This is a guest blog by Nick Seddon, deputy director of the independent think-tank Reform. He took part in a recent College of Journalism discussion about coverage of the Government's reforms to the NHS in England, along with health specialist Paul Corrigan who has also written a blog post on the subject.

Paul Corrigan is right that the Government's problems in health reform have much to do with its lack of a narrative. The Government's failure to make the case for change has made life easy for the critics of reform and allowed the debate to become dangerously polarised.

It has also resulted in sequences of news reports on television or radio in which, first, unsatisfactory standards of care are exposed, while in the next someone argues that there is no need to change the system. Perhaps it's time for media editors, producers and presenters to join up the dots?

Simply put, the challenges facing the NHS are about quality and money, with quality issues thrown into relief by the financial challenge. Demand will outstrip supply every year of this Parliament unless big changes are made to the way the NHS works.

The last Labour government tried to solve the problems of the NHS in two ways.

First, a remarkable increase in public spending. The NHS budget more than doubled in real terms between 1999-00 and 2009-10.

Second, an injection of new ways of working, especially using competition to drive efficiency and get more for less.

The NHS budget is certainly not going to double in this Parliament and the next. If the Coalition turns its back on efficiency reforms, what else can it do? If it doesn't have another idea, then it will get a deteriorating service with rising waiting times and a steady withdrawal of services from the public. Images of patients waiting on stretchers for overdue care, of GP surgeries going into receivership, and the unions on strike, could become familiar to us all.

The BBC would be doing something exciting if it showed the public some of the new ways of working which hold out hope for the future, both in the UK and abroad.

Last week Reform published ten case studies of healthcare innovations enabling better care for patients while saving money. The Nuffield Trust and The King's Fund have such case studies, too.

The narrative the Government needs is right here: when spending cuts act as a driver to do things differently, they are improving the quality of services at the same time as reducing their costs.

The care model needs to be turned upside down. Hospitals are so rooted in the public and political psyche that we allow them to keep taking on more services whether or not they are solvent or safe. Yet, as Paul Corrigan estimated in a recent Reform report, the unnecessary cost of keeping all hospitals open will be around £5 billion per year by the end of this Parliament.

We need to care for older people in nursing homes and enable people with chronic conditions to manage their conditions at home. The BBC could do some great feature pieces about the excellent care being provided in new ways and new settings, which patients love because it's just what they want (for example, home dialysis, telecare programmes etc).

The bad news for everyone who is bored of the healthcare debate is that when the bill gets through Parliament the real job will be just about to start - the job of innovating and developing new business models in this most fast-moving of scientific fields. This will be difficult. The last government was accused of constant "re-disorganisation". This government has created a pile of organisational shanty towns in which structures and systems are cobbled together or thrown up hastily in the knowledge that they will be torn down in due course.

The public doesn't understand all the watchdogs, new boards, council functions, commissioning groups, and more. Equally, according to most surveys, they don't care how their healthcare is provided; they just want it to be high quality and accessible.

Showing some of the alternatives might perhaps open up a useful national debate. If the Government wants people to support change, it has to tell them why change is needed, give them a vision of the future, and then repeat this vision so their eyes are fixed firmly on the prize.

It was timely that the launch of the latest Oxford Internet Survey coincided with the debate in the Commons over releasing all documents about the Hillsborough disaster. The debate came about because of a well supported online petition which, as the survey points out, is the most popular form of political participation online.

What's fascinating (and worrying) is that the survey otherwise suggests that political and civic participation really has not caught on online - even in the general election last year. Signing a petition is by far the most common activity, at just 18%. Other activities like contacting a political party or joining a civic association online are a low 5% or even less.

Compare that to shopping online: 86% of internet users bought online in the past year. Paying bills online ranks at 57%, but when it comes to a council tax bill or parking fine it drops to 24%. It raises important questions about how successfully central and local government have engaged the public online.

But I wonder if the researchers are asking the right questions or looking in the right place.

My own sense of civic participation online is much richer. In my community in Shepherds Bush, London, there's a whole online ecology of civic and/or political activity with a small p.

Take, for example, the excellent Shepherds Bush Blog; or the energetic campaign to stop council plans for skyscrapers along the Thames at Hammersmith; and small business websites like the Askew Business Network which campaigns as well as connects. And that's just three, in one London postcode.

Of course London is full of the next-generation internet users that the OxIS report headlines. But I know of communities all over the country where the internet has provided the medium for people to communicate, connect and campaign. That's where the 'Big Society' is happening and where the professional politicians need to begin to catch up.

Fiona Anderson is the television writing coach at the BBC College of Journalism.

The BBC has sent me from Hackney to Norfolk to do my BBC Journalism Trainee Scheme (JTS) placement and I'm enjoying exploring this new (to me) countryside of meadows and broads - but it doesn't always go to plan.

Last weekend I headed for Pensthorpe, the wildlife park where they film BBC Springwatch.

It was an hour from my base in Norwich but I had a bus timetable and felt confident.

Pensthorpe was amazing - ducklings, blue dragonflies darting around and a wildflower meadow. But it was a long, hot afternoon and after three hours walking I felt ready for home. So I headed for the nearby bus stop: a pole on a grass verge in the middle of what felt like nowhere.

Fifteen minutes later - still no bus. Whipping out my mobile I called the bus company. "Er, no," said the man, "the last bus was an hour ago. You must have the wrong timetable..."

By this time Pensthorpe was deserted. All I could see were miles of empty fields, some now sinister-looking big ducks and a long road with unfriendly cars whizzing past.

Then, like a mirage, I saw a BBC logo appearing through the late afternoon sun. By chance, the Radio Norfolk stage had been at Pensthorpe earlier in the day and Ian, the driver, had popped back to close up. Like a woman possessed, I sprinted up to him and said, "Hello, I'm a JTS trainee - please help!"

Luckily he recognised me, squeezed me in between all the gear and took me back to Norwich. It just shows that it's worth saying hello to everyone while you're on JTS, as you never know when you might need a hand.

It wasn't exactly what I'd planned for the day but I got to ride in the radio car, which was excellent. I don't think we have a training module for that...

Elizabeth Dawson is based in Norwich for a year on the BBC's Journalism Trainee Scheme. She has just finished her online placement and is moving to radio.

This time last week, I left Hangzhou to head home from a very large, very empty airport. It was modern, full of familiar brands and had coffee at £4.50. Like other parts of the new China, it felt too big, and I wondered if it had been built to please some local baron.

A little vignette: I like Chairman Mao badges and always look out for them in Shanghai (below). On this trip, I'd found a pack of ten for 25 yuan (£2.50) - "my last price", the woman told me. Round the corner was the same pack for 10 yuan. I bought two: it is called the market.

China reminds me of Victorian Britain when it was truly 'the workshop of the world'. For Victorian Huddersfield, read Hangzhou. Industrial smog is accepted as part of industrialisation. Heavy lorries pounded the road outside my hotel day and night.

And, like Victorian Britain, Chinese television is a dynamic mix of public and private. The state-run channels - CCTV - are divided by genre. No BBC1 mixed schedules: entertainment, youth, news, military (yes, soldiers in uniform reading the news), classical and English.

I understood the latter but wasn't sure how much I enjoyed it. Chrome spinning titles, glossy sets and glossy presenters, not all of them Chinese (many Australian). Where were the graduates of the school for announcers I visited?

I saw discussions and debates that were far too cordial. More heat, and less studio light, please! Note to CCTV producers: just because somebody speaks English doesn't mean they are interesting.

And the news? It was out of sync with the world news cycle by a day or two (thank you BBC News online for keeping me up to date), and used all the technology, with satellite links etc - but not always to good effect.

News judgments and values? Well, my favourite item had some poor young female reporter sent to the local crankshaft factory to report on how well it's doing (helping to make all those lorries that kept me awake). It reminded me of Midlands Today 40 years ago.

The entertainment shows are either variety with a camera pointed at them - think The Billy Cotton Band Show - on several stages or derivatives of Blind Date or Japanese-style gameshows. Then there were young men with strange haircuts getting 'down with the youth' (think Janet Street-Porter 20 years ago).

The private channels are faster and pacier. I couldn't say whether they are better or less political. Macao TV played some vintage English films: Sunday afternoon schedules round the clock.

There you have it. China was a cacophony - on the box, on the roads, and from the factories. Britain from 1830 to 1980; in just three decades. Much to take away and think about.

John Mair is a senior lecturer in broadcasting at Coventry University and visiting professor at Zhejiang University of Media and Communications in Hangzhou, southern China.

I am in Hangzhou, southern China, on an exchange with Zhejiang University of Media and Communications, which has 11,000 media students. Yet it is only the second biggest in China: Beijing University has many more.

China understands the importance of mass-media to the Party and the country. Each morning, students here scurry to classes well before 8am (a time not known to their British counterparts).

The most sought after course is in bilingual (Chinese/English) announcing. Sixty of the best-looking students - 90% girls, and maybe the best and brightest - are selected from hundreds of applicants each year for a four-year degree. They almost all want to appear on TV. Half of them will make it.

I talked to some of them in an English class: they were interesting but very lacking in curiosity. Their main question was which variety of English accent to adopt - US, English, BBC standard or regional? I told them to go with the flow and do what they are most comfortable with. Some were already 'American' beyond redemption.

They were shocked to hear that the BBC does not train 'announcers' and neither do any British universities. We work on the basis that you either have the talent and ability, and the hinterland to do it well, or not.  

I told them about how Jon Snow had handled a live interview with Alastair Campbell on the day of the Hutton Report with no advance notice. He used his knowledge to try to nail the master spinner. Paxo's legendary 'brain-storming sessions' on Newsnight were a lesson for them all, too. Or see Fiona Bruce's account of her job here. 

Somehow, I feel that their desire for fame was stronger than any desire to inform, let alone to cause mischief.

Earlier, I had been at a recording of a Chinese version of Blind Date in the huge campus TV studio. Shiny floor, shiny-suited presenters. Plenty of bright lights. Forty girls (how many of them were maybe announcer retreads?) and a boy. He decided. It brought out sheer nostalgia in me for early Saturday nights on ITV.

In fact, the whole announcing school was sheer nostalgia too. Memories of early BBC/ITV and the corps of announcers who were actors - real or imagined. Equity ruled the roost at ITV. BBC announcers wore dinner jackets to broadcast on the radio.

These Chinese Sylvia Peters will not be in twinset and pearls on the sets of the many news programmes on CCTV - but they will not be far off. Their haircuts were just so and their fashion sense well developed for 18- to 19-year-olds. Those who don't make it to jobs under the studio lights on graduation will become teachers or similar.

Coming to this country is nothing if not nostalgic. But China is catching up with the rest of the world. New skyscrapers, new roads everywhere. Smog too. No doubt they will overtake us in television as they are in every other industry.

John Mair is a senior lecturer at Coventry University and a visiting professor at Zhejiang University of Media and Communications. 

At the age of 15, my week's work experience stretched ahead of me forever. And that's what I wanted. I'd made a beeline for our local radio station.

Instead of going to school, I jumped on the bus to see what working life would be like - minus the wearisome responsibilities my parents were often complaining about.

Suffolk wasn't famous for much, aside from Ipswich football club (then managed by Bobby Robson) and the composer Benjamin Britten who'd lived on the other side of the county.

So the idea that Bury St Edmunds was home to something as glamorous as Saxon Radio made it impossibly seductive.

And it wasn't television news.

My father and his brother had both worked as cameramen for Anglia Television in Norwich, way up in Norfolk. As 'stringers', they'd be called out in the middle of the night to car accidents, discoveries of dead bodies and royal appearances at nearby Sandringham.

News was a little strange to me as a teenager: the working hours seemed ridiculously inconvenient, the equipment cumbersome and the 'HQ' too far away for my tiny mind to comprehend. Norwich might as well have been in a different country.

The imposing and sprawling Anglia House (above), close to Castle Hill in Norwich, was an intimidating and desperately masculine space - windowless, humourless and seemingly over-resourced. Walking round the building, quietly following my father as he delivered a VHS for transfer, I couldn't help wondering why there needed to be so many machines and so many special operators. And what was a union? Why did everyone have to be so grumpy? How could an editor get excited about a piece of footage showing nothing more than a road with a crumpled car on it?

When one of the tape operators asked me what I wanted to do - "I want to be a journalist" - his response was as damning as it appeared dismissive. "It's difficult," he said, "you probably won't make it."

No surprises then that I chose not to spend my work experience week at Anglia.

No, Saxon Radio beckoned. As the station was staffed by only a handful of people, I ended up going on assignments with a reporter (I'm sure corporate insurance policies would prevent a teenager from being driven around by a relative stranger in a car with a dodgy gearbox and with equally questionable skills operating the gear stick).

I wrote headlines for the hourly news bulletin - which were read out on air. I looked for stories. I suggested stuff. I interviewed people. I got to edit contributions for playout on air.

And I got my own demo out of it as well. Somewhere in the attic is a tape marked "Saxon Radio" with my pre-broken voice on it.

I caught the bug there. I lost it during my university years. But there was something in that early experience that showed me how live broadcasting was gripping; inspiring even. I still get a reminder of that bug when I set foot in the BBC's London newsroom. It remains with you. Untreatable.

The career path is sometimes not as straightforward as our imagination would have us believe. And for a while - before the explosion of internet self-publishing tools - I would have argued that not having spent 15 years doing the kind of thing I found I loved doing in my work experience was a sign of failure.

I don't think that now. Perhaps because, as one grows older, the naive definitions our childish minds insist upon to make sense of the world are supplanted by more complex interpretations.

What remains - or should, if you've not had it drummed out - is that child-like thrill which fuels passion and aspiration (two values required by any journalist).

And it's work like that being done for the BBC's School Report today - a countrywide curation of school children's efforts to produce their own news output - which reminds me of my own early experiment with work, and adulthood.

How many children enjoying the thrill of delivering their first piece to camera today will end up as the journalists of tomorrow?

It was a rip-roaring success for Channel 4 - nearly 9 million viewers watched the last of the five-part series on 15 February. Big Fat Gypsy Weddings became a national appointment to view on Tuesday nights, and the subject round the water coolers on Wednesday mornings.

According to Firecracker Films which made the series, it "went where documentary had not been before". Firecracker's next commission is in the bag, as is My Big Fat Gypsy Christmas (2011). What next, Come Dine with Mr Paddy Doherty - Mr Big Fat Gypsy (2012)?

BFGW captured the zeitgeist of the tabloid red tops which are still running BFGW stories now, well after the end of the series.

Last Sunday, Paddy was offering a bare knuckle fight to the death on the News of the World's front page. It is the Big Brother of our Big Society times.

What's more, the original one-off programme, My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, won an award at the Cultural Diversity Network (CDN) Diversity Awards last year, as Most Groundbreaking Programme.

But was the series true to Gypsies, or did it misrepresent them?

Jake Bowers, Gypsy journalist and editor of Travellers' Times Online, was cross, very cross about BFGW at a 'Coventry Conversation' last Friday.

Firstly, it featured mainly Irish Travellers (hence Paddy D) who make up just 10% of the British Gypsy community. Romany Gypsies - the majority - were notable by their absence. Some had been filmed at Meridien in Coventry, where they are engaged in a turf battle, but that segment hit the cutting-room floor

Worse, BFGW featured Irish Traveller traditions that were unknown or alien to Bowers - a Romany Gypsy. The big fat wedding dresses (some of them inflatable, others decorated with lights, like Blackpool Tower) for which the series will be remembered were not something he had encountered in his lifetime on the road - which has featured spells in Sweden, Oxford, Luton and now Hastings.

Worse still, the tabloid-favourite 'grabbing' of young girls which took place at the weddings, to secure a kiss and their hand in a future marriage, was simply not on his radar. As a Romany Gypsy, Bowers said this 'tradition' "has no place in our history or culture" and it makes gypsy women look like "whores and slaves"; while the so-called documentary as a whole had created an image of "trailer-trash Flintstones".

Rather than widening understanding, it has simply built new stereotypes to add to the old, he said. In Bowers' words, BFGW was a "sneering mockumentary, not journalism".

This view was confirmed by a straw poll of the student audience whose positive image of Gypsies had not been enhanced by watching the series. It was further strengthened by the unannounced presence of a Daily Star reporter in the audience, hoping for some titbits from Bowers.

The production company had consulted Bowers in the early stages of research for the series. He now wants to make his own series to show the rich history of and the daily struggles of Gypsy life. He was, though, at a loss as to how his My Real Gypsy Life might win an audience of 9 million.

Bowers concluded that the viewers of BFGW were holding up a mirror to themselves and their prejudices. The series, in his view, said little about his community "but a lot about your's". This row will run and run.

John Mair founded and runs the Coventry Conversations at Coventry University. You can listen to this and others here.

This is a guest post by Graham Smith, Executive Officer of Republic, a group which campaigns for a democratic alternative to the monarchy:

It has long been felt by a great many people in this country - not just republicans - that when it comes to the monarchy and coverage of the royal family the BBC fails in its duty to remain balanced and impartial. That's why Republic has this week written to David Jordan, the BBC's Director of Editorial Policy, to ask for a meeting to discuss the BBC's coverage of the monarchy in general and the royal wedding in particular. 

Specifically, we have raised serious concerns about widespread and institutionalised bias in favour of the monarchy which is evident throughout the BBC's output, whether on air, in print or online - a bias which has the effect of excluding, offending, disparaging and marginalising a substantial section of the British public.

The basis for our complaint is that the monarchy is a contested and disputed institution. Ten to 12 million people in this country would support its abolition; polls indicate more than half of Britons want the taxpayer to stop funding the monarchy; other polls show a majority would prefer that William replace Charles as next in line to the throne; two-thirds want the palace opened up to more scrutiny.

Furthermore this is, by its very nature, a political institution. It is not a benign entity: it is a core part of our constitution and the power structures that exist in this country. 

The BBC has failed to convey the diversity of opinion about the monarchy. It has presented the issue as being one-sided and implied that the whole country is excited about the wedding. It has covered the plans and expectations of monarchists (who in a sense are also a minority) while ignoring Republic and republicans. 

The BBC's own guidelines state that editors must: "... apply due impartiality to all ... subject matter". Of course we don't expect to see a republican voice in every royal report, but every royal report must be balanced, the tone must be impartial and disinterested, and the content must reflect the monarchy's contested nature. The BBC could also make some effort to cover republican opinion and activity in a fair and balanced way, without resorting to clichés and stereotypes.

I believe one source of this problem is the BBC's failure to categorise the monarchy as a 'controversial issue'. I would stress that even without this categorisation our argument stands up and the Corporation's duty of impartiality applies. However, categorising this issue as controversial is not only appropriate, it would place greater emphasis on the need of editorial staff to ensure balanced and impartial coverage.

To press this point further, look at the BBC's guidelines on 'controversial subjects', which state:

"In determining whether subjects are controversial, we should take account of:

- the level of public and political contention and debate

- how topical the subjects are

- sensitivity in terms of relevant audiences' beliefs and culture

- whether the subjects are matters of intense debate or importance in a particular nation, region or discrete area likely to comprise at least a significant part of the audience

- a reasonable view on whether the subjects are serious

the distinction between matters grounded in fact and those which are a matter of opinion."

On most of these points, the monarchy seems to fit the bill:

The issue is regularly a subject of debate in the media and is certainly contentious. As noted above, opinion is clearly divided on the various issues around the monarchy. A number of MPs support the abolition of the monarchy, including Caroline Lucas MP, leader of the Green Party. Parliament has recently debated reforming the finances and secrecy of the institution.

The subject is often topical and there is clearly a need to be sensitive to the beliefs of the one in five people in this country who oppose the monarchy. The issue is clearly of a more sensitive nature in certain regions and nations of the country and carries important connotations within the context of various nationalist movements. Clearly it is a serious subject grounded in fact and opinion.

With a large section of the community believing the monarchy should be abolished, we are entitled to expect our national broadcaster to serve us as much as anyone else. Indeed, the BBC's coverage isn't just a disservice to republicans, it can also be argued that the whole community suffers when a serious issue is not dealt with appropriately and impartially by a trusted and respected institution such as the BBC.

So it is unfortunate that the sum total of the BBC's reporting gives a misleading impression of the monarchy, reinforces misunderstandings about its nature and its role in our country, suggests that all right-thinking and sensible people have positive feelings toward the monarchy, and fails to question or scrutinise those assumptions. The effect of all this is that a substantial body of opinion is marginalised and excluded by the BBC. 

Republic is not alone in questioning the BBC's royal coverage: there is a widespread view that the BBC has a pro-monarchy bias, a view even shared by some of the Corporation's own distinguished journalists. Not least, apparently, Jeremy Paxman, who in 2008 accused the BBC of "fawning" over the royal family, adding that the BBC did not know whether to "report" or "celebrate" royal events. I would suggest that the job of the BBC is to report, yet instead it ends up celebrating. 

And that is why Republic is seeking a meeting with BBC executives, asking for a review of royal reporting and a fairer, more balanced and more representative take on the issue of the monarchy.

There's been lots of chat in my circles this week about the last Monday's Horizon presented by Paul Nurse, the Nobel prize winner and new head of the Royal Society. The programme, Science Under Attack, questioned whether mild-mannered climate scientists like Phil Jones at the Climate Research Unit have been effective enough at defending their research from attacks that have increasingly emerged from unfamiliar routes like the blogosphere, Freedom of Information requests and Twitter.

I enjoyed the film and felt Nurse's concluding message was the right one - that, rather than bemoaning the way the rules of the game keep changing, academic scientists have little choice but to learn those rules and play the game. 

But not everyone agrees. Many, including colleagues in the science communication world, felt that it was a classic example of 'scientism' - a growing tendency to demand that science should trump everything else as the only sound basis for good public debate and decision-making. 

It was a point well made by my friend Professor Mike Hulme in his reaction. He rightly argues that climate change is about much more than the underlying science, and cannot be resolved without the contribution of politics, ethics, social science etc. As Hulme puts it, in the programme, Nurse "reveals an exalted view of the normative authority of science".

On one level of course it is hardly surprising that Paul Nurse (left) should want to see the scientific way of resolving problems become the dominant one. He may have made a television programme but Nurse is not a commentator; he is one of the world's greatest biologists.

This is a man who, as he explained in the film, fell in love with science as an eight-year-old boy chasing Sputnik, and has lived his dream in laboratories, absorbed in the minutiae of science for over 30 years. For Nurse, the scientific method - testable hypothesis, observation, reason, evidence - has delivered amazing benefits for the world. We should hardly be shocked to discover he believes that debates on climate change, GM crops and HIV/AIDS will be improved by great science. But given that Nurse runs the Royal Society and not the country, his will continue to be just one world view competing with all others.

Having said that, I'm not even sure he was guilty of positing science as the answer to everything. My reading of his programme was rather different. For me, Nurse was arguing that the more people engage in debates on issues like GM crops and climate change, the more the need for scientists to have their say alongside this myriad of voices (described by some as 'scientists on tap not on top'). 

In sharp contrast to some scientists I know, Nurse did not call for the increasingly vocal critics of science to be silenced, censored or even ignored. Indeed, he can hardly be accused of dismissing all other ways of seeing the world when his interviews with sceptics form the main part of his programme and were notable for the generous and respectful manner in which he conducted them.

This was in some ways a gentle and simple film which managed to focus on the battles over climate change without descending into the nasty, polarised style that has for too long characterised that debate. If you haven't seen it yet, you should do so.

Fiona Fox is Director of the Science Media Centre, an independent press office working on the front line between national news media and science on controversial issues.

Fiona was joined by Professor Colin Blakemore of Oxford University and the BBC's Environment and Science Correspondent, David Shukman, for a College of Journalism masterclass on Reporting Science.  

They are the lost tribe of British journalism. Trying to find a labour or industrial correspondent in a newsroom today is like entering the Disappearing World.

They have vanished. Just one full-time correspondent, the Press Association's highly respected Alan Jones, is still on the labour beat.

Once the Labour and Industrial Correspondents Association (LICA) had up to 70 members. The Financial Times alone employed six on its labour desk. In the past, there were enough labour correspondents to mount a cricket team to play the union barons before the Trades Union Congress (TUC) started each year. Today, they could not umpire that match.

On 16 March, the last rites will be sounded for their association with a Media Society/LICA debate, symbolically at the TUC, on the Strange Death of the Labour Corrs.

They were the aristocrats of the newsrooms of the 1960s and 1970s. Top of the tree. High up the pecking order; even higher than the lobby corrs. Many of the great names of modern British journalism started or stayed as labour corrs - Peter Sissons, Peter Jenkins, John Cole, Geoffrey Goodman, Kevin Maguire, John Lloyd, Bernard Ingham, Richard Littlejohn and Andrew Neil among their number. Some will take part in that Media Society debate.

But just where have they all gone? Like the rest of the country, they were 'Thatchered' in the 1980s. Unions were tamed/neutered (you decide) by Margaret Thatcher (and her messenger Bernard Ingham); membership of unions plummeted; strikes became historic; and so too did those who reported the struggle of labour with capital. No labour movement, no labour correspondents needed.

British industry changed too. Manufacturing became increasingly a thing of the past. Factories and mines closed and were converted to shopping malls, enterprise zones or wasteland. Cities like Coventry became mere shadows of their former mighty industrial selves. The whole pattern of employment was transformed for the better/worse (you decide).

In the new era, service industry workers are loath to organise, and even loather to strike. Walkouts are non-existent at call centres. There's not much left to report on the labour front. Labour corrs have joined Britain's industrial museum - a relic, like her car industry.

Intriguingly, the decline of the labour corr has coincided with the rise of the union spin doctor -there to massage the image of the declining unions; to keep the general secretary from talking to the press directly and maybe inappropriately. Some, like Charlie Whelan of Unite, have become powers and personalities in their own right.

But the last two decades has also seen the rise of the cult of business and business journalism. Mammon became the new God. Huge business sections sprouted in the posh and not-so-posh papers, filled with ads for the new capitalism, and content to match.

Playing footsie with the FTSE became the norm. Business was 'in' - so 1990's - labour was 'out' - so 1970's. The denouement of that uncritical approach was seen in the Great Crash (Mark Two) of 2008. Many banks plummeted like Icarus, having sailed too close to the bad debt sun. Few of the business corrs saw that coming. Fewer still could explain it.

But ... with the coalition government cutting public spending deeper than even Margaret Thatcher dared, are there signs of the labour behemoth stirring again? The TUC itself is calling a march in London against 'The Cuts' on 26 March.

Could we see a return of strikes and winters of discontent over the next four years as the unemployment register mounts? Might the labour corrs be in for a second wind; a return from their professional grave? The obituaries may be premature.

Above: Police remove a protestor from outside the Grunwick factory in Willesden during a protest in July 1977. The strike at the Grunwick photograph-processing plant lasted from 1976 to 1978.

Labour Correspondents - RIP, A Media Society/LICA debate will take place at the TUC on Wednesday 16 March at 6.30pm.Tickets/more information from the Media Society. 

Jobs in journalism are hard to find. Maybe it's time for a change of direction?  

How about a job that requires you to eat and think about chocolate all day? Not to mention working from an office in West London's Berkeley Square with "a fair amount of travel" thrown in.

Among the executive jobs in yesterday's Daily Telegraph was one for a Taste Assistant with the Green and Black's chocolate company.

Salary: up to £35k with a "generous chocolate allowance" in case you haven't had enough during your day's work.

Qualifications? "A strong passion for good food - particularly organic farming and especially chocolate."

Even if you don't want the job, it might be worth applying because the interviews will be followed by "a cookery-based challenge", presumably involving chocolate.

Now, isn't that worth thinking about for all job applications? 

Talk about being in the right place at the right time; well, sort of.

Peter Hunt, the BBC's Royal Correspondent, got the call about the engagement of Prince William and Kate Middleton when he was at the Royal Courts of Justice in central London attending the 7 July bombings inquest. A few moments later, camera crew at the ready, Hunt was outside the court building doing a live two-way for the BBC News Channel.

The royal engagement dominated every news outlet across the UK and was still 'breaking news' well into the evening of 16 November - the day of the announcement. By then, there was little more to be said; yet the plethora of reports continued the following day.

Call me a cynic - just as Peter did - for questioning the timing of the Prince's 'good news' during a period of widespread economic discontent: was the announcement fortuitous luck or a carefully planned PR exercise? Hunt insists that the future king is fiercely independent and was totally in control of the announcement.  

CoJo News Debrief is an ongoing series of conversations with journalists about the back story of their own news reports. Previous films in this series:

CoJo News Debrief with Robert Pigott

CoJo News Debrief with Nick Robinson

CoJo News Debrief with Jon Sopel

We know what Cock Robin does - he hides his head under his wing - and who can blame him. Journalists in the UK, on the other hand, have an unfortunate tendency to seek solace in seasonal clichés. How many of the following have you noticed, or used?

Big freeze/chill

Big compared to what and according to whom?

Biting wind

Gnash! Descriptive but overused.

Bitter/bitterly cold

Pint or half? Descriptive but overused.

Blizzard/blizzard conditions

The etymology of the word 'blizzard' is interesting. There's also an official definition of one: "A violent snowstorm with winds blowing at a minimum speed of 35 miles (56km) per hour and visibility of less than one-quarter mile (400 metres) for three hours."

Chaos

Prefer disruption, because you can increase or decrease the degree of disruption.

Haven

Anywhere indoors with heating.

Joy

Assumed to be the experience of all children.

Misery

Assumed to be the experience of all adults.

Sub-zero

Since the freezing point of water is 32 degrees Fahrenheit, I assume, along with the rest of the journalistic profession, that this is a reference to the freezing point of water in either Celsius or Centigrade.

Treacherous roads/pavements

Why do we insist on attributing human qualities to the climate?

Whiteout

Unlikely in the United Kingdom; more frequent in the Arctic or Antarctic. It's when a snow storm makes the land indistinguishable from the sky.

Winter Wonderland

Spare me!

Finally, just to show I'm a humourless old curmudgeon with a broken boiler, here's my favourite cold weather expression from my native Nottinghamshire: 'T'grittuzizahrt' translates as 'large, yellow lorries are spreading grit and salt on the roads'. Or, put another way, 'It's going to be ruddy cold tonight!'

The estate agents Strutt and Parker have taken a quarter-page ad in the BBC's in-house paper Ariel under the heading: "Relocating to Manchester?"

It offers a single property - "an historic Georgian Manor House with stunning views and far reaching gardens and grounds." About 4.4 acres.  

Beneath the picture of the elegant house, with its long terrace and ha-ha leading down to a beautifully manicured lawn, is the price: "Offers in Excess £1,350,000."

Word has clearly leaked out about how everyone at the BBC is a millionaire.

Quite a few people at work have had a nasty cold and a cough recently - it's probably the same where you work. Strap-hanging on the Tube this morning, I was struck by the number of people with the chesty cough that's typical of the latter stages of the infection. And, you know what? Nobody mentioned swine flu.

Yet, little more than a year ago, every sore throat and runny nose was a potential precursor to a mysterious and potentially lethal disease against which the United Kingdom was poorly prepared.

How quickly we forget.

"Swine Flu to Hit Millions," intoned the Daily Mail (July 3 2009), continuing:

"Tamiflu may be rationed says health minister as he issues warning of 100,000 fresh British cases a day.

Millions of Britons will contract swine flu in the coming months, the Health Secretary predicted yesterday. Putting Britain on epidemic alert, Andy Burnham warned that there could be 100,000 fresh cases every day by the end of August.

Under new rules announced yesterday, anyone with flu symptoms is advised not to go to their GP for fear of spreading the disease. Instead they should quarantine themselves in their home.

Sufferers will have to nominate a 'flu friend' to pick up antiviral medicine from special drug collection points, and then post them through the letterbox."

Remember all that?

The clamour was born out by the first H1N1-related deaths in the UK and, then, as the tabloids' predictions of devastation failed to materialise, interest began to wane. Before long questions started to be asked, among them, whether the Government had overreacted; whereas previously the tabloid hue and cry had been that the country was underprepared. It was all a bit rich.

There was no corner of the world and no aspect of human existence that, it seemed, was unaffected.

The Daily Mail reported on Wednesday 9 September 2009 that in France la bise, the practice of planting a kiss on each cheek to say hello or goodbye, could be outlawed because of swine flu.

In Naples, pall bearers at the funeral of Gaetano Doria, Italy's first swine flu victim, wore rubber gloves and masks.

"They refused to touch the coffin and it arrived in church on a trolley," reported the Mail, "despite health officials insisting there was no need for such precautions."

(Oddly, I thought at the time, there was no discussion in the Metro about the risk of infection from picking up a free newspaper on the Tube that had been previously handled by any number of possible carriers. Perhaps newsprint had special antiviral properties.)

So, apart from the fact that hindsight is a wonderful thing, what can journalists learn from the way the swine flu story was covered? In no particular order, I came up with:

- The enduring power of the popular press to influence decision-making at the highest level

- The propensity for certain news organisations to be pessimistic because they think bad news sells

- The pressure for other news organisations to jump on the bandwagon

- The danger that this becomes received wisdom

- The judgmental, simplistic assumption that somebody is to blame or someone is incompetent

- That it takes courage for any journalist to stand in the way of this avalanche and say 'hang on a minute'

- The fact that the media has a short memory.

And I've found it's not just news organisations that are quick to forget. For example, the word 'pandemic' momentarily slipped the mind of a helpful civil servant I spoke to recently.

"It's such a long time ago, I can't remember the terminology," they said.

"Did it reach pandemic status?" another asked me when I rang for guidance about statistics.

Then there are the people whose lives were touched forever by the disease but who returned to obscurity once the media spotlight had passed over them.

What became of the family of Jacqui Fleming, for instance - the mother from Glasgow who was the first person outside the Americas to die as a consequence of contracting swine flu?

Perhaps they declined further publicity; perhaps nobody has approached them for a follow-up. Either way, there are a lot of unanswered questions about the ordinary people whose encounter with swine flu constituted a quick flash in the media's pan, when attention hovered longest over celebrities and the most tragic.

The statistics are problematic, too. For instance, finding a definitive number of swine flu deaths is difficult, because in many cases those who died had other underlying conditions. H1N1 hastened their deaths but was not the primary cause, so the Office for National Statistics (ONS) had trouble giving me a figure. The latest UK total I could find was 29, as reported by the BBC on 17 July 2009.

So, as far as the media's concerned, swine flu has slipped into obscurity. But that doesn't mean there aren't stories out there associated with the pandemic. Maybe one of them is about a triumph of public health education; that the outbreak would have been worse if people hadn't followed the advice to: "Catch it, bin it, kill it".

Who knows?

Judging by the number of people coughing and sneezing on public transport, that's something else from the swine flu pandemic that's been quickly forgotten.