Stefano Hatfield at i: Are you young, dumb and full of it?

Stefano Hatfield

Happy days again for Stefano Hatfield who will oversee the Independent's mini-me daily, i. Hardly a surprise appointment given that this former Campaign editor helmed the doomed thelondonpaper a while back and made a habit there of preferring young inexperienced hacks to the tried and trusted - cheapness and compliance being the former's two big pluses. I do hope he's now up to speed on the law on workplace ageism, though I doubt it.

So here's a bluffer's briefing. The Employment Equality (Age) Regulations of 2006 make it unlawful to discriminate against workers under the age of 65 on the grounds of age. The rules affect recruitment, training, promotion, redundancy, retirement, pay and pension provision.

It was therefore unfortunate that MediaGuardian of February 5, 2007, felt compelled to note that 'Hatfield ... freely admits that he has chosen to hire journalists of a similar age to his target twenty-to-thirtysomething readership [at thelondonpaper]. No veteran hacks moaning about the good old days here, it seems.' MediaGuardian is itself an ageist medium so I wouldn't be expecting much sense from that quarter.

i is targeting young urbanites and has a featherweight budget. Expect, then, a deluge of recruitment of novice regionals (and their friends) in the immediate future. Any examples of ageism at i (or anywhere else) will receive a fair hearing at Madame Arcati.

Stefano Hatfield is in his mid-to-late 40s.

i spy: Does the time-poor newspaper reader exist?

The Independent people have launched a mini-me newspaper called i. It costs 20p and is a digest of sorts of its ailing maxi-me (price: £1), targeted at 'time-poor newspaper readers' (ie professional youngies who live at Pret A Manger).

The birth of the first national print paper in a generation must of course be celebrated as a happy event in itself but ... does the 'time-poor newspaper reader' actually exist?

Of course not. Don't you know a rhetorical question when you hear one?

What one does with one's time is a general matter of choice dictated by personal interest and priorities. If someone under the age of 30 says to you, apropos not reading newspapers, 'I am a time-poor person', then this is not a statement of fact but an advertisement of self-importance. She or he is actually saying:: 'I have better things to do because my life is so busy.' Busy-ness in this context is rated a virtue because it implies solvency, sexiness, engagedness and I'm-booked-up-ness. Being seen reading a newspaper suggests you have time on your hands - you saddo.

The reality is that the life of our 'time-poor newspaper reader' (TPNR) is as time-rich as that of anyone who loafs about the house all day calling themselves a freelance writer or video game designer. The several time windows in a day include thumb-twiddling lavatory longueurs, yawny rail journeys to and from (with delays and no-shows for free-time enrichment), mental and physical office truancy (for smokes, googling, gossing or just standing about in Cafe Nero queues or chomping muffins), etc. All large-paned time windows afford potential hours for the reading of newspapers.

But there's just one problem. More and more Pret A Manger-bound youngies would rather do something else. Like read a newspaper free online or on their iPad. Or grow fat on muffins.

So good luck to i. And my condolences to the Independent.