spinning the good spin

Politicians come under all kinds of criticism for 'spinning', but really it is journalists who are the experts at overplaying a story. Indeed, it is an essential part of the occupation. "I didn't get into this business to write small, boring stories," a former colleague used to say. Given these skills, it should not be a surprise to remember that both Tony Blair and David Cameron came to power with ex-tabloid newspaper editors at their side.

Remembering the Blair government's injudicious and often disturbing use of simplification and exaggeration, particularly during time of war, it is easy to see why cherry-picking supportive evidence is problematic. However, cherry-picking is a key skill of the journalist; if they did not select the best parts of the juiciest stories, their articles would be uninteresting, book length and published days after the event. The need to entertain as well as inform disciplines the successful journalist to steer towards those issues and events that people want to know about, in a style they would want to read.

Moreover, simplification is not inherently a bad thing either. Again, simplification is a core part of the job of the journalist. It is difficult to think of an area of public life - outside of sport - where to tell the whole story does not require some degree of dramatic simplification. Indeed, good journalists sweat blood and tears writing the perfect first sentences, as these are the ones that lead the reader from the simple grab at the top of the article through to the detail in the body of the piece.

The approach taken by the Economist magazine is said to be "simplify, then exaggerate", and when one reads the magazine (though by some odd convention The Economist calls itself a newspaper) it is easy to see the virtue in this approach.

Picking up a copy at random, the 17 July edition contains a short article on the UK online food delivery business Ocado ("Keep on Trucking"), which shows the magazine's approach at its best. Opening with an arresting description of Ocado's "eerily sentient" warehouse, the article asks whether the sector can make money, introduces the reader to the industry, its recent past, Ocado's competition and draws to a close with some sense of where both Ocado and its rivals may be heading - "supermarket chains and online outfits will gradually come to resemble each other".

In just a few hundred words, the reader has learned a lot. More importantly, the article's compression has not come at the expense of truth, the facts are used judiciously, and opinion is carefully measured. Clearly, there is much that has not been said - and indeed Ocado's potential listing on the stock markets has generated thousands of words of comment in the newspapers - but as a general starting point into the industry it's not bad. It does no harm. However, it's a bit tepid. The company has put a value of itself at close to a billion pounds, and it has never made any money. Unsurprisingly, many of the newspaper comments have been somewhat sharper.