As far back as I can remember I always wanted to be a churnalist...

shame that this thread got so little attention.

anyway, rumour has it that will hutton ages ago wanted to write at length in the observer about how the banks were all screwed and therefore all of us were too. roger alton, obs editor, mulls it over and says: "it's a bit... chewy, isn't it? can't you write about cake or something?"

loool roger alton.

apparently he's actually managed to shed readers at the independent, when the whole point of him was to take it downmarket and get more in. so now it's even more rubbish and even less important. wonder how long it will last.

Well, if true, that would be one of many reasons why I stopped reading the Observer (xp).

But then I have been saying pretty much the same thing on ILE in the year that has elapsed since - that the meejah are interested in a Good Story and only a Good Story, regardless of accuracy or importance or who gets hurt/destroyed as a result, because they need circulation, circulation, circulation; that's their business, it's why they're in business, and their profit margin is maximalised by focusing on trivia.

It's far from original or insightful but nevertheless it's what happens.

I prefer newspapers which presume I'm more intelligent than I actually am (so that I can learn something from them), rather than less intelligent.

http://soupytrumpet.com/uploads/2008/02/flair_falcons_coin_toss.jpg

that the meejah are interested in a Good Story and only a Good Story, regardless of accuracy or importance or who gets hurt/destroyed as a result, because they need circulation, circulation, circulation; that's their business, it's why they're in business, and their profit margin is maximalised by focusing on trivia

The interesting thing here, of course, is that the formerly serious papers that have chosen to pursue a trivial path (notably the Independent and Telegraph) are still watching their sales go down the stank; however, I read somewhere the other day (caveat: I can't find the article, and am beginning to wonder whether I dreamed it) that the Guardian and the Times have actually been putting on sales recently, presumably because people are panicking about the recession and thinking: "Hmm, newspapers. I used to trust those."

Like I say, this argument would have more force if I could link to the piece in question. Hey ho.

As for the good-story thing: I think it's even less conscious than you make it out to be, Marcello: many journalists now have an automatic, unthinking notion of what a "good story" is (ie it involves a celebrity and, umm, that's about it) and nobody, at any point, stops to think: hang on, this is total and utter fucking guff.

NB: The Guardian and the Times are full of drivel too, of course (cf the Guardian thread); however, they're less obviously in-your-face with it than the sex-obsessed Indie and the frighteningly celeb-happy Telegraph.

I still take the Guardian and find that if I ignore/don't read G2/Film & Music/the stupider Saturday supplements it reveals itself as a pretty good newspaper.

"regardless of accuracy" isn't quite true: it's more a question of "can we be sued"? if something is false but doesn't defame anyone, it will be around the world in a heartbeat.

nick davies does a great job in the book of showing how the millennium bug bullshit spread, or smaller stories like a guy who claimed to have taken out insurance against the emotional damage of england getting knocked out of the world cup - it was obv just a stunt for his mate's insurance firm. it was published in hundreds of papers in dozens of countries and not one person did a cuttings check which would have proven it was untrue, because there were no consequences to getting it wrong.

papers will be absolutely scrupulous to the point of censorship on the other hand about serious stories of public interest but where someone might sue. although that's changing - the graun is, justifiably imo, being v aggressive w/ new libel defences to eg report that bae bribed a saudi prince with £1billion despite them not having had a single document to prove it.

websites seem to epitomise this problem, speaking from my experience. you sit at a desk all day and the goal is to have an index full or to keep it ticking over with a certain amount of stories. nobody does anything massively unscrupulous but my impression would be that there are tons of "website journalists", utterly divorced from reporting, who are just repackaging and rewording other peoples work, be it tv/radio packages or PA copy.