{"id":5585,"date":"2010-09-29T13:11:38","date_gmt":"2010-09-29T17:11:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=5585"},"modified":"2022-02-06T22:00:44","modified_gmt":"2022-02-07T03:00:44","slug":"qotd-never-attribute-to-malice-that-which-can-be-explained-by-malice-and-incompetence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2010\/09\/29\/qotd-never-attribute-to-malice-that-which-can-be-explained-by-malice-and-incompetence\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: “Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by malice and incompetence”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

I used to publish in the National Post<\/em> back in the day Conrad Black ran the show. It was a business run with integrity. The last time I had a call from their editorial board I had to explain the Post<\/em> paid me 40 cents a word. The man was genuinely scandalized — I mean audibly taken aback and offended — when I told him I would not hand my work over to him for free (btw, Adam, how did selling your integrity work out for you? Looks like you got what it was worth).<\/p>\n

These days they don’t bother to call. Last week, they took my Margaret Atwood story and ran with it uncredited. They lacked the decency to do something that would have cost them nothing.<\/p>\n

[. . .]<\/p>\n

I am a writer. I don’t expect to get paid much. But I do expect to get paid. If this country aspired to be something more than a grasping, pissant kleptocracy celebrating third-raters and UCC school ties my work — this blog and others like it — would be understood as part of the real Canadian cultural establishment.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, I don’t require their acknowledgement.<\/p>\n

Nicholas Packwood, “Neither honour nor courage: The National Post”, Ghost of a Flea<\/em><\/a>, 2010-09-29<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I used to publish in the National Post back in the day Conrad Black ran the show. It was a business run with integrity. The last time I had a call from their editorial board I had to explain the Post paid me 40 cents a word. The man was genuinely scandalized — I mean […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,41],"tags":[204,1456,135,58,213],"class_list":["post-5585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-quotations","tag-blogging","tag-competence","tag-copyright","tag-internet","tag-newspapers"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-1s5","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5585"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5585\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71609,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5585\/revisions\/71609"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}