Paper Round – Star Sunday

Star Sunday

Originally uploaded by Editor_Tupp.

Notes are on the wiki for the Star Sunday, my final contribution to the Cause Celébre that The Paper Round has become. It was surprisingly hard work, and deeply depressing, but I for one am glad I did it. To quote Brass Eye, “an astonishing sense of community here now, a positive atmosphere, a sense of a job well done, a shared sigh of relief very much like the bizarre euphoria at the end of an hour’s vomiting“. Couldn’t have put it better myself. I can’t say quite what has been achieved by the paper round, but one or two people have paid attention, including the author (I presume) of one of the Sunday Times articles who was remarkably quick to get on the wiki to defend his work. My response was prompt, and I hope, reasonable.

The Star is every bit as bad as I had expected. I’ve had to create two new categories. One of these was “infotainment”, and it’s coming into existence was largely a function of Sunday supplement stuff being printed in the main section of the newspaper. The other was a more specifically tabloidy genre, “made up”. This applied to a small number of stories which, when one cleared away the verbiage, were based on anonymous quotes of dubious provenance. This is a long-standing method in the sports pages (“Fergie vows revenge”, based on a “club source” who says “he’s definitely keen to avenge last season’s defeat”, that sort of thing) which has crept into the news section.
The other thing about the Star which is worth noting is the huge amount of advertising in it. Unlike the sneaky broadsheets, the Star feels very little shame about this, to the extent that they often give phone numbers and web adresses for the sponsors.

Perhaps in time I will go into the national library and have a look at a few old papers to compare them with what was published on November 11th and 12th, 2006, but that aside, I fear I will be unable to read a newspaper for a very long time.