A week back we were as always, hugely entertained by the farcical annual journalism awards. Once again both the Herald and the Stuff fleet bragged of being the big winners, as they do each year.
How is this possible? Simple; everyone gets a prize. Being a journo is akin to joining the army wherein as compensation for low pay and a ridiculous occupation you’re given baubles; medals for the military and “awards” for the journoes.
In the mid 1990s the then Dominion editor casually mentioned he’d submitted some of my columns for the annual awards. My horrified screams woke people as far away as Iceland. I had him promptly withdraw it. Imagine the embarrassment. I’d have had to migrate.
A decade or so back, a half-witted young woman rang advising she helped edit the Herald’s website and asked would I please supply a bio’ to head up the top of my weekly column. One huge mystery was then cleared up, namely the absurdly lengthy and incredibly laudatory bio’ published over the Herald’s John Roughan’s weekly offering. It always puzzled me reading it as to how he’d ever missed out on at least a Nobel Prize. Now the answer was clear. He wrote it himself.
I always cite Roughan when discussing columnists, as an example of someone who writes a clear, sensible but predictable commentary on events of the day, but which it’s inconceivable anyone would ever read twice. In short, he’s utterly devoid of humour or originality, the keys for longevity and being published in a book of columns.
But back to the halfwit young woman wanting my bio’ for the Herald website. I promptly dashed of a Roughan length account, explaining that I’d spent 20 years in prison for a crime I didn’t detail. There I learned to tap dance and on release represented New Zealand in the world champions, winning the title five years in a row. For this I was knighted by David Lange, he himself an avid tap dancer.
Young women are biologically programmed to be gullible in the sole interest, like every living entity from amoebas upward, of reproducing their species.
Consequently, it was no surprise when the Herald girl replied thanking me for dealing with the matter so quickly and commenting on my interesting history.
As an aside, I had dealt with it like most people, namely immediately on receiving the request. But she was used to journoes who are noted idlers.
Anyway, I couldn’t wait for it to appear in print but alas, a senior subbie picked it up and realised I was taking the mickey. I ignored the fresh request for a bio’ so to be consistent, henceforth they scrubbed running them and Roughan has hated me ever since.
POSTSCRIPT
God help us all. Yesterday both the Herald and the Dominion Post bragged about cleaning up all the awards in yet another bauble-issuing journalism award, this time an international one.
Feel for the poor buggers. They’re facing an abyss, as they know, with collapsing sales, as with all print media. This avalanche of awards for their wonderfulness are the equivalent of the condemned prisoner’s last meal before their appointment with the scaffold.
6 Comments
The Herald has found a new phrase to describe anything not totally PC, leftist drivel.
Tiki (the movie guy) said that rioting, looting, burning buildings, smashing up shops and murdering people wasn’t helping the protesters cause. “Tiki’s Tone Deaf Comment” blared the headline.
They’re getting desperate, the begging bowl out and on the bludge for government money, all for our own good of course.
“journalism [is] a strategic asset over which New Zealanders must have control”.
We have control, it’s called the free market. Produce propaganda and childish drivel and people won’t pay for it. Simple!
Reminds me of the caucus race in Alice in Wonderland
Not knowing the awards had just been -this morning reading The Herald’s on-line news, I noted it was now listing itself as “Website of the Year”. Must be the Herald’s turn now I thought as Stuff had given itself the title for the past several months. Such is the boring rotational nature of these awards….
Some moron on Red Radio this morning gleefully announced, I am not making this up, that at NZD 64c to the USD the NZD is ”strong”
Award shows are all about the particular industry giving awards to itself. Who the hell decides if one song/film etc. is better than another? I remember the Herald art critic being given some abstract artwork by “an important new artist” to review.
He described how he knew what the excellent work was trying to portray: then he was told that the artist(s) were in fact kindergarten children.
He was not amused.
At 64c to the US$ the kiwi is far too strong. 40c is reasonable, 30c probable in a year or so.
The NZ Herald invites us to subscribe for world-class journalism. That’s the joke….. Stuff is heading for oblivion with its Left/Liberal agenda mocked mercilessly in my humble bubbles.