Sunday, November 26, 2006

End of the Road for Press Gazette

A few months ago I took out a subscription to the Press Gazette. It's basically the trade mags for newspaper and broadcast journalists. It was always good for a story for the blog and it was a magazine I always looked forward to reading. Sadly it went out of business on Friday after a long struggle against going into liquidation.

Rob McGibbon has an emotional post on his BLOG about the effect this will have on people like him - freelancers. Rob wrote a weekly interview with a major media personality each week. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that his interviews were the best thing about Press Gazette, as I wrote HERE in October. Read a few of them HERE and you'll see what I mean. If I were features editor on a Sunday newspaper I know whose phone I would be pestering tomorrow. And it ain't mine.

* Rob McGibbon will be appearing on my bloggers panel on 18 DoughtyStreet tomorrow at 9pm alongside Cicero's Songs Brian Micklethwait and Chicken Yoghurt.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sad to see the demise of UKPG, or Uka-puga, as it was fondly known in the seventies when i was a working journo.

i have a lot to be thankful for the UKPG.

it used to be the place for job vacancies in journalism - it was an ad in the ukpg that led to me working in Bermuda for five years where I met my wife, and another that led to me becoming National Press Officer for the NSPCC in the early eighties.

Ironic that the final edition should carry the story of my libel victory over the Mail-on-Sunday...

http://new.pressgazette.co.uk/article/221106/mail_on_sunday_pays_damages_to_phil_dilks

ian said...

Was that a company subscription on behalf of 18 Doughty Street?

Iain Dale said...

No it bloody wasn't.

Anonymous said...

The demise of UK Press Gazette after more than four decades as the trade magazine for journalists marks the end of an era for me...

UKPG carried the advert that led to me working on the Bermuda Sun newspaper for five glorious years in the seventies – where I met my wife Gill of 29 years.

I find it bizarre that the final edition published should also carry the story of my successful libel action against the Mail-on-Sunday.

Very sad.

Anonymous said...

It failed in the market place...byeeee.

Andrew Ian Dodge said...

It is sad to see it go but I am guessing they will be blaming the internet for their demise.

Anonymous said...

Didn't Piers Morgan buy it a year or so ago? That man has no luck.

Anonymous said...

This is the sad end of an era, I was a regular reader too.

Anonymous said...

Yes, but there is a certain irony here. If 'paid-for' journalism is used to tap up stories for bloggers who did it for love and publish for free then circulation is going to drop. The recent ABC figures seem to confirm that newspapers are struggling.

I am a big fan of newspapers - but when the Observer is £1.80 and the Sunday Times is 2.00 [I think] there is a point where it is silly to pay for all that flim-flam on top of the actual newspaper.

Either that, or the bloggers and online telegraph will start charging

Anonymous said...

Wasn't this the same company that owned the British Press Awards ?

Wasn't there some sort of unholy piss up, followed by a boycott by many of the main stream papers - or was that another one of these awards beanos ?

The Hitch said...

So Piers Pugh morgan is out of a job again ?
hahhahahahhah
hhahaha