Out With A Bang

Clearly, I’m in no position whatsoever to comment on how the ‘boogey man’ of the provincial newspaper industry – the BBC’s plans for greater, local video news coverage; http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=97 – is going to be hit, or not, by today’s announcement from the BBC.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/oct/07/bbc.television

The original Press release, you strongly suspect, would have been a master-class in, well, promoting the corporation line. Put it that way. And leaving the rest of us to try (in vain, in all probability…) to read between the lines as to what any of it means.

So, like I say, better off not even going there. Other than to mark the passing of the seemingly luckless Pat Loughrey, the director of the BBC’s Nations & Regions, who will be ‘…leaving the corporation at the end of next summer once the changes have been brought in.’

Don’t know the lad from Adam.

But as the structural challenge of the web, the cyclical onslaught of the credit crunch and the fact that I can now watch the Beeb for free on my unplugged lap-top continue to wreak havoc with people’s journalistic careers, you wonder why those caught in this raging firestorm can’t be granted one final dignity.

That they be allowed to go quietly into the night.

‘Thompson paid tribute to Loughrey, saying that under his leadership the nations and regions had become the creative powerhouses.

“From Doctor Who to Still Game, God on Trial to the brilliant coverage of last year’s floods, much of the best the BBC produces now comes from across the UK,” he said.

“Pat Loughrey has played a critical part in laying the foundations for these editorial successes and creating a compelling vision of the future.”‘

… that is, right up to the moment we binned him.

One, final irony. This is worth a read. It is a speech that Loughrey delivered to the Society of Editors conference in October, 2005. I guess there is every chance that Sly Bailey was sat in the audience somewhere…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/speeches/stories/loughrey_editors.shtml

Read it now, three years on… and those same battle lines appear even more entrenched. Certainly the major protagonists appear ever more desperate in the defence of their shrinking kingdoms than they were when Loughrey stepped into the lions den that afternoon.

And yet in the heat of that earlier battle, Loughrey’s voice appears one of sense and sensibility; of moderation and accommodation; of recognising that the way forward for all of us is via partnerships – my words for your TV. Our TV for your words. And due credits all round.

It’s the link economy, stupid. Do what you do best, then link to the rest.

So if that was, indeed, the path that Loughrey was intent on following, it seems something of a shame that he’s being bundled off the regional stage just as the real fun and games kick off…