others wish to improve upon it by giving it a brain to think for itself."

Back in Seattle, Jamie Samans is ready for a new challenge: his wife bought him a Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner for Christmas, although he has not yet had the heart to take it apart. He is, though, looking for his next Robosapien hack. "Maybe adding a weather station," he reflects, "or something to improve his grip."

Still... shouldn't he just get a life? "I've had my time doing the sensible things," Samans laughs. "I've lobbied for major tax bills that would save my clients millions of dollars, and I couldn't have cared less. But now I get to send MP3s from the PC in the house to my Robosapien in the garage. And that's a Eureka moment."

(The Times, London, January 15 2005)

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Interview: Trevor Kavanagh, The Sun (Evening Standard)

By David Rowan

HE IS reputedly Britain's most influential political journalist - the man with the hotline to Rupert Murdoch who is feared and revered at Westminster, especially when an election looms. As The Sun's political editor since 1983, Trevor Kavanagh has lately been credited with forcing a government slowdown over Europe and keeping immigration at the heart of political debate. He has also landed an award-winning string of scoops, from Lord Hutton's leaked final judgment to Tony Blair's election date.

A tall, distinguished 61-year-old, you would expect Kavanagh to be as sharp and aggressive as some of his feistier Sun commentaries. So it is something of a relief to find him in person courteous, thoughtful, even self-deprecating. "I'm absolutely baffled by this 'most powerful man in Britain' role," he reflects over breakfast in a Westminster restaurant. "It's not a skin I feel comfortable with."

His reputation as a power-broker grew, he explains, when Kenneth Clarke used a BBC interview to suggest mischievously that Kavanagh's loudly trumpeted hostility to Europe gave him Britain's casting vote. "I guess The Sun does have a powerful voice on Europe, as our 10 million readers, on the whole, are very sceptical. That's probably why Tony Blair conceded a referendum on the constitution. But those who suggest that this makes me one of the most powerful journalists are getting confused with the paper itself."

Still, Kavanagh's well-sourced exclusives can dominate the news agenda for days. His Hutton "world exclusive" last January provoked a furious response from No 10 and won him two "Scoop of the Year" awards. Naturally, he will not discuss his source. But he does play down his own role in breaking the story "All we were doing was breaking an embargo, although Lord Hutton was pretty cross," he says. "Interestingly there were two inquiries ordered, but neither bothered to ask me about it. I'd have said, 'I can't tell you' — but you think they'd have asked."

He claims to be "just a reporter". Few reporters, though, have such close access to their proprietor. Kavanagh came to Murdoch's attention when, early in his career, he moved to Australia and rose to be political correspondent on the Murdoch-owned Sydney Daily Mirror. Today they talk "intermittently". But having survived four Sun editors, he wields significant influence in the proprietor's view of British politics.

He would be "surprised", he says, if The Sun did not endorse Labour this spring. Does that mean Murdoch has had second thoughts about Michael Howard, whom he invited to address a News International summit in Mexico last March? "No, he's met and enjoyed the company of Michael Howard. But I think the Tories have yet to prove that they have something major to say."

But what would win the Tories Murdoch's support? "They've got to be bold, prepared to risk attack for saying things that Labour cannot steal. On crime, for instance, a lot of people still feel that victims are seen as less important than the criminals."

Illegal immigration is another key concern, and Labour, he believes, has been "soft". Some critics have accused him of stirring anti-immigrant fervour, but he has no time for liberal handwringing. "I don't think we've stirred it up enough," he says. "What we're vehemently opposed to, and the Government has sold the country short on, is the failure to deal with illegal immigration and bogus asylum seekers." Mightn't his robust comments promote racism? "If there's racism in the pub on a Saturday night, that's nothing to do with our position," he replies.

UNDER current editor, Rebekah Wade, and her predecessor, David Yelland, The Sun has been a cheerleader for New Labour. Kavanagh had early concerns about Blair: before 1997, he reportedly wrote an anti-Labour memo to News International executives. So does he feel the paper is now too Blairite? "We've been pro-Labour on a number of fronts, not least Iraq and terrorism," he says carefully, "but we've also been critical of some of the ways the Government spends taxpayers' money. That's the point about The Sun. It's not Tory or Labour. It's an independent newspaper."

Still, it has been rumoured within the paper in recent months that Kavanagh felt the line had become too unquestioning, and that Wade's close social links with Labour politicians may have led the paper to underplay Blair's embarrassment over Iraqi WMD.

More recently, his critical comments about David Blunkett's affair contrasted noticeably with The Sun's gentler editorial line. Was the paper too easy on Blunkett? "I don't know," he says. "I did some quite strong stuff, but I think we were understanding of the human factor. I don't want to be too condemnatory of Blunkett, he was one of the most dynamic Labour ministers, and he really seemed to be doing his best to tackle crime." Blunkett will be back, he predicts.

Does The Sun see Gordon Brown as a leader to back? "The Sun has always had a good relationship with Gordon Brown," he says cautiously. "The proprietor admires his intellect, dynamism, work ethic, his mission to get people into work." Yes, but would The Sun back Brown as leader? "I think we have to wait till we get to that point and then assess how he's handled things. I think that's possible, yeah. But I'm not in a position to speak for the proprietor."

He is particularly critical of Labour's media manipulation, and believes that the FT's John Lloyd is wrong to blame journalists for their cynicism. "It isn't the journalists muddying the waters, it's Labour's spin machine. This Government has developed a wall of cynicism between the media and Westminster and Whitehall, with all its attempts to confuse and confound the inquiring journalist."

The result has been to let this Government get away with scandals that would have broken a Tory one, he says. "I cannot imagine that a Conservative prime minister could possibly survive when, having announced he was going to step down in four years' time, he somehow managed to conjure up a mortgage on a £3.6 million house on the basis of future income. Or that Norma Major would escape criticism for carrying out lucrative speaking engagements abroad. They would be pilloried. But under Labour, almost anything goes."

So is he a Conservative? "No I'm not," he replies. "I've never been a member of a political party. I do have views coloured by my experience — when I returned from working in Australia in 1977, I worked as an industrial reporter for The Sun and covered lots of strikes which seemed to me to be industrial vandalism. There's no doubt that the Thatcher years made a difference."

He maintains a healthy separation between the pressures of Westminster and a suburban Surrey home life. He and his wife Jacqueline have never taken a holiday with a politician, or entertained one at home over dinner, he says. "I'd agree with Hugo Young that if you have friends in politics, you frequently end up losing them, as you sometimes have to write things they don't like." Was Kirsty Wark wrong to take a holiday with Jack McConnell? "I wouldn't like to comment on other people's relationships," he says.

Perhaps this unwillingness to make enemies beyond his political prey helps explain the respect that Kavanagh has earned among his peers. As for his supposed "influence", he does seem genuinely bewildered. "If I retire tomorrow, whoever succeeds me will get as many scoops as I've got," he says. "There's an awful lot of excellent journalists out there who are just as entitled to awards as I am. It's just that when The Sun does a story, we do it big."

(Evening Standard, January 12 2005)

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Trendsurfing: Experimental travel (The Times)

By David Rowan

Planning a holiday? Don't be too easy on yourself. The latest tourism boom requires travellers to undergo any number of alarming or surreal self-imposed challenges. It might be less restful than a week on a beach - but at least you'll come home with some inerasable memories.

It's known as "experimental travel", and Joel Henry is a past master. Henry, a 49-year-old grandfather from Strasbourg, recently took his wife on a Rome city-break, but they ignored the Colosseum and the Trevi Fountain. Instead, they asked a local friend to mark 20 places on a map that held some undeclared personal meaning. "We didn't want to know why, but simply built our itinerary around these dots on the map that meant something only to him," says Henry, a TV jingle-writer. "We spent two days discovering Nanni Moretti's cinema, private houses we knew nothing about, even a local tramline. It made for the most perfect holiday."

Henry calls this an "Ariadne's thread" trip, after the mythical ball of yarn that led Theseus through the labyrinth. But it is just one of his many favourite quirky travel challenges. Some weekends, the Henrys explore European cities using only a century-old Baedeker. Other times, they sample "retourism" - taking the train or plane to a far-flung resort, only to return using the slowest possible means of transport. "My favourite, though, is 'erotourism'," Henry says. This involves him and his wife
travelling separately to an agreed destination, and then trying intuitively to meet up once there. Whether in Venice or Hamburg, they have always hooked up - turning a mere journey into an "erotic pursuit".

As founder of the Laboratory of Experimental Tourism, Henry has spent the past 15 years encouraging others to place equally arbitrary constraints on their journeys. His latourex.org website chronicles their often surreal endeavours, from "monopolytourism" (playing a local version of Monopoly and visiting the dice-determined streets or city jail) to "K2 expeditions" (heading for grid reference K2 on the local map, even if it covers the sewage works). "It's all about having fun trying new things without knowing what will happen," he explains. "So when we tested 'blind tourism', being guided through Luxembourg wearing dark glasses and carrying a white stick, we discovered the city through its smells and noise. What we hadn't reckoned on was customs stopping us to check our papers while we were still in character."

Around 500 experimental travellers subscribe to Latourex's newsletter. But that will grow this spring, when Lonely Planet publishes the first guidebook devoted to the genre. "People seem quite charmed by the idea of turning travel into something playful," says its Melbourne-based author, Rachael Antony. "I wouldn't be surprised to see more taking it up even just for a day. Experimental travel's a great way to meet people."

Antony's research led her to a British snowboarder who travelled through Japan wearing a plastic horse's head "just to see how people would react", and a newlywed Slovak couple who hitchhiked in wedding outfits and found strangers offering their homes as honeymoon suites. "My favourite was a guy who stood in a southern Indian market carrying a sign explaining that
he was a tourist available for rent," she recalls. "He had the most amazing day working in a restaurant, teaching English and handing out pamphlets for a politician. It's just another way of opening your mind."

Still, the natives do not always appreciate experimental travel's postmodern irony. Take the extreme hitchhiking challenge known as "slight hitch travel". "We know an Australian guy who stood by the roadside in LA with a sign saying 'Sydney'," Antony says with a chuckle. "The cops pulled him over and helpfully told him he ought first to head for the airport."


(The Times, London, January 8 2005)

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Interview: Nick Pollard, Sky News (Evening Standard)

By David Rowan

WHEN it controversially dropped ITN last spring for Sky News, Channel Five promised "bigger, better news". This week, with Sky finally in place, Five's coverage has unquestionably been bigger. With 60 staff in the tsunami zone and 20 local freelancers, Britain's smallest terrestrial channel has had a reporting team ITN could only dream of. And Sky has finally won its longsought foothold in terrestrial TV.

For Nick Pollard, the former newspaperman and ITN producer who has run Sky News for eight years, it is a particular triumph. Pollard, 54, who joined the Birkenhead News at age 17, has shown that an innovative, hungry news operation can compete successfully with far better funded rivals. His budget may be £35 million compared with £50 million for BBC News 24, but by nurturing his reporters' ambitions, and offering innovations such as interactive voting and an onscreen news ticker sharing the excitement of breaking news with the viewer, he has picked up a string of awards.

This week on Five, he has been able to show how he intends to provide a fuller service than ITN - at lower rates. On Monday, for its first weekday bulletins, the Five News team could call upon a dozen reporters in Thailand, Sri Lanka and Indonesia. "It's not that we thought ITN was doing a bad job," he says in his office on Sky's Isleworth campus. "It's just that we can do better - we can give Five complete access to everything we do the moment we do it.

"Over the next six months, we'll see Five News being a real home for innovative and original journalism."

In person, Pollard is straightforward and focused, with a consequent lack of small-talk. He is also something of a workaholic, arriving at the office shortly after 6.30am, and generally staying until around 5.30pm. Colleagues describe him as tough and demanding but fair, and point to a "caring" and approachable side. "During the Iraq war, he quietly gathered in the families of the reporters and engineers out there, and brought them into Sky to alleviate their fears," one recalls. "That sort of thing earns you respect."

He has also brought Sky recognition from the wider industry and its regulators, who have praised its lack of bias. "He's overcome the 'us' and 'them' view of Sky within the industry," says a colleague.

Yet some, particularly aggrieved former ITN staff, wonder if Sky's low bid for Five's contract owed more to Rupert Murdoch's television aspirations. Government papers released this week suggest that Murdoch's executives were strenuously lobbying ministers to ensure that the Broadcasting Act would let him buy Channel Five. So is the news contract simply part of Murdoch's grand plan to acquire Five?

"I'd think that's highly unlikely," Pollard says. "It has never been a factor in all the discussions we've had over the past year, or indeed five years ago, when we came close to winning the contract. It's just been a news supply contract, and that's always been the way we see it."

ITN, furious to lose out, suggested that Sky's cheaper bid meant it would be losing money. "That's complete nonsense, absolute sour grapes," he replies. "Sky News, and therefore BSkyB, makes a healthy profit on this contract. Sky would not have pitched on a loss-leading basis."

Still, he has personal reasons to regret any fallout with ITN: he was executive producer for News at Ten for 13 years, responsible for three General Elections and such coverage as the fall of the Berlin Wall. Murdoch's other news channel-Fox News, has beaten CNN in the US ratings with its opinionated coverage. Does Pollard see Sky News evolving into a British version of Fox? "I don't think there's any evidence that partisan news is on its way to the UK," he says. "The regulatory climate under Ofcom is unequivocal. Parliament has decreed that it's not going to happen." He rejects as "deliberate mischief making" suggestions - as in a 2003 Cardiff School of Journalism study - that Sky's coverage of Iraq showed "partisanship".

Pollard has spent 37 years as a journalist, 27 of them in TV news at Sky, the BBC and especially ITN, where he worked closely with Alastair Burnett. He claims to be "a big fan of the UK tradition" of objectivity, and sees no reason to emulate Fox. But hasn't Murdoch himself suggested that British news broadcasters should be free, like newspapers, to pursue a political agenda? Pollard quickly senses danger. "I don't have a view on that," he replies carefully.

A more consistent criticism is that Sky's drive to break stories leads to journalistic short cuts. A BBC documentary prompted the resignation of James Forlong, a Sky reporter who later took his own life, over allegations that he had faked a 2003 report from the Gulf. Pollard, who says this was a "unique" incident unrelated to editorial pressures, instead points to the eight screens beaming different news channels into his office. "I probably look at more TV news than anyone else, and the idea that we are less accurate than BBC News 24 is just simply not true."

He has taken "ironic satisfaction" this week watching the BBC "desperately trying to replicate what we've done". Sky took an early decision to anchor its tsunami coverage locally, and so transferred production and presentation to Thailand, Sri Lanka and Indonesia. It's quite clear that the BBC saw what we did and said: 'We're being left behind, we'd better do the same.'"

Pollard, who is married to a former nurse and has two sons, has to make a stream of ethically difficult snap decisions about which footage may be broadcast. With the Kenneth Bigley and Margaret Hassan videos, Sky decided not to broadcast any footage showing the subject clearly distressed. "We have no problem at all in pausing before we put material out, because I would much rather spend five or 30 minutes discussing the ethics and morality of showing something than put it on air and discuss it afterwards. It's inconceivable that it won't get harder in the next few years as terrorist organisations get increasingly sophisticated."

Footage of the tsunami victims has brought its own challenges. He allowed a "gruesome" scene showing a body being washed at a temple. "The crucial thing is the body was being lovingly handled by a volunteer. It said so much about the effort people were putting in." There were no complaints.

The 24-hour news agenda, meanwhile, continues its eternal cycle, and Pollard's concentration becomes more strained amid rings on his mobile and flashes on his eight screens. So what's next? A bid for Channel 4 News?

"No," he says firmly. "It's time for a period of consolidation. We've got an awful lot on our plate."

(Evening Standard, January 5 2005)

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The Times: The 'mobisode', Hollywood's next frontier

By David Rowan

THE idea of a portable telephone the size of a briefcase must have seemed so funny in 1985 that Vodafone hired a comedian to make the first call in Britain on January 1. Who's laughing now?

In the 20 years since then the mobile phone has been transformed from a cumbersome, comical and impractical means of communication into an indispensable tool of modern life. Its versatility is such that you can use it to surf the internet, book theatre tickets, send photographs to your friends, read the news - and make telephone calls. And, if the mobile phone companies get their way, this year we will all be watching television on the move.

The phone networks now believe that custom-made TV and film clips will be the next mobile-phone money-spinner. Having invested billions of pounds in high-speed, "third generation" networks, they are eagerly striking deals with the film, television and music industries to provide video entertainment on demand. It is a huge gamble on our willingness to pay to watch tiny, flickering screens but, if the phone com panies are right, it could change our viewing habits for ever.

This month Vodafone will offer a customised phone version of the drama 24, with 24 one-minute "mobisodes" designed to accompany the TV version. The deal with the Fox Entertainment Group, whose parent company, News Corporation, owns The Times, also covers video trailers of Fox films.

Not to be outdone, 3, the rival service from Hutchison 3G, is working with television companies and record labels to offer "video entertainment on the move". Edward Brewster, a spokesman for 3, said: "There will be more TV-based content, so you'll be on the bus and sample a 90-second trailer of a show you might decide to watch tonight."

The company recently offered subscribers video out-takes and highlights of the ITV series The X Factor, as well as exclusive access to a 45-minute concert by the rock band Rooster. This year, it plans a big expansion to include customised comedy, sports and music clips.

Industry analysts have high hopes for the advent of what is being called "mobile television". The technology consultancy In-Stat recently predicted that video content could be the single biggest spur to 3G growth, generating almost £3 billion a year by 2009 in the US alone. Another consultancy, ABI Research, recently announced that mobile phone TV was definitely on the way, citing Vodafone's 24 "mobisodes" as the breakthrough.

Vodafone says that it expects great things of 24 in attracting new subscribers and generating revenue. It has not disclosed how much each episode will cost, but subscribers have paid 50p a day or £5 a month to watch its Premiership football service. "This is very much the tip of the iceberg," said Ben Taylor, a Vodafone spokesman. "With 3G allowing us to send much bigger files to handsets, video content is the big area that's poised for take-off."

The networks say that they have learnt from experience which programmes the phone viewers will or will not watch. At present Vodafone offers music videos, news from ITN and video weather and sport from Sky, as well as comedy such as Fawlty Towers.

But 3, which led the way in 2001 with an exclusive £35 million deal to show Premiership football, admits that not everything has worked as expected. Mr Brewster said: "We did a lot of research before launching, and people said they wanted to watch the news, yet we got there to find they were not interested they wanted to be entertained instead. So it's about keeping the content snappy, and offering short, punchy bursts of entertainment."

The content owners have the most to gain. Fox will share the revenue earned from Vodafone subscribers and will also benefit from the extra publicity for 24 and its films. The record label BMG will similarly take a share of 3's £1.50 fee when videos from Dido or Britney Spears are downloaded. Disney has been aggressively pursuing hundreds of alliances with mobile networks, initially to sell ringtones and character wallpapers, but increasingly for video clips.

Technological advances are likely to encourage this convergence of the phone and television industries. An emerging broadcasting standard, known as DVD-H, allows programmes to be sent to mobile phones over conventional digital television networks, offering the capacity to receive vast numbers of channels. Nokia plans to launch its first DVD-H "mobile TV" handsets next year.

There are, naturally, the sceptics who ask whether we will want to watch TV on the move. Clive Sinclair, they point out, brought out a "pocket TV" in 1977. It failed to catch on and was quietly withdrawn. Well, the advances in the technology since then tell their own story, and those in the industry are in no doubt where it is going. Mike Caldwell, Vodafone's corporate communications director, predicts that within 15 years most of us will be wearing a mobile phone bracelet.

(The Times, January 1 2005)

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Trendsurfing: Green dry-cleaning (The Times)

By David Rowan

They're on to a hot story at Laundry & Cleaning Today. Forget the usual professionally finished features about ironing trends and tumble-drying techniques: all Britain's dry-cleaners want to read about today are the strange foreign ideas suddenly threatening their way of life. From America and Europe, a new wave of "environment friendly" dry-cleaning processes is arriving to clean up a notoriously un-green industry. And according to Jack Fowler, the trade paper's editor, they could bring the biggest shake-up and fold-down since laundries discovered Perc in the Thirties.

"Perc" is perchloroethylene, the most common dry-cleaning solvent. It's certainly tough: as its British manufacturer boasts in December's issue, "it easily cleans greasy items and provides the cleaning performance demanded by the industry and its customers". Unfortunately, Perc is also a suspected carcinogen which pollutes air and water supplies. So its environmentally concerned opponents have been busily developing alternatives.

Until now, there were few places in Britain to try the results. But the success of "green" dry-cleaning businesses in Scandinavia and California has finally brought the concept home. Within the next year, hundreds of UK stores will be phasing out Perc for less toxic alternatives. And that, for the ethically aware, should iron out a few pangs of conscience.

Lockwoods the Cleaners took the plunge last May, becoming the first British independent to use an American silicone-based substitute called GreenEarth. "I'm 47, and I want to be in the business in another 20 years," explains John Lockwood, whose father started the small West Yorkshire chain in 1953. He admits to being "a bit of a green": at home, his wife insists on recycling the paper and bottles. But this decision was led by head as much as heart. "Looking at the way legislation has gone, it was a case of planning for the future," Lockwood says. "Our industry is wide open to criticism about the sort of solvents we use, particularly as we're so visible on the high street. A lot of my colleagues tend to bury their heads," he adds despairingly. "So many of them are just nine-to-fivers."

Lockwoods has some influential company. Johnsons Cleaners, part of the group that owns Sketchley and Jeeves, has converted around 150 of its 630 branches to GreenEarth, and says the rest will follow by 2007. It costs a few thousand pounds to update each cleaning machine, but John Lockwood still charges normal rates - typically £8.70 for a two-piece suit. "And apart from the huge environmental issue, my staff prefer to work with it," he says. "There's no odour at all, and it's not a skin irritant. We're also getting brighter colours, with most fabrics feeling softer." Still, Jack Fowler awaits convincing that silicone will remove the toughest grease stains. "'Til then," he says, "I'm sitting on the fence."

But silicone is not Perc's only challenger. Another technology is called "wet cleaning"; a third uses carbon dioxide, converted under pressure to a liquid. The Hangers chain currently uses the carbon dioxide process in 90 North American stores, and now Jan Hamrefors is rolling out the Hangers franchise across Europe. Last year stores opened in Scandinavia and the Netherlands; this year, Hangers plans to reach the UK.

"This is a conservative industry, but I definitely think it's ready for change," Hamrefors says. "Of course, we're doing this for business reasons, as we believe the demand is there. Still, if we can also save the world in the process..."

(The Times, London, January 1 2005)

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