Exhibit JC42 - The Leveson Inquiry

For Distribution to CPsEditorial Attitudes Towards News Reporting Revealed in Clarke’s Lecture Notesnot telling them so much how things should be done, but make them dothem. So his first words to students, on joining the course, were that theyhad now become junior reporters on a newspaper going to press that verynight, and that they would learn by doing the things they had to do on anewspaper, and doing them speedily and accurately. This might explain thedemise of the L.U.J.S. Gazette termly newspaper when Clarke wasappointed. Again, still at the same luncheon, Clarke felt strongly that: ’Thispractical work must have some relation to reality, not only in the matterwritten, but in its accuracy, condensation, and the speed of its preparationand transmission. ’2Several of those at the luncheon, like the Chief Clerk at Bow StreetPolice Court, Albert Lieck, took four students at a time, twice a week, to dopractical reporting of the cases there, but not for publication. Othersattended meetings of the London County Council, arranged by HerbertMorrison (1891-1963), and this helped them learn about local government.The Port of London Authority were also very helpful and a former studentremembers being taking to the docks and writing a feature on it which hesold to a London evening paper?After Clarke had been teaching for about a year the opportunity arose todiscuss the future of the course with fellow academics in November 1936. 4Some problems discussed included the different term dates; for instance,University College students sometimes missed Clarke’s first lectures in theterm which, ’in a progressive course like Practical Journalism... is ahandicap.’ While it may have worked well enough in the past, Clarke put hiscase forthrightly: ’We are not dealing with the past, but with the future, andattempting to meet changes which have come about in the newspaperfield.., and it was recognition of these changes that brought about therevision of the Journalism course.., to bring it abreast of modernnewspaper requirements. The newspaper profession is still watching us,what we are doing to make the course really efficient and we have still gotto get the general body to take us seriously.’The considered opinion of the journalists on the Journalism Committeeof London University was that there should be a centralized JournalismDepartment at one college and, if that could not be arranged, ’setting up inthe University an Independent School of Journalism.’The old journalism which involved ’writing short stories, descriptivearticles, dramatic criticism or leading articles’ Clarke felt was wrong,because it ignored the ’going out and digging up news, knowing how todeal with a speech or a police court case.’ In other words, he was referringto the standards of the old journalism with its leisured pace and readership,centred in the London club-land of Pall Mall, being replaced by the brasher,brighter luminaries of the new journalism - as they were again calling itthroughout the 1930s.Clarke’s method of teaching, as evidenced in his lecture notes whichexist in manuscript and type-written form, allows informed discussion of histechnique of imparting journalistic skills to youngsters of university age, andalso provides an invaluable insight into editorial attitudes towards news andhow it should be reported.120MOD100051291