“Will this story make a difference?”
It’s a question journalists ask themselves all the time.
The journalist, in the modern parlance, being the warrior for a certain view of the world rather than a reporter of it. Sadly, that journalistic view also being wrong but then that’s the arts graduates for you.
I thought it was ” Who, what, when and why?”. Then again, as you say Tim, most ‘journalists’ these days are merely activists.
but then that’s the arts graduates for you
Bother arts graduates. let’s have more like Patrick Vallance, Chris Whitty and Neil Ferguson. If you want serious mischief made, it’s science graduates every time and the more highly qualified and cocksure they are, the bigger the mischief.
“ I thought it was ” Who, what, when and why?”. Then again, as you say Tim, most ‘journalists’ these days are merely activists.”
Is that the right way round? It’s so easy to become a journalist that activists can move in to it without much effort.
The internet killed most of the fact based reporting. Sports reports, stock prices, prime minister’s speeches. Why read a newspaper reporting a Boris speech when you can just follow Number 10 on social media?
No-one who wants to make a living is now going into reporting. It’s full of the privately educated flakes who have family money, who can just be activists, even though no-one really cares.
Will this story get clicks?
FIFY
Kipling had six questions:
“I KEEP six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.”
When the personnel office became “human resources,” I knew we were screwed.
When reporters became journalists . . . .
BWTM Never accept journalism as a noble profession. It is not. The ones who tell us it is are journalists. All idealistic notions of journalism are false.
personnel office became “human resources,”
Forty years ago, at Heal’s furniture store the personnel office still had a relic of a sign on the wall ‘Wages Office’.
It’s the ones who call themselves “investigative journalists” (as one Mail wanker did to me once) that get right up my nose. The wanker in question (Nick Fielding his name) then compunded the offence by trying to order me not to talk to any other media because his rag had paid the airfares of my ex-wife and my daughter to Cambodia.
The Guardian claims that journalists are watchdogs, holding political authority to account. The dog that didn’t bark in the night in the case of China and The Guardian (cf “The Adventure of Silver Blaze”).
Management Accountants used to be called Cost and Works Accountants 50 years ago, wonder what other titles it would be fun to resurrect. Executive Assistants have certainly gotten bolder since they stopped being called secretaries
I worked for a bloke had a secretary. Not a shorthand typist. A real one. She had a girl did typing. She could organise anything but would never take a decision. Not her job. If her boss wasn’t around, she’d ask me. Then steer me to making the decision she thought best. Invariably it was the correct one.
“The media is part of a social nervous system, alerting the public to remote danger in the same way neurotransmitters tell the brain the tips of the fingers are being burned. We serve as amplifiers that enable weak or remote voices to reach a wide audience and centres of decision making. And, of course, we also have a role as watchdogs, holding political authority to account.”
What a bunch of cunts.
“As Greta Thunberg and others have pointed out, the climate and nature crises are so pressing they should be the subjects of the top headline on every news website and TV channel.”
Like I said.