Optimistic, Despite Everything

I belong to an abused and misunderstood minority group.

I'm viewed with suspicion, sometimes with outright hostility, by members of the public just because of what I am. I've known people stop talking and stare when I approach.

Even educated folk who should know better are prone to sweeping and ignorant generalisations about how they think I behave. Others are sure 'people like me' will do anything for money.

Politicians of all parties routinely vent their fury at me, often to deflect attention from their own failings. New laws to restrict my activities could prove an easy vote winner, and to that end I've had a judge examining my affairs in detail.

I'm a journalist.

Happy Birthday 2LO

Today marks the 90th anniversary of the first broadcast by the BBC; not, in 1922, a crisis-wracked 'Corporation' but instead the very commercially-minded British Broadcasting Company.

Beeb 1.0 was set up by a syndicate of radio manufacturers to give early-adopter gadget-crazy punters something to listen to with their shiny new wireless sets, cool devices which were the iPhone 5 of the early 1920s.

When I tell trainees that they're usually gobsmacked.

Radio Needs a Warm Reception

This is the time of year when I go around to visit my trainees on placement in newsrooms.

Going out to see them in the workplace is a useful way to see that our postgrads really are making a contribution to their host organisation; and, if I'm honest, I enjoy the opportunity for a coffee and a gossip with editors, many of them now former Leeds Trinity trainees, updating the grid of who's moving on where so as to get an idea where entry level roles could be coming free for my current lot.

Doing the rounds involves a lot of turning up and waiting around in reception areas, which has in turn prompted a few thoughts I'd like to share with you.

Give Me a Reason to Listen

I've read and respected James Cridland for a number of years. A lot of years, actually, ever since he started as a young presenter at whatever Pennine Radio was officially called that week.

He now bills himself a 'radio futurologist', a term simultaneously as exact as it's vague, and lives half his life in various airport departure lounges as he carries his vision around the world. I don't pretend to understand all his posts, which feature exotic terms such as 'Radio DNS'. Radio DFS - now that'd be musak in a sofa showroom, I get that.

In fact I'm turning, slowly but surely, into a clone of a certain lovable former BBC editor I know who, walking out of a presentation on the latest hi-tech gizmo coming into service, beamed from ear to ear and said "I don't understand it - but it's bloody clever".

However I did understand and appreciate James' latest post on MediaUK headlined 'Speech is the most important part of radio. When will the industry realise?'