Gonzo Publishing Again
The best thing about making your own printed page is, of course that you write whatever you like, usually scurrilous and it looks, well, more real. Because whatever else the printed word might lack, it does not lack authority. If you came back to your car to find a hand-written note from a traffic warden informing you you had a ticket, you’d probably ignore it – handwriting has authority in only two circumstances, the first is when the message has been left in lipstick on the mirror in your bedroom and says something like ‘you are a crap shag. Have borrowed your car, hope you don’t mind, Trixie xxx’. The second is when the message is written in blood on the wall of the cabin in the woods you are staying in. In both cases justification, font and point size are not really relevant. In the latter case, let’s face it, not even the message is relevant, not even if it’s ‘enjoy your complimentary muffins’. You’re gone!
That’s why people buy newspapers. They are the voice of authority. Well, for people who can read they are, for people who can’t read, they are the source of partial nudity, celeb scoops (usually two scoops, out of a bikini top, on a beach in a fuzzy long lens shot (it’s hard to focus when you’re masturbating behind a gorse bush being scrutinised by curious goats) and footie news or, even better, speculation.
Increasingly, it’s speculation that populates the pages of papers. Or columnists. I don’t have a problem with traditional journalism, where some bloke, sometimes in a dirty mac, sometimes not, goes somewhere, finds out stuff and writes it up in a concise and amusing way. I do have a problem when they rely on unnamed ‘sources’ or simply on the sauce for inspiration. It’s opening up a twenty page paper and finding ten pages of ‘comment and analysis’ that shocks the hell out of me.
Comment and analysis is, I think, a slang term for bigotry and opinion. Read the pages long enough and the same people offer the same opinions – but about completely different subjects. It’s truly astonishing, from the situation in the middle east to the way that the economy is affecting sales of garden gnomes, these people will link to their pet subjects, usually something about their forthright views on immigration, which, being about as palatable as a turd sandwich (on brown) leaves you with a nasty taste in your mouth.
The worst thing is that these people have been paid for their sub-standard annoyance of a contribution. By you. Suckah!
Because no matter how insightful, how erudite and how informed any blog might be, whether it be on politics, gardening or cooking, it’s free and so, by today’s twisted value system, it doesn’t carry as much authority as a newspaper. This view might be changing slowly, but it’s up against some tough challenges, namely, that if you have paid for something, you are reluctant to admit that you could have got better for free elsewhere (prostitutes are the exception that proves the rule, if you want to have crap sex with somebody who is bored by the whole process, get married).
Newspapers mine blogs, reprinting swaths of them, but blogs rarely reprint whole sections of newspapers. This is because when a blogger makes it to print it’s the literary equivalent of being allowed to sit at the adults table (with the shock of seeing your work edited roughly the same as the shock experienced by children when they realise how dull adult conversation is, that you are expected to eat your peas rather than demonstrate your ‘nose cannon’ with them and that crayoning on linen tablecloths is a great way to earn a slap if you are lucky, or a steak-knife through the back of the hand if you’re unlucky enough to be sitting next to the great-grandmother who brought that tablecloth over from the old county).
Journalists and especially columnists are not happy to see their work appear in blogs. This is not just because of copyright, but because such blog entries often start ’72 fundamental errors in this piece of crap’.
That’s why people buy newspapers. They are the voice of authority. Well, for people who can read they are, for people who can’t read, they are the source of partial nudity, celeb scoops (usually two scoops, out of a bikini top, on a beach in a fuzzy long lens shot (it’s hard to focus when you’re masturbating behind a gorse bush being scrutinised by curious goats) and footie news or, even better, speculation.
Increasingly, it’s speculation that populates the pages of papers. Or columnists. I don’t have a problem with traditional journalism, where some bloke, sometimes in a dirty mac, sometimes not, goes somewhere, finds out stuff and writes it up in a concise and amusing way. I do have a problem when they rely on unnamed ‘sources’ or simply on the sauce for inspiration. It’s opening up a twenty page paper and finding ten pages of ‘comment and analysis’ that shocks the hell out of me.
Comment and analysis is, I think, a slang term for bigotry and opinion. Read the pages long enough and the same people offer the same opinions – but about completely different subjects. It’s truly astonishing, from the situation in the middle east to the way that the economy is affecting sales of garden gnomes, these people will link to their pet subjects, usually something about their forthright views on immigration, which, being about as palatable as a turd sandwich (on brown) leaves you with a nasty taste in your mouth.
The worst thing is that these people have been paid for their sub-standard annoyance of a contribution. By you. Suckah!
Because no matter how insightful, how erudite and how informed any blog might be, whether it be on politics, gardening or cooking, it’s free and so, by today’s twisted value system, it doesn’t carry as much authority as a newspaper. This view might be changing slowly, but it’s up against some tough challenges, namely, that if you have paid for something, you are reluctant to admit that you could have got better for free elsewhere (prostitutes are the exception that proves the rule, if you want to have crap sex with somebody who is bored by the whole process, get married).
Newspapers mine blogs, reprinting swaths of them, but blogs rarely reprint whole sections of newspapers. This is because when a blogger makes it to print it’s the literary equivalent of being allowed to sit at the adults table (with the shock of seeing your work edited roughly the same as the shock experienced by children when they realise how dull adult conversation is, that you are expected to eat your peas rather than demonstrate your ‘nose cannon’ with them and that crayoning on linen tablecloths is a great way to earn a slap if you are lucky, or a steak-knife through the back of the hand if you’re unlucky enough to be sitting next to the great-grandmother who brought that tablecloth over from the old county).
Journalists and especially columnists are not happy to see their work appear in blogs. This is not just because of copyright, but because such blog entries often start ’72 fundamental errors in this piece of crap’.
Labels: Media, Print, Publishing, Writing
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