Comments

View comments: 74 to 44 - 43 to 14 - 13 to 1
1. 13 Jack McJiggins says:
   October 7th, 2008 at 10:03 pm

   What I like best about the comments is that we appear to be posting from the future….I sense an opportunity for some stock-market manipulation.

2. 12 Jack McJiggins says:
   October 7th, 2008 at 10:02 pm

   The comments will continue, but Anroak’s link with the outside world will be severed, leaving us to write the entire thing from our own imaginations. We will be stuck forever in the server system with no chance of escape…in other words, nothing will change.

3. 11 sam says:
   October 7th, 2008 at 10:00 pm

   chenier, husband is a programmer, have suffered it for years :), yes usenet had it’s advantages certainly.

4. 10 chenier says:
   October 7th, 2008 at 9:52 pm

   You’ve noticed it too!

   Yep, it’s the price of progress; we increasingly lose more and more function as they add more and more features that nobody knows how to make work.

   I recall a few weeks ago you mentioning the killfile option on usenet; the happy days when you could dispatch some twit to the cybervoid in perpetuity…

5. 9 sam says:
   October 7th, 2008 at 9:41 pm

   it’s them constant upgrades chenier, they tend to screw a lot of things up.

6. 8 chenier says:
   October 7th, 2008 at 9:38 pm

   sam

   As far as I know comments will continue, but the software develops weird and definitely not wonderful kinks. This is one of them…

7. 7 chenier says:
   October 7th, 2008 at 9:34 pm

   Thank you for that cheerful comment; my theory is that the site’s sudden decision that 2 comments constitute a page is a result of the ‘all must have prizes’ syndrome.

   Lots of people would like to be able to claim that they wrote an entire page, so now they can.

   I should never have mentioned Anorka’s plans to reach out to the community with MP3 files for the hard of reading…

8. 6 sam says:
   October 7th, 2008 at 9:33 pm

   are they really going to get rid of the comments feature ?

9. 5 Jack McJiggins says:
   October 7th, 2008 at 9:26 pm

   Still, it’s good to know that the Anroka comments feature is going into meltdown in conjunction with the financial markets.

10. 4 Jack McJiggins says:
    October 7th, 2008 at 9:24 pm

    Poor old Steve - his obituary had already been published this year, then this “heart attack.” Eaten by alligators could be next.

11. 3 The Real Stig says:
    October 7th, 2008 at 9:12 pm

    Didn’t we have a perfect example of this calibre of journalism only a couple days ago with someone reporting that Steve Job’s had been admitted to hospital, having suffered a heart attack.

    “Apple has categorically denied a citizen report published to the CNN iReport website early Friday claiming that chief executive Steve Jobs had been rushed to a local ER following a major heart attack.

    “It is not true,” Apple spokesman Steve Dowling told Reuters.

    CNN describes its iReport site as a venue where ordinary citizen journalists can share their “passion about the news.”

    “At CNN we live for news. We love talking about it. And we know that there’s a whole lot more to it than what you see on TV or read on your favorite Web site,” the news agency says. “So we’ve launched an independent world where you, the iReport.com community, tell the stories we’re not used to seeing. And the most compelling, important, and urgent ones may get seen on CNN.”"

12. 2 magnetite says:
    October 7th, 2008 at 2:09 pm

    Hooray! We is all jernelistts now!

    [Serious face. Not mock serious. Real serious]

    I know very little about journalism. Other than it is a hard job to do right, and it is hard not to want to do it right.

    I worked for a local paper for three months in the late 80’s. Just a copy reader - fixing typos of those who were far too busy getting across the information, the body of the event to worry about being touch-typists. Even on a local paper, I saw weary reporters coming in from a hard day’s (or night’s) work of reporting the facts - in as few words as possible, in the most informative way possible.

    Citizens (plebs like myself, who appreciate the fact that the professionals here are professional enough to tolerate me) are handy when they are on the spot with a cameraphone. We cannot be relied upon for real journalism. We plebs (I include myself here only, so as not to upset anyone else - all 3 secondary school exam results of me, all in woodwork; history of, high and applied marquetry - not quite true but close enough) will report on our loves and hates alone. We like the sound of certain words in our ears, the taste of certain words on our tongues.

    The professionals can be told by their editors to go out and bring back a 500-word piece (or 5 minute film) on dog-sh*t on a Scarborough beach, or a flower shaped like Ben Affleck or a radical knitting circle - and make it interesting and informative. They will not like it, but the best of them can do it. It WILL be interesting and informative too, or at least not make us want to ball up the newspaper and throw it away; or hurl family pets at the TV screen in disgust, swearing to ourselves thet we’ll never watch this channel’s news again. We, the people, cannot do this. We are not trained for it, would not put our backs out for a story we feel does not challenge us or appeal to us the way the professionals can. How many Woodwards and Bernsteins could be drawn from the ranks of Joe Public?

    Sometimes the public can string enough words together, eloquently enough to just manage, or fill a hole on a slow news day. We (me) the public should not be able to rise higher than that, lest opinion become our news.

    Thank you for listening.

    [3/10 magnetite - you could have done better...see what I mean? I couldn't do this for a living!]

13. 1 chenier says:
    October 7th, 2008 at 12:16 pm

    Au contraire; I see this as a poignant evocation of President Bush’s rallying cry to the bits of Congress which would fit into his living room:

    ‘this sucker is going down’

    He was right, too…

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