Newspapers

Sunday’s New York Times travel section has a 36-hour guide to what to do and see in Edinburgh. Unfortunately it’s terrible, listing rotten pubs and feeble restaurants. Though it’s a) questionable how much attention people pay to this sort of mini-guide anyway and b) I can’t hope to defeat the NYT,  let me say that I’ll provide a much better personalised weekend guide to Auld Reekie to any reader who happens to be visiting the city this summer/fall/winter.  Can’t say fairer than that, can you? PS: The NYT opens its guide to the city thus: EVERY August, the global theatrical community — well, at least the part that is drawn

I carry no candle for Conrad Black and I’ve never worked for him. But his conviction on charges of fraud (albeit for raking in a comparatively trivial $3m) has occasioned another one of those interesting and illuminating differences between British and North American journalism. Without exception every British journalist I’ve talked to feels rather sorry for Lord Black of Crossharbour; without exception every American or Canadian hack seems pretty pleased that he’s come a cropper. Doubtless there are exceptions to this general rule (after all, my sample size is pretty small in the scheme of things) but it’s striking nonetheless. The case for Black’s defense is simple: he’s a newspaper