alexlockwood.net

Following my opinion piece over on Journalism.co.uk about the hypocrisy that would entail if the Daily Mail really were to win the Press Gazette Environmental Press Awards campaign of the year, I came across another link to a story, published by the Press Gazette, from last year.

My argument is that the Daily Mail’s “Ban the Bags” campaign was a co-opt of an already running and successful campaign that was building its own momentum. Other than that, of course, the DM’s coverage is so invidiously contradictory and generally anti-environment, particularly against legislation to combat climate change (the Kyoto Protocol, the UK Climate Change Bill), that any award would be tough to swallow; and particularly this award for the Ban the Bags campaign, as it has barely added anything new.

And so the link and quote is worth publishing:

Editor of the Mail on Sunday Peter Wright defended his newspapers’ use of covermounts and other promotions to boost circulation.

“When the history of newspapers is written, it may well be that the greatest innovation of our generation is the humble polybag,” Wright said.

And if that point is not clear enough, Wright continues:

“Any editor who wants his paper still to be here in 2020 needs to be constantly thinking about what he can add to his paper and what he can put into his polybag that will make his newspaper better value to the reader.”

How about a nice manufaturing-intense polyeurythane statuette of Janus for the average Daily Mail reader’s mantelpiece? (And before any criticisms of prejudice, I’m thinking here of my mother, who still buys the paper after working there as a clerk in the 1960s).