Once upon a time the route to a staff reporting job on a national newspaper was well-worn – starting off on a good local or regional, learning one’s craft and shorthand, before shifting on Fleet Street to get a foot in the door with the big boys.
Times, it seems, have changed – and now a few years spent pumping out propaganda for the Tories is enough to leapfrog hard-working hacks, regardless of your level of experience.
Last year Rats in a Sack reported on how a number of eyebrows were raised at the Mail on Sunday after it appointed Gabriel Millard-Clothier, the Conservative Party’s deputy head of media, as its new political reporter. Millard-Clothier had no journalism experience beyond a first-person piece about the poor value of his politics degree for the Times in 2020 and as recently as 2019 was still working in a Belugo restaurant with his duties, according to his LinkedIn profile, being as an “ice cream man, kitchen porter and waiter”.
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Now another Tory spinner has left CCHQ to go gamekeeper-turned-poacher – Aaron Newbury, until last year a full-time press officer for the Conservative Party, has been hired by the Daily Express as a reporter.
To be fair, Newbury has some media experience. Since leaving the Tories’ pay, he has worked as a freelance commentator, giving his opinions to various right wing outlets including, inevitably, GB News. But speaking one’s brains is a very different art to that of actual news reporting, which usually comes with years of experience getting out on the beat.
Still, as much of the Express’s output these days comes from just reporting verbatim the latest guff to come out of Kemi Badenoch’s and Robert Jenrick’s mouths and splashing it across the front page, perhaps he’ll fit in fine.
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