editorial authority
G Daeb
a nerve. Or so they would have me think.
Some time ago I made the observation that the
local rag's women's editor seemed only to write
about herself and those whose arses her nose
was so far up it seemed she was oblivious to
just how bad her own bullshit stank.
And promptly she went out and interviewed a
normal woman who'd (HOLD THE FRONT PAGE!)
got on a course.
Once.
Obviously, she is a very very busy person, with
a great many very important things to do, so I
guess maybe I should have been grateful for the
nod there, to say they ran the training schedule
for the whole country's journalists--once.
Only, having done a bit of education myself, I
can't help making the following observations:
Getting on a course is something the dole think
is important. Whether or not you actually learn
anything or, indeed, benefit in any way at all, is
not really any consideration of theirs.
So there we have it. Getting on a course, if you
a woman, is the be all and end all of the epitome
of achievement.
Certainly there's been no Watchdog-style follow
ups, not even in the quasi-academic sense of
an epilogue to the thrust of theory which acts as
a litmus to whether the content of the paper (pun
intended) was, basically, right or, basically,
misguided--not in any meaningful qualitative sense
anyway.
In fact, as is the case with so many women it
seems, she had her moment and now it's gone,
this once optimistic student.
Is adult education in our area really so much under
the wise auspices of St Jude that actually being
able to report completion in the form of a feature
masquerading as insightful is an impossibility?
Or has the loss of a job in the editorial department
really stretched resources so much that a now
successful adult learner can't send in an informal
update by e-mail?
What are we to assume? That somehow school
education is now geared up to favouring females
but the rest of it is a man's world a woman can't
succeed in?
Or that their late-'90s foray into telling the rest of
the UK how to run a successful paper was very
much a case of "do as we say, not as we do"?
Or that the BBC's (and News Corporation's, for
that matter) model of expecting their audience
to be able to remember the gist of a feature from
some time in the past is just too much for even
now-educated members of this dumbed-down-by-
degraded-DNA area of the country to cope with?
Perhaps she's just crap?
And perhaps that's why her reflex is to advise
people not to read her columns.
So come on then hinny, are there any benefits to
be had from enrolling on a course as a woman?
Stylistically bad it might be but, personally, I'm
a firm believer that it's what you learn not whether
you pass or fail that's important--an ethos I might
have expected the discriminated-against women
of the slightly post-current generation to embrace.
But not one our local rag seems to be proactively
underlining.
So come on. What happened to these women?
Or, rather, this woman.
Because, surely, in the context of Trisha and good
ol' Jeremy Kyle promoting getting on a course, if
it was a waste of her time then surely other women
might want to know. And if it wasn't, then why fight
shy of a heart-warming tale of achievment against
the odds?
It's just, like, y'know, you bother to get interested,
and find out this stuff about what journalism's about,
see no evidence of it in practice, say so, and get
slagged down as a piece of shit and advised, well,
just don't read it then, as though it's some airheaded
mock-interview on the Playboy channel.
So come on, pull those bobby socks up now, and
justify your condesending manner to me by, erm,
DOING YOUR FUCKING JOB YOU LAZY-ARSED
AIRHEADED BROWN-NOSING BINT, and actually
evaluating the worth of services accessible by women
instead of just glibly promoting people who compliment
the cut of your hemline at the (so you say) rare social
events you do get out to. Because, believe me, they
aren't particularly representative
NB: journalism students, there haven't been any real
opportunities for work experience on the title for a
good couple of years, because its cheaper to have
their own kids (as opposed to people who nurture
any genuine interest in the line of work) in over the
summer than pay minders. Without knowing too
much about any of them, though, this simply can't
continue indefinitely so maybe next, if not, this
summer, THERE MIGHT ACTUALLY BE SOME
REAL WORK EXPERIENCE GOING.
G DAEB
COPYRIGHT (C) 2009 SIPSTON
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