Goodbye to the old image

A trilby hat with a press card in the brim and a grubby mac (the coat, not the Apple computer) with a notebook in one pocket and half a bottle of Scotch in the other.
That was the cartoon image of journalists when I joined the profession in 1969. Nothing could be further from reality now, but there was an element of truth then.
Twenty years ago, when I was deputy editor of the Bath Evening Chronicle, a posh lady phoned to say: “There is an elderly gentleman here who says he is a reporter for the Chronicle, but that cannot be true as he is obviously drunk.”
In fact he was one of the breed of reporters who went from pub to pub gathering stories before returning to the office to bash them onto an elderly typewriter.
The doctor warned him to stop drinking so much beer and whisky, so he switched to dry Martini in half-pint glasses, and has been dead for many years.
Today’s average regional newspaper reporter drinks little and favours fruit juice, Diet Coke or water at lunchtime.
The main reason for the change is the increased workload, as papers have grown bigger and we have added websites and video to improve our service to readers.The time of long lunch hours in the pub has long since gone.
Today’s Mid Somerset News & Media’s journalists are all committed, hard-working members of their communities.Remarkably respectable too, but I think that was always true for most of our editorial staff.
It is the grubby end of the national tabloids that lets down the reputation of British journalists.
Philip Welch