People are losing their jobs elsewhere, even in the heart of the chattering classes. Yes, my favourite newspaper is shedding people and sections. Hopefully they'll be treated well, though Fleet Street has a saying about liberal papers treating their staff worse than reactionary ones.
The Guardian has declines recently - the supplements, such as Environment, have been reduced to allow more journalists to spend time on important stories about Amy Winehouse, The Wire, celebrity sport columns and whatever Tanya Gold thinks we should know about her on any particular day. Now they're ceasing to publish the Technology supplement - an innovative and (you'd think) essential part of a forward-looking newspaper. I'd drop the TV listings personally and cut the 'essential clothes under £3000' dross.
Over at the Observer, the decent magazines are going: Sport Monthly, Woman and Music. All that will be left is the Department for Supporting Illegal Wars Based on Falsified Evidence and (hopefully), Rawnsley and Mitchell who, let's face it, needs the work. I certainly won't miss Escape (the travel section), lacking a cat in need of litter material.
Does it matter? Newspapers are migrating to the web - and losing millions of pounds in doing so. Murdoch plans to put his papers' sites behind a pay wall, while others, like the Guardian rely on advertising (which is why they're going bust). I love the accessibility of the web versions - but I also love the flow, convenience and portability of the newspaper, the ability to tear bits out, write on them, pass them over to your friends, fashion them into sunhats…
Witticisms aside though, it is a bit worrying - loads of US newspapers have closed, and UK ones are struggling, despite having a much better readership. We need spiky, independent journalism. Can't we ban the Daily Mail instead, and forcibly transfer their readers? It would be like being sent on an involuntary and unpleasant foreign exchange holiday. They don't like our clothes (sandals), our food (muesli), our relaxed attitudes to sex, drugs and politics… but they'd be transformed after a few months - into nice people.
9 comments:
Very busy today Vole, clearly.
Spiky, independent journalism you say? The WWIT magazine provides this (okay, it doesn't but it's hip). Most importantly, is my article on page 27:
http://issuu.com/wereworthittoo/docs/theblackissue
Don't forget to pass it onto your 'hip' friends, readers and I shall be seeing you tomorrow, Vole.
P.S. Stand down Ewar! You know very well that Vole would do anything to help. It's needed to be shown to tutors beyond the week it's due as more time allocated would serve an extra purposeful analysis. I cannot imagine your essay to be anything but precisely detailed and eloquent anyhow even if the text is complex.
Don't get your knickers in a twist, DD, was just a bit of sarcasm. I would much rather read Vole's blog entry than read his ferocious criticisms of mine anyhow.
I'm almost finished anyway, just concluding with "That Satan was a right shit!"
Well, I've been here since 9 (even skipped swimming this morning and fencing tonight) and I'm still in the office, so yes, I'm busy.
Satan - evil, obviously - but he's also seductive and we can sympathise with him. That's the thing about Paradise Lost: Milton had to make him convincing, otherwise Adam and Eve wouldn't have gone with him. But making him more complex than 'evil' runs the risk of making the moral less than orthodox - we can feel sorry for him, or even like him. So it becomes literature rather than a sermon. But once you've sympathised with Satan - you're going to hell!
Unless you think all this God stuff is nonsense. Tricky, isn't it?
Very well, you never know with you! Anyhow I feel yours will be far superior to mine as I haven't particularly stuck to the assigned passage and rather gone off tangent.
I've nearly finished it, meant to do so last night but I was particularly down last night after hearing about Robert Enke which my blog shows.
Satan was a personified self-contradiction, very much like the Gaurdian writers! I cannot stand Charlie Brooker for starters not matter much you like him, Vole. He can shit off as I certainly wouldn't mourn his sacking.
I'm sending you love from the Learning Centre then Voley.
DD, that is a bloody brilliant excuse, and one I'll have to use in future: "Sorry about the missed essay Frank, but it's just...Robert Enke...y'know?"
And Charlie Brooker is a genius.
I constantly imagine Charlie Brooker walking along a pathway and a piano dropped on his over-sized head, it brings great delight whenever I see his articles or books.
Besides this blog/article by the Guardian on Sophie Dahl was pretty much the finest they've done in months. I fear I fallen for her charming cake-making self.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/mediamonkeyblog/2009/nov/11/sophie-dahl-second-helping-nigella
I like that excuse too. My lecture isn't very good because I'm mourning Hull's late goal against Stoke the other weekend.
I don't know anything about Sophie Dahl. I automatically boycott anyone famous for things they aren't experts at. I gather she's an author's daughter and a rather attractive model. Not a chef - they need decades of training.
Brooker - used think he was brilliant, now I think he's sometimes brilliant and sometimes going through the motions. I am rather devoted to Miss Mangan though.
Post a Comment