It’s taken two years, but someone has finally managed to write a Guardian online article worse than one by Tanya Gold.
Salutations to Louise Brooks for a stunning effort on South African crime, in which she manages to be alarmist, factually misleading and, impressive swerve this, patronising to… Egyptians.
This piece has caused mine eyes to open. When reading the Tanya Gold Oeuvre, I had assumed she was doing it on purpose. But now I see the light. It’s not the fault of the poor hack , an honest toiler merely hoping merely to earn a crust from the GMH table. The system is to blame.
I’ve come to understand that Guardian online editors believe that the sole value of an article lies in the number of comments posted below it.
Gentle journalistic souls are cast aside if they achieve less than a hundred scrawls beneath their efforts. I can almost hear the cackles in the blogs section - “Turn up the self absorption- the saps will hate it!” they cry in sub-editing. “This piece needs some more grating comparisons and clunking metaphors to really annoy people” goes the shout at the editors desk. In a corner marked “Charlie Brooker slept here” we overhear the awed tone of a mark of rare regard: “ If Tanya mentions Hampstead just one more time in this piece, I think the internet will explode!”
Indeed, I feel sorry for the poor souls charged with carrying out this comment seeking behaviour. Their editors must know what loathing their articles will cause, yet still they send them over the top, offering a choice between controversy or redundancy. These are not journalists, my friends, they are fly-paper, and we all know what flies are attracted to.
I fear this need to attact bile and vitriol explains why Guardian online writers pour out so many gushers of narcisstic froth. Their aim is to call forth a geyser of revulsion which will carry readers to their keyboards, even if it is simply to declare that the author is a haemmarroid possessed of the incisive perspicacity of toilet paper and the humour of a festschrift in honour of a Professor of coprolitic studies.
A friend once told me that the motto of our brave new media world is “if you write it, they will comment”.
I think he was right. It’s just that two letters are missing.
11 Comments
July 10, 2009 at 4:19 pm
The article may well be a load of crap but could you, at least, get the poor scribbler’s name right?
July 10, 2009 at 4:28 pm
My point is proved, I think.
July 10, 2009 at 4:49 pm
That CiF has more articles touching on theology (assuming that’s the correct term for things along the lines of “Where God Went Wrong”, “Some More Of God’s Greatest Mistakes”, “Who Is This God Person Anyway?” and “Well, That About Wraps It Up For God”) than the Church Times didn’t clue you in on this?
July 10, 2009 at 5:03 pm
I can be a little slow. We all know this.
July 10, 2009 at 5:11 pm
I blame targets. Bound to be GB’s fault….
July 10, 2009 at 5:42 pm
‘Salutations to Louise Brooks for a stunning effort on South African crime, in which she manages to be alarmist, factually misleading and, impressive swerve this, patronising to… Egyptians.’
Hopefully this statement is not based on statistics from the South African government,whose recent President said that HIV/AIDS was not an issue in his country.
Even the good old BBC quoted infection rates of 1 in 10 of the population with an estimated 600 deaths per day with around 600 people per day dying from Aids related illness.
So where is your evidence that the information in this article is incorrect,what is your source?
July 10, 2009 at 5:49 pm
The correction at the bottom of the article should give you a clue.
July 10, 2009 at 11:40 pm
Any chance of a straight answer to my question which is again:
‘So where is your evidence that the information in this article is incorrect,what is your source?
Why the evasiveness or is just that you don’t like the article and therefore just want smear the messenger?
How many times have you travelled to South Africa and which parts did you visit?
July 10, 2009 at 11:06 pm
surely if the Egyptians could build the pyramids they could host a World Cup.
Say what you like about slavery , it gets things done . I hate to toss a fly into your scented oils Hopi but my mum went to South Africa last year and she told me it felt dangerous , far more so than Hampstead for example That’s good enough for me , enjoyed your disdain though sort of ‘see you later bloviator’.( my new word , ta )
July 11, 2009 at 2:01 am
I can’t shake the feeling that this post is supposed to be ironic. I mean:
Patronising: “I feel sorry for the poor souls charged with carrying out this comment seeking behaviour.”
Factual accuracy: a commenter above says you got the name of the journo wrong.
Grating comparisons and clunking metaphors: toilet paprt, fly-paper, etc.
Alarmism: well, I should think the central thesis that newspapers now charge themselves with the sole task of making their readers angry qualifies.
Self-absorption: hmph. Harder to prove this one, but I’ve always felt the tendency of mainstream bloggers to take pot-shots at columnists has an air of self-absorption inherent to it. Sort of along the lines of Guido’s “dead-tree-press” stuff.
July 11, 2009 at 11:03 am
Roger,
You are funny sometimes.
Clue: When an article carries a correction to it’s own factual accuracy, it’s pretty clear what the factual inaccrracy is.
Andrew,
You might think I deliberately tried to wind people up. I couldn’t possibly comment.
H