journalism

Co-operatives, collaborations, partnerships – antidote to the default setting of corporate greed?

Pic credit: Master Isolated, http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/ images/view_photog.php? photogid=1962

I’ve always liked the concept of co-operatives, the idea of ordinary people joining together and sharing the labour and the profits of their labour, as opposed to fat-cat directors skimming off the cream and leaving a few drops of sour milk for the people who make their wealth possible, in the form of pathetic little bonuses and below-inflation pay rises.

Somehow, in our loony capitalist world, it’s become accepted that one particular group of workers, those that sit in offices and administrate, should be an elite who earn disproportionately way more than the rest. “But we bring in the money!” they cry in justification for enormous salaries. Yes, and we accept we couldn’t do without you. But we clean the toilets, or serve the lunches, or treat the sick, or produce the staff newspaper, or handle customer complaints, or deliver the post, or mend the computers…. And you couldn’t do without us! Everyone, every function, in a business is interdependent. No business can succeed without everyone performing their own role to the best of their ability. Where did this idea come from, and how has it taken root, this idea that those who perform one function should be so much better recompensed than others?

Directors of big companies; premier league footballers; and top bankers are the obvious examples. They’d argue “but we’re the best at what we do!”. That’s as maybe. Isn’t everybody in a company the best at what they do? They wouldn’t have been recruited in the first place if they weren’t. Who’s to say who brings more real value to a business – or especially to society? Why the huge disparity in remuneration? There are only 24 hours in a day and even those who need little sleep can scarcely work more than 16 hours a day, even if they wanted to. Even then, even working twice the hours of the “normal” worker, that’s no reason to be paid more than twice the rate of that normal worker.

Let’s face it – if we were living in an egalitarian society where everyone earned the same salary, the footballers would still choose to be footballers, the company directors would still choose to be company directors, the cleaners and porters and postal workers would probably still choose their jobs. We’d choose our jobs according to our own abilities and tastes. No one job is intrinsically more worthy of reward than others.

You might find, of course, that some would opt for what is currently considered to be a lesser role, knowing in their hearts that their current position exceeds their abilities. That would be fine – by all means, weed out those who have been promoted beyond their abilities though over-confidence, or through knowing “the right people”. Others would choose a job that suited their natural inclinations, that they couldn’t do under the old system because it wouldn’t pay the bills – like helping with literacy classes or looking after sick people, or rescuing abandoned animals or helping the homeless and dispossessed. Useful jobs.

Ultimately things would all even out and everyone would be doing the job that best suited their personalities and aptitudes and interests – and society would be all the better for it.

There is an alternative to the default setting of corporate greed, and it’s not new. The co-operative movement began in Europe in the 19th century, spurred on by the exploitation brought about by the industrial revolution, the idea being that workers should be self-governing, reaping all the benefits from their own work. No one person would be in the position of being able to command an income far bigger than the rest. Everyone would do the job to which they were best suited, everyone would work equally hard, and everyone would share in the rewards.

Probably the best-known today in the UK is The Co-operative Group http://www.co-operative.coop/corporate/, the UK’s largest consumer co-operative, which comprises the supermarket chain and insurance, travel, banking, legal and funeral businesses. The core idea is to sell products in a fair and honest way, support communities and make a reasonable financial return to the member-owners.

Then there’s the likes of the John Lewis Partnership, another major retailer, not strictly a co-operative but still with the aim of divvying up the profits among the people who create them. http://www.johnlewispartnership.co.uk/. It works – the staff like getting a share of the dibs and the customers like getting the good service that is a result of that incentive.

Here’s another example of collaborative working. This week, I did an interview with office and meeting space provider Regus http://www.regus.co.uk/, whose UK regional director told me about a growing trend for co-working – where unrelated businesses choose to share an office for the opportunities that provides for company and networking. This has been particularly noticeable at Regus’s sister brand B.hive, which is targeted at women – and headed by well-known businesswoman Lynne Franks http://www.lynnefranks.co.uk/.

Regus UK regional director Celia Donne told me: “We have many examples of women who met at B.hive and who are now working together or finding ways to help each other. It’s like a private members’ club but with business facilities. Women, especially those in smaller organisations, tend to seek a slightly less corporate approach.”

Then there are the quirky little local examples, like the Spring Garden pub and live music venue in Hotwells, Bristol, which is run as a CIC (Community Interest Company). It operates as a non-profit organisation, putting all surplus money back in to music and drama and local interest groups. I’d provide a link except its website doesn’t seem to work, so maybe it’s gone out of business, which would be a bit shit considering I’m singing the praises of co-operatives. Anyway, it’s a nice little place and when I went in there the other day to ask if they had live music on Saturday the bloke behind the bar said “no, but you can come in and play if you like” which, considering he’d never heard my singing, makes him a very brave man.

And finally, in my list of examples of lovely collaborative enterprises, is the newly formed Golden Mustard Media http://www.goldenmustardmedia.co.uk/. The idea is that a load of creative types – writers, designers, marketing bods etc – club together to offer the same services that a larger marketing agency could do. Golden Mustard offers the whole gamut of creative services, such as design, marketing, copywriting and PR – and I’m going to be part of it, which is fab. The brains behind the idea is an entrepreneurial journo called Graham Garnett, who will bring in the business, sub individual projects out to whoever is best suited to handle them, taking his percentage in much the same way as any agency does. I’ll let you know if it works!

Castration, tax dodgers, flowers & Assange – strange search terms that have brought people to my website

If they're looking for info on these, they've come to the wrong website! Pic by me.

It’s fascinating to look behind the scenes at a website to view the search terms that have brought people to visit.

Of those visitors to my site that were the result of a search engine search, the single biggest number came via searches for the name of the person who produced the vulgar T shirts I blogged about on a couple of occasions. That topic also provoked the largest single number of comments on any blog posts I’ve done, not all of them pleasant.

The second single biggest number of hits has come, not surprisingly, from searches for F Words – though I suspect some of these visitors may have been looking for something rather different!

The third biggest number of visits resulted from searches on my name. Again, some may have been hoping for something else – other Sue Fentons are available, so many, in fact, that I did a blog on the subject. http://fwords.co.uk/2011/06/23/me-myself-and-i-%E2%80%93-and-the-other-ones-%E2%80%93-how-i-found-i-wasn%E2%80%99t-unique/

A huge variety of search terms have brought other visitors. Some of the terms are really rather bizarre. I blame myself for this – it’s all because of my tendency to chunter on about random topics instead of sticking to the initial purpose of my blog, which was to promote my skills and knowledge as a freelance journalist. It’s funny – you start off with a policy of earnestly discussing missing apostrophes and bad spelling and before you know it, you’re rambling on with tongue in cheek about bacon sandwiches, corporate tax dodging and fantasy dog breeding. That’s the beauty of blogging, I suppose – it brings out the true inner writer – but of course Google and the other search engines are always lurking about taking notes and suggesting you as a source of fascinating information on subjects that (in my case) include: 

Bagology

American death penalty

Greek flowers

Assange

Coastal pathway

Ode to a Nightingale translated into Arabic

Some are really rather bizarre, since I don’t remember having actually written anything on these specific topics – still, Google appears to think I’m an authority:

Lapland immigration strategy

Hairy arms

William Hague fascist

Chihuahua fights

Indecent behaviour within the British Army

Naked lady jumping into water

Ugly gorillas

Topman tax dodge is quite a favourite term – I show up well on this one due to a couple of posts I did on the subject a while back.

Another favourite one is piglet castration and I wasn’t even responsible for this one – it was a guest blog written by a college friend who breeds pigs. Another guest blog, by an journalists’ union official, got me hits from people searching on sacked for Twitter comments and similar phrases.

Other phrases that have brought visitors here include:

Crap press releases

Dogging

Obnoxious responses to Facebook misspellings

Larry the prime minister’s cat

Jane Asher

Commas

Daddy long legs porn

Space Hijackers

Italian tableware

Swearing

Arms trade hoax

Circumcision

Troy David

London protest

Bad English.

Of course, it’s even nicer to be found through searches that are actually relevant to my work as a journalist. One visitor today found me after searching “I want to find a freelance journalist in Surrey”. They (or someone) even looked at my online CV, details of qualifications and clients and fees. My curiosity is now piqued – who are they, and did they find what they were looking for, or did my chunterings on about bacon and Lapland send them scurrying off to get the Yellow Pages?

“Bagology” – the career I’d have chosen over journalism had I known it existed

Pic credit: duron123, http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/ images/view_photog.php?photogid=3506

I’ve been in some kind of journalism ever since I sat at a manual typewriter in a college classroom in Cardiff reading about libel law, learning shorthand and writing news stories about made-up events in a made-up place called Newtown that suffered from far more of its fair share of fires, murders and motorway pile-ups.

Doing anything else was never really an option although I had previously considered other ideas – then written them off as I wasn’t qualified and wasn’t likely to become so.

Working with animals – no, not clever enough to be a vet, not tough enough to deal with ill-treated animals.

Advertising – no, didn’t want to encourage consumerism and corporate greed.

Being a film director – no, cos I don’t know how to use a video camera.

Law – no, cos I can’t retain facts for more than five minutes.

A while back I did discover a bit of a knack for analysing people’s personalities and lifestyles from the contents of their wallets or handbags. It’s great fun in pubs and an ice-breaker at parties – get someone to empty their handbag on the table and tell them all about themselves. It’s a skill akin in some ways to palm-reading or phrenology except that you don’t need any esoteric knowledge. It’s interesting to see how comprehensive a knowledge of someone you can gain from analyzing their bags – for women especially, the bag is an extension of their personality.

As I say, it was a bit of a laugh for an idle hour in the pub – no-one told me the art of handbag-gazing had a name, or that you could make a career out of it!

So I was captivated by a press release issued today about a life coach called Debbie Percy, who is billed as “the UK’s leading Bagologist”. Leading? So there’s more than one? No-one told me it was possible to make a living out of three-pint party tricks – I’d have thought twice about journalism had I known!

Debbie has apparently “developed an extremely accurate means of understanding someone’s personality and lifestyle just by analysing the contents of their bag. This then enables Debbie to identify and address particular issues in someone’s lifestyle.”

The Bentall shopping centre in London is offering free “bagology” readings from Debbie to winners of a draw being run on Facebook. www.facebook.com/TheBentallCentre.

It got me wondering how I’d fare in such a reading, so for a laugh, I thought I’d analyse myself from the current contents of my bag and purse.

Notebook Forgetful, needs to write everything down.

Five pens Obsessive, hoarder.

Camera Anti-social – always taking pictures instead of talking to whoever she’s with.

Calculator Can’t add up.

£5 off book voucher Thinks she’s intellectual.

0.02p off Sainsbury’s voucher Obsessed with saving money, however minuscule the amount – can’t see the bigger picture.

Instructions for colleague in an local group I belong to, explaining how to update the website Lazy, tries to palm work off on others.

Handwritten list of long words uttered by friend who’s gone to uni, collated for amusement of mutual friends Bully, intellectually inadequate.

Hand mirror Vain.

Tweezers Has a mono-brow.

Comb (broken) Unkempt.

Two lipsticks – one red, one brown Split personality – slut and frump.

Emery board (worn out) Needs a manicure.

Two eyeshadow brushes, no eyeshadow Disorganised.

Press card Perpetually hoping to blag her way into something exciting.

WeightWatchers membership card Eats too much.

Collection of coupons to get 70% off wine glasses at Tesco Cheapskate. Drinks like a fish.

Collection of own business cards Egotistical.

Collection of other people’s business cards Aspires to popularity.

National Trust membership card Aspires to be middle class. Likes drinking tea.

Filofax Out of touch. Probably wears shoulder pads.

Mobile phone (bottom of the range) Technophobe. Cheapskate.

London tube map and street map No sense of direction.

Southern Railway penalty charge notice Fare dodger.

Leaflet about Shut Guantanamo protest Trouble-maker.

Appointment card for blood donation session Do-gooder. Probably hasn’t got HIV or syphilis.

Well, that was fun. If anyone enters the Bentalls competition and doesn’t win a handbag analysis from a proper bagologist, send me a list of your handbag contents and I’ll see what I can do!

Crappy press releases of the week: more moans about punny, irritating and meaningless headlines

My latest nominations for press release headlines that don’t do their job and GET TO THE POINT are as follows:

“I’m Dreaming of a Green Christmas”

What does this tell us? It seems to be a corruption of a well-known song sung by Bing Crosby. Is the release something to do with Crosby? Something to do with music, certainly? Why the “green”? Is it about the weather – does it mean we’re not expecting snow this year? Who is the “I” who’s dreaming? Nope – I give up.

It turns out that the news is that an ethical retailer has launched its Christmas catalogue. Hence “Green Christmas”. Ethical = “green”, “Green” = like White but not. It’s a play on words! Geddit??!! Aren’t we funny!

For goodness’ sake – why not just get to the point, instead of making the reader play guessing games.

“Wishing you a Merry & Healthy Christmas”

Ooh, it’s an early e-card from a particularly well-organised well-wisher! No. It’s a carol? No, it’s a press release – about pillows, of all things. The angle is that memory foam pillows that help support the neck properly are thoughtful Christmas presents. Again, the writer, for some reason, felt it was best not to say so in the headline.

“Winter Wonderland celebrates its 5th year with a magical new Ice Rink”

This one’s not bad – you do get the gist straight away, which is that the well-known Hyde Park attraction is getting a new ice rink.

But this release misses a trick by using the word “magical” – what on earth does that mean? Does the rink do astonishing card tricks, or make itself disappear? Does it perform the Indian rope trick or cut itself in half? The writer is so busy trying to convey the idea of festive, romantic twinkliness that she forgets to mention until paragraph 3 that the rink will be the biggest of its kind in the UK. Now, that’s quite newsworthy, actually, but the fact’s in danger of being overlooked.

Ooh, here’s another one who likes the word “magic”. Guess what this is about…

“Now that’s magic!”

Go on, have a guess. No? The headline the writer was grasping for was “Celebrity TV magician [name here] opens new headquarters of local company [name here]”.

I believe the celebrity in question uses the catchphrase “Now that’s magic!”, which is presumably why the writer used it. It’s an allusion, you see. Editors who happen to be familiar with the work of said celebrity and who have a bit of time on their hands will put two and two together and realise that the release is something to do with said celebrity. But over and above that, the headline does little to tell us what the release is about.

Same goes for this next one. To its credit, it’s about neither Christmas nor magic so it comes as rare and refreshing fruit to me, but it still manages to drive me wild through its use of a pun. Puns are inappropriate in press releases. If the writer wants to be clever and witty they should do so on their own time, for an audience that has the same sense of humour. Otherwise, they are simply showing off, at the expense of the reader’s understanding of the words.

Here you go….

“Rugby Star Muscles Up”

What does that mean, do you think? My first impression was that a rugby player was interfering where he wasn’t wanted, then I realised that would be “muscles in”, not “up”. Of course, it must be something to do with the rugby player getting more muscled. But why is that news? Don’t all sports stars work out?

The story is that he uses the products of a health supplement company with “Muscle” in its name. Aha, it’s a pun! He gets more muscles with Muscles – geddit??!!!!. Oh, I can’t start laughing.

Writers should always remember their audience – it would be fine for The Sun, for instance, to use a pun like this because that’s the kind of thing their readers like. But a press release writer isn’t writing for Sun readers – he/she is writing for a cross-section of journalists, all of whom want to know from the outset what the story is about. The reader shouldn’t have to puzzle out what is meant; it wastes time and is irritating. This story would have been better headlined something like “Rugby star puts on 10 stone by taking Muscle Company’s vitamins” or words to that effect.

Meanwhile, I’m collecting examples of good, efficient, press release headlines. There are some. Will report back in a later blog.

Pic credit: Tom Curtis, http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=178

Grumpy journalist seeks interesting assignments. I’m free next week! Don’t let my cats starve!

Today I completed a feature about a British exporter for an international trade magazine and tomorrow I’m writing some copy for a website designer who’s doing a groovy new site for a property company.

Next week I’ll be meeting a local small businessman who likes the nice simple WordPress sites I’ve created recently and might want one for himself.

But other than that, next week is stretching bare and challenge-free ahead of me. If I don’t get a commission to do something, I will get all grumpy and bored – and my poor cats will have to have their meaty chunks in gravy rationed, so they’ll get all irritable too, and take it out on the local mouse population.

If anyone needs any copy-writing, sub-editing or features, do shout! Requests to do features for consumer press particularly welcome, but I enjoy corporate and trade press work too.

This coming weekend is going to be considerably more eventful than next week and I’ll have little access to the internet, so if anyone does make my dreams come true and “gissa job”, it’s best to contact me on my mobile phone.