If you want tabloid tittle-tattle on your television, then look no further than Channel 5′s “unashamedly populist” news bulletins. Read the full story

Desmond gleefully plucks legs off C5 news spider

Channel 5′s news team are up in arms at changes to the its output. A proposed relaunch, due next year, will see job cuts and reporters expected to edit their own footage. All editors and newsroom staff are set to be made redundant, emphasising Richard Desmond’s commitment to destroying the livelihoods of journalists. (Source: MediaGuardian)

More men than women in journalism, notices Guardian

The Guardian has been doing a bit of digging on the balance of gender in journalism. Between the 13 June to 8 July, a team jotted down the bylines of articles in seven daily newspapers to find that the average percentage of female reporters is 22.6 per cent – a miniscule number compared to male journalists, who made up 77.4 per cent of the bylines. The Guardian has made the data available to download for any would-be graph-makers, so feel free to have a fiddle, as it were. (Source: MediaGuardian)

Hello NoW, I’m John Cleese, can I have some money?

Good to see John Cleese cracking some jokes as opposed to promoting car mechanics fixing your “faulty showers” (shudder). Talking to Radio 4′s Mark Lawson, he said he was disappointed that his phone hasn’t been hacked by the News of the World. “I live in hopeful expectation because I would love to get money out of that bunch of bastards,” he eloquently added. We’ve all got to eat, I suppose. (Source: Press Gazette)

Footage running up to Muammar Gadaffi’s bloody end was not too graphic to broadcast, Ofcom has ruled, despite hundreds of complaints from viewers. Read the full story

Usual suspects announced for BBC Olympic coverage

The BBC has announced its presenting team for next year’s London Olympics. No surprises here, as Gary Lineker, Claire Balding and Sue Barker will head up proceedings as Auntie gets sporty. You can breathe a sigh of relief though – Mark Lawrenson’s name isn’t mentioned anywhere. (Source: MediaGuardian)

The big question facing Midlands’ journalism

It’s a tough question, but the National Union of Journalists is set to try and answer it: is journalism in the Midlands dead? Job cuts abound, including at the BBC and regional publishers, and the NUJ has called a public meeting to discuss the issue. “Excellent, hard-working journalists are being thrown on the scrap heap,” said general secretary Michelle Stanistreet, “and the citizens of this region are losing a vital check on the activities of local politicians and businesses”. As long as the debate doesn’t turn into a rendition of Monty Python’s parrot sketch, it’ll be interesting to hear the union’s conclusion. (Source: MediaGuardian)

Stop arguing about Clarkson and watch Stewart Lee

Despite strikes, the onset of winter and the gradual collapse of the Eurozone, Brits have been complaining in their droves about a man who makes Simon Cowell look fashionable. Yes, Jeremy Clarkson hit the headlines again, just in time for his annual Christmas book, a collection of his erudite thoughts. You can read what our Barny de Hoedt thought of the Clarkson furore here, but in the meantime we leave you with a snippet of Stewart Lee, explaining his own thoughts of the Top Gear troublemakers:

“Of course I would love it to be a million every night but I’ve not been set a target [by Channel 4]. We would all like the numbers to go up but it’s not what this is about.” Read the full story

UK terrestrial coverage of new international stories in developing countries has declined since 1989, a report has revealed. Read the full story

Former BBC reporter Michael Cole has hit out at the corporation’s reliance on “gratuitous and usually utterly redundant” pieces to camera in its news coverage. Read the full story

A facebook-owned news application is “inevitable” and “will not bode well for media companies”, according to the founder of NewsCloud, the social media research blog. Read the full story