The burgeoning of the Internet has seen a sea change in the journalistic paradigm, where benchmarks are now on the cutting edge of the envelope and redundant subeditors and paperboys drink themselves to an early death in dingy craft beer joints arguing over Oxford commas and throwing distance.
The Weakly Whirled News, one of the early adapters of online news-like sentence assembly, has decided in the interests of de-tolling the information superhighway, and mowing the berms, to reveal the complexities involved in putting content up on sites like for instance but not restricted to NZME., home of the Herlad.
9.00 Senior NZME. staffers assemble and send out for decaf kopi luwak and paleo biscotti.
10.00 Senior NZME. staffers head off to planning meeting in Cancún, leaving IT section in charge.
11.00 NZME. IT staff checks to see if his Year 10 NCEA results have come through, then browses TMZ.com for breaking news.
11.01.15 Staffer finds likely story – Kim Kardashian tweeting about laddered fish nets.
11.01.23 Staffer saves KK’s tweet and first 450 responses.
11.01.55 Staffer cuts and pastes all tweets in sequential order.
11.01.59 Staffer takes first five words from original tweet, capitalises them and pastes them at top of page, adding “Kardashian disaster:”.
11.02.04 Staffer takes first five words from each subsequent tweet and pastes them above each tweet, adding “Someone else says”
11.04.25 Staffer hits “publish” button after deselecting “spellcheck before publishing” option.
11.05.00 Staffer joins World of Warcraft deathmatch online with colleagues at Fairfax.
12.01.00 Page wins Canon Media Award for best investigative journalism. Senior NZME. staffers think about rehiring Rachel Glucina.
This website is flawed – I can’t find a like button
It’s next to the “spellcheck before publishing” button.
I’m reminded of the immortal words of the great Dita de Boni, when replying to a civilians critique of an article where much licence had been taken.
What were they?
I’ve had a memory lapse. Apparently the only antidote is for journalists to throw copious pieces of paper with the photos of Rutherford and Ngata.
..in my general direction.