Claire Beale on Advertising

Monday, 12 May 2008

It began with six ballsy women in their undies baring their imperfections with fizzing confidence and it grew into one of the most famous, successful and culturally significant ad campaigns in the world. But last week Dove's "Campaign for Real Beauty" was accused of being a fake.

Could Cole win kill kiss-and-tell?

Monday, 12 May 2008

At no point has Ashley Cole denied sleeping with an Essex hairdresser, who vomited on the way to his house, but nonetheless he says the reporting of this extra-marital affair by the Daily Mirror and The Sun has cruelly infringed his privacy, as well as damaging his standing with his wife, Cheryl.

Sports writer George Kimball: My close-up view of boxing's golden age

Monday, 12 May 2008

How many times has a drunk put you in a steely grip and told you that the world wouldn't believe his story, and that, boy, did he have a book to write, and maybe one day he would get round to writing it?

My Life in Media: Mary Kalemkerian

Monday, 12 May 2008

Mary Kalemkerian is the head of programmes at BBC Radio 7, the digital station that revives drama and comedy favourites from the BBC archives. She is nominated as the Station Programmer of the Year at this evening's Sony Radio Academy Awards. Kalemkerian grew up in the Scottish Borders and trained as a teacher before beginning her radio career 30 years ago. She has worked for the BBC in Edinburgh, Manchester and London, and has run BBC7 since it started in 2002. She lives in north London and has a daughter aged 26.

My Mentor: Sue Turton on Guy Patrick

Monday, 12 May 2008

I moved to Manchester in 2003 as GMTV's north of England correspondent. It was my first big reporting break. I met Guy Patrick from The Sun when he had just broken the Bruce Grobbelaar match-fixing story. I asked him to pass my request to interview his whistleblower to The Sun's editor at the time, Stuart Higgins. Strangely, no one else had asked, so I managed to bag the first interview and that's how we became mates. Later,

My Week In Media: Novelist Charlotte Mendelson

Monday, 12 May 2008

Matthew Norman's Media Diary

Monday, 12 May 2008

Nothing befits a statesman like the elegant avoidance of cretinous hyperbole, so it was good to catch John Whittingdale, chairman of the Commons media select committee, on Friday's Today programme. At first I was bamboozled by John's mention of "a catalogue of the most appalling abuse", and assumed he was talking about that unutterably monstrous story about the Austrian cellar (especially when he then referred to "looking under the stone").

Raymond Snoddy on Broadcasting

Monday, 12 May 2008

Just when you thought things couldn't get much worse for ITV.... Global content director Dawn Airey does a runner to a rival and, just as the ripples stop spreading, along comes Ofcom with both barrels and fines the broadcaster £5.67m – rather higher than the figure that the ground-preparing leaks had suggested. The fines get added to the £7.8m compensation payments already announced.

Variety speak: The bizarre Hollywood terminology you'll need to clinch a movie deal

Monday, 12 May 2008

If you thought you had to know your Bertolucci from your Brad Pitt just to get a job polishing Harvey Weinstein's golf shoes, you're only halfway there. Movie insiders actually converse in their own "slanguage", a rich, and often very funny, collection of invented terms popularised by the industry magazine Variety over more than a century of reporting on the world of film. Some of these terms, such as "mogul" and "blighty", have made the jump into standard usage. Many others, like "preem" (premiere) and "moppet" (child actor) remain strictly within the world of movie jargon.

Urban spaceman: Trevor Beattie reveals the secrets of his success

Monday, 12 May 2008

As sunshine streams through the windows of his Covent Garden office, Trevor Beattie picks up a DVD and presses play. Up on his television screen, pictures appear of the most recognisable man in British advertising, strapped into a chair and wired up like Gordo, the squirrel monkey who was launched into space in a Jupiter rocket at Cape Canaveral half a century ago.