As presentations go, it was a pretty rubbish one.
When I first started giving talks about how to write, long before that became my job, I put together some slides containing advice and tips.
I was particularly keen on one of them.
It just featured one word: READ.
I went on to elaborate: you will only improve your writing by reading more of other people’s.
And I urged my audience – whether students, would-be village correspondents or radio station newsroom volunteers – to put any sensitivities and snobbishness aside.
“Some of the greatest writing in the English language today is in The Sun,” was a line I regularly used.
Sometimes I’d go further. “If Shakespeare was alive today, he’d be writing headlines for The Sun,” I once claimed.
So let’s get this clear: I have always been a fan of the way in which our most popular newspapers make words work. The way they paint pictures, encapsulate ideas and wage war on waffle.
Great journalism can be found in The Sun and the Mail, along with very welcome investment in good writing, of that there is no doubt.
And there are good people writing for both titles. I know and am very fond of some of them.
I say that not just because it’s true but also because there have been some fascinating debates on Twitter in the last few days about whether it’s possible to be both a decent human being and a writer for the tabloids. One was started by Thea de Gallier
with another by Sophie Brown.

I’d like to make it clear that I think the DM is absolute trash, but I don’t think that every single journo who works there is trash. I’m not condoning any of their hate-mongering content and think the article in question is misinformed and dangerous.
— Sophie Brown (@SophieBrownHP) December 30, 2017
I hate the world view the Sun and Mail espouse, the political hang-ups they cling to, the misleading stereotypes they encourage and the division and negativity that characterise so much of their coverage.
But I’d never discourage one of my students from working for them.
I’d make sure they went into the application process with their eyes open. But also that they had the courage to keep their mouth open, too, if what they were being asked to do challenged their conscience. Call me woefully naïve, but I can’t believe there are organisations that cannot be reformed from within.
You only have to look at the way in which sports journalists on The Times refused to accept their paper’s sidelining of the Hillsborough inquest verdict, and ensured that the second edition was changed to reflect such landmark news.
And here’s one final thought, the basis for a New Year’s resolution for all of us.

It stems from a tweet in one of those threads from journalist Jessica Bateman, and a cracking blog from a man who has felt himself under fire from both the Mail and the Sun. John Sutherland is a senior police officer in London and was understandably riled by The Sun’s critical coverage of what it regarded as failures in the war on crime. He also happens to suffer from depression, and has for some time been on anti-depressants – or ‘happy pills’ as The Mail’s recent inane splash headline called them. Both stories to him illustrate a media default setting of carping from the sidelines, of seeing darkness rather than candles.
Tearing down is easy. It’s a little more difficult to build things up
I like to think that my own Twitter thread already reflects the glass half-full outlook recommended by both Jessica and John.
I have no connections with Manchester but this beautifully-written piece by the awesome @JenWilliamsMEN
trying to make sense of an extraordinary year for the city brought a lump to my throat. https://t.co/lLzKCQncX2— Paul Wiltshire (@Paulwiltshire) December 31, 2017
Rather than just railing against news coverage that disgusts us, we need to praise and celebrate the good stuff. Particularly if that good stuff is on occasions rolling its sleeves up and floating enlightened solutions to problems.
If we want a different, more positive and constructive, sort of journalism, it starts with us.