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Emily Bell - The Guardian

"One of the most singular problems or restraints encountered by journalists working in Britain are our stringent libel laws.".

Emily Bell
Emily Bell is editor-in-chief of Guardian Unlimited, the websites of Guardian Newspapers Ltd. In 2002 Guardian Unlimited won the Website of the Year at the British Press Awards. It is the biggest online newspaper in the UK with 56 million page impressions a month and over 4.5 million users. Emily joined Guardian Unlimited in 2000 as founder and editor of the MediaGuardian.co.uk website, and moved to her current post overseeing the network at the beginning of 2001.

Before this Emily worked for ten years at the Observer newspaper in various business reporting capacities, becoming business editor in 1998. She has reported on most aspects of the media industry and is now a media columnist for the Guardian and Broadcast magazine. She lives in Highbury with her husband and two children, Alfie and George.

How would you describe the current state of print journalism in England especially re the growing competition of internet and new media technologies ?

Print journalism in Britain remains highly competitive with 10 major national newspapers and a similar number of Sunday titles competing for the market. But it is undoubtedly the case that readership are beginning to look online for breaking news and online products, hence while overall news circulation's have declined online has increased over the last 2 years. In some cases though, in the case of The Guardian and Observer, we have seen our circulation increase in paper format at the same time as we have seen a greatly increased number of people going online. So it is not necessarily the case that the web is cannibalising print sales or individual titles, though undoubtedly the strength of the internet will not to the overall newspaper market any favours.

What type of relation (if any) do you hold with foreign newspapers ?

We have a number of affiliations with foreign newspapers on a wide scale of levels of co-operation. Perhaps one of the closest affiliations is with The New York Times where we have an agreement to use NYT copy, both in the newspaper and on the website.

Do journalists in England encounter any particular problems in the course of their work (lawfull or otherwise).

One of the most singular problems or restraints encountered by journalists working in Britain are our stringent libel laws. Unlike for instance in the US malice must be proved. Often the simplest of errors can lead a newspaper to courts for "libelling a person". This has been used in the past not so much for ordinary people to redress misrepresentation of themselves in the press, but as a mechanism used by the wealthy and powerful to suppress aspects of a newspapers work which they do not like. In an attempt to keep away from more formalised regulation such as a proper privacy law, the British newspaper industry works under self imposed guidelines draw up by the PCC (Press Complaint Commission) . Again there is some criticism of this system which could be argued favours the rich and famous over the ordinary members of the public.

What is the work market for journalists like ? Is it easy for young journalists to find a job ?

It is highly competitive to get a job in British journalism and the unfavourable journalism conditions have made it ever harder for journalists to break into the profession. However the recent expansion of websites and new media opportunities have helped the market a bit and despite the high failure rate of journalistic web sites it has still opened up opportunities for young journalists which might not have existed before.