Mantex

Tutorials, Study Guides & More

  • HOME
  • REVIEWS
  • TUTORIALS
  • HOW-TO
  • CONTACT
>> Home / Archives for Journalism

House Style

October 31, 2014 by Roy Johnson

an explanation and guidance notes

House Style is a term used to describe the rules laid down by a business or organisation to regularise the presentation of its written communications and documents. In some cases these rules might be summarised formally in a published Style Guide or Style Manual.

The purpose of codifying what can be written may vary from a desire to control a corporate image (business documents); a need to maintain standards and follow established conventions (academic writing); or a need for accuracy and precision (technical manuals).

Many different types of institutions, businesses, publishers, or public bodies will establish a house style in order to maintain their corporate or brand image.

International United Nations, European Union
Corporations Lockheed, General Motors, Microsoft
Publications New York Times, The Economist
Institutions University of London, Department of Transport
Retailers Amazon, Marks and Spencer, IKEA

The origins of house style lie in the realm of printing, where newspapers and book publishers originally sought to establish guidelines for standardising their productions. The best known of these guides is Hart’s Rules, first written at the end of the nineteenth century for the Oxford University Press. In the twenty-first century, house style is also likely to include writing and presentation guidelines for what will appear on computer screens.

There are differences of approach in the rules of these various style guides. This should alert us to the fact that they are not only dealing with matters of fact and correctness – but are offering a series of conventions which should be followed by their authors.

They are likely to have policies governing such matters as

  • Spelling
  • Grammar
  • Capitalisation
  • Use of acronyms
  • Vocabulary
  • Punctuation
  • Headlines
  • Spacing

The notes given below provide illustrative examples. For detailed information on any topic, follow the links to the online style guides and the newspaper house style sites. Some of their guides are the size of small encyclopedias.


House Style – a real example

Microsoft Manual of StyleMicrosoft’s Manual of Style illustrates the company’s rules for both print and screen writing, as well as their requirements for visual presentation and language use.

For instance, each topic they discuss is illustrated by an example of ‘Microsoft style’ and then an example of ‘Not Microsoft style’.

They also specify such fine details as how to present numbers; how to choose the names for toolbars and buttons; how to punctuate lists; how to size titles, sub-headings, and paragraph spaces; and where to use quotation marks.

The following is their table of contents for the topics covered in their house style guide – many of them in extremely fine detail.

  • Microsoft style and voice
  • Writing for web delivery
  • Writing for a worldwide audience
  • Accessibility issues
  • The user interface
  • Technical procedures
  • Practical issues of style
  • Grammar
  • Punctuation
  • Indexing and keywords
  • Acronyms and abbreviations

Style guides might now make distinctions between house style for print and for online purposes – because the two mediums are considered quite distinct, and may have different readerships and purposes.

Reading on a computer screen is more tiring than reading from a printed document. For this reason, style guides for digital use may specify shorter sentences and paragraphs, wider margins, and the inclusion of graphics.

House style manuals very often specify how the various departments and personnel in an organisation should be described. They are also likely to specify such details as the size and spacing of titles, headings, and sub-headings.


Spelling

Some words (in English) have more than one spelling. The term judgement can also be spelled judgment. House style rules help to create consistency throughout a document. And consistency is a key principle in creating ease of comprehension.

Newspapers also strive to use consistent spellings for foreign names such as Reykjavik (the capital of Iceland) and Nizhni Novgorod (a port in European Russia).

They are also likely to specify the spelling of names of important people – such as Ban Ki-Moon (Secretary General of the United Nations) and Aung San Suu Kyi (opposition leader in Myanmar – formerly Burma). This shows respect for the person.

American English and British English have minor differences in spelling, so documents aimed at both audiences need to be consistent.

British centre, harmonise, travelling
American center, harmonize, traveling

Printed style guides

This is a selection of book reviews featuring style guides published by a variety of organisations.

House Style MLA Style Guide
English – Modern Languages Association – Academic

House Style Microsoft Manual of Style
American – Microsoft Corporation – Business

House Style The Chicago Manual of Style
American – Chicago University – Academic

House Style New Hart’s Rules
English – Oxford University Press – Publishing

House Style The Economist Style Guide
English – Economist Magazine – Journalism


Note of interest — it is said that the complete printed maintenance manuals for the Boeing 737 jet weighed more than the aircraft itself.


Vocabulary

The choice of vocabulary is important because it reflects the nature and the attitude of the organisation. The language you choose needs to be understood by the audience(s). It should be clear, unambiguous, and consistent.

It is now very common for organisations to specify the terms used to describe people with disabilities, ethnic minorities, and issues related to gender.

For instance, the BBC specifies that people with learning disabilities should be used – not mentally handicapped. It specifies Muslim instead of Moslem.

The Guardian newspaper used to prohibit the use of the term regime to describe a government – because the term is clearly derogatory and suggests a bias against a government which might become legitimate in a few week’s time.

The Telegraph newspaper has a list of ‘banned words’ in its house style guide. These are not ideologically taboo words so much as lists of journalistic clichés used in tabloid newspapers – terms such as bloodbath, clampdown, jaw-dropping, and prestigious.


Online style guides

BBC News style guide
Detailed guidelines for print, online, plus radio and television broadcasting. Also includes rules on pronunciation and spelling of foreign names.

English Grammar
Comprehensive grammar guide, with downloadable lessons, interactive exercises, grammar checker, videos, and daily updates.

Purdue On-line Writing Lab
Purdue’s famous OWL, useful for general writing concerns, with links to American academic style guides and how to avoid plagiarism.

The Elements of Style
William Strunk, Jr.’s original 1918 classic. The ‘bare bones’ approach to common problems, with illustrative examples.

On-Line Study Resources
Style, grammar, essay-writing, citations and footnotes, plagiarism and presentation from the University of New South Wales.

alt.usage.english – Style FAQ
Mark Israel’s Frequently Asked Questions covers common English usage questions, word etymology, online and offline references, and more.

WebGrammar
Judy Vorfeld’s excellent site covers some of the most common writing mistakes, including spelling, grammar and homonym errors.


Capitalization

The correct use of capital letters is not quite so straightforward as it might seem. It is not always immediately clear if someone, somewhere, or something warrants a capital or not. The following are some of the more common instances.

days of the week Wednesday, Friday
places Scotland, East Anglia
rivers the river Mersey
buildings the Tate Gallery
institutions the Catholic Church
firms British Aerospace
organisations the National Trust
months of the year April, September

However, when such terms are used as adjectives or in a general sense as common nouns, no capital is required:

the King James Bible / a biblical reference

Oxford University / a university education

the present Government / governments since 1967

Capitals are used when describing intellectual movements or periods of history:

Freudian – Platonism – Cartesian – the Middle Ages
the Reformation – the Enlightenment

They are also used in the titles of books, plays, films, newspapers, magazines, songs, and works of art in general. The normal convention is to capitalise the first word and any nouns or important terms. Smaller words such as ‘and’, ‘of’, and ‘the’ are left uncapitalised:

A View from the Bridge
The Mayor of Casterbridge
North by Northwest
The Marriage of Figaro


UK journalism style guides

Online style guides The Guardian

Online style guides The Economist

Online style guides Reuters

Online style guides Associated Press

Online style guides The Telegraph

Online style guides Financial Times Lexicon

© Roy Johnson 2014


More on publishing
More on journalism
More on creative writing
More on writing skills


Filed Under: How-to guides, Journalism, Publishing, Writing Skills Tagged With: Editing, Journalism, Writing skills

How to Make Money Scriptwriting

June 19, 2009 by Roy Johnson

practical guide to professional screen writing

This is the second edition of a very successful book which covers all aspects of scriptwriting (or script writing) and making a living as a professional author. It’s the work of a leading literary agent who brings insider tips and guidance on what is a tough market in which to make a living. Julian Friedmann takes a practical, no-nonsense approach which encourages would-be authors to become more aware of what he calls the ‘politics’ of writing. This means paying more attention to the market place; being prepared to fit in to the system of television or screen, and being prepared to deliver to audiences what they want.

ScriptwritingHe paints a picture of a very difficult business which makes big demands of the would-be screenwriter. The only way to succeed is be prepared to collaborate; drop your ego; know that viewer-ratings is All; and ‘murder your darlings’ when required.

There are excellent chapters on how to structure and produce a ‘pitch’, a ‘treatment’ and a ‘step outline’ for a proposed script. But even if you’re good at doing all that, there’s still more to learn: how script editing and script reports work; what ratings, audience share, and programme research mean; how to deal with an agent – or without one; how to handle meetings and negotiate with producers; how to understand a basic agreement and protect your own interests as a writer; and how to survive financially whilst you are waiting for that call from Hollywood.

The emphasis is almost entirely on cinema and television. There’s no mention of the theatre, and radio only gets a very brief mention, although there is one chapter on writing for interactive multi-media.

There’s also no advice on the details of writing techniques: he assumes you know how to write, or can find out elsewhere. His guidance is on how to make a success of scriptwriting from a business point of view. There are full explanations of all the people you need to contact; how to make your work look professional; and how to take rejection without losing heart.

He ends with a very useful series of appendices with includes examples of negotiations with producers; sample memos commissioning a deal; legal contracts; Writers’ Guild minimum Terms of Payment; plus all the contact details for writer’s groups, training courses, and professional associations.

Anyone entering this ferociously competitive field of creative writing needs all the help they can get. Friedmann explains why it is such a tough business, and in doing so he reveals the strategies you need to succeed. You will find advice on writing skills elsewhere. This is insider guidance on how the business works.

© Roy Johnson 2003

How to Make Money Scriptwriting   Buy the book at Amazon UK

How to Make Money Scriptwriting   Buy the book at Amazon US


Julian Friedmann, How to Make Money Scriptwriting, Bristol: Intellect, 2nd edn, 2003, pp.219, ISBN: 184150002X


More on publishing
More on journalism
More on creative writing
More on writing skills


Filed Under: Creative Writing, How-to guides, Publishing, Writing Skills Tagged With: Broadcasting, Film, Journalism, Publishing, Scriptwriting, Television, Writing skills

How to Write

June 19, 2009 by Roy Johnson

basic writing skills explained in easy stages

This is an introductory guide to writing, aimed at people who think they can’t write, or for whom writing is an ordeal. Broken down into short topic-based chapters on everything from beginning to revising, it demystifies the writing process by taking the reader through each stage necessary to bring a piece of writing to a decent finish. Follow the advice, and you will learn how to write. Alastair Fowler kicks off by considering the advantages and disadvantages of composing and editing directly on a computer screen.

How to WriteThen comes a series of short chapters, each one dealing with a different aspect of the writing process: outlines, drafts, paragraphs, sentences, arguments, punctuation, researching, and grammar. His model is formal academic writing, but his advice will be of use to anybody who wants to understand writing skills and improve their own. He deals with those tricky issues that distress beginners, such as ‘making a start’, and offers tips which at first glance can seem counter-intuitive, but reveal a voice of experience:

For most sorts of writing, the best way to begin is not to. Or rather, to have already begun in the past.

He also covers how to plan what you intend to write, and how to create order in what it will contain; then how to flesh out your rough notes into a first draft.

Beginners will also find it reassuring that he shows how to get a feel for the scale of a piece of writing – how to assess the required length and thereby the scope of its content.

I also found his advice on paragraphs sound. Once you have grasped the concept of structure and rhythm in a paragraph, most other problems of construction and format should fall easily into place.

He goes into quite some detail on how to construct persuasive arguments. It is in this sense that the book really is fundamentally about writing essays, and I think on reflection that it’s for people who have mastered the basics of writing and who wish to hone their skills.

Next comes how to arrange the parts of a sentence to make meaning clearer, and then an explanation of all the common marks of punctuation, which he manages with being either pedantic or boring. (If you want advice on punctuation delivered in a humorous manner, try Lynne Truss’ excellent Eats, Shoots & Leaves.)

For those who really are brushing up their essay writing skills, Fowler has some useful advice on quotation – how to do it, and what real function it serves. The same is true of plagiarism, which he discusses in the light of re-working other people’s ideas in a legitimate manner.

He finishes with a conducted tour of the available reference books and guidance notes on writing skills – which is a lot more useful than just a bare, unannotated bibliography. It’s a short book, but probably all the more useful for that – and amazingly good value at the price.

© Roy Johnson 2006

How to write   Buy the book at Amazon UK

how to write   Buy the book at Amazon US


Alastair Fowler, How to Write, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, pp.202, ISBN: 0199278504


More on journalism
More on creative writing
More on writing skills
More on publishing


Filed Under: Creative Writing, Journalism, Writing Skills, Writing Skills Tagged With: Creative writing, How to Write, Journalism, Writing skills

How to write a newsletter

November 28, 2010 by Roy Johnson

guidelines for effective communication skills

newsletterA newsletter is designed to keep people up to date with events and activities.

It can be issued as a printed document, an email message, or even a blog posting.

Some online companies issue a newsletter every few days, whereas big organisations might issue only two a year.

Some newsletters are just a humble sheet of A4 printed on both sides: others may be multi-page glossy brochures.

A newsletter is a vehicle for spreading information to members of a group, and can also contain amusement and entertainment.

How to be an editor

Your number one task is to gather interesting and relevant news and information, then make it available to your readers.

The biggest part of that task (unless you are very lucky) is likely to be gathering enough information to fill each issue.

The simplest way to do that is to add each news item as it comes in. This saves you the trouble of relocating it again later. Keep a file (paper or electronic) with a copy of each item for the next issue.

Make a note of any important details attached to the news item – such as times, dates, URLs, prices, contact addresses.

Don’t leave all the information gathering until just before a newsletter issue goes out, otherwise you will put yourself under a lot of pressure

Readership

An in-house newsletter for a large business has the advantage of a stable and known readership. But this presents you with the difficulty of coming up with newsworthy stories from one source.

This type of newsletter also has the double-edged characteristic of being driven by company policy.

A newsletter that is aimed at a wide readership has the disadvantage of a largely unknown audience. But by way of compensation, you can take more risks in selecting the content.

Asking for contributions

Lighten the burden of writing a newsletter by inviting contributions from your readers.

People are often willing to write a short article, particularly if it is drawing attention to an event they wish to publicise

Invite readers to notify you of product launches, forthcoming events, or novelties which might interest your readers.

It is quite common to attract such contributions by offering prizes or free gifts in return.

House style

It’s very useful to establish a house style, then stick to it. Choose colours, images, font types, vocabulary, and layout to create your house style.

Tailor your style to reflect your organisation or line of business. This means that your readers will know what to expect.

It also means that any potential contributors know how to present their work.

Editing tips

Every editor’s nightmare is to publish a newsletter then suddenly realise that it contains a silly mistake – a mis-typed phone number, the wrong date for an event, or a URL that doesn’t work.

For this reason, rigorous editing and proof-reading is required before every publication date. Here are some antidotes that work

  • edit and proof-read your newsletter rigorously before every publication
  • check all factual details, but in addition check your spelling and grammar
  • ask someone else to check the text before you send it off
  • don’t try to edit for several features of the writing at the same time

Read through the text several times with only one of these issues in mind:

  • spelling
  • syntax
  • grammar
  • numbers
  • names
  • dates
  • URLs
How to present the content

If you want people to read a newsletter, it’s got to be interesting – to the readers. Pack your newsletter with items that are fresh and newsworthy.

Grab your readers’ attention in the first sentence of any item.

You can make any collection of news more attractive by adding smaller items of entertainment.

Take a tip from newspapers. Almost all of them have crosswords, cartoons, pictures, recipes, and horoscopes scattered amongst their main items.

Add a selection of not-directly-related news items. Remember that –

  • scientists also practice the arts
  • housewives follow current affairs
  • politicians enjoy sports

Here are some tips on regular stand-by extras that can help give your newsletter variety:

  • a quiz
  • an advice column
  • seasonal recipes
  • personal profiles
  • questions and answers
  • how-to articles
  • top 10 lists
  • votes and polls
Legal issues

Even if your newsletter is a small-scale affair, you should take care not to leave yourself open to legal prosecution. Be careful not to libel or defame people – which means making sure that everything you say is true.

Tread carefully with your content: you might be amazed at how easily some people take offence..

On a large-scale circulation newsletter keep in mind that there may be subscribers with views and beliefs quite unlike your own.

Unless you wish to be daring or radical, treat sensitive issues such as religion, politics, and ethical beliefs with care.

[I once printed some of George W. Bush’s famous ungrammatical statements during his illegal invasion of Iraq. Even though they were all things he had actually said, I was heavily criticised by patriotic Americans. I refused to retract the quotations, but lost a lot of subscribers. So decide which is more important – your circulation figures or your political commitment.]

Advertising

If you reach a big enough audience, you may be able to attract paid advertising.

Knowing how much to charge is the biggest problem – especially if you are starting from scratch.

Try to find out how much newsletters like yours charge for both small insertions or paid features (advertorials).

Don’t be greedy. A smaller but regular income will be more useful than a larger but one-off payment.

Make a clear distinction between any advertising and your own content. Readers will be annoyed if they feel they have been duped into reading what turns out to be an advert.

Evading spam filters

If your newsletter is an email message or an HTML attachment, spam filters on the reader’s server will block messages containing certain words.

They are obviously on the lookout for obscene words. But that’s not all. They are checking for the tell-tale signs of get-rich-quick offers, ponzi schemes, and the Nigerian letter scam.

These are some of the hallmarks of spam message that you can easily avoid:

  • titles in all capital letters
  • over-use of exclamation marks
  • satisfaction guaranteed
  • lose weight – cash bonus

Even the simplest and most innocent-looking words can become spam alerts if viewed in a certain way. The easiest was round this problem is to insert characters in such a way that the words are still legible – f.r.e.e   k.n.i.c.k.e.r.s   to cover your   b.o.t.t.o.m.

What to avoid

I receive two dreadful newsletters every quarter – one from my local council, and the other from a university. They both display just about every feature of a useless newsletter publication.

  • all articles heavily self-conratulatory
  • small issues blown out of proportion
  • celebrity profiles – of nonentities
  • financial news with no critical analysis
  • no invitation for reader feedback
  • all negative news omitted

Both of these organisations (at the time of writing) are suffering enormous cuts in government funding, and making huge numbers of staff redundant. These is no mention of this in either publication.

The net result of their phoney optimism and lack of honesty is to debase the value of any serious news they report. Few people read these newsletters. They go straight into the bin.

Email newsletters

Format the newsletter so that it can easily be read on screen. Use narrow columns and plenty of white space between each item of news.

Use shorter sentences than you would for printed materials. Long sentences are particularly difficult to read on screen

Use clear headings for each topic. This gives readers a chance to scan the newsletter for topics which interest them.

Avoid the use of continuous capitals for emphasis. This decreases the chance of being trapped by spam filters.

Always make it quite clear how readers can unsubscribe. Nobody wants to feel trapped. Keep in mind this good joke from Dick Vosburgh: “I haven’t been so happy since the day that Reader’s Digest lost my address”.

Offer a list of topics to be covered in the next isue. This gives reader’s an incentive to keep reading.

Template

Title

——– MANTEX NEWSLETTER ——–

Create a title for your newsletter – then stick to it.

Issue number

Number 165 – December 2010 – ISSN 1470-1863

The ISSN (International Standard Serial Number) is an identification number for serial publications and other continuing resources in the electronic and print world.

The number is issued by the national library of any country, and is free of charge.

Sub-title

Arts, Culture, and Technology as seen from
the digital hub of Media city Manchester UK

This is a brief explanation of the topics covered by the newsletter, and a hint at its general approach.

Advertising

** 13,000+ subscribers will see your AD **

This is an internal announcement, letting potential adveritisers see where their advert would appear.

News item One

0— ‘Here Comes Everybody’

Here Comes Everybody

This is without doubt my outstanding reading experience
of the last few weeks. Clay Shirky is what some people
are now calling a ‘futurologist’.

He analyses the latest developments in computer technology
and uncovers new shifts in social and economic forces.

His prime target is the newspaper industry, which used to
have what seemed like a monopoly on the distribution of
information about current events.

That has now been completely undermined by something as
apparently innocuous as personal blogs.

He also shows *why* Wikipedia has become the greatest
encyclopedia the world has ever seen – even though nobody
gets paid for writing it.

His study is a very engaging mixture of technology, sociology,
politics, and anthropology. Full review here –

This is the lead article – the news item to which you attach most importance, and which you think might be most interesting to your readers.

Make the clickable links as clear as possible. They can be shortened if necessary using services such as TinyURL.com and Bit.ly

Entertainment item one

0— Pub Quiz Question #1

What part of the body suffers from glaucoma?

Quizzes are a popular way to add variety. You could also try jokes, odd facts, today in history, famous birthdays, or handy household tips.

News item Two

0— Language Skills

http://mantex.blogspot.com/2010/10/language-skills.html

This is an amusing YouTube video of a young kid
speaking English in 24 different accents.

Warning! It’s not safe for work (NSFW) or for
showing your maiden aunt.

What’s even more remarkable is the fact that
he nails so many UK dialects – which as all
good linguists know is not the same thing as
regional accent.

http://mantex.blogspot.com/2010/10/language-skills.html

This is a lighter news item with a link to a YouTube video clip. Keep in mind that these are sometimes removed and may become copyrighted.

Formalities

Copyright (c) 2010, MANTEX
All Rights Reserved

PO Box 100
Manchester
M20 6GZ UK

Tel +44 0161 432 5811
www.mantex.co.uk

This is a formal declaration, claiming copyright and stating a business address.

Promotion

If you like this newsletter, PLEASE
FORWARD IT to friends and colleagues.
subscribers should register at the
following address —

https://mantex.co.uk/

BACK ISSUES featuring news items,
reviews, and product details at –

https://mantex.co.uk/articles/news/

Please retain the copyright and
list-joining information. It may be
posted, in its entirety or partially,
to newsgroups or mailing lists, so
long as the copyright and list-joining
information remains.

This encourages your subscribers to create new subscribers by forwarding the newsetter to their friends. It’s free promotion.

Interaction with readers

If you have any requests, observations,
or items you would like to be included
in our next issues, just mail us at —

news@mantex.co.uk

Unsubscribe instructions

You receive the MANTEX newsletter
because you subscribed to it. If you
wish to leave the list, send a message to

unsubscribe@mantex.co.uk

It is important and respectful to your subscribers to know that they can unsubscribe at any time.

Always respect their wishes. Some people subscribe by mistake; others change email address.

And incidentally, you should never sell or pass on your subscription lists to advertisers. This would be sure to annoy subscribers; they would lose faith in your integrity; and they would certainly unsubscribe – in large numbers.

Tailpiece

News-165-December-2010
ISSN 1470-1863
The British Library

This isn’t strictly necessary, but it forms a neat reminder of the status of the publication.

© Roy Johnson 2010


More on How-To
More on literary studies
More on writing skills


Filed Under: How-to guides Tagged With: Business, Communication, Information design, Journalism, Media, Publishing, Writing skills

Information Age Journalism

June 8, 2009 by Roy Johnson

contemporary journalism in an international context

This is a book which looks at the state of journalism (newspaper, radio, and TV) in the context of globalisation of media control and the Internet age of instant communication. Vincent Campbell starts with a look at the decline in newspaper circulation – a more-or-less universal phenomenon. The dangers he sees are the monopolisation of ownership, tabloidization, and the onset of the Internet which has thrown everything into a state of uncertainty.

Information Age JournalismHe looks at the relationship between journalism and the state, arguing that whilst most people in liberal democracies want the removal of state controls, when they are replaced by the demands of the free market they do not diminish but simply change their form. This leads to a detailed examination of the concept of ‘press freedom’, with examples drawn from all over the world – only forty percent of which is ‘free’. He covers newspaper ownership, the role of advertising, and he also deals with the ethical questions surrounding the manner in which journalists gather information – their relationship with sources, and where news management ends and spin begins.

He includes a detailed analysis of the workings of a typical newsroom. This includes how news stories are discovered, selected, written, edited, then presented.

There’s a comprehensive discussion of all the ethical dilemmas commonly raised in journalism – invasion of privacy, naming and shaming, chequebook journalism, libel, blasphemy, and protecting your sources – as the editor of the Guardian, Peter Preston, spinelessly failed to do after printing Sarah Tisdall’s whistle-blowing revelations.

This leads logically enough into a consideration of objectivity, opinion, bias, and slant. Most of his arguments are illustrated by examples drawn from recent high profile cases from the print press and TV which most people will remember.

He then looks at various alternatives to conventional journalism – where one might expect to hear more radical views. These range from political satire, as in The Onion and Private Eye to literary journalists of the Tom Woolfe school.

Although it certainly makes his coverage comprehensive, I was surprised that he gave so much space to (so-called) reality TV such as Big Brother, sports journalism, confessional television chat shows, and the amazingly vacuous Cosmopolitan, which he categorises as ‘lifestyle journalism’.

The result of this is that the coverage of Internet journalism is squashed into a few brief pages right at the end of the book. No mention of blogging at all – which is strange after two hundred pages in search of something new and radical.

It’s a book which could do with a few more pictures to break up page after page of dense text. But it’s suitable for anyone who wants to make an in-depth study of journalism, particularly in an international context, or in its relationship to politics and the current ownership of mass media companies.

© Roy Johnson 2005

Information Age Journalism   Buy the book at Amazon UK

Information Age Journalism   Buy the book at Amazon US


Vincent Campbell, Information Age Journalism, London: Arnold, 2004, pp.306, ISBN: 0340763493


More on journalism
More on creative writing
More on writing skills
More on publishing


Filed Under: Journalism, Publishing Tagged With: Journalism, Media, Writing

Journalism – A Short Introduction

June 26, 2009 by Roy Johnson

Reporting for press, broadcast media, and the Net

Ian Hargreaves has worked in newspaper journalism, magazines, television and radio. He was director of news and current affairs at the BBC, deputy editor of the Financial Times, and editor of the Independent and the New Statesman. This breadth and depth of experience gives him a very well informed overview of contemporary journalism in print and broadcast forms.

Journalism - A Short IntroductionHe starts by sketching in a brief history of free speech and the press – Milton, Thomas Paine, J.S. Mill – then argues that newspapers had only just finished establishing themselves as the prime vehicles for circulating news in the early years of the last century when they were immediately challenged by new technological inventions. First the radio, then television, and most recently the Internet. This is an exposition conducted at a fairly high socio-political level.

He compares recent journalism in Russia and the USA for instance – both cases where freedom of expression is being compromised, even if for very different reasons. One possible solution he sees is a return to what he calls ‘civic journalism’ – of the kind discussed by Dan Gillmor in his recent book We the Media. Digital communication in the form of email, bulletin boards, blogs, RSS feeds, and web sites puts the power of communication and free speech back into the hands of individuals. We no longer need to own printing presses to circulate information.

He is certainly smack up to date – tracking the politicking and manoeuvring that goes on between governments, regulatory bodies, and media tycoons such as Rupert Murdoch, Ted Turner and their like. He also includes the Hutton report in the context of reporting during a war, which always puts ‘standards’ and the ethics of truth-telling to a severe test.

There’s an interesting chapter on tabloid journalism in which he easily exposes the excesses of The Sun and The National Enquirer – but he also argues that the concentration on ‘celebrity’ has had an injurious knock-on effect on serious media.

There’s also a chapter on press ownership where he argues that despite the Murdochs, Blacks, and Maxwells, the real power in press ownership is passing into the hands of business conglomerates. This is likely to be depressing news for those who believe in a ‘free press’. He also offers some gritty examples from his first hand experience of the relations between owners, editors, and journalists.

There’s a historical view of public relations and spin-doctoring which is more interesting than you might think – though the overall impression it gave me was that all journalists ought to keep in mind the mantra of Harold Evans who suggested that all journalists interviewing politicians ought to ask themselves “Why is this bastard lying to me?” He also includes an interesting chapter on the ethics of journalism – with a healthy critique of the toothless UK Press Complaints Committee.

He ends, logically enough, with the influence of the Internet, which has spawned all sorts of challenges to conventional media. He uses the example of Matt Drudge’s exposure of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal as a touchstone case, reminding us that Drudge was just an individual citizen, not a paid journalist. Digital information technology is changing so quickly, it’s difficult to know what will last or what will happen next – but he outlines all the important issues.

I found this a much more interesting and stimulating book than its modest title led me to expect. If you want to know what’s happening in journalism right now, it will bring you right up to date.

© Roy Johnson 2005

Journaalism   Buy the book at Amazon UK

Journalism   Buy the book at Amazon US


Ian Hargreaves, Journalism: a very short introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN: 0192806564


More on journalism
More on creative writing
More on writing skills
More on publishing



Filed Under: Journalism Tagged With: Journalism, Journalism - A Short Introduction, Media, Publication, Writing skills

Mediactive

December 27, 2010 by Roy Johnson

new journalism, new publishing, new media

Mediactive is the latest stage in an argument that has been developing for some time now. In 2004 Dan Gillmor launched the notion of the ‘citizen journalist’ in his polemic We the Media. He argued that news is too important to be left entirely in the hands of professional journalists, and that bloggers (who were at that time a new phenomenon) had a corrective influence that should be encouraged. Since anyone with access to a computer and the Internet can start blogging within five minutes, it was in the power of ordinary people to create an additional and maybe an alternative voice to the established press and the broadcast media. They can also do this at virtually no cost, because the open source movement makes powerful software available to us free of charge. Since that time the sales of print newspapers have been plummeting, and bloggers have risen in importance and influence, to the extent that all major newspapers now have their own staff bloggers, having once ridiculed their very existence.

Mediactive Mediactive is Gillmor’s update to these arguments, in which he urges us all to become more active, sceptical, and open consumers of information – but also active participants in its creation. And he even provides the tools to do the job. In the past you needed to own printing presses, publishing companies, and distribution networks to make even the smallest item of information available to a wider audience. But now all that has changed. Because as he argues very persuasively (referencing Clay Shirky) – the barriers to entry are virtually zero. “You don’t need anybody’s permission, and you don’t need much money either”. In other words, individual entrepreneurs now have an entirely new opportunity to make information available to the public.

His book is in three parts: first, the arguments for becoming active in the creation of media (print, blogs, video, podcasts); second, the tools for engagement and how to use them; and third, the large socio-legal issues and conflicts in online advocacy and the realms of media literacy in education.

This is an interesting book in its own right as a physical object. Mediactive exists primarily as an on-going project, a web-based set of resources, of which this printed book is only one manifestation, which might well be called Version 1.0. Other manifestations already exist as web pages, and you can download the whole thing as a PDF file free of charge at Mediactive.com. In time, as new materials, updated evidence, modifications, and corrections are made, the version number will change – just as in the case of software at the moment.

Dan Gillmor is one of those people who believe that making books available as free downloads increases the sales of a print version. It has to be said that in this form of print on demand (POD) format these books are not very attractive. They have small page margins, the first lines of paragraphs are indented, typography is crude, and perhaps worst of all, underlining is used to show where hyperlinks exist in the online version.

It has no index, footnotes, or bibliography. All of these are available in the master copy which exists on line. It’s rather like a book that has been produced by an enthusiastic amateur using a desktop publishing kit. It’s also written in bite-sized chunks for reading on screen. What works in one medium doesn’t necessarily translate well without problems for another

However this is the Brave New World of publishing and distributing ideas, and I think we might expect a few rough edges in these emerging forms, just as I’m equally confident that production standards will rise as the form matures. If you don’t believe me, have a look at any document you produced twenty years ago.

Basically he wants us all to become more vigilant and active participants in using the new media tools at our disposal. His strongest argument in support of citizen media against traditional journalism and especially broadcast media is also its smallest and simplest elements – the hyperlink and the comment. If television news reports an event, we have no way of clicking through to check the source of the information or any alternatives there might be, and we have no way of offering corrective feedback or criticism.

Having urged participation, he then goes through the best known of the new media tools – blogs, YouTube, Flickr, and even content management systems (CMS), though like me, he drew the line at Drupal as a techie step too far.

All this creates an entirely new opportunity to the individual entrepreneur in any field of interest. That’s because the barriers to entry are virtually zero. “You don’t need anybody’s permission, and you don’t need much money either.”

He poses interesting questions and raises thought-provoking questions. For instance, the apparently simple query: “What is journalism?” If somebody documents arguments over a planning application to build a new factory in their neighbourhood on a blog – is that journalism? And if not, why not? His answer would be yes – because even though you are not paid for writing the article or employed by a newspaper, the article is performing the function of journalism by making information publicly available.

He also poses an interesting notion that is reflected in the very nature of the book itself. “When is a work complete?” Why shouldn’t a digital work live on and accrue to itself all the modifications, corrections, additions, and links to further information that become available over time? There is no reason why a book should not be like a Wikipedia entry – subject to constant updating and revision.

Of course this idea leads in turn to the question “What is a book?” – to which this production is an interesting answer. Of course we are accustomed to a book being a relatively static or fixed entity, existing in maybe at the most two or three editions. But there is no reason why we should not refer in future footnotes and references to Book Title, Version 3.1.5

Mediactive   Buy the book at Amazon UK

Mediactive   Buy the book at Amazon US

© Roy Johnson 2011


Dan Gillmor, Mediactive, Lulu.com, 2010, pp.183, ISBN: 0557789427


More on digital media
More on technology
More on theory


Filed Under: Media Tagged With: Communication, Cultural history, Journalism, Media, New media, Publishing, Technology

On Writing Well

July 26, 2009 by Roy Johnson

best-selling guide to sharpening your writing style

William Zinsser is professional journalist (former writer and editor on the New York Herald Tribune) who manages to express a love of writing and an appreciation of good style without ever dragging readers into the swamps of grammatical nit-picking and rule-governed instruction. In On Writing Well he expresses himself in an urbane and conversational style typical of popular magazines. This is a reassuring approach for those who want a guided tour of writing issues, held by the hand of someone experienced in the craft. It’s rather like having a writing coach at your shoulder as he talks you through what writers think and the decisions they make.

On Writing Well He’s particularly alert to the fear of those who lack confidence. The first part of the book is taken up with his principal recommendations. These are to cultivate brevity and clarity, and to omit any form of ‘clutter’. He has some wonderful examples of equivocation, ambiguity, and deliberate obfuscation drawn from American public life – including such gems from Alexander Haigh as “at this juncture of maturization” [that is ‘now’] and “We must push this to a lower decibel of public fixation. I don’t think there’s much of a learning curve to be achieved in this area of content.”

He then covers the means by which this clarity is to be achieved. It involves, logically enough, choosing your words carefully, and developing a unity of approach and subject matter.

The third part of the book deals with different forms of writing – such as reportage, interviews, and travel writing. It also covers scientific writing, business and even sports. These chapters are aimed at aspiring journalists, but there’s much to be learned from such details as his sharp-eyed analysis of the travel cliché: ‘villages nestling‘ and ‘byways half-forgotten‘:

Half the sights seen in a day’s sightseeing are quaint, especially windmills and covered bridges

The latter part of the book relaxes into its real subject – journalism – on which Zinsser speaks with feeling about its craft and techniques. In fact he ends by giving a paragraph-by-paragraph account of writing a travel article, explaining the subject options, the choice of vocabulary, and the strategies of approach which he tried and rejected. There’s a certain amount of patting himself on the back after-the-event in this, but aspiring writers might find it interesting to be taken through the generation of a piece of work in this way.

At its best, this approach will make readers sensitive to the effects they produce, and at its weakest it’s like a well-written guidebook on ‘How to Write Stories for Magazines’. But on balance, more people are likely to improve their writing by becoming conscious of rhythm and structure than are likely to fall into the abyss of verbal entertainment which fails.

© Roy Johnson 2006

On Writing Well   Buy the book at Amazon UK

On Writing Well   Buy the book at Amazon US


William Zinsser, On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction (6th edn), New York: Harper, 2006, pp.336, ISBN: 141775057X


More on writing skills
More on language
More on dictionaries


Filed Under: Creative Writing, Journalism, Writing Skills, Writing Skills Tagged With: Creative writing, Journalism, On Writing Well, Writing skills

Plagiarism, Copyright, and New Media

July 21, 2011 by Roy Johnson

how digitization affects creative work

Plagiarism

Plagiarism Copyright New MediaStrange thought it may seem, it’s not possible to copyright the title of a creative work. There is nothing to stop you writing a novel called Where Angels Fear to Tread, making a film called Gone with the Wind, or composing a musical show called A Little Night Music. In fact all of these examples have taken their titles from works of art which preceded them. You might be criticised for lack of originality; you would certainly risk creating confusion, but nobody could stop you. Copying somebody else’s title is not the same thing as plagiarism. This isn’t particularly well known, but it’s a fact.


Ideas

It’s also not possible to copyright an idea. You can have the idea for inventing invisible steel, but you can’t copyright or patent the idea itself. Copyright and patent applications are required to be detailed descriptions for the manufacture and implementation of new ideas. That is, you can only copyright the process of actually making invisible steel.

In the creative arts, it’s not possible to copyright the idea for a new series of television programmes, the plot outline for a new opera, or the concept for a new video game or iPhone app. You only have copyable rights to such a product when the thing itself has been produced. That’s why proposals for new works such as these are kept under tight wraps by production companies. They don’t want their rivals to get in first.


Music

The issues of ownership in recorded sound are increasingly complex since the arrival of digitization. But there are two fundamental distinctions to be made which affect plagiarism and copyright:

  1. Melodies can be copyrighted
  2. Chord sequences can not be copyrighted

In 1970 the Beatles guitarist George Harrison published a song called My Sweet Lord which went on to become a big hit. The problem was that it was note-for-note identical to a song called He’s So Fine recorded by an all-girl black group called The Chiffons. Harrison claimed that it was a case of ‘subconsciously’ copying. A court case ensued in which just about everyone’s reputation was damaged and a lot of money changed hands.

Similar cases have arisen elsewhere, but now with less frequency, since it is relatively easy to prove the similarity between two melodies, even if they have different underlying harmonic sequences.

In the case of harmony and chord sequence, the case is quite different. Any number of tunes have been written based on an identical harmonic sequence. George Gershwin’s I Got Rhythm has a relatively simple chord progression which has been a great favourite of jazz musicians because it provides a comfortable sequence on which to improvise. New songs composed to fit on top of the original harmony include Ah-Leu-Cha, Allen’s Alley, Anthropology, Lemon Drop, Lester Leaps In, Red Cross, Salt Peanuts, and Squatty-Roo.


Sampling

PlagiarismSampling occurs when one part of a song or a musical performance is taken and re-used as part of a different composition or performance. This is often done using electronic equipment and software programs. The sampled portion can also be edited or played back continuously in a ‘loop’ to form the background for a new composition. This practice has been widespread in popular music for the last twenty years.

It’s currently a vexed area of copyright and plagiarism, and many successful court cases have been fought by artists claiming that their work was being used without recognition or payment. Some have been successful even though the original sample has been edited and changed almost beyond recognition.

The argument in favour of sampling invokes the concept of ‘fair use’ in copyright law. This recognises the right of one person to quote from the work of another when creating an original work. [This happens all the time in academic scholarship and research.]

Open Source supporters such as Laurence Lessig and Cory Doctorow argue that sampling and fair use should be tolerated in favour of creative expression. Detractors argue that if the newly composed work relies too heavily on the original sample for its effect (such as a recognisable guitar riff in pop music) it falls into the realm of plagiarism.


Mashups

A mashup is the fusion of two separate sources of digital information to form a new entity. The following example shows the combination of a geographic map with information on flights in and out of Schipol airport Holland to produce a real-time (and interactive) data presentation program.

In this case it’s likely that permission has been sought to use these sources of information. But thousands and thousands of mashups are created in the world of pop music where the lyrics from one song are overlaid on the instrumentals or the melody of another. These instances raise issues which the copyright laws have been unable to resolve.

Defenders of mashups claim ‘fair use’ arguments, and point to the fact that the new product is ‘original’ in that it did not exist before. Critics have pointed to unacknowledged use of material, but the court cases they have brought have rarely been successful, because the people being sued rarely have any money. Pop music mashups is a minority sub-culture in which people produce things just for the hell of it – or just because it can be done.


Film

In the realm of film, literal copying and even plagiarism are rare – for the simple reason that access to the original materials would be difficult and permission to quote expensive. Rare exceptions include Woody Allen’s Play it again, Sam which includes reconstructions and direct imitations of films featuring Humphrey Bogart and in particular Michael Curtiz’s 1942 film Casablanca.

Sometimes films include re-makes of an original story. For example, The Big Sleep was originally filmed by Howard Hawks in 1946, based on Raymond Chandler’s 1939 novel of the same name. It was re-made in 1978 by Michael Winner and the setting transferred to England. In both cases, these are ‘interpretations’; of Chandler’s original story.

In 1998 Luc Van Sant created a shot-for-shot remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 film Psycho, which was itself taken from Robert Bloch’s 1959 novel, based on a true-life Wisconsin serial killer. Although many of the camera angles and shots are very similar, the cast is different, the setting updated, and the theme music re-orchestrated. It was not particularly well-received, but nobody accused Van Sant of plagiarism: the film was seen as more of a hommage to the original.


Video

Because much video is now digitised, it is much easier to copy and ‘quote’ than a film printed on a 35mm celluloid strip. Consequently, much video footage is now used in mashups. These are often created for comic effect – with visual materials from one source counterposed with audio tracks from something entirely different.

A popular case in point is the short sequence from Joachim Fest’s 2004 film Downfall about the last days of Adolf Hitler. This has been used as the basis of any number of satirical parodies. The original video footage and the sound track of Hitler’s furious rant about the war being lost is retained – but new sub-titles are inserted with reference to anything from English football managers being sacked, Hitler’s plans to invade Ireland, his rage at having been banned from Microsoft’s arcade game Xbox. and even rants about the frequency and quality of Downfall parodies themselves. In this example (ranting about the new iPad) he finishes his rant with a request not to put the video clip onto YouTube.

What makes these clips funny is the fact that the film remains the same, but the subtitles are re-written to provide ridiculous and completely inappropriate subjects for his rantings, often focussed on trivial contemporary events. Why is this not classed as plagiarism? For two important reasons. First – the people who make these parodies don’t suggest for one minute that they have made the original Downfall footage. Second – they are not attempting to profit from their re-use of the visual material. Their object is to create fun which is freely available to anybody.

Joachim Fest has endorsed the production of these parodies on the grounds that they reinforce his original message – that people who become too powerful should be exposed by revealing their megalomania, with mockery if necessary.


Blogs

Blogging is rather like the Wild West of the Internet. Anybody can write whatever they wish and publish it to a personal blog for the rest of the world to see and read. There is virtually no control over content, no censorship, and no monitoring of who says what.

Nevertheless, bloggers are on the whole respectful and they attribute the sources of any materials quoted, with web links to the original and hat-tips acknowledging the authors. Some people break these conventions and steal other people’s news items, but they are often found out and held up to ridicule. That’s because once something is put up onto the Internet it’s easy to check its origin and the time and date it was put there. Anyone claiming an ‘exclusive’ or lifting someone else’s copy can be found out if the same material exists in an earlier published version. Even a string of words less than a sentence long can be traced via a Google search in less than a second.

It was common only a few years ago for people to deride blogging as no more than a form of vanity publishing. Now, every self-respecting business (particularly news-related publications and broadcasters) have their own in-house bloggers.


Web sites

In their earliest manifestation, web sites were specialist repositories for scientific research papers and archives of academic materials. Since the democratisation of the Internet, the Web is also now big commercial business. Some online companies exist for the sole purpose of throwing up web pages which will attract the attention of Google searches.

As a consequence of this change, an enormous amount of copyright infringement and plagiarism occurs on web sites. That’s because some people will shamelessly copy existing web pages and take already-syndicated articles to give their own sites more ‘content’. There are even programs that will automate the process. (These are called ‘page scrapers’.) Shady business companies adopt this practice to attract visitors with a minimum of effort and make money from advertising on the site.

However, they do so at their peril, because Google ranks any ‘duplicate material’ as ‘redundant pages’ and demotes them in its page and site rankings.

A similar lack of original content occurs on web sites known as ‘link farms’ or ‘portal sites’. These are sites which merely provide lists of other web sites – usually in categories with multiple sub-menu options. That is, they are empty of any original content. These too are downgraded by Google in its rankings.


Newspapers

Most established newspapers now have their own web sites, and they employ journalists to write the news items and articles that they publish both in print and on line. Copyright and plagiarism is almost never in question. Even when a newspaper uses a photograph or a short report supplied by an independent news agency such as Reuters, the fact will usually be credited and the original source named.

However, a recent case shows that there are always possible exceptions. Johann Hari was a journalist writing for The Independent. He specialised in radical issues, and in particular he wrote in-depth interviews with controversial political figures. Recently, he has been accused of breaking the journalist’s code of ethics. By comparing the text of his articles to previously published work it has been possible to show three primary instances of plagiarism.

  1. He used quotations from other people’s work – without attribution.
  2. He re-wrote other people’s articles, using the structure, sequence, and the arguments of the original.
  3. He used quotations from other people’s interviews – as if the words had been addressed to him personally.

Hari at first strenuously denied these charges of plagiarism, but then it was discovered that he had adopted a false identity (‘David Rose’) and used it to maliciously edit other people’s Wikipedia entries, besmirching their reputations and boosting his own. He was suspended from the Independent, and then eventually admitted his guilt.


Magazines

The only time copyright issues occur in magazines is when one publication decides to re-print an article from another. But this is usually acknowledged, with a footnote along the lines of ‘This article first appeared in the July 2010 issue of Harper’s Bazaar‘.

However, the recent success of The Huffington Post has raised a number of copyright issues. Arianne Huffington created her online news service in 2005-2009. It offers a combination of a frequently updated digital news service with magazine-style articles written by specialists. It has been very successful, and now has versions covering Canada, America, France, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom.

But much of the content of the HuffPo is generated by bloggers who are not paid for their articles. They’re encouraged to contribute on any subject they wish; and their work is mingled with product placement articles and other junk journalism. There have also been recent accusations that armies of HuffPo staff are being employed to re-write other people’s original work to escape any accusations of plagiarism.


Copyright cases

Wikipedia has a useful list of copyright case law in Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, and the United States. This takes account of historical rulings and recent cases involving digital works, trademarks, photographs, peer-to-peer file sharing, definitions of originality, distribution, and even ‘what is not a sculpture’.

© Roy Johnson 2011


More on technology
More on digital media
More on journalism
More on creative writing
More on writing skills
More on publishing


Filed Under: Journalism, Media, Publishing Tagged With: Copyright, Journalism, Mashups, Media, Plagiarism, Publishing, Sampling

Print Journalism

June 30, 2009 by Roy Johnson

essays on journalism – from print to the Internet

More than 12.5 million national newspapers are sold in Britain every day. The figure goes up to 14 million on Sundays. And for every copy of the Guardian sold each day, ten copies of the Sun cross the counter – which is what led former Sun editor Kelvin McKensie to rather cruelly call the Guardian ‘the world’s worst newspaper’. This publication covers every possible aspect of print journalism, and I suspect it has been produced in the hope of becoming a standard text in departments of journalism and media studies.

Print Journalism The chapters are written by ex-journalists now teaching at four universities – City London, Sheffield, Cardiff, and Lincoln – so it seems there must be a regular career path leading out of the Street of Shame and showing other people the best way to get there. Articles in the first section deal with the history, structure, and the financing of print media. Who owns what; which titles sell most copies; and how they make a profit.

There’s a certain amount of overlap and repetition here, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing, because the newspaper and magazine publishing business is a lot more complex than it appears on the surface. The second section gets straight down to practical advice for would-be journalists: how to be a reporter; how to conduct interviews; what makes a good news story; how to write good introductions and structure paragraphs.

Then, moving into the newsroom itself, there are chapters on the role of news editor, what sub-editors do, and how pictures are captioned. The individual essays could profit enormously from more illustrative examples, and almost every page is crying out for graphics.

The would-be journalist is given a detailed breakdown of news features, and more importantly how to successfully pitch your ideas to editors, then how to write them if and when they are accepted.

Once you have written your piece and checked it several times over for style, content, accuracy, spelling, and grammar, it then goes to a features editor who will edit it all over again. There’s a whole chapter explaining this process. It’s a tough world, and this is required reading for anybody who wants to make a success of freelance writing.

You are unlikely to be invited to write comment or opinion pieces, but you could break into print via reviewing. How to write them is explained in detail – and these days its as likely to be reviewing radio and TV programmes as traditional books and theatre performances.

Print journalism is now as we know being challenged by the online world – though you are even less likely to earn income from it. There are essays which analyse the differences between newspapers’ print and online versions, and technical advice on how monitor screen and web browsers affect how and what we read on screen.

There’s also advice on writing blogs and wikis, before the collection winds up with essays on the ethics and law in journalism, copyright, and intellectual property rights – which is one of the best short explanations of a complex issue I have seen for quite some time.

© Roy Johnson 2005

Print Journalism   Buy the book at Amazon UK

Print Journalism   Buy the book at Amazon US


Richard Keeble (ed), Print Journalism: a critical introduction, London: Routledge, 2005, pp.347, ISBN: 0415358825


More on journalism
More on creative writing
More on writing skills
More on publishing


Filed Under: Journalism, Writing Skills Tagged With: Communication, Journalism, Print Journalism, Writing skills

  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • Next Page »

Get in touch

info@mantex.co.uk

Content © Mantex 2016
  • About Us
  • Advertising
  • Clients
  • Contact
  • FAQ
  • Links
  • Services
  • Reviews
  • Sitemap
  • T & C’s
  • Testimonials
  • Privacy

Copyright © 2025 · Mantex

Copyright © 2025 · News Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in