Take a tour of The Sun's subs room

If you are a beleaguered sub-editor, wondering if your days are numbered, then this is a must listen. It's the BBC's Word of Mouth tour of the Sun's subs room with managing editor Graham Dudman. He describes the subs as "the craftsmen of the English language who make The Sun what it is." Chief reporter John Kay says the reporters are "the foot-soldiers of the paper and what we produce are the nuggets of facts which our wonderful sub-editors then mould into this fantastic peerless prose which appears every morning." He goes on to say that, how ever well reporters think they have written their stories, "our wonderful sub-editors always find a way to improve them". He admits: "I hate to say it but every occasion that they have re-written one of my stories, which fortunately doesn't happen too often, it has always been improved." Great to hear. It is also good to hear subs talking about the importance of rhythm, pace, creativity, turning pictures into words and writing headlines from left field. We ran the subbing training scheme for The Sun and one of our former trainees, Fran Wetzel, talks about her experiences too. There are some classic Sun headlines in the programme. Many you will recognise, but I hadn't heard this one by sub Elaine Roberts before: A prize bull that dies and its sperm is frozen for future breeding. The headline: Pushing up Daisies.

As I have said before, it is not coincidence that the two most successful daily papers in the country, The Sun and the Daily Mail, remain committed to the craft of subbing. Graham emailed the link to me to say: "If I was running a subbing course, I’d be tempted to make it required listening!" Couldn't agree more ...