Newspaper Columnists Attack Blogs… Again

Newspaper columnists are once more up in arms about the blog phenomenon, blaming the blogs for a massive increase in material that could put the columnists out of a job.

Dross Hackwork, the UK's leading newspaper columnist said yesterday:

These blogs are producing far too much material - what we in the business call Old Rope - for which they expect little, or even no, payment. Frankly, we are terrified of losing our cushy jobs. For years and years, we columnists have been able to make an easy living wibbling on about our domestic arrangements, our holidays, our cats and endlessly rehashing scenes from our student days. But, with people doing that kind of thing for free in blogs, it seems the bottom will soon drop out of the market. Once the newspaper owners and editors see that these 'bloggers' will produce plenty of Old Rope without even wanting payment for it, then we will all be out of a job.

She added with a shudder:

I have heard that some of these bloggers don't even live in London! Apparently, there are even some as far north as Watford, and maybe even beyond there… that is if there is anything actually north of Watford apart from the North Pole. Anyway, not the sort of people we journalists would want to associate with under any circumstances.

The future doesn't look too bright for the more specialist columnists either. It seems that not only are the bloggers better than the mainstream media (MSM) at producing the Old Rope columns, they also include in their number several people who do seem to know what they are talking about, an ability that most journalists regard as the badge of the amateur, feeling that a true journalist should automatically become an expert on any subject as soon as they begin to write about it.

However, there are expert bloggers in many fields from politics through economics and the arts to computers and modern technology who often expose the limited expertise and knowledge of journalists, even - in some cases - those journalists that are regarded as specialists in their particular subject.

Political Columnist Prole Guiltiliberal, said:

For several years now I've been able to pontificate about politics safe in the knowledge that no-one would be able to pick up my mistakes, errors or evasions. All the little tricks professional journalists have traditionally used to bend the facts into the required shape that satisfies the prejudices of not only our faithful readers, but - more importantly - the owners of our newspapers, are now being unmercifully exposed by these bloggers. These (spit) bloggers pounce on my articles before the ink is even dry and rip them to shreds in their pathetic little blogs. I'm just glad that the proprietor of my newspaper doesn't know how to work his web browser or I'd be sacked. Then my kids would have to go to the sort of local comprehensive I champion in my columns, and we would actually have to use the NHS instead of just writing about what a wonderful idea it is. Frankly, it is terrifying me that people who just happen to know what they are talking about are putting our cosy urban middle-class life in peril. It does seem that the golden age of newspaper pontification could really soon be over.

A political blogger, Stan Pyjamaranter, said, in response:

For too long now, these journalists have been saying that other workers must not stand in the way of technological progress by hanging on to jobs in outmoded industries. But, now that their industry is about to be rendered obsolete, and they are staring redundancy in the face, suddenly they are up in arms about it.

However, the famous newspaper proprietor Lord Ronald Avarice, however, in a recent speech to the Very Rich Buggers Indeed Society, stated:

The journalists think we don't know what is going on. But, surely, even they must have noticed how many newspaper - and other media - websites have blogs, or blog-like pages. These journalists are going to be in for a bit of a shock when contract-renewal time comes around, I can tell you that.