Two stories this week, both in the Guardian, have refreshed my faith in journalism, firstly the unfolding tale of the tragic death of Ian Tomlinson, the newspaper seller who collapsed during the G20 protests in London; the other a feature in today’s Guardian about two different organisations helping troubled kids.

The extraordinary Ian Tomlinson story has been running in the Guardian all week; the newspaper has done painstaking detective work, piecing together eye witness reports and amazing bystander video footage.

It might sound odd or pretentious but there’s something about the way this story has developed that reminds me of a Jane Austen novel, in which you start out being told one individual is worthy and another of dubious character only to find, as the plot develops, that the exact opposite is the truth.

Early on, media coverage suggested that an unruly crowd had lobbed bottles at police officers tending a dying man; now it seems as if the police may have played a part in the man’s death, and the so called bottle lobbing was not a hail of fire but a single missile etc.

The other piece that has cheered me, in today’s Guardian, is a really thoughtful feature on two organisations with radically different approaches to troubled kids. Ray Lewis, hired and then fired by Boris Johnson, is a former prison governor who thinks zero tolerance is the best answer for wayward youths. Camila Batmanghelidjh is a psychotherapist who practises unconditional love and infinite patience.

Personally, I tend towards Batmanghelidjh’s methods as Lewis’s approach seems harsh and Victorian, but what’s so interesting about the feature is the way it draws out what the two organisations have in common, apart, that is, from being led by charismatic media friendly heads; both offer the young people consistent care.

The headline – ‘What is the right way to raise children?’ – implies that the discussions of method have resonance for all parents and carers. I would certainly agree, as someone who has long contemplated the difference between tough/tender approaches, although to no great practical effect!…

Over the past forty eight hours, I have watched two glossy, high end Hollywood ‘womens pictures’ : All about Eve, starring Bette Davis and Anne Baxter, made in 1950; the other a 2008 remake of George Cukor’s classic The Women, starring Hollywood royalty of a certain age, including Annette Bening, Meg Ryan, Debra Messing,Candice Bergen, Jada Pinkett Smith.

Both films are about love, betrayal, womens’ friendship and professional ambition but one is a classic and the other ……..well, it just doesn’t quite work. All about Eve, made in 1950, remains an absorbing, ironic study of the relationship between women of different generations, with Davis playing a possibly exaggerated version of the public’s perception of her: the tough but tender thesp. Anne Baxter is truly chilling as a conniving ingenue who tries to steal everything Davis possesses, from husband to professional reputation, but succeeds in winning fame, but not real love. Baxter’s performance still stands as a seminal portrait of a peculiarly modern form of acceptable evil; the person who will sacrifice all integrity for success, while appearing saccharine sweet on the outside.

In contrast, The Women, a comedy about a group of women discovering a friend’s husband’s infidelity in a ‘powder room’ , while perfectly watchable, has no centre, no real drive. I’m trying to figure out why. Today’s middle aged Hollywood actresses look twenty five from a distance yet oddly rubbery close up, so a lot of screen time is taken up internally managing that double take. The script isn’t that sharp either. Maybe it’s because it has too gloopy an ending: lead character finds professional success, wins back errant husband. Here it lacks the realist edge of All about Eve which makes it perfectly clear: high end professionalism, while utterly worthwhile in itself, carries a high price for women. Then and now.

But I think the problem is something to do with the difference in post war and contemporary emotional tone/registers. Women, including Hollywood women, of a previous age, were much more self contained, a stoicism that, paradoxically, made their sadness and struggles more moving. We associate Meg Ryan, Annette Bening and Bette Midler with many things, but stoicism is not one of them; their high octane zaniness too often hits an off tune note for a re-make of a film about a woman’s strategic management of her husband’s infidelity. We also can’t help but be aware that these are all highly powerful women within the industry; it’s hard to see them as mere wise cracking adjutants to the all powerful man (who never appears, incidentally.)…

I sat in on a really interesting conversation earlier this week between a group of well known writers, all talking about how they read, or why they don’t:

‘ I just can’t read, sitting at a desk. Unless I’m at a desk in a library…’ ‘ I do take a book if I’m going on a bus or train journey.’ ‘I still have this idea that it’s sinful to read a novel during the day.’ ‘Me, too. I can only read in the day time if I’m doing a review.’

Two things struck me:

1) How odd it is that fiction writing is considered one of the most prestigious occupations, yet here are well known novelists who feel it’s illegitimate to read novels during the day!

2) Apart from guilty consciences, the biggest single block to these writers reading more is children and all the tasks associated with domestic/school life. (They were all women writers and I’d bet that father/writers have a different story to tell………..)

Personally, I rarely pick up a book for my own pleasure, until I have completed all my tasks. ( Except when I am on holiday.) And I rarely, if ever, get to the end of my various work/domestic lists. No wonder, then, that I usually don’t start reading until between eleven and twelve at night and that one night out of three, I am usually woken by the sound of the book slipping from my hands and scudding to the floor.

But there’s light at the end of the tunnel. We all listened with good humoured envy to one renowned author, her children all grown up and long gone from home, describe her daily routine, ‘ I get up every morning at seven, take a coffee back to bed and read for an hour’. She added merrily, ‘ I can even tackle quite difficult things because I feel at my most intelligent at that hour.’

That will be me one day, I thought. Probably in about a decade’s time….…