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| Stefano Hatfield |
So here's a bluffer's briefing. The Employment Equality (Age) Regulations of 2006 make it unlawful to discriminate against workers under the age of 65 on the grounds of age. The rules affect recruitment, training, promotion, redundancy, retirement, pay and pension provision.
It was therefore unfortunate that MediaGuardian of February 5, 2007, felt compelled to note that 'Hatfield ... freely admits that he has chosen to hire journalists of a similar age to his target twenty-to-thirtysomething readership [at thelondonpaper]. No veteran hacks moaning about the good old days here, it seems.' MediaGuardian is itself an ageist medium so I wouldn't be expecting much sense from that quarter.
i is targeting young urbanites and has a featherweight budget. Expect, then, a deluge of recruitment of novice regionals (and their friends) in the immediate future. Any examples of ageism at i (or anywhere else) will receive a fair hearing at Madame Arcati.
Stefano Hatfield is in his mid-to-late 40s.
13 comments:
So nice to have you back.
The Madame we know and love!
yuckola to the whole bloody enterprise
Excuse me Madame, but why would Stefano want to employ some old bastard (such as yourself?) when his target audience is a generation younger (than yourself?). Ageism is one thing, demography another. To catch your readers, you usually have to hire people who understand them. If the new laws against discrimination don't recognise this simple fact, then they need to be changed or just ignored. Sounds to me Stefano knows what he's doing.
The Indie trying to get hip to that California trip is v. embarrassing
Ooh, Anonymous! Young and bitter!
Thank god for Madame Antarctica; someone has to stand up for us old and bitter hacks who've worked for a long time in this crazy business and are now getting royally shafted by little Notting Hill bastards who don't need to work as they live in daddy's flat on granny's trust fund, and think journalism would be 'fun'.
Of course I understand that a young demographic needs a specific attitude, but being over 30 doesn't mean that you're pissing yourself constantly. Journalism is now full of poor little rich kids, and if you're older or poorer, you can forget having a voice in the media, which is fast becoming the voice of twats. Richard Dennen, anyone?
I've ntoiced that "mature" journalists tend to smell. It may be lack of showering but it may also be accumulated poisons from years of late night boozing so that that they end up like the living dead, like zombies. Thank God Stefano Hatfield is back to save us from these doddery stinkers.
Looking at my analytics report I see a number of visits from the Independent url coincide with the delivery time of some of the above comments. At a guess I'd say Simon Kelner must be north of 50.
To the Independent. Why was "Independent Minds" taken off air? Given that some bloggers were not up to scratch is one thing but you cannot tell me in all seriousness that the sole survivor is a one trick pony going on about anorexia.
The thing to understand about the fabled Indie is that it is based in the Daily Mail's home in S Kensington. Beyond its liberal face it's just another newspaper full of loud mouths, drunks, bullies, men and she-males.
This sums up the problem nicely:
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/columnists/article7149416.ece
Thank you Clair - a most interesting piece. The first par reads:
It was pleasing to see the Institute for Public Policy Research complaining last week that too many professions were relying on young people doing unpaid work. And it was even more satisfying to hear the Universities Minister David Willetts echoing the comments on the BBC, saying that the practice discriminated against the less well-off and that the Government would look into the issue.
I think I shall pop a nice letter to Mr Willetts in the post over the weekend on the matter, and I hope anyone else concerned about all this should, too...
I wholly agree, and Madame shall be tracking progress (if any).
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