Ah, the cosiness of the British media.
The Independent's newest columnist Rebecca Tyrrel (a refugee from the Telegraph) set up shop today, a dozen pages away from the column belonging to her husband, Matthew Norman. As ever, he's name-checked God knows how many times. I didn't have the energy to count them all.
Doesn't anyone else think this sort of thing is, well, odd? I know it's a small world (full disclosure: my wife's a radio producer) and I know it's bad form to even mention the issue (I get some very odd looks whenever I raise the subject with people in the biz.) But even so...
Not surprisingly, things seem to even worse in the world of glossy magazines. More power, I say, to Lindsay Nicholson, the new big wheel at the National Magazine Company [registration-only link]:
Nicholson has for some time been pushing for more diversity in magazine publishing, notably by campaigning against the widespread practice of making aspiring journalists serve their time doing unpaid work experience. This has contributed to what she calls the "Serena syndrome", magazines staffed by middle class people with names like Serena and Rupert, because they are the only people who can afford to work for nothing. "The industry is hideously white, to coin a phrase, and that is reflected in the magazines we produce," she says. "If you landed from Mars and the first thing you saw was a magazine you would think everyone was white, attractive and under 40."
Hear, hear, says media academic Desmond O'Rourke [reg-only again]:
A good starting point might be to conduct some research and do an audit of the number of Ruperts and Serenas in circulation.
Not to mention Rebeccas too?
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