Liz Hodgkinson

The Leveson Inquiry has got us thinking about journalism as never before. But what Lord Leveson and the various barristers don't quite understand is that you need a particular mindset to be a journalist in the first place. So what is that mindset? First of all you need to be curious. Then you have to want to communicate. Then you have to have a sense of fun and be irreverent and iconoclastic. You have a desire to be dramatic, to want to shake people up, startle them, report what has never been reported before. Above all, you want to find out.

It's not so much that you want to get information by illegal or questionable means, as that any means which will secure a good story can be considered. I know that when I worked on tabloid newspapers, the thing was always the story. Of course mobile phones, emails and the internet had not been invented so the methods we had to secure exclusive, startling or groundbreaking stories were more primitive. But there was always that overriding desire to nail a really good story -- and sometimes, it has to be said, to take that story a little further than it would actually go.

For journalists are storytellers,loving to spin a good yarn. Journalists are gossipy blabbermouths; they are the kind of people who were always told to stop talking at school. They are not so showbizzy as actual performers but there is a showbiz side to them. Then they are tough - or at least, they become so. They are caught up in the drama of the unfolding story, whether this is cruel treatment of animals in medical laboratories, corrupt coppers, wars or shenanigans in the town hall. It doesn't much matter -- so long as there is conflict and drama, a journalist will be there.

Do they want to get at the truth? Well, the best ones do but on newspapers, especially tabloids, you are always chasing circulation, so an exclusive about a celebrity, a footballer, a politician, is almost irresistible. Could anybody actually have resisted the Max Mosley story? Although few people outside the motor racing fraternity had heard of him, everybody had heard of Oswald Mosley, fascists and Nazism and the Mitford family was also famous. But obviously for a tabloid readership, it was the Nazi theme that was uppermost in interest.

As for Milly Dowler, well that was a big story, too, and there is always competition to take any big story further.

But now we have the sad spectacle of rich celebrities like Charlotte Church taking huge sums of money from News International for phone hacking. Yet another photo opportunity for the singer! Few people will feel that sorry for celebrities who court publicity when it suits them, but phone hacking is an illegal activity and that is that. It is not clear how an activity that was actually illegal was allowed, or how it went on for so long and very possibly at the end of the day there was little harm done. Of course the celebs have bigged it up, but their lives go on much the same as before.

Or do they? The press, at least in the olden days, had subtle ways of getting its own back and one of those was not to give any publicity to celebrities who had challenged them. Perhaps now Church will be forgotten, unable to get herself in the paper when she wants to. The same may happen with Hugh Grant.

As to the lawyers, they are not, in the main, flashy or publicity-seeking people. True, there are some exceptions like the late John Mortimer, Helena Kennedy, Geoffrey Robertson and the late George Carman but in the main, they are not witty, iconclastic, original or quirky thinkers, but fairly dull mainstream people, even though they may be clever. They are simply not the same breed as journalists and this shows at the inquirty.

Mind, the inquiry also shows up just how scripted comedians and 'funny' broadcasters are. Although Ian Hislop is scathingly witty on Have I Got News For You, his wit did not shine at the same level when giving evidence at Leveson. He did his usual mugging and gurning, but the rapier wit was not there, even though he tried. It just proves how difficult it is to be genuinely witty off the cuff.

But what of the future of journalism? Well, it will be dead -- or at least, professional-quality journalism will be dead, if Leveson manages to kill the great British press off even more than the internet, bloggers, falling circulations and advertising, and ever growing reluctance of people to spend a bob or two on a daily newspaper.