For God’s sake, doesn’t any journalist have a sense of humour? First a public rebuke on the BBC for being “pompous” now journalism.co.uk doesn’t see the funny side. Any minute now, I’m expecting the National Union of Journalists to issue a press release calling for the government to take action against bloggers issuing death threats to their members.
For the last time: it was a joke. It was certainly satirical, in that one of the problems of British journalism these days IS that – due to the pressures of rolling news environments – a lot of the time journalists can simply “not be bothered” to cover stories in a less superficial way. And yes, it probably isn’t fair to draw this wider conclusion from this simple exchange of tweets but he was a bit arsey, I thought it was a nice line and figured he was broad-shouldered enough to take it. If I was being self-important, I would have written a 2,000 word essay about it (and believe me, I could), not a short quip before writing about something else entirely.
But of course, I mentioned it was a joke in the comments of that article this morning, for the record. Why didn’t Judith Townend mention that fact? Could it be that she “couldn’t be bothered”?
It’s nice to be noticed, but in the middle as I am of this act of journalistic mass-onanism, I am starting to feel like the biscuit…
UPDATE: That journalism.co.uk website has (as of 11.30pm on 2 September) generated one hit for this website. Not exactly a hub of activity then!
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Keep smiling James – broadcast journalists are generally second only to actors in their ability to combine extreme self-importance with raging insecurity. I would say ‘chin up’ – but in circumstances like these, it’s more chin well tucked in and gloves up…
Nice to see a run-out for “onanism” – excellent.
I have taken to having a tag which says “WARNING: Contains irony”.
Better safe than sorry
For the avoidence of all possible doubt, I’m not actually angry or upset by this – in fact I’m amused. It is very rare that I rant on this blog out any desire to do anything but amuse (okay, yesterday was borderline but with some major provocation and after 30 hours without sleep), but I have noticed people tend to assume otherwise. One of my work colleagues told me that a bloke he met in the pub once described me as “a very angry man”.
Wouldn’t a biscuit in the middle of a circle jerk get VERY soggy…?
Yes, thank you for spelling out my extremely subtle visual metaphor. Please – no diagrams.
Salty too. O:-)
“Wouldn’t a biscuit in the middle of a circle jerk get VERY soggy…?”
Not if everyone got stage fright at the vinegar strokes…
Well, not everyone can perform for the money-shot you know.
And I say that as a journalist (not a spunk-monkey porno stand-in)
“And I say that as a journalist (not a spunk-monkey porno stand-in)”
I’m going to get accused of being pompous for saying this but what’s the difference?
I was going to say “I bet you say that to all the girls”
James
Difference is regional porno stand-ins get much more money…
Jennie
Only to my local MP’s…