I only got one proper Christmas present this time around, but it was a cracker. My Kiwi friend Tim Sturm gave me a copy of Stephen Jones' book On My Knees, about the Rugby World Cup of 2003 – won by England – hurrah! This was an especially sporting choice by Tim, given what Jones has to say about the relative merits of England rugby and New Zealand rugby.

Here is how Jones describes one particularly exhausting day at the coal-face of rugby reportage, fraught with both mental and moral worries, and physical exhaustion.

The late evening kick-offs meant that I would be still hacking away in the media centre well into the early hours, with people bustling around cursing malfunctioning modem connections, barking views on the game, vainly trying to discover from the locals if any restaurants stayed open till 4 a.m. England were beautifully embarked now. They would have to walk into some kind of catastrophe not to go through to the semi-finals, and, as near as dammit, Europe was guaranteed a finalist.

It was a matter of trying to shine up the last few words; check with London that they were captioning the pictures with the names of players who were actually in them; talk to the graphics department about our representation of the Greenwood try; have our Rugby Roundup man talk us through the other events of the day in the tournament; rewrite and retouch; making sure our preview material already filed referring to the next day's games still stood up. Then, dredge for nuggets from all our columnists - Lawrence Dallaglio, Jeremy Guscott, Malcolm O'Kelly and Chris Paterson all 'wrote' ghosted columns in some or all of our editions. Guscott is highly professional in his approach and Bob Dwyer, in my experience, easily the best match analyst in the media anywhere, worked for us throughout the tournament.

Sometimes, it falls into place. Sometimes, it is a long grind. At some time, when all the maelstrom of production of the first edition had subsided back in London, when the media centre bustle gave way to tired faces and a slow sense of relief, there would then be a check with the sports editor. Are we OK, have we covered the bases, have we missed a story that our rivals are running? No, as usual.

Just before I made that call, I took another. It was from a member of the Harlequins who told me that Will Greenwood, the try-scorer, was to leave for home the next day. Carol, his wife, had been admitted to hospital with complications early in her pregnancy. It was only just over a year ago that Will and Carol had lost Freddie, their son, who had been born 18 weeks premature.

It was a story. A profoundly upsetting one for the Greenwoods but in the sense that it was bound to come out soon (due to Greenwood not appearing in the team), still a story. I rang England's media people, who went deathly quiet. They refused to confirm the story.

'I know this is true, why are you denying it?'

Their answer was that Greenwood had already been booked to fly home from Perth the day after, at three in the afternoon, and the media announcement would be made at the same time, with him safely departed. I had a sinking feeling as I apprised the hierarchy back in London. I knew they would be keen to run it. Essentially, I did not want to. I expect to be pushed hard by my sports desk. I push hard back at them. I try to be reasonably sanguine, always, if something that appears in the paper gives offence to the subject, and they are safely back at Wapping, I am in the field along with that subject. It's just tough luck. They also knew that there were many ways that the story could emerge that night and be run in any competing Sunday paper; they knew that Greenwood himself, under contract to the News of the World, may well be announcing it himself in his weekly column and that I, who knew it, would look silly for not filing it.

The exigencies of newspapers were one thing. But this was something else. Will Greenwood was not hiding a pulled hamstring; he was not hiding a positive drugs test. He was hiding, for the moment, the news that his missus was under treatment so that a second youngster was not born prematurely; and even though it was way past midnight and he would be in bed, all packed, the idea that the story might cause him inconvenience, cause him to be waylaid by hacks when his mind was elsewhere, caused me a considerable amount of unease. We ran a story, factual and unadorned.

Less than two weeks later. Greenwood was back in Australia. Carol was in excellent order and sent him back to play his part in a shot on glory. On 3 February 2004, Archie Frederick Lewis Greenwood arrived safely.

The Sunday Times reporting squad, as unimpressive a bunch at that time of day as you could find, arrived back at our hotel around three, shattered, and hoovered up a beer. I was starving. I ordered a steak sandwich from room service. I was almost too tired to eat. As it arrived, the office rang. 'The editor wants a 1,000-word feature on France. He thinks they will be England's next big game.'

France? I hadn't even seen them play. I didn't feel that 3 a.m. Perth time was quite the slot to call their media officer demanding an interview. It was something of a struggle. I put the steak sandwich down. My contact lenses were sticking to my eyes, so I was not inclined to unravel all the leads, the modems and the chargers, and to power up the laptop. I made some notes, rang the copytaker and started dictating off the top of my head. I dozed off completely at one stage and was woken after a few seconds by a tinny 'Hello, hello' on the line.

There had been nothing light about the day.

Posted by Brian Micklethwait at 03:18 PM

I will now criticise Instapundit. Twice. I don't remember ever having done this before even once, so this is new territory for me. Perhaps I will be hunted down by goon squads and locked up in a basement at the University of Tennessee.

Criticism number one of Instapundit is this beyond-frightful picture of him that the Guardian has been using to decorate his recent columns for them. It looks like something contrived for Halloween, and confirms, whether by accident or by design, every Guardianista prejudice about the man that there is. He is nasty, sinister, stupid, ignorant, and if this was an old and cheap black and white movie (which is what it looks as if it was taken from) he would be dead very soon and deservedly so, in the course of trying and failing to do something sinister and nasty.

Either Instapundit chose this photo, in which case he made a big mistake, or the Guardian chose it, in which case they did a very clever thing. If the Guardian chose it, and if Instapundit tried to get them to use another, but they went with this picture anyway, then that is a story and it is a story that the rest of us would, I am sure, love to be told.

And the other criticism I have to offer of Instapundit is that whenever, as he occasionally does, he features a small picture on the right hand side of a posting, he almost always fails to separate the text from the edge of the picture. This results in writing, and particularly the little permalink blob, jamming itself smack dab up against the picture, as for example here, here, here, here, here. here. and here. Here, he either did it right or got lucky, almost certainly the latter. I am not nearly such a clever blogger as Instapundit, but in this particular matter I always do better, this posting being only one of many examples of my superior typographical skills to those of Instapundit when it comes to placing small pictures in my postings, on the right hand side.

In my case the secret is to insert this gobbledegook into the code which inserts the picture:

align="right" img style="{margin-left:10}"

There. That wasn't very hard was it. Well, of course, like everything in computerisating, it is easy if you know it and do it regularly, and totally bloody impossible if you don't and you don't.

More seriously, now that the Old Mainstream Media have been toppled from their perch (my thanks to Instapundit for the link), Instapundit is now New Mainstream Media. And it is the duty of the rest of us to see that he lives up to the high standards that are appropriate for his new and elevated station in life.

In particular, he now has to realise that appearances matter.

UPDATE Nov 13: Incoming email from Gregg A Howard:

Note that the Guardian photo was taken using the "Frankenstein flash" technique used by old chaw 'n' spit newspaper photogs on particularly heinous criminals. It involved holding the flash a foot or two below the lens and the perp's face in order to distort the features in a way much admired by city editors back in the 30's and 40's. (see attached) But surely its use here is simply a coincidence and has no bearing on how GR's opinions are viewed by those at the Guardian.

I don't know whether Howard concocted this composite picture himself or found it somewhere else. The former, I'm guessing, if only because if the latter he would presumably have said. Either way, my thanks.

UPDATE Nov 14:

I did concoct it myself. The photos were scanned from Bloodletters and Badmen (isbn - 087131-113-5).

I picked the book up at a library sale for 25 cents some years ago. When I saw the Guardian photo, the inference was immediate. The composite was simple using the five-year-old software that came with this computer. The other faces are those of Harvey Murray Glatman, William Heirens and Stephen Nash.

A few more emails like this, and this blog will start to become a real Culture Blog.

Posted by Brian Micklethwait at 01:55 PM