{"id":56864,"date":"2024-12-26T01:00:58","date_gmt":"2024-12-26T06:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=56864"},"modified":"2024-12-25T09:55:18","modified_gmt":"2024-12-25T14:55:18","slug":"qotd-the-essence-of-journalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2024\/12\/26\/qotd-the-essence-of-journalism\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The essence of journalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Journalism is the craft of filling in the white bits between the advertisements.<\/p>\n

It’s not a profession, it’s not a calling and it has no public purpose. Trial and error has shown that peeps out there just won’t go out and buy booklets of adverts. They won’t even pay all that much attention to free books of them stuffed through their letterboxes as local freesheets show.<\/p>\n

In order to get people to see the piccies of fine cavalry twill trousers (an ad that has been running beside the Telegraph<\/em> crossword for at least four decades), or to drool over offers of lushly organic bath salts, experience has indicated that someone needs to be employed to write about the footie \u2013 see that parrot bein’ sick? \u2013 or the weather \u2013 cloudy with a chance of meatballs \u2013 or the thespian who should only have been stepped out with \u2013 Meghan Steals Our Prince! \u2013 or you know what they’re doing with your money \u2013 Tax Rise Shocker! \u2013 to fill in the blanks between the commercial offers.<\/p>\n

And that’s it. That’s what we do.<\/p>\n

We can even prove this. The editorial line of absolutely every publication is one that follows the prejudices of its readers. When setting up a new one the big question is, well, who are we going to appeal to? Not what truths are we going to tell but who will look at the ads based upon the truths we decide to tell.<\/p>\n

All that speaking truth to power, interrogation of structures and inequalities, that’s for the awards season. It has as much to do with reality as calling politicians statesmen \u2013 entirely irrelevant to the working day and something more suited to those dead.<\/p>\n

Entirely true that journalism comes in flavours, even layers, styles and stratified along socioeconomic lines. But then so do restaurants come in manners that appeal to different audiences despite their output all ending up in the same place \u2013 the U-bend \u2013 some limited number of hours after consumption.<\/p>\n

Journalism is simply entertainment that is, journalists just those who do so with words. There is a market for that truth-telling to power stuff, just as there is one for vegan meals. But they’re both limited to those who are entertained by such which is why Maccy D’s bestrides the world and the Mail<\/em> and The Sun<\/em> outsell Tribune<\/em>, Counterpunch<\/em> and Salon<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Tim Worstall, “The Grandiosity Of Modern Journalism”, Continental Telegraph<\/em><\/a>, 2020-05-02.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Journalism is the craft of filling in the white bits between the advertisements. It’s not a profession, it’s not a calling and it has no public purpose. Trial and error has shown that peeps out there just won’t go out and buy booklets of adverts. They won’t even pay all that much attention to free […]<\/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":[4,831,28,41],"tags":[97,213,134],"class_list":["post-56864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-business","category-media","category-quotations","tag-advertising","tag-newspapers","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-eNa","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56864","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=56864"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56864\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":93134,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56864\/revisions\/93134"}],"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=56864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}