Interview: Donald Trelford, ex-Observer editor (Evening Standard)

By David Rowan

CAN the British Press Awards survive? Two weeks after this year's well-lubricated ceremony, the self-proclaimed "Oscars" of national newspapers are under attack as never before. With 11 Fleet Street editors pledging a boycott, allegations are flying over corruption among the judges, a bias towards chequebook scoops, and a more general failure to reward "the best of British journalism". Not many issues unite editors from The Guardian to the Sunday Express. Even Lady Cudlipp, who presented an award in honour of her late husband, has complained that the event has become "intolerant, boorish and belligerent".

If the awards do now collapse, that will leave Donald Trelford as the last ever chairman of judges. Trelford, a former editor of The Observer, has this week been aggressively defending the judging process, accusing his critics of failing to check their facts. But he does admit that the event's future is now uncertain - although not, he insists, for any logical reason.

"There is no clear issue uniting the editors," he says. "Some had a highly emotional reaction to Bob Geldof [who used the stage to insult those present], others questioned the judging, the cost of entry or the number of categories. And some just couldn't get their heads around the fact that the News of the World had won Newspaper of the Year. But that award was judged by a remarkably independent group of people, whose experience and impartiality it would be hard to find on a Pulitzer prize committee."

Trelford, who lives mainly in Majorca, is now offering to play peacemaker, inviting editors for "a rational discussion" to resolve their concerns. "Some, I suspect, would like to walk away, and I'd hope to persuade them not to. It would be absurd, after all the improvements that have been made, if we abandon them simply because of some off-the-cuff remarks by Bob Geldof. Besides, the future of Press Gazette [the event's organiser] may be tied in with the awards' survival, and newspapers shouldn't walk away lightly from Press Gazette."

Yet there are clearly more serious issues at stake than Geldof's rant. After The Sun and the News of the World collectively won most of the main categories, Stephen Glover, in The Independent, claimed that "corruption" among the judges had engineered a red-top "stitch-up". This clearly angers Trelford, who is at pains to point out the two-stage judging process, and the independence of the Newspaper of the Year panel, which included head of Radio 4, Mark Damazer, Adam Boulton of Sky News and former Sun editor David Yelland.

"I will not accept that there was any degree of corruption involved," he states. "Glover wasn't even at the event and hadn't bothered to understand the judging process at all. There was not one category where, for example, a News International person had been decisive in voting for their own person. In fact, the News of the World was chosen unanimously, and their own judges weren't involved."

Did he really at no time suspect bias or score-settling among judges? "I'm very alert to that - we're not fools," he says. There were "hardly any" instances of journalists nominating their own newspapers, and the extra scrutiny this generated could make it counter-productive.

"It happened more in previous years. At one stage, David English [of the Daily Mail] and I did get involved in some arm-wrestling to do deals: if I back your man [Hugh] McIlvanney to be journalist of the year, will you back my man to be sports writer of the year? A lot of that went on, but it doesn't happen any more. And if it did, I'd stamp on it."

The Guardian's Alan Rusbridger and the British Journalism Review have called for a new Pulitzer-style set of awards, rigorously assessed by a more disinterested committee. One benefit, they suggest, would be to stop rewarding tabloid buy-ups, such as the Rebecca Loos story, which won the News of the World its Scoop of the Year.

"I agree that buy-ups are an easy form of journalism compared with finding out the facts yourself," Trelford says. "It's a very tricky area. It is worrying that newspapers can buy stories with cash or by arrangement with agents."

SO why did he allow the practice to be rewarded this year? "If you're judging a scoop, you are ultimately judging the 'wow' factor, and the extent to which it dominated the news agenda in the weeks that followed," he replies. "The fact that it's bought up isn't a reason not to consider it, but it is a factor we take into account."

Doesn't that penalise papers which lack the Murdoch chequebook? "That is a legitimate argument," he says. "But we do have senior people from newspapers among the judges who will know how a story came about - how Trevor Kavanagh got the Hutton report, say - and, of course, we take account of this. We're not unsophisticated.

"But there are buy-ups and buyups. When The Times had the scoop of Edwina Currie's affair with John Major, the paper secured the book that it came from through contacts Brian MacArthur had long cultivated, because the publishers felt they could trust him. And even when the News of the World bought up Rebecca Loos, for their 'Beckham's secret affair' story, they'd been tailing her for months. That's what led her to go to Max Clifford. We discuss these things."

Nor should the "serious" papers automatically sneer at tabloid sex scandals, he suggests. "With the News of the World's expose of Mark Palios and Sven-Goran Eriksson [over their affairs with Faria Alam], you could say that's just a sex story, a kiss-and-tell. Or you could say, that does expose some corruption in an important governing body of the nation's leading sport. It isn't just sex."

Trelford, 67, claims not to miss editing. "By the time I'd left newspapers, in my mid-fifties, editing was largely to do with marketing, cutting editorial budgets and redundancy programmes," he says. "I'd had enough." The Observer, after "a very bumpy stage" following its sale to The Guardian, is on strong form under Roger Alton, he believes.

But journalism now takes up only a fraction of Trelford's time. He is writing a thriller - set, naturally, in the newspaper industry - and he visits London once or twice a month to pursue his roles with the Advertising Standards Authority and the Competition Commission.

If he is to retain his job with the British Press Awards, he will also need to be something of a diplomat in future weeks as he offers to hear editors' concerns. "All awards are imperfect, as they're subjective, and we recognise that," he says. "But editors should recognise that, if they don't win anything, that doesn't mean they should distrust the way in which the decisions were reached."

And if their minds are already made up? After all, 11 editors must be pretty furious to agree jointly to denounce the awards' "decline in conduct and prestige".

"People lash out without bothering to study how things are done," Trelford says. "I'd welcome the opportunity to tell them if they want to listen. But if they don't," he adds a little exasperated, "then so what?"

(Evening Standard, March 30 2005)

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The Times: Op-Ed - MGM v Grokster

By David Rowan

BY RIGHTS, YOU ought really to be banned from reading The Times. Who knows what injuries the newspaper, rolled up, could inflict as you fight for your seat on the packed 8.13? Later you might wrap it around your chips, all saturated fat, thus exposing News International to vast potential costs in some future obesity lawsuit. The newspaper is a menace. Wouldn't it be better for Britain if we simply switched off the presses?

Mercifully, that quaint notion of a free press keeps us going. Just as breadknife manufacturers are not held liable for the rare unlawful uses of their products, modern communications businesses are not shut down simply because they have the potential to enable others to break the law. It would be absurd to blame Vodafone for terrorists chatting across their network.

Yet if some of America's biggest entertainment companies have their way, that presumption of a communication medium's neutrality is about to disappear. Next Tuesday, the United States Supreme Court will begin hearing a case that affects anyone who has ever downloaded a music track, recorded a television show, or even sent an e-mail. The case, known as MGM v Grokster, is the culmination of a four-year legal battle to determine whether 'peer to peer' file-swapping services are liable for every pirated digital file that passes through their networks. The issues, to non-geeks, may appear arcane, but they affect the very future of technological innovation. They boil down to this: if a technology can potentially be used for ill, should it be banned - so preventing any of its legitimate uses?

The defendants are two American companies that make file-sharing software, Grokster and StreamCast Networks, known for a program called Morpheus. In 2001, a powerful alliance of entertainment companies brought a lawsuit claiming that these software companies should be held responsible for copyright breaches by their users. It was easy for the music industry to shut down Napster, as its technology required all exchanged digital files to pass through the company's central computers. But with Morpheus and Grokster, there is no central infrastructure for the lawyers to target: the software simply lets users find files on each other's computers.

In 2003, a federal judge ruled that the developers could not be held liable for how their users interact across peer-to-peer networks. The ruling was upheld the next year in California's Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Now the movie and music industries, along with supporters ranging from the National Football League to the Church Music Publishers Association, are going for the big one. If they win, innovation will be the victim.

The complainants want to overturn the famous 'Sony Betamax ruling' of 1984, which held that manufacturers of video recorders were not responsible for tape piracy involving their machines. At the time, the court, by a five-to-four majority, decided to protect any technology from liability if it was 'merely capable' of 'substantial, non-infringing use'. The decision freed manufacturers to develop many of today's must-have gadgets, from the iPod to personal video recorders, which may be used both for unlawful and 'non-infringing' purposes. In the propaganda campaign that preceded the Betamax case, Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, declared that the video recorder was 'to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone'. Strange, then, that video rentals went on to become the film industry's main source of revenue.

Established interests have never much liked innovation. Back in 1906 the composer John Philip Sousa predicted 'a marked deterioration' in musical tastes as newfangled gramophones 'reduce the expression of music to a mathematical system of megaphones, wheels, cogs, disks, cylinders and all manner of revolving things'. Similar battles were fought over the printing press, photocopier, mechanical piano, radio and television. Remember how home taping was going to kill music a generation ago? Music seems to have survived.

Yes, most of the traffic flowing through the peer-to-peer networks involves breaches of copyright. And yes, music sales did fall by almost a quarter in the five years to 2003, as fans realised that technology offered a free alternative to extortionate CD prices. But the roughly 10 per cent of 'legal' file-swapping on these networks allows programmers to swap code, academics to exchange learned papers and little-known musicians to gain a fan base. Why should the music industry be able to close such communications channels? Just because technology comes along and disrupts existing business models, should copyright owners not find clever ways to adapt, rather than suing 12-year-olds and fighting software developers in court?

If the studios do win, it will be the consumer who loses. The next generation of digital music players, internet telephony, TV recording equipment - all will suffer from a new legalistic caution that will stifle progress. The music lobby may have more star names on its side: a Sheryl Crow and a Brian Wilson for every Terence Trent D'Arby on the software companies' side. But if the music lobby wins, you might as well swap your iPod for a Thomas Edison wax cylinder.

(The Times, Op-Ed, March 26 2005)

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Trendsurfing: iPod Parties (The Times)

By David Rowan

Stop thinking of iPods as personal stereos. The latest trend turns them into portable DJ consoles, allowing you to impose your musical tastes on a crowd of strangers. Bring-your-own iPod parties are springing up from Manchester to Melbourne, letting clubbers take turns plugging their Mp3 players into the sound system. It is a newly democratic way to decide what a dancefloor will be listening to - and along the way is turning amateur DJs into local club heroes.

It is 10pm on a February Saturday night in North London, and inside the smoky Progress Bar a dozen volunteer DJs are refining their playlists. Between now and 1am, each will have a 15-minute slot in which to entertain around 100 people, his or her musical choices streaming through the pub speakers as video screens above show footage from Seventies TV series. The DJs can play pretty well anything they like, which is why tonight's eclectic mix ranges from the Sex Pistols to Depeche Mode, from 50 Cent to The Osmonds. Television themes and film soundtracks go down particularly well. All that matters is finding tunes that will get the crowd dancing.

This is the monthly Playlist club night - the March event will be held here tonight - and a panel of judges is on hand to decide who will win the prizes. "We're looking for people who in 15 minutes can make an inert audience move," explains Jonny Rocket, who, with his wife Lisa, has organised the free event. February's participants - picking stage names such as DJ Twiglet - include a student, a sound engineer, a bedroom creator of "mash-up" tunes, and an apparent transvestite whose own musical creation lasts around eight minutes before groans from the crowd force the judges to call "Next!". The judges score each act by holding up number cards, and the act with the highest score wins iPod accessories donated by sponsors. Tonight's winner turns out to be DJ Akimeder, who has mixed together tracks by Cher, Steps and the Beatles to create highly danceable new tunes. He has also woven in the BBC cricket theme.

"We tell the judges to consider how much the crowd is dancing, audience reaction, and the performer's imagination," explains Lisa, 34, a housing manager by day. "This is self-expression through music," adds Jonny, 40, a journalist on a computer magazine. "Discovering the iPod reintroduced me to music, and once you're interested in things you want to share them."

Playlist has been organising these events since last August and is now working with affiliates in cities such as Philadelphia. Rival UK promoters are also running iPod parties from Brighton to Birmingham, with equivalents in Australia, Japan, Germany and Holland. Jonny and Lisa took their inspiration from a pair of New York artists and DJs, Andrew Andrew, whose popular weekly iPod party night is one of the oldest. "I guess you could call this legal sharing of music," Jonny reflects. "It's only going to grow."

"I never understood that 'superstar DJ' culture where someone gets paid £1,000 to play someone else's records," adds Lisa, a sparky redhead wearing a nose ring, who is also the warm-up DJ. "At least we give people the opportunity to have a go. You see them leaving at the end of the night with a smile. It's self-empowerment."

(The Times Magazine, March 26 2005)

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Evening Standard: Profile of Peter Fincham, BBC1 chief

By David Rowan

He is the multi-millionaire TV producer whose hits range from Ali G to The X Factor. But can Peter Fincham, a former musician with no experience of working inside the BBC, convince its demoralised staff that he has the public-sector credentials to take its main channel forward?

Fincham, 48, is known in the industry as a quiet charmer, always calm under pressure, yet ruthless when it comes to striking deals. He will need all his powers of persuasion to convince his new BBC1 colleagues, reeling under savage job and budget cuts, that his vision for them extends beyond the bottom line.

Although a Groucho Club regular, Fincham is not one for showmanship. He is determined to keep a low profile. But then he is more the background business manager than the programme-maker. drafted in by Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones 20 years ago to build up their small production-house, then specialising in voiceovers. He also began to manage their careers, setting up an in-house agency that now represents Graham Norton, Sara Cox and Matt Lucas.

To his credit, Fincham built the business into Britain's biggest maker of independent television shows, making over 800 hours of programmes a year and employing 800 staff. When Pearson TV, now Fremantle Media, bought the company five years ago for £62 million, he is said to have pocketed around £12 million. He stayed on to merge Fremantle's various production businesses into the powerhouse that is Talkback Thames.

"Peter is an agent by nature," says Daisy Goodwin, editorial director of the company's production arm. "He's smart, good at spotting talent, and very good at handling people. He'll be a huge hit at the BBC."

Ash Atalla, the former producer of The Office now working on Talkback's comedy shows, calls him "incredibly charming, very considered, making everyone feel at ease. He'll be telling you about a great Rolling Stones concert one minute, the next minute having a serious discussion with you about the war. You can't pigeonhole him in any particular genre."

But his most persistent interest has been in comedy, executive producing shows such as Da Ali G Show, Never Mind the Buzzcocks and Smack the Pony. It was through his musical performances with the Cambridge Footlights, while a student, that he became friends with Rhys Jones. In 1977, they worked on a show together with Robert Bathurst, Rory McGrath and Jimmy Mulville.

Fincham's subsequent musical career, he has admitted, "fizzled out because I wasn't good enough". He was almost 30 by the time Rhys Jones and Mel Smith offered him a broadcasting job, based in their tiny office above a martial-arts shop in Carnaby Street. He soon developed a reputation for developing popular, ratings-driven shows, but also quirkier, more risk-taking programmes such as Chris Morris's controversial Brass Eye series. By the time the Channel 4 chief executive's job came up in 2001, and again last year, Fincham was considered a prime contender. When he lost out narrowly to Andy Duncan last year, he said: "I can't imagine what else might come up on the broadcasting side that would be more appealing than Channel 4."

So it is all the more surprising that, having quit Talkback Thames in January for "a break and a change", he is now joining the BBC - swapping jobs, in fact, with BBC1's departing controller, Lorraine Heggessey, who was hired by Talkback Thames as his replacement.

Heggessey's stewardship of BBC1 was often criticised for putting ratings above "traditional" BBC values. So will Fincham's lack of public-service experience lead the channel into an even more commercial direction?

Those who know him say Fincham is far too canny for that. "I wouldn't say he's a ratings man," Atalla says. "I've seen him get excited at X Factor audience figures, but I've also seen him stand up for programmes that deliver small ratings, if he feels they're quality bits of work."

Besides, Goodwin adds, Fincham no longer needs to prove himself in commercial terms. "He's rich enough and has done all of that. He's made a lot of money, and he understands the value of doing the right thing."

Michael Grade, the BBC chairman, must be hoping today that Goodwin is proved right.

(Evening Standard, March 24 2005)

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Broadcast magazine: Alastair Stewart interview

By David Rowan

Had things gone a little differently, Alastair Stewart would have been the story, rather than storyteller, in the forthcoming general election. Beaten by Charles Clarke to the National Union of Students presidency, he spent two years as deputy president in the mid-seventies and by now fully intended to be in Downing Street.

"I have absolutely no doubt at all I'd have been Chancellor of the Exchequer," the ITN newscaster says, his smooth anchor's delivery unblemished by any hint of self-doubt. "That was the one I wanted, and these things were discussed. I'd studied economics at Bristol, had a place at the LSE to do law, I'd even lined up a pupillage. I'd mapped out that the law would pay the bills while you'd do a bit of light politicking."

That was until Stewart appeared on a local television news programme, Southern TV's Day By Day, to berate Margaret Thatcher's "appalling" education cuts. "Afterwards, the editor phoned me up and said, 'That went terribly well - have you ever considered working in television?' He offered me a job there and then."

Three decades on, he is preparing to cover his sixth ITN general election. The open-plan basement in Gray's Inn Road is in advanced rehearsal mode for what we're promised will be the "most exciting yet" election-night coverage, based around "groundbreaking" graphics and greater "clarity of analysis" than ever. As part a core team once again led by Jonathan Dimbleby, Stewart will provide live analysis and commentary on the night, promising "quite a few surprises" that he wants to keep from the opposition.

Stewart, 52, is still wearing his make-up after presenting his live daily two-hour morning show on the ITV News Channel, and will shortly return to the studio to front the regional evening news programme, London Tonight. He recently won a Royal Television Society award for his work on the news channel, praised as a "formidable presenter of rolling news" whose interviews "properly tested his subjects". Off camera, too, he seems keen to control the conversation, steering discussion firmly away from controversy ("You're not going to get me into the whole Paxman-Vine debate" about interview styles), and limiting the flow of questions by flying into long anecdotal rifts. Maybe it is just the politician inside him.

Although he is naturally reluctant to suggest which party he might now have been representing ("I'm very sympathetic to all politicians," he insists), Stewart is concerned that the impartiality of television news faces imminent threat of what he calls "Foxification ". "Fox News seems to me to have thrown a gauntlet down to broadcasters right across the world when it comes to politics," he says. "It is now the most watched television news programme in the USA, and there will be a very powerful argument that, if that's what people want to watch, are we going to be able to sustain the argument that that's not the way we do it here?

"In the digital era it would just amaze me if somebody didn't come up with a proposition to try and produce a news offering here that was as overtly partisan as Fox. That would fundamentally alter the contract between the broadcaster and the viewer."

Ofcom's current strictures against partisan news, he suggests, will face such challenges within five or ten years. But change, he warns, is inevitable. "We used to read the news wearing dinner suits and bow ties. We used to have a bulletin only at 5.45pm and 10pm. We don't any more."

He speaks as a veteran. Having started out at Southern 29 years ago, he joined ITN in 1980 as industrial correspondent, and was reading the news a year later. He reported and presented for Channel 4 News, and in 1986 became anchor of ITN's early evening news. He began fronting News at Ten in 1991, having been in Washington and the Gulf, but left for Carlton-Granada’s London News Network after losing out to Sir Trevor McDonald as the main presenter. He has also presented a range of other shows, including GMTV's Sunday programme, and, until he received a drink-driving ban in 2003, ITV's Police Camera Action.

The key to political interviews, he says, is "to do your homework first", as well as having the capacity to listen - "one of the most scarce resources in my trade". This allows the interviewee to offer "an intelligent and full answer", he says. "Quite often listening to the answers may sow the seeds of somewhere else where you want to go. And if you're not listening, you can't then tear them apart should that be appropriate."

When pressed on the contrasting approaches of Jeremies Vine and Paxman, and the relative merits of a confrontational approach towards politicians, he pauses for eight seconds before saying carefully: "The over-aggressive style of interviewing can cut off your nose to spite your face. If you pursue any political interview on the basis that he or she is lying to you, you're going to end up not listening. If you don't get a straight answer, it's then up to you to pursue it with absolute determination. You may have to say, well, it's perfectly clear we're not going to get an answer. But that's entirely different to sitting down, saying, 'Delighted to see you, minister', but thinking, 'You lying, shrivelling, dissembling bastard'. Those of us in our trade do the world of politics no service when we occasionally seem to hold it in contempt."

His more specific concern about BBC News is what he sees - for obvious competitive reasons - as its ill-executed news channel. "The BBC does not know why it does rolling news, and that is clear day after day," he says. "Sky does brilliant rolling news, with some accomplished presenters and reporters - most of whom learned their trade here - but unlike the BBC, they don't have an appointment-to-view bulletin that's even worth considering. But ITV is on the threshold of having a unique proposition: well-resourced, authoritative, but enormously watchable appointment-to-view bulletins, woven into a rolling news service that can employ the journalistic talents of people like me, Mark Austin, Katie Derham. Calibre people." Its anchors certainly display no risk of self-deprecation.

Yet the numbers tell another story, with the ITV News Channel still trailing in the ratings. "I'm keenly aware of that," Stewart replies, "but we're up sharply within only a year of rebranding. I don't dispute that Sky has a bigger audience, and on occasion they can hit a breaking story faster. But there are others we hit faster - we hit Blunkett before they did, and Boscastle. And now the ITV regions are all part of the same team."

But what of Charles Allen's recent comments about ITN's future in the ITV network? Doesn't the uncertainty bother him? "I'm not remotely worried," Stewart says, with a Cabinet minister's certainty. "Whether you call it ITN or the ITV news division is a passé debate. I wouldn't go to the wall for three letters. But I would for ITV plc retaining a high-quality and well-funded holistic news offering - and I've absolutely no doubt that that's safe."

(Broadcast magazine, March 24 2005)

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Interview: Peter Dale, Channel 4 Television (Evening Standard)

By David Rowan

PETER Dale never expected to have an election issue on his hands. As head of documentaries at Channel 4, Dale suspected there might be a little political fallout when he commissioned Jamie's School Dinners. But for Jamie Oliver's war against the Turkey Twizzlers to prompt a national campaign against the 37p lunch, ministerial pledges to improve school nutrition, even Tony Blair's intervention to back "Saint" Jamie - well, not many TV executives can plan for that sort of impact.

But Dale, a quietly spoken, casually dressed 49-year-old, seems to enjoy stirring things up, especially with an election looming. "Quite good timing, isn't it?," he smiles. "We like that."

An avowed fan of "mischief ", he prompted further discomfort for Labour last week with The Government Inspector, about the events surrounding David Kelly's death. Political debate today is so bland, he believes, that it is up to the broadcasters to "rattle a few cages" when they can. "I mean, we're not going to bring any governments down with these programmes," he says. "But keeping people on their mettle - well, that has to be a good thing."

He gives Oliver full credit for suggesting the school dinners series. "It was quite obvious within five minutes of meeting him that he felt passionately," Dale recalls. "The key is it's very focused - the simple message that meals cost just 37p, that could get people's juices going. Jamie said at the beginning that the kids would hate him, that he didn't know if he was ready for it, and when I saw him during the making of it, he really was having a tough time.

"But it's very seldom you get a TV programme that really grips people, their will to change things. We'll have to see whether the Government follows through." Despite claims yesterday from Margaret Hodge, the children's minister, that the Government had been working with Oliver for a year to develop new policies, Dale is unaware of any discussions while the series was being made.

Is it the role of television documentaries to change government policy? No, Dale admits, his duty is merely to "document change" and help viewers understand what is happening around them. "But if broadcasters don't galvanise people, what are we there for? It's about tapping into what matters to them."

Dale's critics argue that he has pursued too many ratings-led formatted shows at the expense of more conventional documentaries. Series such as Wife Swap and Faking It, while popular with viewers, were dismissed by some as contrived entertainment.

Nonsense, he responds - they simply offered innovative new ways to tell a story. "Some people will always lament that things ain't what they used to be, but fashions change," he says. "If I can get five million people to understand the domestic politics of our living rooms, and 1.5 million to watch what went on in the Moscow theatre siege in a traditional talking-head documentary, I've won, haven't I? I've got nearly seven million people to understand the world better."

Critics' claims that the channel has lost its innovative edge "hurt", Dale says. "I've been batting criticism ever since I got here about Channel 4 losing the plot, Channel 4 dumbing down. Series like Faking It and Wife Swap have shown broadcasters in other countries new ways to tell stories about how we live. If the critics don't like them, they can go somewhere else."

But traditionalists will be relieved to learn that the Wife Swap era is now over. "We've lived through a decade of grotesque individualism, all that 'me' business-but I think people are now thinking about the meaning of community," Dale reflects. "All those concentrated studies of individual life answered a particular need at a particular time. But I sense now a greater interest in the impact of business, government, schools on our lives - series about what we want our institutions to do."

For all his reputation as a populist, Dale learned his trade the "old school" BBC way. The son of a nonconformist minister and a teacher, he joined the BBC after Liverpool University as a research assistant in 1979, the same year as Mark Thompson.

He directed Everyman, 40 Minutes and Inside Story documentaries, winning a number of awards. Seven years ago, Michael Jackson lured him to Channel 4 to commission other people's documentaries. Last month, he was put in charge of More4, a free-to-air digital channel devoted to the genre, which will launch this autumn.

But why do we need yet another digital channel? "It's going to fill an enormous gap in digital and Freeview homes," he replies, "where there's nothing between the rarefied atmosphere of BBC4 and Carp Night on Discovery Home and Leisure. Where is the accessible, intelligent, smart, responsive station in the digital world?"

But can a budget of just £30 million - around six per cent of Channel 4's - produce quality? "It's enough to make a difference," he insists. "There will be quite a lot of repeats, but two-thirds of the budget is going on origination. It's not Channel 4 budgets, but if you say to a producer, 'Go make three films about something you really care about, and here's the price of a semidetached house in Surrey,' a lot will seize that opportunity."

HE ALSO reveals that Channel 4 is creating a "documentary foundation" to nurture a new generation of British talent.

Before More4, Dale bought in a number of American cinematic documentaries, such as Fahrenheit 9/11 and Capturing the Friedmans, without appearing to develop any home-grown equivalents. But in the past six months, he says, he has commissioned six films "that aren't necessarily destined for TV but could end up there after they've had a theatrical life".

Kevin Lygo, director of television, has committed £1 million a year to the foundation. "Nowadays, TV has huge commercial pressure to deliver," says Dale, "and for very good reasons we're not making the huge range of international docs that maybe we did 20 years ago. So who are those talented filmmakers who are increasingly feeling that TV is not for them? This is about Channel 4 being imaginative, being nimble, thinking of new ideas."

Yet didn't those bold foreign documentaries, now marginal in the schedules, help establish Channel 4's reputation in the first place? "We could have 365 international documentaries a year, most of which aren't watched, or we could have Angus Macqueen make three programmes about cocaine, commission Nick Broomfield to go back to South Africa and China, on top of a dozen Unreported Worlds," he replies.

"My passion for documentaries can survive all the slings and arrows from those who say that Channel 4's lost the plot, that it's all Celebrity Big Brother. You can survive any amount of that when you know what you're doing is right."

(Evening Standard, March 23 2005)

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Trendsurfing: Krumping (The Times)

By David Rowan

Think of clowns performing aggressive hip-hop routines, and you'll understand why krumping has become street music's most talked-about new dance style. Barely four years old, this manically energetic, furiously competitive, full-body-gyrating art form has finally escaped from the ganglands of South Central Los Angeles to obsess trend-watchers on both sides of the Atlantic. MTV has feted it, rappers have worked it into videos, and now a feature-length documentary is heading for cinemas.

This extraordinary underground spectacle is best seen in its raw state in the playgrounds and parking lots of Compton or Watts. Children as young as seven paint clown make-up on to their faces and then compete against each other to out-dance their rivals. "It's a freestyle dance form that's full-bodied, adrenalin-driven and confrontational," as Dance Magazine describes it. "If movement were words, this would be a poetry slam."

Krumping evolved from a slightly tamer dance style known as clown dancing. Its origins are widely credited to a children's party entertainer, Thomas Johnson, who, in his rainbow Afro wig, has spent the past 13 years using hip-hop to entertain birthday parties, Black History parades and church picnics. As Tommy the Hip-Hop Clown, Johnson has found a way to combine magic tricks and face-painting with a dance routine that, as he sees it, demands "a raw, natural and expressive freedom of the body". It didn't take long for his young fans to start practising the dance steps on LA's streets.

Johnson has become something of a community activist, promoting clown dances as a way to keep teenagers away from street gangs. He launched his own dance school - located next to a discount coffin shop - and now runs regular "battle zone" contests in which entrants try to dance rival clowns into submission. But it is only recently that the rougher variant known as krumping, with its syncopated back-flips and frantic body-twists, has reached a wider audience. This began with pop videos from the Black Eyed Peas and Missy Elliott, but the real kicker came with the video for Christina Aguilera's video for Dirrty. Its director, the fashion photographer David LaChappelle, was so fascinated by some of the dancing he saw that he decided to make a 24-minute documentary, Krumped, which premiered to acclaim at last year's Sundance Film Festival. He has now expanded it to a full-length documentary called Rize, due for release this spring.

LaChappelle, more used to directing videos for the likes of Elton John, describes krumping as a sort of "hip-hop punk rock". "You can't believe what you're watching," he says. "It's insane. You've never seen bodies move that fast. These kids are creating an art form from nothing. It's inspiring."

In the meantime, there are said to be around 50 groups of dancing clowns now fighting it out peacefully in California. Tommy Johnson is attracting the attention of magazines such as Vanity Fair and People, although he still keeps up his regular gigs in churches and Bible classes in some of LA's toughest neighbourhoods. As Johnson sees it, what matters is to offer young people "a positive outlet" in the tough inner city. "Now," as he puts it, "you can be a Crip, you can be a Blood - or you can be a clown."

(The Times Magazine, March 18 2005)

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Interview: Andy Coulson, News of the World editor (Evening Standard)

By David Rowan

IN the end, it was the News of the World's night. At last night's British Press Awards, the "Oscars" of the national press, the News of the World walked away with newspaper of the year, scoop of the year, not to mention Ryan Sabey as young journalist of the year.

For the News International contingent, this was the first time in recent memory that one of their titles had been voted Britain's top paper. No wonder its editor, Andy Coulson, was so busy filling his colleagues' glasses with champagne until the early hours.

Coulson, in charge for just two years, has had a tough time lately, unable to stem a circulation drop of 7.6 per cent in the year to February, while having to defend his methods from attacks by royals, celebrities and the occasional courtroom prosecutor. So he was naturally delighted last night to hear the judgment of his peers that his paper, full of "vitality and originality", had broken "important stories with far-reaching consequences".

It has been a vintage year for News of the World exclusives. "Beckham's Secret Affair" may have won scoop of the year, but the shortlisted entries included "Sven's Secret Affair" and " Blunkett's Affair with a Married Woman" - both News of the World splashes. No wonder the 37-year-old editor felt able to break his own rule for once and grant the Evening Standard a rare interview.

Coulson is controlled and assertive, and first of all he wants to disabuse those who dismiss his paper as largely titillation. "The News of the World is all about telling people great, exciting, interesting stuff on a Sunday morning that they didn't know on a Saturday night," he says. "The most pleasing thing for me last year is we got a good spread of stories, breaking a great sports scandal in Sven, a great political scandal in Blunkett, and a classic tabloid story in Beckham. Two of those stories ran over several weeks, and it's a pretty rare thing these days for a story to dominate the news for a month."

The Beckham story is said to have lifted circulation temporarily by up to 500,000. The paper negotiated a kiss-and-tell deal with Rebecca Loos through Max Clifford, reported to have cost more than £300,000. But sex scandals are only part of the mix, Coulson insists. "I can't say they're not important, but there's nothing new about sex. We happen to have had three this year, but we've broken other stories, too - Ryan broke the 'Prince Harry exam cheat' story. We had the Kieren Fallon story. It wouldn't work if all we ever did were sex scandals."

Coulson, just 34 when appointed editor of Britain's biggest-selling newspaper, has made his career at News International. He grew up in Essex, and after leaving school took a reporting job on the Basildon Evening Echo, before moving to the Sun's "Bizarre" showbusiness desk in 1988. Just like Piers Morgan, he made his name editing the showbiz column, being photographed with celebrities and developing mutually beneficial relationships with publicists. "Showbiz gives you a pretty good grounding, especially on The Sun," he says. "And running a column-gives you a good idea of how a tabloid works."

He became assistant then associate editor and gained a reputation for mischief - while on Bizarre, he fed a false story to his Daily Mirror rival that Paula Yates was having some ribs removed for cosmetic reasons. Richard Wallace, now editor of the Mirror, has called him "a good schmoozer and operator" with "an immense amount of charm". Colleagues also recall a ruthlessness and a strong sense of team loyalty. He joined the News of the World as Rebekah Wade's deputy in 2000, and succeeded her three years later when she moved to The Sun.

The royal family, for one, may have wished otherwise. There have been regular outbreaks of tension, most recently before Christmas when he published a photograph of Prince Harry on holiday. Clarence House claimed the Prince's privacy had been breached. But Coulson insists the princes are fair game. "I feel very strongly that the royals shouldn't be treated any differently to anyone else," he says. "The kids are of an age now where they have no special rights in my view. There was a rumour recently that the palace were lining themselves up to try and extend the agreement [not to cover their private lives] into Wills's training at Sandhurst, which would have been a terrible mistake."

He has a simple answer to those who bemoan his willingness to pry into public figures' private lives. "If we'd done anything wrong, there's a pretty well established set of Press Complaints Commission rules, and there's the law. We know the law, we know the PCC, and we work within it."

Neville Thurlbeck, the chief reporter who broke the Beckham scoop, is more explicit. "On every single story we sit down and discuss the privacy issue," he says. "With the Beckhams, for example, we decided they have always used their marriage and their celebrity to sell themselves as a marketable commodity. They'd made an awful lot of money trading off the back of a so-called fairytale marriage, and, like most fairytales, we realised it wasn't true. And we had to expose that."

The secret to bringing in the scoops, Thurlbeck says, is simple. "To be brutally honest, we pay big money for big stories. But very often we are presented with stories that are very difficult to prove, and we have to spend a lot of time beavering away to prove things. When we've done, there may be hours and hours of painstakingly boring work that ends up in a lawyer's safe that the reader will never see."

THE Guardian called Thurlbeck's Blunkett scoop "indefensible" as a publicinterest story, and he has been accused of using entrapment and of paying police sources for confidential information (he was cleared of one such charge). But he has no qualms. "The socalled liberal press who criticise us are also very happy to repeat our stories. The News of the World doesn't pretend to do anything other than reveal big stories and titillate and entertain the public, while exposing crime and hypocrisy. I'm not saying it's a grandiose ideal, but it's something we're proud of and our readers enjoy."

Besides, Coulson adds, the paper's critics should acknowledge all its "good campaigning work" last year, including issues such as school bullying and random drugs tests for schools. "That's as important to us as the front page."

But when it comes to the tougher questions - such as is his paper too reliant on the likes of Max Clifford -Coulson decides that he really ought to be back partying with his colleagues. "Do you mind if we knock it on the head now?" he asks sharply, without answering the question.

After all, it's not really News of the World style to be on the defensive.

(Evening Standard, March 16 2004)

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Trendsurfing: 'Free gadget' marketing (The Times)

By David Rowan

Psst - fancy a free iPod Shuffle? Well, how about a Panasonic flat-screen TV or an IBM notebook computer? No strings, guv, honest - they won't cost you a bean. All you need do is succumb to the latest US marketing craze that is about to hit Britain.

It is called "incentivised affiliate marketing", and it relies on networks of websites with names like Cameras4Free and FreeDesktopPC to promote third-party commercial services. Hundreds of these sites have proliferated since last summer, promising anything from Mac Mini computers to new Prada handbags in exchange for your commitment to sample an advertiser's products. Sign up to try a DVD rental service or a new credit-card, and encourage a bunch of friends to do the same, and in return you are promised free goodies worth hundreds of pounds. You can even drop out of the trial once you have received your expensive free gift.

It all sounds suspiciously generous, the sort of unsustainable giveaway that can only be another internet scam. Yet the marketers behind these sites claim to have hit on a viable economic model. With conventional advertising, they say, it can easily cost £40 or £60 for a bank or a cable company to acquire a new customer. But if that advertiser can attract the attention of half a dozen potential clients for the price of an iPod, then everybody in the chain stands to benefit.

Gratis Internet, a Washington DC-based marketing firm that started giving away iPods last June, claims that advertiser demand is so great that it is actively preparing a UK launch. In eight months, it says its FreeiPods.com website has given away 11,000 iPods in the US, worth around £2 million. "There's a natural scepticism when people see anything for free," admits co-owner Peter Martin. "They just need to be educated. It's simple: we're making money from advertisers who are looking to acquire new customers. The money for these goods is coming ultimately from those advertisers."

Gratis began five years ago giving away condoms in exchange for clicking on internet ads. Now it offers flat-screen TVs, digital video recorders and other hi-tech gear paid for by partners including AOL and Visa. To qualify for the television, you and eight people you sign up must "complete an offer", such as acquiring a Citibank credit-card. The desktop PC requires 10 referrals, the iPod just five.

Does it work? Gratis gave The Times details of more than a dozen customers who claimed to be the happy owners of free iPods. It took Jenny Heisler, at George Washington University, around ten weeks to sign up five friends and receive her gift. To qualify, Heisler had to join a BMG Music club for a year, initially buying seven CDs. "I am not sure how long I plan to continue my membership," she says, "but in the end, it will cost me less than purchasing the iPod."

Not everyone's experience has been quite so positive. Some rival services have proved fraudulent, failing to send promised gifts or using individuals' personal details to bombard them with spam. Gratis, too, has faced its share of bad press, most recently after temporarily losing a privacy certificate for allegedly "violat[ing] promises involving the protection of children's information" (Gratis says this was a misunderstanding).

But with tens of thousands of users now signing up each week, Peter Martin insists that the giveaway model is the way forward. "Incentivising is where marketing is going," he reflects. "Nowadays, people expect something for free in return for their custom."

(The Times, March 12 2005)

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Evening Standard: Ekow Eshun profile

HE IS the adept cultural pundit regularly called upon to pronounce on high art or racial politics. Now, rather than dissect other people's output from the comfort of the studio sofa, Ekow Eshun is taking on a troubled artistic project of his own. By David Rowan

Eshun is the surprise choice as the new artistic director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts. The 58-year-old institute, in its prime location in The Mall, may still be a favourite haunt of London's trendiest students, but critics are questioning its lack of focus and cultural influence. The post was widely expected to go to an acclaimed Swiss curator, Hans Ulrich Obrist, whose terms were rumoured to be excessive for ICA budgets. So is the home-grown style journalist the man to give the ICA a renewed purpose?

His previous work, as a member of its governing council, included telling Ivan Massow that he had to resign as chairman, and then publicly calling Massow a "pillock". So when he was appointed this week, he knew as well as anyone the pressures he will now face confronting its internal splits, tarnished critical reputation and financial uncertainty.

The ICA badly needs to raise its share of commercial sponsorship if it is to afford the sort of attractions that compete with the big names in exhibitions and events.

"He really didn't expect to get it," says a close friend. "The big question was going to be how he'd manage a team of 70 people. It's a riven organisation, and he's never run anything on that scale or had to raise that sort of money."

But Eshun, a consummate performer with an immaculate casual wardrobe, was so persuasive in his interview that the ICA decided to redefine the job for him.

While the previous director Philip Dodd had to juggle both artistic and managerial roles, Eshun will now have a separate managing director to deal with the less artistic duties. A memebr of the interview panel said: "He recognises that the ICA is about reaching the 16- to 30-yearolds who he's quite in touch with - the people at Goldsmith's and St Martin's - and not necessarily the media people."

He will also need to sort out the muddle of what the ICA stands for in an era when institutions ranging from Tate Modern to the Saatchi Gallery are pushing back artistic boundaries and contemporary art is everywhere - not only in the Palladian niche of The Mall.

Eshun needs to give the Arts Council-funded ICA a selling point and a direction that stands out in London's crowded cultural market. In 1992, it hosted Damien Hirst's first major London show; in the Seventies it was associated with the edgy art of the punk era. Now, critics are less impressed. "It's eclecticism run mad," says one. "There are random debates, some oddly chosen exhibitions and installations - and a lot of people using it mainly as a cafe. It doesn't hang together at all."

ESHUN marks a generational shift from Philip Dodd, the former New Statesman journalist, academic and broadcaster whose manner was that of a rather stately radical.

By contrast, Eshun has Hoxton credentials, living with his girlfriend near Old Street, and takes fashionably outspoken positions against targets ranging from the royal family (he favours "a proper republic") to the Metropolitan Police campaign against middleclass cocaine use.

So what will he bring to the role? "I'd expect him to take it younger, more mainstream, like a littlebrother version of Tate Modern," predicts the journalist Richard Benson, who has known Eshun since they both worked on The Face in the early Nineties. "At that time he'd be bringing in stories about the modern artists Gavin Turk and Marc Quinn before anyone had heard of them, and as his editor, I'd tell him that was stupid. But he was proved right - he has that pop sensibility."

Born in London, he spent part of his childhood in Ghana, where his father, a diplomat, fell foul of the regime and spent time in jail. He was educated at Kingsbury High School in north-west London before studying politics and history at the London School of Economics.

Miranda Sawyer, who has known him since he wrote for Just Seventeen magazine, believes that his ambition stems from his family background. "One moment he was living in splendour, the next it was gone. His dad was very keen on his sons being well educated."

Eshun recently returned to Ghana to trace his family's history. What he discovered sickened him. "To my disgust, I discovered that my ancestor of seven generations past had been a slave trader," he explained - a white man from Holland who had settled in Ghana, and whose mixed-race son had continued the trade. "My ancestors may have been long dead, but I still felt morally culpable for their actions."

He has written about growing up black in Britain, and about the racism and bullying he has suffered. But he is sensitive to accusations that he has been helped in his media career by the relative paucity of articulate ethnicminority voices. "Any time there's a race angle, he is called on to talk about it," a friend explains. "He's not that comfortable with it, but the one thing Ekow understands is what the media needs. And he'll take that opportunity."

His greatest exposure has come through his cultural critiques on Newsnight Review. His self-consciously thoughtful performances have not always been appreciated: to the Daily Mail, he is "achingly pretentious".

"He can come across as too clever and not passionate, but that's not the case," says his fellow pundit Miranda Sawyer. "The trouble is he's so clever that he tends to articulate his views rather over-intellectually."

So surprised was he to get the job that Eshun has asked for time to think through his plans. Will he cope when he arrives in May? "He's a charming guy, so he should be able to get the staff to love him," says one of his commissioning editors.

Yet if he is to restore the ICA to the heart of London's cultural life, that charm will need to be accompanied by a clear vision and a core of steel.

(Evening Standard, March 11 2005)

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Interview: Sam Baker, Cosmopolitan editor (Evening Standard)

Sam Baker and the sexual politics of Cosmo. By David Rowan

HOLD the orgasms - Cosmo has discovered politics. After a 32-year crusade to locate G-spots and expose male flesh, the magazine's new obsession is the contenders for the keys to Number 10.

Next month, among spreads on breast-enhancement and threesomes, Cosmopolitan's readers are being offered interviews with those unlikeliest of pinups, the three main party leaders.

It is certainly an eccentric way to fight one of the most brutal circulation wars in recent women's-magazine history. But Sam Baker, Cosmo's editor since July, is on a mission that she says is about empowering a generation of politically disengaged women. With surveys suggesting that four in five women under 24 intend not to vote, her "High Heeled Votes" campaign, she says, is about "ensuring that women's issues are on the political agenda and that politicians take this group of voters seriously".

In the April edition, that means interviews with Blair, Howard and Kennedy; the following month, Cosmo will unveil election campaign ads designed according to reader research. Not that Baker, 37, has entirely dispensed with the magazine's more traditional fare - which in April's edition includes a naked Footballers' Wives actor and a guide to finding your "E" spot (that's Emotional Orgasm). It is just that she has also found room to quiz the three leaders about unlicensed minicabs, abortion, and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases.

The four-page result is rather less earthmoving than Cosmo's more usual real-guy confessions. Michael Howard does take Baker home with him, but only to show how relaxed he can be over a morning coffee poured by his wife. Blair comes over as far more hard-to-get, never quite satisfying her with those corny lines of his. The cover line - "See grown men beg!" (for your vote, that is) - looks somewhat oversold.

"Whenever Labour or the Conservatives talk about women, it's always about maternity rights or pensions, which very much affect older women," Baker says in her office behind Carnaby Street. "But no one's talking about first-time buyers, student loans, Sexually Transmitted Infections or getting home safely at night. We felt we were pretty unique in making these middle-aged men talk about sexual health." It took far more negotiation to get Blair to commit than the others - and in the interviews, he is the most evasive on abortion.

The campaign all sounds very noble - but how, exactly, will this help Baker to sell magazines? "It's not that politics will sell magazines," she says. "I just wanted to get people to see the breadth of content that's in Cosmo. It does, contrary to popular opinion, have a campaigning history. I wanted to bring back Cosmo's news agenda, some of that 'oomph' that it used to have. With this voting campaign, everyone's wanted to talk about it. For the first time since I've been here, we've started having articles about Cosmo that haven't had the word 'sex' in."

THIS suggests that Baker's agenda is more about generating publicity. She admits that part of her goal is to use newspaper coverage to make potential readers rethink their prejudices about the magazine. "All of the relationships and sex and fashion content is incredibly important, but it's not the only thing that's in Cosmo," she says. "I wanted to get the women who had not considered it part of their repertoire just to pick it up. If they're reading their Sunday Times, and they see an article about us which talks about 'stressorexia', or why young women aren't voting, that might make them go into their newsagents."

So it's simply a PR strategy aimed at differentiation - a cheaper alternative, perhaps, to cover mounts? "No, there's no point being different for the sake of it," Baker insists. "I do think it's in keeping with Cosmo. People say these magazines don't do politics, but what is politics? It's the fact that STIs are massively on the increase, that our readers can't get on the housing ladder."

She is certainly an effective operator. In the six months to December, Baker lifted Cosmopolitan's circulation to 478,000, a 24-year high, in the face of tough competition - success that she attributes to a more "modern, glamorous" look since a redesign, a less "ghettoised" use of the sexual features, and better use of new and established writers.

Before that, she spent five years editing Company, where she boosted sales by 50 per cent - just as her earlier relaunch of Just Seventeen as J-17 was credited with 220 per cent year-on-year rise. Oh, and in the six months between leaving Company and joining Cosmo, she also managed to write a novel, Fashion Victim, reported to have earned her a six-figure advance on both sides of the Atlantic. The book is out in June, and she is currently writing a second. Her husband, Jon Courtenay Grimwood, is also an author.

Baker's success reflects badly on the London College of Printing, which rejected her at 18 from a journalisttraining course. "Their exact words were that I didn't have what it took to make it in magazines," she says with a grin. "I was absolutely distraught, and I think that's motivated me for the rest of my life." Instead, she studied politics at Birmingham University, before starting her career at Chat and then Take a Break.

Despite her current campaign, Baker has never been active politically. And for all Cosmo's heritage, she certainly will not call herself a feminist. "I probably would have done in the Eighties, but not now. The fact is that nobody wants to be called a feminist today," she says.

"Feminism is perceived as antimen. I don't think feminism means anything to most women in their early twenties. It's a historical concept almost - which will probably make Germaine Greer combust."

AS BAKER sees it, Helen Gurley Brown, the magazine's founder, was concerned not about "feminism", but about enabling ordinary woman to achieve some semblance of equality. "We're not in the business of syndromes and isms," she says. "We're in the business of 'Are you going to get home safely?', or why more and more young women are taking coke."

Still, isn't she worried about the new competition in the market, with well-funded weeklies such as Grazia threatening the shake-up that last year hit the men's monthlies?

"Grazia's interesting, it's brave, and bits of it are very good," she says carefully. "But I'm not quite sure I can see where it's going to end up. It's totally celeb focused, but you've got a lot of magazines already selling to the celeb market, and a lot are cheaper and have more of it."

Glamour, she says, is "a very different proposition to Cosmo, a bitesized read [where] we could last you the month". Nor do the other newcomers worry her, she says, pointing out that Cosmopolitan's global reach now stretches to 53 editions and 39 million readers. "We feel like we're in a pretty good place."

But maybe the genius in Baker's plan is to offer an excuse to readers previously too embarrassed to be seen enjoying all those sexual confessions.

Now, at least, they can claim to be buying Cosmo for the political coverage.

(Evening Standard, March 9 2005)

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Interview: Ned Temko, Jewish Chronicle editor (Evening Standard)

By David Rowan

WATCH out, politicians: the Jewish Chronicle is on full alert. Ned Temko, the editor of Anglo-Jewry's house journal, may be leaving the paper in June, but first he intends to expose every hint of anti- Semitism that seeps into the General Election campaign.

"There are enough real issues in this campaign without any party having to resort to prejudice," he says in his office near Chancery Lane. But should any politician play however subtly on what he calls "chattering-class anti-Semitism", Temko warns, the Jewish Chronicle will "hold up a mirror to what's going on".

His paper has already had plenty to write about. Labour's website election posters, which critics claim depicted Michael Howard and Oliver Letwin as literature's most notorious Jewish stereotypes, he found particularly troubling. "I wouldn't have thought kicking off an election campaign with a subliminal appeal to images like Shylock or Fagin does Labour much credit," he says. "Some images are so entwined with the iconography of anti-Semitism that you can't reasonably say this is just old political knockabout. It doesn't mean that Labour's deliberately going on a campaign to bait Jews - but this is territory that either political party enters at its peril."

Then came the controversy over Ken Livingstone's refusal to apologise for comparing a Jewish Evening Standard reporter with a concentration-camp guard, which continues to dominate Temko's paper this week. Although it has not accused the mayor of anti-Semitism ("I don't throw the term around lightly," Temko says), he is scathing about what he calls Livingstone's "astonishing double standards". "He preens and presents himself as a symbol of [London's] multicultural success, yet displays a self-indulgent reluctance to acknowledge he got something wrong."

The JC, as readers know it, may sell just 35,000 copies, but its influence extends beyond its newsstand sales: according to one survey Temko cites, it is read in almost every Jewish home in parts of north-west London and Hertfordshire. It is also very profitable. "There are people who keep no religious laws, may not go to a synagogue, yet still read the JC," Temko says. "It's still the best index of Jewish affiliation in this country."

As an outsider, Temko, 52, finds it easier to speak his mind than Anglo-Jewry's more established figures. An American former war correspondent, he was a surprise choice when appointed editor in 1990. Since then, the paper's relationship with the Chief Rabbi in particular has often been fraught. But then this slight, bearded man, who grew up in Watergate-era Washington, has always enjoyed creating a stir. "We're leaned on all the time," he says, "but the one thing that isn't up for negotiation is the paper's editorial independence."

That independence faced its greatest test in 1997, when the paper received a leaked private letter from the Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, which accused the late Reform rabbi, Hugo Gryn, of helping "destroy the faith". Sacks sought a High Court injunction to prevent publication, but with the support of the paper's board, Temko printed the letter. Relations have never fully recovered.

"I'm sure there's some tension there," Temko says. "It was very tough for the Chief Rabbi, as the letter was at variance with what he was saying in public. I have a great deal of respect for him, but our first responsibility was to report the news, and we would do the same again."

Their disagreements have continued in print. Temko condemned Sacks's decision three years ago to rewrite his book, The Dignity of Difference, because hardline rabbis felt it too inclusive of other faiths. "Rewriting the book was a mistake," Temko still insists. "Many on the religious right have never accepted him as their chief rabbi. Equally on the religious left. I do think he's got a near impossible job, and I don't think it's any accident that his greatest successes are representing the Jewish community in broader British society."

Is he suggesting that the Jewish community has become irreparably split? "On the surface it's become more divided," he says, "but I think it's actually become more self-confident. Twenty years ago, Jews would not dare disagree with each other publicly for fear that all Jewish life as we know it would implode. But today, look at the active debate over Israel, all with a bedrock of respect.

"The central job of the JC is to sustain the argument. One of my great satisfactions is that Jews who would cross the street to avoid talking to one another will argue in our pages."

What does concern him is the growth of "chattering-class anti-Semitism", particularly in the media. "I do think we've seen a change in the intellectual climate, where things that would simply not have been said a decade ago make their way into public discourse," he says. He cites an Any Questions? debate, just before the Iraq invasion, in which an audience member noted the number of "Israelis" in the US government. "It was clearly a code word for Jews, but what was more disturbing was that no one on the panel batted an eyelid," Temko says. "Then, a couple of days later, a BBC radio presenter asked his guests if there should really be a White House spokesman with the name Ari Fleischer. So should anyone with a Jewish name be pensioned off?"

Temko does not claim that the BBC is institutionally biased, far less anti-Semitic. "But I do think that too often on BBC there is this problem of lack of context. Often there's laziness and sloppiness." He does not take particular issue with Barbara Plett, its Middle East correspondent, who reported that Yasser Arafat's death brought her to tears. "I don't think one should read too much into that report, except to say that as a former foreign correspondent I'm not sure it's your place to shed public tears to a party in a conflict you're covering. I'm talking about the 'something in the air'. It's a fact that there have been more incidents of violence, more desecrations of cemeteries."

From June, he will write for either an American or a British newspaper (negotiations continue), and will complete a book on religion and science, still living in London with his wife, an NHS child psychotherapist, and their 17-year-old son. He says he has missed reporting: before arriving in London, he was with AP, UPI and the Christian Science Monitor in hotspots from Beirut to Moscow. It is too soon, he says, to name his likely successor: headhunters are currently talking to internal and external candidates.

Temko leaves "genuinely upbeat" about the community's prospects and confidence, despite his concerns about hostility towards Israel occasionally spilling over into anti-Semitism. And despite his concerns about political debate, he considers Britain ready for a Jewish prime minister: "The central fact about Michael Howard is he was made Tory leader despite being Jewish," he says. "When we asked that question in an ICM poll, four-fifths of people said a Jewish prime minister would be okay."

Doesn't that undermine the stark warnings of intercommunal tensions regularly sounded on his own pages? "Let's face it, we're not talking about jackboots on the streets of Golders Green," Temko reflects. "It's ludicrous for community leaders to draw comparisons with the 1930s. This is still broadly a very tolerant society."

(Evening Standard, March 2 2005)

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