Is this the worst Sam Wollaston "review" ever?

[Godzilla Bankrolls]

Ooh, journo bitch-fight. I hope the one with principles wins!

[Mr. Analytical]

Oh, One of those. Lucy should go undercover to get the real grit on her fluff piece about how she doesn't understand Nintendo Wiis.

 You really are coming across as a smug git here TR.  Do you really want to sit there and defend the state of modern British journalism and the shit people get paid to produce?

[Godzilla Bankrolls]

TR has an odd, mid-Adlannic way of writing, doesn't he? Doesn't detract from what he's saying. Childish, cowardly self-preservationist pish that it is.

[The Mumbler]

I don't doubt that a lot of people who work in newspapers are overworked, stressed, stretched to the limit and perhaps in deep despair. Doesn't make what appears in the paper legitimate if it's lazy, uninformed drivel, though.

An example: the other week, Zoe Williams wrote a radio column berating Harold Pinter for not speaking up a bit when he was interviewed on Night Waves. Two things: 1) I could hear him perfectly well. 2) He's had throat cancer, which might explain things, despite 1).

Pinter's illness has been on the front page of every broadsheet so Williams should have known that. Even if she hadn't, the idea that G2's editors were all ignorant as well beggars belief. But even if no-one knew, the fact remains that Williams squandered a radio column on Pretending Not To Be Able To Hear Someone Speaking On The Radio rather than Listening Properly And Not Trying To Be So Darned Clever And Self-Satisfied.

That, ultimately, is what's so offensive. Not the ignorance, but the smugness at being ignorant.

[Mr. Analytical]

That, ultimately, is what's so offensive. Not the ignorance, but the smugness at being ignorant.

 That's just standard operating procedure for some hacks though.

[Lfbarfe]

...but you haven't. Add another 5 years and you might be getting there. I'm not saying you're not capable, just that theres a lot of people out there with double that experience who'll work for less, and will still phone in TV reviews. Sucks, but there it is.

God, you're a patronising bugger, aren't you? I'm not asking for career tutorials from someone whose own career path fills me with dread and horror. I'm pretty much sorted, thanks. I'm 33, and I own my own house without a mortgage, which means I don't have to seek or accept work that bores me or suck up to people I don't like or respect in order to turn a coin. I've had one book published, with another on the way, I've got a couple of regular gigs and there's one commissioning editor who calls me every couple of weeks to ask if I've got anything. I've got a fairly large overdraft at the moment, but that's only because I've taken far too long to write this second book. I decided to walk around the slippery slope rather than go up it. You should be asking me for advice.

Theres a staff writer for Society, I knew her when she was on trade papers 5 or 6 years ago, she just joined the Guardian and will be a staff writer on Society (its like being a sub for Accrington Stanley) for a while to come. If she's lucky she'll graduate to G2 to write fluff for a couple of years, and then if she pushes out a book or two they might offer her a column.

You make journalism sound like chiselling granite with a spoon. It's not, it's a desk job, mostly (unless, of course, you're having to shoulder the burden of riding 3-wheeled mopeds around in the interests of science). The trouble with journalism now is that too many new entrants want to be columnists rather than staff writers on Society. It might be the boring bit that nobody cool bothers with, but if you're in local government, it's a must-read. It contains actual information, news and informed comment, which in my view, beats the pish souffle written by the likes of Wollaston, Mangan, etc, hands down. Also, too many new entrants think that their own dull lives are acceptable subjects for columns, having been indulged in this by clueless editors. I've written the odd autobiographical piece, but week in, week out the cupboard pretty soon runs bare.

[terminallyrelaxed]

...but you haven't. Add another 5 years and you might be getting there. I'm not saying you're not capable, just that theres a lot of people out there with double that experience who'll work for less, and will still phone in TV reviews. Sucks, but there it is.

 Well it sucks for your newspapers frankly.  "Paying your dues" clearly has nothing to do with being able to do the work or even being a decent writer... it's like the 1950's Civil Service.  If you're still in the job after 10 years you get a promotion.

Nonsense. So you've just graduated and they should sack someone to make room for you, because you're "young and fresh and still have that spark"? Paying your dues means proven track record, not just sitting around waiting. Thats a sure way to get passed over by someone who has a proven track record and talent and style.

Never mind that the spark that once prompted you to write has long since been extinguished by a decade writing about things you're not interested in. Never mind that it's the public that's poorly served by a journalistic hierarchy that places more importance on seniority than talent or style.

I'm sorry, but you're just kidding yourself, or at least allowing yourself to get demoralised. They might place more importance on experience and track record and therefore seniority, but when you're an editor and you want a sober piece on the anniversary of the Morecombe Cockel Picking tragedy you're going to ask one of your staff writers whose style you know, and whom you know will deliver the article in the tone you require and whom you know from experience could write it - including research and interviews. How do they know they can? Because (as an example) they started as a Casual (maybe even in reception answering the fucking phones, I've seen it done) and hotdesked it around every book of the Guardian doing research and commissioning photographers and eventually writing mini stuff like product reviews and then being sent out on stupid little interviews and recording the 'this much I know' type stuff - and all for a pitiful wage in central London until its seen that they are reliable and versatile.
I'm not saying theres absolutely no nepotism, but theres an awful lot of degree-educated young people out there who can string a few words together and think journalism looks like an easy way to make a living, talent isn't as rare as you think and true style comes with experience, and is in any case vetted according the editor's needs.
Again, the Wollaston piece in question is indeed appalling, but it isn't a sign that journalism is eating its own tail. Maybe you can do better than him - but no-one owes you the chance to show it. Theres a deadline, and lowly due-paying staff writers hanging around, not doing much.

I myself and trying to get into the photography side of things - and I'm up against every cunt with a Cybershot. But even in photography it isn't really nepotism, its proven ability and past performance. I too have heard "I'll keep you in mind" a few times. No calls yet. They will only  come when the preferred guy isn't available - not preferred because they want to suck his cock, but preferred because he's delivered quality work to deadline before, exactly in keeping with what they asked for. Its their job on the line if someone comes back with shite and its too late to send someone else before press. I'm gagging for them to throw me a bone, but I don't blame them if they don't. If I could affford to live on the wage at my age I'd try and go for a photographer's assistant job, its the only guaranteed way to get given a chance.

Its a fucking difficult business to get into from any angle (I too had to work on trade mags for 6 or 7 years to get the relevant experience) but once you're in, you're in. Not because they love you, but because they know you can deliver. In my experience it has paid to get in on the ground floor. I don't know how well that applies to writers but its got to be better than sitting at home knocking up freelance stuff and spamming it out.

[terminallyrelaxed]

I'm pretty much sorted, thanks.

Me too. So why so bitter, then?

The trouble with journalism now is that too many new entrants want to be columnists rather than staff writers on Society.

This is exactly what I've been saying. Again, I'm not defending the writing styles of Wolllaston, Mangan or even fucking Ronson, but everyone seems to think they just wandered in and chatted up the editor. I don't think much of anything Williams writes, I don't like the tone of her serious pieces and the fluff is barely post-Burchill, but she's put the hours in.

[mothman]

Exactly. Barfie, you're being a cunt. All TR did was try to put some of the tawdry-state-of-modern-journalism discussion into context, having worked as he did within dictionary-luzzing range of the Wollaston object itself. Hardly worth going off on one now, was it?

[Mr. Analytical]

Nonsense. So you've just graduated and they should sack someone to make room for you, because you're "young and fresh and still have that spark"? Paying your dues means proven track record, not just sitting around waiting. Thats a sure way to get passed over by someone who has a proven track record and talent and style.

 Nonsense right back at you.

 Sam Wallaston visibly has neither style nor talent... and yet he's in the job.  He has a proven track record of mediocrity and, evidently, whizzing round on a tricycle.

 Paying your dues is all about being in the job for a period of time.  As Sammy-boy demonstrates, it's clearly a system that simply does not filter for talent.  It filters for lanky cunts happy to churn out cack reviews and then ponce about on a scooter.

 The current job filters for making the lives of subs easy.  Sam probably got where he is today by virtue of being willing to write about any old shite, at the drop of a hat and without making too many spelling mistakes.  It's journalism of the path of least resistance.

 The evidence for how wretched the system is is evident in the above review.

but when you're an editor and you want a sober piece on the anniversary of the Morecombe Cockel Picking tragedy you're going to ask one of your staff writers whose style you know,

 I have no problem with serious journalism being an uphill battle to get into.  It's all about building up contacts and getting a nose for the business and, in truth, more about investigation than about skill as a writer.  But we're not talking about serious journalism here (besides which, that piece sounds horrific anyway).

 Do you really need to go to someone who you know will get the tone right if you're looking for a review of a three wheeled scooter?  How about writing a daily column about what was on TV the night before?

 As far as I'm concerned, reviewing is the lowest rung on the journalistic ladder.  If you can't do decent reviews then you have no business being a professional or even semi-professional writer... and yet Sammy displays his lack of skill and desire week in and week out.

 I think that the problem is that while a lot of these people probably could write decent reviews, they are either too busy climbing the greasy poll and believing reviews to be beneath them OR they really want to be writing about theater but are stuck in the lifestyle freelancers pool and are forced to churn out reviews of things they have no interest in or knowledge of.

 There may be thousands of talented writers out there, but they're in incredibly short supply when it comes to the reviews and pop-culture commentary in the British dead-tree media.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

Here's Zoe Williams laying into Adam Curtis, like she even remotely knows what she's talking about:

Zoe Williams
Monday March 12, 2007
The Guardian

"Fuck You, Buddy" is the first part in a series (The Trap - What Happened to Our Dreams of Freedom, Sunday, BBC2) about civil liberties: the keen-eared wireless listener will have been alerted to its soi-disant intellectual credentials by the fact that they are trailing it on Radio 4. Normally, it pleases Radio 4 to pretend that the television arm of the corporation is just a distant retarded cousin it met once at a wedding. The "inflammatory" name refers to a game invented by the mathematician John Forbes Nash, whom they actually draft in here, which at first I thought lent it authority, and later on I decided was just because, well, he's mad, innee?

Fuck You, Buddy is just one game Nash invented, to demonstrate how all human interaction was characterised by suspicion and selfishness. Another was the Prisoner's Dilemma, in which it was proven that, whichever way you played it out, it was always more beneficial to you to screw over your cohort than to co-operate with him. Frankly, as interesting as game theory is, and it is interesting, I couldn't help thinking, "Hold the front page! Paranoid schizophrenic thinks rest of world is out to get each other!" A number of other game theorists were wheeled out. They're all pretty old now, and they pause for so long you think the telly's on pause. I kept thinking the dog was sitting on the remote. "That dog is probably out to screw me," I thought. "It will serve him better, in the long run, than cooperating with me."

Nash's theories dovetail, apparently, with those of Friedrich Hayek, which spell out the pitfalls of altruism as the basis for any economic model (the key text is The Road to Serfdom. I can't be sure, but I think it means that we will end up enslaved. Just by being nice to each other! Who'd have thunk?).

Now, I'm already a little annoyed, because these are complex ideas, and the BBC's prime-time idea of elucidation these days seems to be "repeat the same phrase in a sonorous voice. This will make it sink in, and also be good for people who've just made a cup of tea". Whatever the philosophical connection between Hayek's model and Nash's game theory, the dovetail is not as neat as the programme insists; to extend the metaphor, if you were to use this dovetail as part of a chair that you were making, for instance, you would not be able to sit on it.

Here are some more complicated ideas from the programme: RD Laing, in his observations that patients would improve under his care, then deteriorate once sent home, decided to "investigate the circumstances where this thing called madness was incubated". Using some of the techniques of game theory (so there is a connection, honest, guv) he decides that society is a bleak environment where everyone is out to get one another; families seem affectionate but are in fact mechanisms of malign control that filters down from the highest authorities. He invented counter-culturalism; he undermined our trust in institutions. Now check this out for an argumentative leap: Laing destroyed faith in the psychiatric elite. This led to a flurry of pathologising behaviour, so what had previously been "just a bit eccentric" was now "obsessive compulsive disorder." "Terms like OCD took hold of the public imagination"; "in the name of freedom, an attack on the psychiatric elite had created new checklists". We sent ourselves mad, in other words: thinking we were sloughing off the yoke of elitist science, we instead shackled ourselves to a much more damaging model in which all behaviours were nutty on some level, and all of us were enslaved to an unattainable goal of "normality". This argument just doesn't stack up, it's lazy - the public didn't invent OCD and ADHD. This isn't the result of a crumbling trust in authority, of the death of a "psychiatric elite"; everyone is still in thrall to an elite, it's just a different sodding elite! Fuck You, Buddy had some very interesting elements, but as the prosecution of a thesis, it had no rigour. Well, Fuck You Too, would be the Radio 4 response. If they were allowed to swear.

[Lfbarfe]

Sorry, I wrote the reply above before I read the rest of your reply, so I hadn't yet realised you are just a failed and embittered hack.

Embittered, certainly. Failed, no. On my own terms, I'm successful. I enjoy my work, and my time is mostly my own.

It must suck that your inadequacies are so evident

What inadequacies are those then? I know what I do badly, so I don't do it. Would that Sam Wollaston had the same self-awareness.

that you have to blame the culture for your lack of achievement.

What lack of achievement? I'm sorry that sitting in an air-conditioned room with a group of people whose ambition outstrips their talent, all the while churning out cack to stop the ads from bumping into each other, is not the apex of my professional ambition. I have a superbly equipped study, with all four walls covered in book shelves containing valuable reference material, a fuck-off great hi-fi that allows me to listen to Cannonball Adderley at full volume while I work and no pisspot office politician looking over my shoulder to check I'm not emailing my mum.

Whats the matter, did my explanation not sit well with the excuses you make to yourself?

Your explanation seemed to me to be an apologia for rubbish journalism, and an indication of the almost complete lack of will to do any better.

Oh, One of those.

What the cock do you mean by that?

Lucy should go undercover to get the real grit on her fluff piece about how she doesn't understand Nintendo Wiis.

In that case, I'd say that reading the fucking manual would be an investigative triumph for la Mangan. The Guardian used to be strong on empowerment of females, but I'd say that 'woman can't understand games console' panders to the neanderthal tendencies that Jill Tweedie et al spent years battling.

Certainly to a bunch of jaded and cynical Morris fans, its not my thing either, but I expect the housewives of middle england find it diverting enough. A weekend supplement can't be all things to all people.

I was a dyed-in-the-wool Guardian reader for a good 15 years. Maybe I changed, maybe it changed, maybe both, but I can't pick the paper up now without wishing I'd done something else with my time instead.

You just keep telling yourself that sunshine.

What I meant was that most unsolicited submissions remain unread. There are a few heroic commissioning editors out there who give the first par a go at the very least. However, as Mr Analytical says, when you've got a pool of people already being paid (no matter that they've already got plenty to do and show no interest in the extra work they're given), what's the incentive to build up a network of freelances?

No, you see, I'm actually working in the newspaper industry, not yapping around its heels trying to get in.

Uh? I'm not trying to get in - I'm already in at enough places not to starve. Anything else is just bunce. Maybe not national newspapers, but national magazines.

This means I actually know whats going on, not what's been repeated to me in the pub.

I have a very close friend who works at the Independent who was desperate to take advantage of the recent voluntary redundancy offer. I trust what that friend tells me, and what I'm told indicates that it's a vile place to be working at the moment.

Come on, your 'insights' might carry more weight if it wasn't for the bile - didn't you say you wrote for a living?

Yes, I do. What's your point?

[The Mumbler]

 As far as I'm concerned, reviewing is the lowest rung on the journalistic ladder.  If you can't do decent reviews then you have no business being a professional or even semi-professional writer...

But I think that comment illustrates just what a debased art reviewing is. Too many people doing it prefer pithiness to perceptiveness, maybe because they get more personally-addressed mail that way, maybe because they can leave their real beliefs at the door. Anyone can review things. To do it well is extremely rare. Wollaston and dozens like him give the impression that anyone can do it. Well, anyone *could* write like that. But what about writing that's better than that? What about writing where, if challenged, saying "Ach, it's only telly, don't take it so seriously!" is woefully inadequate?

I'm fed up of people trying to be funny in newspapers. Fuck off and do some open spots if that's your bag.

[Lfbarfe]

Me too. So why so bitter, then?

Because it's fun.

This is exactly what I've been saying.

Pardon me for misunderstanding, but it didn't really read like that.

Again, I'm not defending the writing styles of Wolllaston, Mangan or even fucking Ronson, but everyone seems to think they just wandered in and chatted up the editor. I don't think much of anything Williams writes, I don't like the tone of her serious pieces and the fluff is barely post-Burchill, but she's put the hours in.

Hours in which she has proven herself to be fucking useless. The problem here is with the editors who have a misguided idea of what the readers want, IMHO. There's just so much worthless verbiage in newspapers now.  I've been looking at old copies of The Times a lot over the last couple of years, and from the 1950s to the early 1980s, the paper reported soberly and reliably, while also providing informed comment. Nowadays, the news stories are announcements of something that someone's going to say, and everyone's a comedian.

[Lfbarfe]

Exactly. Barfie, you're being a cunt.

I'm not being a cunt. I am a cunt.

All TR did was try to put some of the tawdry-state-of-modern-journalism discussion into context, having worked as he did within dictionary-luzzing range of the Wollaston object itself. Hardly worth going off on one now, was it?

Very worth going off on one, I'd say. Whatever TR says now about not defending the status quo, just telling it like it is, his original reply seemed utterly, smugly at ease with the tawdry state of modern journalism, and made much of his own treasured insider status.

[The Mumbler]

That Williams piece about Adam Curtis is a prime example of spending nearly a thousand words bemoaning the BBC dumbing down - but in a frightfully dumbed-down way. Perfectly ok for the papers to dumb down. Cheers.

I'm not your friend, Zoe, so you can abandon that stream-of-consciousness e-mail style you've imperfected over the years. And as for the rash of brackets, are your SHIFT, '9' and '0' keys worn out yet?

How she got where she is: Oxford. Protege of Burchill's. Evening Standard. The World. The End.

[Lfbarfe]

As far as I'm concerned, reviewing is the lowest rung on the journalistic ladder.  If you can't do decent reviews then you have no business being a professional or even semi-professional writer...

I disagree. The lowest rung on the journalistic ladder is rewriting press releases for the news in briefs column. Good reviewing can almost be art in its own right. I'm thinking of the best of Clive James' Observer tv columns or Auberon Waugh's fiction reviews.  

Incidentally, though I love Clive James' tv reviews, I fear he has a lot to answer for. He filled his columns with great gags, but always got to the heart of the programmes he was reviewing. When he took a stand, he knew why he was taking it. Others who have followed his lead have gone for all the gags with none of the analysis, and taken stands for the sake of being good controversial copy.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

There must be an editorial decision to 'not be too serious' in G2. While it might be a good idea, it does mean that almost all daily reviews of cultural events are treated in a derisory manner.

I know terminallyrelaxed is trying to say Wollaston does OK because he has a very busy schedule meaning a TV review isn't neccessarily a priority, but it's not much comfort for the readers.  I don't understand why they have to put up with it because it's how the system works on an ethical newspaper.

[Backstage With Slowdive]

This thread has simply reminded me why I stopped buying newspapers years ago. They used to be worth reading, but that was deemed unacceptable around the turn of the decade.

[Mr. Analytical]

But I think that comment illustrates just what a debased art reviewing is. Too many people doing it prefer pithiness to perceptiveness, maybe because they get more personally-addressed mail that way, maybe because they can leave their real beliefs at the door. Anyone can review things. To do it well is extremely rare.

 The evidence for the truth of this is everywhere.  There are a number of reviewers that I personally really rate but with the possible exception of Sight & Sound, there's not a single publication I can think of that has standards to which I aspire.

 You look at book reviews and most of them are plot summaries or hopelessly fence-sitty and solipsistic "You'll like this book if you're the kind of person that likes this sort of book!".

 What I meant is that reviewing demands what I consider the basic skills involved in being a professional non-fiction writer.  Namely being perceptive and being able to communicate those perceptions in an interesting way.  If you can't do those then you should go and work in a bank... seriously.  However, if you can do reviews well then you can probably do longer features too and should probably be trusted to administer a reviews section (subject to not being completely disorganised).  That was all I was trying to say.

 
 The Williams review is clearly a result of her watching a programme she didn't full understand and then deciding that, because it's a clever programme, she'd better say something clever about it.

 She swallows the incorrect views on Game Theory, completely ignores the programme's main point and spends half the article tilting at a windmill and throwing the phrase "fuck you, buddy" around like a naughty teenager.

[The Mumbler]

It wasn't a personal dig at you. I sort of knew what you were getting at. But it's the kind of thing that seems to abound in today's media: give your opinion, even if it's not very well-informed or badly-realised. I'd expect it from the readers but for the paper's writers to do it, with get-out clauses sprawling across every painfully adolescent sentence is... apparently par for the course.

I just think: Oh, go and do some research, and I don't mean the internet.

[Mr. Analytical]

I just think: Oh, go and do some research, and I don't mean the internet.

 If they used the internet it would be a step forward, or at least turn down commenting on things they know nothing about.

[Peking O]

As an editor, I'd love to get my hands on some unedited Wollaston. Can you imagine how shabby his stuff must be before it goes through the editing process? Jesus. That's like porn to me.

[The Mumbler]

As an editor, I'd love to get my hands on some unedited Wollaston. Can you imagine how shabby his stuff must be before it goes through the editing process? Jesus. That's like porn to me.

That's the point, though. I don't think it is edited at all. I suppose, alternatively, his original copy is pristine, thought-provoking prose, and his editor's a complete sabotaging moron.

[Mr. Analytical]

Absolutely.

It's journalism as the path of least resistance.  Wollaston has "paid his dues" in so far as he's churned out enough ineffectual bilge that the editor knows that whatever Sam writes can go in pretty much unedited.  That way, the editor doesn't have to actually engage with any of the ideas or wrestle with prose.  He can just shove it down the memory shute and get back to churning out paid articles for the Oberserver or whatever it is he does with his day.

[Peking O]

That's the point, though. I don't think it is edited at all. I suppose, alternatively, his original copy is pristine, thought-provoking prose, and his editor's a complete sabotaging moron.

The Wollaston stuff probably is edited to some extent. A major newspaper wouldn't stick something out unedited. The New York Times employs about 150 copyeditors, and that's just one newspaper.

[Lfbarfe]

The Wollaston stuff probably is edited to some extent. A major newspaper wouldn't stick something out unedited. The New York Times employs about 150 copyeditors, and that's just one newspaper.

British papers employ far fewer subs than they used to.

[The Mumbler]

I believe Radio Times also had a mass of redundancies a few months back. And just look at it now... not just gushing but gushing with shoddy subbing. A shocking barrage of typos of late.

[Peking O]

British papers employ far fewer subs than they used to.

Really? Interesting. A former co-worker of mine (who taught copyediting classes at NYU) used to have a huge file of clippings from British newspapers. The clippings featured some of the worst grammatical errors he'd come across in his meticulous research. He went straight to the British papers for these examples because of their reputation for errors. He would be aghast to learn that fewer subs are now being employed in the UK.

[Lfbarfe]

I believe Radio Times also had a mass of redundancies a few months back. And just look at it now... not just gushing but gushing with shoddy subbing. A shocking barrage of typos of late.

January 2006 - it was mainly on the TV listings side, as BBC Worldwide decided to buy them in from PA like everybody else. It struck me at the time and still strikes me as a 'cost of everything/value of nothing' decision. The radio staff are relatively safe, as no-one else bothers to compile proper comprehensive radio listings. As a freelance working for that end of the magazine, I have to say that Jane Anderson is probably the best commissioning editor I've ever encountered - enthusiastic, open-minded, utterly straight and honest. Sorry if that sounds nauseous, but those are rare qualities among commissioning editors, in my experience.