George Brock, head of journalism at City University, says in a post today that the Independent "ripped off" its Kelvin MacKenzie article, in which he called on all journalism colleges to be closed, from City's student magazine.
Brock says: "One of the many pieces of practical journalism our students complete is a 108-page magazine, X-City, which has just appeared. Kelvin developed his views about training journalists at greater length and the interviewer, Harriet Thurley, turned it into a first-person piece. This was then ripped off, without any attribution, by The Independent today (a lesson in itself on what to expect from national papers). Credits were inserted a few hours later."
His view of MacKenzie's call to shut journalism colleges is fairly succint: "Kelvin is talking bollocks."
- Bit surprised by MacKenzie writing for the Independent, after all he told the Today programme when i was launched: "What I don't like is the current Independent and, having put them side-by-side for the first time today, I can't see how the current Independent, which is long, boring and political, is going to compete very well, with this rather light, frothy, interesting and not left-wing paper..."
