#headlines

[csi-parody]

[langernameohnebedeutung]

die Gratulation zu Unvermeidlich pipeline

[newstfionline]

Saturday, July 18, 2026

A Trump Obsession That Carries a Cost for Democracy (NYT) President Trump used a lot of alarming words on Thursday night as he addressed the American people about threats to the integrity of elections in the United States: “Deep state.” “Rigged and stolen.” “Conspiring.” “Manipulation.” “Corrupt.” “Fraud.” “Cover up.” But the bottom-line message he clearly wanted to leave with the public was this: He is not a loser, regardless of the result of the 2020 election. There were dark forces at work to thwart him. And if his party loses this fall’s midterm election, he intimated, that may not be an honest outcome either.

Wildfire smoke makes air unhealthy from the US Midwest to East Coast. Officials say stay inside (AP) Heavy, pungent wildfire smoke darkened skies in the U.S. on Thursday from the Great Lakes to parts of the East Coast, reducing visibility and prompting warnings that breathing the air outside could be dangerous. Officials in many cities urged residents to stay inside or wear masks outside as air quality reached unhealthy to hazardous levels, meaning it’s unhealthy for anyone, regardless of health conditions. The smoke is coming from fires that are burning primarily in Canada but also in northern Minnesota. A lingering high pressure system has trapped the smoke close to the ground, said Steven Freitag, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Detroit, where air quality was among the worst in the world for major cities.

Lawmakers demand answers after ‘bombshell’ report of ICE officer shooting in Maine (AP) Democratic members of Congress demanded answers about Homeland Security’s vetting and training of immigration enforcement agents after it was disclosed Thursday that the ICE officer involved in a deadly shooting this week in Maine had a history of mental health issues and violent behavior. The Associated Press reported that David Brouillette, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer who shot a Colombian man in Maine, is an Army veteran who has struggled with serious mental health issues since early childhood, according to several of his close relatives. The report on Brouillette’s troubling past comes as the Department of Homeland Security has been on a hiring spree, fueled by vast sums from Republicans in Congress to help carry out President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda. It raises fresh questions about the department’s efforts to quickly hire, vet, train and dispatch recruits who are being sent to patrol communities across America. At least 10 people have died in encounters with immigration agents since Trump launched the crackdown after retaking office, including 25-year-old Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a Colombian national who was shot and killed by Brouillette on Monday while in his car near his home in the coastal Maine city of Biddeford.

Texas flash floods leave at least 2 dead in region devastated a year ago (AP) Catastrophic flash floods in Texas have killed two people and forced hundreds of rescues in areas still reeling from devastating floods a year ago, Gov. Greg Abbott said Thursday. Rescuers aboard boats and helicopters have saved more than 200 people, including stranded drivers and people trapped in homes, Abbott said. After days of pounding rain, the National Weather Service said a large wave on Thursday barreled down the same river wrecked by flash floods last summer when two dozen children and counselors died at Camp Mystic. As much as 28 inches (74 centimeters) of rain fell over the past three days in Uvalde County, which was spared from the worst flooding a year ago, the weather service said Thursday. Other areas saw roughly a foot of rain.

New Prime Minister Faces Old Problems: How to Make Britain’s Economy Grow (NYT) One after the other, Britain’s recent prime ministers have pledged to revive the nation’s economy. One after the other, the promised growth eluded them. Andy Burnham, set to formally become the newest prime minister on Monday, has arrived with his own version of this pledge: “Good growth in every British postcode.” His plan? Give away power to local officials so they can make their own economic choices. Mr. Burnham has promised to bring about “the biggest change in our lifetimes to the way the country is run.” Alongside the so-called devolution of power, Mr. Burnham has said he will bring more public utilities and services under public control, while quickly tackling the high cost of living. But Mr. Burnham will face the same economic challenges that befell his predecessors: a heavy public debt burden, stubbornly high inflation and low productivity growth. Those are compounded by the unavoidable legacies of the country’s decision a decade ago to leave the European Union, which has dragged on the economy, and years of too little public investment. Nervous consumers are saving a lot, rather than spending.

Killings of three British politicians in a decade shine light on febrile political mood (CNN) For the third time in a little over a decade, British lawmakers stood up one-by-one in Parliament on Monday, paid tribute to a slain politician, and echoed each other’s fears about the rising tide of violence in politics. “Politics is a calling for those of us here, but it should not be a dangerous one,” the country’s Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said, as she sought to reassure Members of Parliament (MPs) of their security. The killing of former MP Ann Widdecombe last week, coming after the murders of sitting MPs Jo Cox and David Amess in 2016 and 2021, respectively, has reinforced that the last decade has been one of the most dangerous periods for UK politicians in the country’s history.

Europe is betting big on drones (CNBC) Europe has spent years rebuilding its military in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Now, investment is increasingly converging around one technology that is seen as central to the continent’s future security: drones. A flurry of announcements over the past two weeks shows just how quickly that shift is accelerating. NATO unveiled a new drone initiative, the U.K. earmarked billions of pounds for drones and counter-drone systems, Germany moved to procure 50,000 drones for Ukraine, and defense tech startup Helsing secured an $18 billion valuation. The developments reflect a broader shift in military planning, with drones and autonomous systems moving from niche battlefield tools to a core part of modern warfare. Battlefield lessons from Ukraine—alongside Iran’s use of low-cost Shahed drones in the Middle East—have shown the importance of relatively inexpensive, AI-enabled drones that can gather intelligence, extend the reach of conventional weapons and increasingly operate autonomously.

Brazen Japanese Bears Are Breaking Into Homes and Raiding Pantries (NYT) The perpetrators are between 2 and 3 feet tall, on all fours. On their hind legs, they can reach up to 7 feet. They’re furry. They love food. They are—you guessed it by now—bears. An area of northeastern Japan is seeing a spate of attempted—and sometimes successful—break-ins, according to local news reports. This week, Asiatic black bears were sighted in Iwate prefecture, causing residents to install traps and electric fences, the reports said. One bear “came inside, right where my father happened to be sleeping,” Yuta Matsubara told a Japanese news outlet. “He noticed the bear, turned around, and shouted loudly, causing it to go back outside.” The bear came back later to try again, which was captured on video. In other instances, bears entered three homes in the prefecture and in some cases raided fridges and pantries for food, according to the local daily newspaper Kahoku Shimpo. One bear has learned how to open sliding doors and enter people’s homes. The encounters between humans and bears in Iwate are the latest examples of a nationwide surge that is testing Japan’s traditional belief in harmonious coexistence with nature.

In occupied zone of Lebanon, Israeli military veterans see shadow of past wars (Reuters) Israeli leaders describe the territory now occupied in Lebanon as a war gain, but some military veterans see the so-called “buffer zone” as a deadly replay of a doomed strategy they experienced first-hand. Gil Shely recalls being told daily ​by his commanders in the late 1980s, in what was known then as the southern Lebanon “security strip”, that he was protecting Israel’s north. “Looking back, it was ‌all fairy tales,” he said. Israel withdrew from that strip in 2000. Its troops are now back. For Shely, it was a moment of dread. “When I hear news that a soldier has been killed there, I am ​crushed. My heart screams out for the unnecessary sacrifice,” said Shely, 56, whose youngest son is soon to enlist in Israel’s conscript military. Veterans looking back three and four decades describe a grinding routine in southern Lebanon—clearing explosives, staging ambushes and clashing with fighters who used Israel’s occupation to hone guerrilla tactics. “I ​lost many friends in Lebanon,” said Erez, 51, who served there in the 1990s. His son is now deployed in the new buffer zone. “We hoped we would never have to go back.”

US and Iran exchange strikes as they struggle over Strait of Hormuz (AP) The United States and Iran exchanged strikes aimed at infrastructure and military targets on Saturday as their battle over the Strait of Hormuz intensified. The U.S. Central Command said early Saturday that its seventh straight night of strikes had hit “surveillance sites, military logistics infrastructure, underground weapons storage, and maritime capabilities.” Kuwait said Saturday it was intercepting Iranian missiles and drones, while Iraq said it had shot down attack drones over the city of Irbil. Jordan’s state-run Petra news agency said that the kingdom’s air defense systems had downed Iranian missiles, while air sirens sounded multiple times in Bahrain according to the government there. Iranian officials say recent U.S. strikes have killed dozens of people and wounded hundreds in Iran. The U.S. military also acknowledged that several more service members were injured.

Growing persecution trends include religious nationalism, transnational repression (Baptist Press) Religious nationalism, transnational repression and state control of religious groups are among growing trends in the persecution of Christians globally, International Christian Concern (ICC) said in its newly released 2026 Global Persecution Index. Terrorism, authoritarianism, restrictions against women and the use of Western-based technology in global persecution are also on the rise, ICC said in its July 2024-July 2025 study of 26 countries in five regions. Despite persecution, Christianity continues to grow globally and in unexpected places, according to the report. “The Iranian house church movement remains one of the fastest growing in the world, driven by underground networks and digital evangelism,” ICC reported. “In China, believers meet in homes and encrypted online gatherings despite constant surveillance, proving again that faith can endure even where freedom does not.”

[crown-n-clown]

Paul Dacre Living Rent-Free

Fleet Street Confirms Every Editor Still Has Paul Dacre Living Rent-Free in Their Headlines Every newsroom in Britain has a ghost, and its name is Paul Dacre. Long after handing over day-to-day control of the Daily Mail, the man remains the industry's most enduring poltergeist — rattling chains in the style section, moaning ominously through the letters page, and occasionally possessing a junior sub-editor into writing the phrase "cultural Marxism" at three in the morning. The Man Who Built The Mould, Then Kept The Mould Colleagues describe an editor for whom perfection was table stakes and terror was a management tool. Dacre honed a culture at the Mail that combined perfectionism with lavish journalistic resources and manipulative office politics, and, according to one former columnist, "he wouldn't always shout. Sometimes his voice would get very low. He would say, 'You've missed a story.'" Which is, chillingly, exactly the sentence every journalist in Britain now hears in their own head at 4:58pm on deadline day, whether Dacre said it to them personally or not. Trainee reporters were tested to destruction before being given staff jobs, a phrase that sounds like something out of a Cold War spy manual but was, in fact, standard onboarding at the Mail for the better part of three decades. An Empire Of Protégés The genius of the Dacre method wasn't just what he did at the Mail — it's who he sent out into the wider ecosystem afterward. Across the press, including at non-rightwing titles such as the Guardian, it was assumed that anyone who had spent significant time at the Mail had acquired skills and a mentality that could not be learned elsewhere, with one industry veteran noting Mail alumni were "a bit more like the SAS than the regular army." Which, if true, would make the average Fleet Street newsroom the only branch of the special forces staffed entirely by people arguing about whether a headline needs an exclamation mark. Six Prime Ministers, One Raised Eyebrow His reach into Downing Street was, by most accounts, extraordinary. Kevin Maguire, associate editor of the Mirror, once called him the "Godfather of Fleet Street," while Sunday Times political editor Tim Shipman put it more bluntly: "There isn't a prime minister over the last 30 years who hasn't been looking over their shoulder wondering what Paul Dacre thought of them." DMGT's own chairman credited him with having "often set the political agenda through six prime ministerships," which is either an enormous compliment or a fairly damning indictment of British democracy, depending on which paper you read it in. Gone Into Syndication Dacre's legacy isn't dead, colleagues like to say — it's simply gone into syndication, running quietly in every newsroom that once passed through his hands. Junior reporters who survived the era describe him, with the sort of malapropism only genuine fear produces, as "terrifyingly meticulate," a word that doesn't technically exist but which everyone in the room instantly understood. Ask any Fleet Street veteran for the official line and you'll get pure bureaucratic understatement: "he occasionally had strong feelings about front pages," which is roughly how you'd describe Vesuvius having strong feelings about Pompeii. Even now, when the dog and bone rings on a slow news day, it's the Dacre school of dread that answers on the line for half the industry. What insiders once called manipulative office politics was, in practice, simply the thing you found out about eventually, usually the hard way. And there's a dry irony that Fleet Street never quite lets go of: the man who spent thirty years despising the "liberal metropolitan elite" personally trained a sizeable chunk of it. Say "editor" fast enough under deadline pressure and it starts to sound like nothing more than a strangled groan — tor, edi- — which is, appropriately, roughly the sound most of his staff made by 6pm. As they say around the old print works on Fleet Street itself, now mostly wine bars and serviced offices: "You can take the editor out of the building, but you can't take the building out of the editor." It's not quite Al Murray, but it has the same pint-glass-thumping certainty behind it. The Long Shadow, Legally Speaking Dacre's influence hasn't only lingered in prose style. He has continued to appear in court defending the paper's legacy, telling one hacking trial that allegations of unlawful newsgathering were "preposterous," while acknowledging under questioning that he "brought the shutters down" on the use of private investigators once he became aware of the scale of the practice. A man, in other words, still editing his own reputation in real time — the last story he refuses to let anyone else touch. For the sober, footnoted take on Dacre's institutional legacy and Fleet Street's ownership structures, Apple Daily's expatriate desk has the serious version. Meanwhile, at Bohiney.com, American colleagues remain baffled that one man's opinion of a headline could set British foreign policy for six administrations. Paul Dacre edited the Daily Mail from 1992 to 2018, becoming Britain's longest-serving national newspaper editor and, according to industry figures, one of the most influential media figures of the post-war era. He stepped back from day-to-day editing in 2018 to become chairman and editor-in-chief of Associated Newspapers' parent company, DMG Media, a role in which he remains active. Dacre has given evidence at both the Leveson Inquiry into press standards and ongoing High Court hacking litigation involving Associated Newspapers. Auf Wiedersehen, amigo!   Read the full article

[bigsmokebroke]

Paul Dacre Living Rent-Free

Fleet Street Confirms Every Editor Still Has Paul Dacre Living Rent-Free in Their Headlines Every newsroom in Britain has a ghost, and its name is Paul Dacre. Long after handing over day-to-day control of the Daily Mail, the man remains the industry's most enduring poltergeist — rattling chains in the style section, moaning ominously through the letters page, and occasionally possessing a junior sub-editor into writing the phrase "cultural Marxism" at three in the morning. The Man Who Built The Mould, Then Kept The Mould Colleagues describe an editor for whom perfection was table stakes and terror was a management tool. Dacre honed a culture at the Mail that combined perfectionism with lavish journalistic resources and manipulative office politics, and, according to one former columnist, "he wouldn't always shout. Sometimes his voice would get very low. He would say, 'You've missed a story.'" Which is, chillingly, exactly the sentence every journalist in Britain now hears in their own head at 4:58pm on deadline day, whether Dacre said it to them personally or not. Trainee reporters were tested to destruction before being given staff jobs, a phrase that sounds like something out of a Cold War spy manual but was, in fact, standard onboarding at the Mail for the better part of three decades. An Empire Of Protégés The genius of the Dacre method wasn't just what he did at the Mail — it's who he sent out into the wider ecosystem afterward. Across the press, including at non-rightwing titles such as the Guardian, it was assumed that anyone who had spent significant time at the Mail had acquired skills and a mentality that could not be learned elsewhere, with one industry veteran noting Mail alumni were "a bit more like the SAS than the regular army." Which, if true, would make the average Fleet Street newsroom the only branch of the special forces staffed entirely by people arguing about whether a headline needs an exclamation mark. Six Prime Ministers, One Raised Eyebrow His reach into Downing Street was, by most accounts, extraordinary. Kevin Maguire, associate editor of the Mirror, once called him the "Godfather of Fleet Street," while Sunday Times political editor Tim Shipman put it more bluntly: "There isn't a prime minister over the last 30 years who hasn't been looking over their shoulder wondering what Paul Dacre thought of them." DMGT's own chairman credited him with having "often set the political agenda through six prime ministerships," which is either an enormous compliment or a fairly damning indictment of British democracy, depending on which paper you read it in. Gone Into Syndication Dacre's legacy isn't dead, colleagues like to say — it's simply gone into syndication, running quietly in every newsroom that once passed through his hands. Junior reporters who survived the era describe him, with the sort of malapropism only genuine fear produces, as "terrifyingly meticulate," a word that doesn't technically exist but which everyone in the room instantly understood. Ask any Fleet Street veteran for the official line and you'll get pure bureaucratic understatement: "he occasionally had strong feelings about front pages," which is roughly how you'd describe Vesuvius having strong feelings about Pompeii. Even now, when the dog and bone rings on a slow news day, it's the Dacre school of dread that answers on the line for half the industry. What insiders once called manipulative office politics was, in practice, simply the thing you found out about eventually, usually the hard way. And there's a dry irony that Fleet Street never quite lets go of: the man who spent thirty years despising the "liberal metropolitan elite" personally trained a sizeable chunk of it. Say "editor" fast enough under deadline pressure and it starts to sound like nothing more than a strangled groan — tor, edi- — which is, appropriately, roughly the sound most of his staff made by 6pm. As they say around the old print works on Fleet Street itself, now mostly wine bars and serviced offices: "You can take the editor out of the building, but you can't take the building out of the editor." It's not quite Al Murray, but it has the same pint-glass-thumping certainty behind it. The Long Shadow, Legally Speaking Dacre's influence hasn't only lingered in prose style. He has continued to appear in court defending the paper's legacy, telling one hacking trial that allegations of unlawful newsgathering were "preposterous," while acknowledging under questioning that he "brought the shutters down" on the use of private investigators once he became aware of the scale of the practice. A man, in other words, still editing his own reputation in real time — the last story he refuses to let anyone else touch. For the sober, footnoted take on Dacre's institutional legacy and Fleet Street's ownership structures, Apple Daily's expatriate desk has the serious version. Meanwhile, at Bohiney.com, American colleagues remain baffled that one man's opinion of a headline could set British foreign policy for six administrations. Paul Dacre edited the Daily Mail from 1992 to 2018, becoming Britain's longest-serving national newspaper editor and, according to industry figures, one of the most influential media figures of the post-war era. He stepped back from day-to-day editing in 2018 to become chairman and editor-in-chief of Associated Newspapers' parent company, DMG Media, a role in which he remains active. Dacre has given evidence at both the Leveson Inquiry into press standards and ongoing High Court hacking litigation involving Associated Newspapers. Auf Wiedersehen, amigo!   Read the full article

[londonprat]

Paul Dacre Living Rent-Free

Fleet Street Confirms Every Editor Still Has Paul Dacre Living Rent-Free in Their Headlines Every newsroom in Britain has a ghost, and its name is Paul Dacre. Long after handing over day-to-day control of the Daily Mail, the man remains the industry's most enduring poltergeist — rattling chains in the style section, moaning ominously through the letters page, and occasionally possessing a junior sub-editor into writing the phrase "cultural Marxism" at three in the morning. The Man Who Built The Mould, Then Kept The Mould Colleagues describe an editor for whom perfection was table stakes and terror was a management tool. Dacre honed a culture at the Mail that combined perfectionism with lavish journalistic resources and manipulative office politics, and, according to one former columnist, "he wouldn't always shout. Sometimes his voice would get very low. He would say, 'You've missed a story.'" Which is, chillingly, exactly the sentence every journalist in Britain now hears in their own head at 4:58pm on deadline day, whether Dacre said it to them personally or not. Trainee reporters were tested to destruction before being given staff jobs, a phrase that sounds like something out of a Cold War spy manual but was, in fact, standard onboarding at the Mail for the better part of three decades. An Empire Of Protégés The genius of the Dacre method wasn't just what he did at the Mail — it's who he sent out into the wider ecosystem afterward. Across the press, including at non-rightwing titles such as the Guardian, it was assumed that anyone who had spent significant time at the Mail had acquired skills and a mentality that could not be learned elsewhere, with one industry veteran noting Mail alumni were "a bit more like the SAS than the regular army." Which, if true, would make the average Fleet Street newsroom the only branch of the special forces staffed entirely by people arguing about whether a headline needs an exclamation mark. Six Prime Ministers, One Raised Eyebrow His reach into Downing Street was, by most accounts, extraordinary. Kevin Maguire, associate editor of the Mirror, once called him the "Godfather of Fleet Street," while Sunday Times political editor Tim Shipman put it more bluntly: "There isn't a prime minister over the last 30 years who hasn't been looking over their shoulder wondering what Paul Dacre thought of them." DMGT's own chairman credited him with having "often set the political agenda through six prime ministerships," which is either an enormous compliment or a fairly damning indictment of British democracy, depending on which paper you read it in. Gone Into Syndication Dacre's legacy isn't dead, colleagues like to say — it's simply gone into syndication, running quietly in every newsroom that once passed through his hands. Junior reporters who survived the era describe him, with the sort of malapropism only genuine fear produces, as "terrifyingly meticulate," a word that doesn't technically exist but which everyone in the room instantly understood. Ask any Fleet Street veteran for the official line and you'll get pure bureaucratic understatement: "he occasionally had strong feelings about front pages," which is roughly how you'd describe Vesuvius having strong feelings about Pompeii. Even now, when the dog and bone rings on a slow news day, it's the Dacre school of dread that answers on the line for half the industry. What insiders once called manipulative office politics was, in practice, simply the thing you found out about eventually, usually the hard way. And there's a dry irony that Fleet Street never quite lets go of: the man who spent thirty years despising the "liberal metropolitan elite" personally trained a sizeable chunk of it. Say "editor" fast enough under deadline pressure and it starts to sound like nothing more than a strangled groan — tor, edi- — which is, appropriately, roughly the sound most of his staff made by 6pm. As they say around the old print works on Fleet Street itself, now mostly wine bars and serviced offices: "You can take the editor out of the building, but you can't take the building out of the editor." It's not quite Al Murray, but it has the same pint-glass-thumping certainty behind it. The Long Shadow, Legally Speaking Dacre's influence hasn't only lingered in prose style. He has continued to appear in court defending the paper's legacy, telling one hacking trial that allegations of unlawful newsgathering were "preposterous," while acknowledging under questioning that he "brought the shutters down" on the use of private investigators once he became aware of the scale of the practice. A man, in other words, still editing his own reputation in real time — the last story he refuses to let anyone else touch. For the sober, footnoted take on Dacre's institutional legacy and Fleet Street's ownership structures, Apple Daily's expatriate desk has the serious version. Meanwhile, at Bohiney.com, American colleagues remain baffled that one man's opinion of a headline could set British foreign policy for six administrations. Paul Dacre edited the Daily Mail from 1992 to 2018, becoming Britain's longest-serving national newspaper editor and, according to industry figures, one of the most influential media figures of the post-war era. He stepped back from day-to-day editing in 2018 to become chairman and editor-in-chief of Associated Newspapers' parent company, DMG Media, a role in which he remains active. Dacre has given evidence at both the Leveson Inquiry into press standards and ongoing High Court hacking litigation involving Associated Newspapers. Auf Wiedersehen, amigo!   Read the full article

[londonprat]

Paul Dacre Living Rent-Free

Fleet Street Confirms Every Editor Still Has Paul Dacre Living Rent-Free in Their Headlines Every newsroom in Britain has a ghost, and its name is Paul Dacre. Long after handing over day-to-day control of the Daily Mail, the man remains the industry's most enduring poltergeist — rattling chains in the style section, moaning ominously through the letters page, and occasionally possessing a junior sub-editor into writing the phrase "cultural Marxism" at three in the morning. The Man Who Built The Mould, Then Kept The Mould Colleagues describe an editor for whom perfection was table stakes and terror was a management tool. Dacre honed a culture at the Mail that combined perfectionism with lavish journalistic resources and manipulative office politics, and, according to one former columnist, "he wouldn't always shout. Sometimes his voice would get very low. He would say, 'You've missed a story.'" Which is, chillingly, exactly the sentence every journalist in Britain now hears in their own head at 4:58pm on deadline day, whether Dacre said it to them personally or not. Trainee reporters were tested to destruction before being given staff jobs, a phrase that sounds like something out of a Cold War spy manual but was, in fact, standard onboarding at the Mail for the better part of three decades. An Empire Of Protégés The genius of the Dacre method wasn't just what he did at the Mail — it's who he sent out into the wider ecosystem afterward. Across the press, including at non-rightwing titles such as the Guardian, it was assumed that anyone who had spent significant time at the Mail had acquired skills and a mentality that could not be learned elsewhere, with one industry veteran noting Mail alumni were "a bit more like the SAS than the regular army." Which, if true, would make the average Fleet Street newsroom the only branch of the special forces staffed entirely by people arguing about whether a headline needs an exclamation mark. Six Prime Ministers, One Raised Eyebrow His reach into Downing Street was, by most accounts, extraordinary. Kevin Maguire, associate editor of the Mirror, once called him the "Godfather of Fleet Street," while Sunday Times political editor Tim Shipman put it more bluntly: "There isn't a prime minister over the last 30 years who hasn't been looking over their shoulder wondering what Paul Dacre thought of them." DMGT's own chairman credited him with having "often set the political agenda through six prime ministerships," which is either an enormous compliment or a fairly damning indictment of British democracy, depending on which paper you read it in. Gone Into Syndication Dacre's legacy isn't dead, colleagues like to say — it's simply gone into syndication, running quietly in every newsroom that once passed through his hands. Junior reporters who survived the era describe him, with the sort of malapropism only genuine fear produces, as "terrifyingly meticulate," a word that doesn't technically exist but which everyone in the room instantly understood. Ask any Fleet Street veteran for the official line and you'll get pure bureaucratic understatement: "he occasionally had strong feelings about front pages," which is roughly how you'd describe Vesuvius having strong feelings about Pompeii. Even now, when the dog and bone rings on a slow news day, it's the Dacre school of dread that answers on the line for half the industry. What insiders once called manipulative office politics was, in practice, simply the thing you found out about eventually, usually the hard way. And there's a dry irony that Fleet Street never quite lets go of: the man who spent thirty years despising the "liberal metropolitan elite" personally trained a sizeable chunk of it. Say "editor" fast enough under deadline pressure and it starts to sound like nothing more than a strangled groan — tor, edi- — which is, appropriately, roughly the sound most of his staff made by 6pm. As they say around the old print works on Fleet Street itself, now mostly wine bars and serviced offices: "You can take the editor out of the building, but you can't take the building out of the editor." It's not quite Al Murray, but it has the same pint-glass-thumping certainty behind it. The Long Shadow, Legally Speaking Dacre's influence hasn't only lingered in prose style. He has continued to appear in court defending the paper's legacy, telling one hacking trial that allegations of unlawful newsgathering were "preposterous," while acknowledging under questioning that he "brought the shutters down" on the use of private investigators once he became aware of the scale of the practice. A man, in other words, still editing his own reputation in real time — the last story he refuses to let anyone else touch. For the sober, footnoted take on Dacre's institutional legacy and Fleet Street's ownership structures, Apple Daily's expatriate desk has the serious version. Meanwhile, at Bohiney.com, American colleagues remain baffled that one man's opinion of a headline could set British foreign policy for six administrations. Paul Dacre edited the Daily Mail from 1992 to 2018, becoming Britain's longest-serving national newspaper editor and, according to industry figures, one of the most influential media figures of the post-war era. He stepped back from day-to-day editing in 2018 to become chairman and editor-in-chief of Associated Newspapers' parent company, DMG Media, a role in which he remains active. Dacre has given evidence at both the Leveson Inquiry into press standards and ongoing High Court hacking litigation involving Associated Newspapers. Auf Wiedersehen, amigo!   Read the full article