Sitting next to me in the barber’s was an old sparring partner of mine. Some of the best discussions, debates and arguments I’ve ever had were with this man. A lifelong newspaper man, he is a fountain of knowledge and difficult to trip up. Over the years I seldom won, or even came close.
I enquired as to what he was up to now having retired as editor of a provincial almost a year ago.
Playing golf and sitting on my arse. And enjoying both immensely. I should have retired years ago.
Do you not get bored?
Not at all. I was bored reading the same tat the hacks were sending across my desk in the latter years though. If I had to read one more piece regurgitated for the umpteenth time I would have screamed.
That bad, huh?
Laziness and computers. Copy and paste. Change a line here and there and whack it out.
That’s plagiarism!
Not when the hack filing it wrote it themselves in the first place. Refiling it half a dozen times is laziness.
You don’t miss it then?
I miss the thrill of when one of my reporters broke something before the nationals. And I really miss writing the editorial.
Would you take up blogging? As a hobby. You could write what you want, when you want.
Christ no! I don’t want to be associated with that. You can’t trust the Internet. I’ve seen good journalists make fools of themselves by reporting ‘facts’ they read on the Internet.
Now that’s plagiarism!
There is no copyright on the Internet.
Wrong on this one, Patsy. No matter the publication medium, what someone writes is copyrighted to them.
Humph! It can’t be trusted. Look at Wikipedia.
Wikipedia has been shown to be more accurate than Britannica in many fields. Plus it is right up to the minute. Britannica is only published periodically. For every person who vandalises an important article there are a hundred others who will jump in a correct it immediately.
Humph! I still don’t trust it.
I’m careful with it too, but that’s no to say I ignore it totally. But anyway, I don’t know how we got onto Wikipedia. Back to blogging - I think you’d enjoy it. I really do.
Blogging, Wikipedia, the whole Internet - all the same. Can’t be trusted. Any of it.
Next! The barber called and so one of the few debates I could have won with this man was cut short. There will be an opportunity to resurrect it at some stage I’m sure. I could cite cases of journalists copying bloggers. How bloggers can break news faster. How businesses can use blogs to get their message across without it being corrupted by a newspaper subby. Yes, I’d love to win this one and I’m sure I can. What I’d like even more is to convince him to try blogging.
The rants of an old-style newspaper hack, with ingrained prejudices, published on the platform they all despise, would make very interesting reading. What beautiful irony it would be. We could learn why these, otherwise well informed journalists, lump all aspects of the Web together. Why they fight against it. Why the younger in the business embrace it to a degree, but fail to understand it fully.
I think a phone call to meet up for a pint at the weekend would be in order. All going well there will be a part two to this. If it goes as I want it to, there will be a new link on the side-bar.
Update: It didn’t go well. It didn’t go badly. Let’s just say we are in talks about talks.
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