Abstract
Guardian assistant editor White looks back on this year's political party conferences and reflects: At all three conferences, "the leader", and what he or his spin-doctors think and say, is all-consuming. This is both politically unhealthy and journalistically soul-destroying. But we do our best to sustain interest and to be busy on the many platforms which a modern newspaper or TV channel feels must be stood upon: print, audio, internet TV, blogs, line-by-line as it happens reporting, plus the traditional newspaper model: reports, commentary, diaries, cartoons, leaders, colour pieces, features, the political sketch… We fan out like the hunter-gatherers we all once were, following such ancient half-remembered instinct to attend fringe meetings in the hope that someone our audience has heard of will attack the leadership, or abuse the European Union or immigrants. In these disciplined times it rarely happens, but we try.
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