You want me to be a Team Leader? Not bloody likely!
Ominously, the memo waiting for me when I got to work was from Lindsay Cook, then managing editor of Express Newspapers.
But it wasn’t the Dear John letter that every journalist of a certain age half-expects. It announced that I was to be made a “Team Leader”.
“Am I now? Well, we’ll see about that,” I thought.
I stalked into the editor’s office and dudgeon has seldom been so high. He indulged me in a two-minute rant.
The moment I paused for breath, he nodded up the corridor, meaning, “Let’s go.”
Lindsay ushered us in and listened as I explained that I had dedicated myself to learning my craft and worked hard to secure one of the “Great Offices of State” on a national newspaper: night editor of the Sunday Express.
I had no intention of giving up such a job title to be a team leader, whatever that meant. If management insisted, I would have to leave.
The editor, Michael Pilgrim, backed me to the hilt and Lindsay, a good, experienced journalist and a nice woman, relented and let me keep my proper title.
Whenever management start faffing with job titles, it means they have run out of ideas that might help to stem the haemorrhage of readers and are now filling their days rearranging the deckchairs.
And so, when I read the leaked email yesterday from David Higgerson, chief content officer for Reach, I recoiled from the meaningless management-speak and marvelled that supposedly intelligent people had come up with such guff, particularly the job titles.
Reach now has a director of audience and engagement, which is something to do with the new focus on video; and a director of newsroom transformation, who heads a team that will look at technology and artificial intelligence.
It is hard to figure out just what the new Reach game plan is. It seems bizarrely complex and blurred by bosses’ bullshit. I think we might have heard if management consultants had been let loose in One Canada Square but this bears all the hallmarks.
Certainly it is a plan hatched by managers and not by journalists. Two things about it strike me. The first is that they are not taking care of the crown jewels, the Express, the Mirror and, if we’re being charitable, the Star.
They are losing staff, among them good writers, and that’s regrettable. But most of all, they are at risk of losing their characters and their distinctive voices.
How long before the pooled subbing operation results in Pages 1, 2 and 3 being different and the rest of the papers identical in all but typeface?
The Mirror and Express go back generations in some families. Those who still buy them expect their political preferences to be reflected; their aspirations to be understood; the objects of their pride and prejudice to be lauded or scorned.
The second thing to note is that, while the plan slashes costs, that is only half of the equation. It’s not enough to stop money going out the door, you need money coming in, too. Times are tough in the economy and ads are hard to sell.
Reach might have ambitions to raise the quality of the products for sale but they have relied on clickbait trash for so long it’s going to be a long slog back to the real world.
In newspapers, to paraphrase Richard Desmond, if you haven’t got a story, you haven’t got a business.
Reach is to trial a long overdue digital subscriptions strategy on the Manchester Evening News. But if you want people to pay for news you first have to find some. That means boots on the ground.
All I hear is a stampede to find new jobs.
*****
My younger son has just received the results of a DNA test and it contains some interesting surprises.
You at the back there, stop smirking, boy. It has not thrown up any unfortunate anomalies in the Dismore family tree.
It shows James to be 43 per cent Scottish, which is entirely credible. My mother and all her family were from Dundee.
He has also inherited 21 per cent of his genes from England and northwestern Europe – my father’s lot were from Surrey and Hampshire, via the Isle of Dogs in East London. His side would also account for the three per cent Irish heritage.
My wife is French, so it is unsurprising that James is 19 per cent Froggie. It looks as though she is also responsible for the 12 per cent of Spanish genes, which is a puzzle but my wife is investigating.
That leaves two per cent from Germanic Europe, which makes perfect sense. The name Dismore derives from the old French Dix Mars (ten Marks). Some think that is the sum paid to one of my forebears, a German soldier of fortune, who came over with William the Conqueror’s army in 1066.
The only other surprise is a map that shows our ancestors moving in the area of western Cornwall between Land’s End and Redruth. I knew nothing of that connection.
Personally, I am particularly proud of my Scottish heritage and I hope James is too. They’re great people, the Scots.
*****
I was reliving Richard Addis’s finest hour and clearing out an old sock drawer. The idea was to make room for some splendid new hosiery.
They are colour-coded, so that a pair is actually a pair, and helpfully, they have the day of the week printed on the instep. Not so much a sock for the ages, as a sock for the aged.
So far, I have got the day of the week wrong three times. I’m retired, you see, and I couldn’t give a toss what day it is.
*****
A friend ticked off some teenagers misbehaving on our High Street and they all turned to her and shouted: “Housewife, housewife, housewife!” She laughed, but when did that become an insult and such women figures of fun? Kids are fiendishly clever in their cruelty.
*****
Watching the T20 Blast at the weekend, I was amused by a conversation among the commentators. They were discussing northern delicacies. My favourites were hot Vimto (who knew?) and pie in a bap: an actual pie inside a bread roll. I’ve heard of that but never actually saw one in all my years up there.
*****
Headline in The Times: Johnson ‘used contacts from time as PM to help fund life after No 10’.
If this were a crime, Sir Anthony Charles Lynton Blair, our Prime Minister for 10 years, would be banged up for a very long time.
RICHARD DISMORE
10 September 2025
