A special guest posting by Copernicus of the Midnight Court:
Perhaps it isn’t fair to expect too much of the Evening Herald, a paper one imagines is staffed almost entirely by very young, inexperienced persons whose purple box-design ties come handily packaged with their poly-mix shirts and who spend considerable portions of their household budgets on hair gel. And that’s just the girls.
Unfortunately, forced intimacy with this organ over a period of several hours leads one to the sorry conclusion that it isn’t fair to expect anything at all. I found it difficult at times to know exactly into which of Simon’s categories some of the Herald’s published items should go. The line between PR and advertorial is a fairly porous one in any event, but so it seems is the line between journalism and opinion. And not only in the Herald. In the end, I was pretty generous I think in describing as “journalism??? some of the stories I read, especially items like the urgent report of Des Bishop’s pedestrian view that “something??? must be done about crime in Limerick Hell. Nevermind a manufactured “news??? item which the paper fabricated out of thin air, or Enda Kenny as they cite him on page 6. See wiki for details.
If journalism is the task of inquiring into matters of public significance (and we may wonder elsewhere if a 19 year-old’s sex-toy tantrum fits the bill) in an effort to provide a democracy’s citizens with what most closely resembles the truth of a given set of circumstances, well there wasn’t any on display.
If, on the other hand, journalism is simply a matter of filling up a journal with press releases, sentencing reports, advertisements masquerading as urgent news and unquestioned opinions from the first, second and third estates, then all is well in the fourth.
Perhaps the Evening Herald can wheeze along on a diet of salacious Garda leaks about the sex lives of murder victims, but once the mysterious brake on broadband roll-out is inevitably released, it is difficult to imagine people continuing to spend money to buy the advertising they can get free on the net (or, incidentally, from its little brother, Herald AM) just because it’s bundled with a bit of ragged gossip and self-serving commercial or State-sponsored spin.
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[…] Blogging activities continue, but hither and yon. Scored a guest post at tuppenceworth as part of the great Tuppenceworth Paper Round, which is a quick impression of a reading of last Friday’s Evening Herald. Read here. My notes on every story in the paper are in this Paper Round wiki – I started off pretty po-faced, but it gets more brief and caustic (and hopefully funny) if you’re prepared to scroll down the page. Worthwhile, especially if you want to see Brendan O’Carroll called a vomitous, puke-faced bollox. Bit on vibrators too. I’m currently compiling my notes on what I found in the Sunday Independent at the wiki here. […]
who are earth are you to slag off females! what makes you such an expert??
I too am of the lady persuasion. If not in body, then certainly in spirit.
HAVING TRIED RING ABOUT HALF A DOZEN NUMBERS OF PEOPLE WHO WORK IN THE EVEN.HERALD OFFICE AND IS ACTUALLY PRESENT AT THEIR DESK I GIVE UP TRYING TO CONTACT THE NEWSPAPER. I APPRECEIATE THAT ADVERTISING IS VERY IMPORTANT BUT THEN SO IS THE EDITORIAL WHICH IS THE DEPARTMENT I WANTED TO SPEAK WITH . HOW ABOUT GIVING THE PUBLIC ACCESS AND INFORMATION SO OONE CAN CONTACT EDITORIAL DEPT.
DORIAN de Braam