[Youngian]

‘Distinct characters’ unaffected by the redundancies

The Daily Mail has announced plans to make some of its journalists’ jobs redundant, as the newspaper struggles with declining print readership and the increased cost of paper.
The newspaper’s editor, Ted Verity, said his plan would lead to staff working across the print Daily Mail, its sister title the Mail on Sunday and MailOnline.
Until very recently the three outlets have had distinct identities with different teams and little sharing of resources. In many cases journalists from the different outlets would be competing against each other for stories, despite all working for the same parent company.
Staff at the Mail on Sunday are expecting to bear most of the job losses. Verity said the weekend newspaper would retain its “distinct characters, columnists and senior staff” but hinted that more junior roles are at risk. https://amp.theguardian.com/media/2023/ ... p-declines

Rising cost of paper sounds like a tall story but energy costs increasing and supply problems have made it so

Pulp friction: Why paper has become a huge headache for publishers https://pressgazette.co.uk/media-audien ... ces-risen/

[satnav]

How many junior members of staff could be spared the axe if they simply dispensed with Johnson and Littlejohn?

[Andy McDandy]

Newspapers are increasingly less about news reporting and more about pushing their preferred take on events. For that, you don't need reporters, but you do need some big names.

[Crabcakes]

Given the average Mail article is pretty low quality, there has got to be a very strong eye on getting AI to ‘write’ a lot of it. It genuinely couldn’t do much worse in places.

[Abernathy]

Also even more the case with the Daily Express. Most of the “stories” on there seem to be about what was on the fucking telly last night and what a few fuckwits have been saying about it on social media.

[Andy McDandy]

It's pretty clear many papers have staff just watching daytime TV and waiting for something to happen that can be written up and padded out with a few quotes from X (formerly known as Twitter). Most of the politics is press releases telling us what is due to happen later that day, or follow-ups to ongoing things invariably ending with "[public figure] was contacted for comment".

That last one seems to have gained a lot of traction in recent years - I guess the idea is to imply that the sleb in question is obviously bang to rights because why else would they be refusing to answer questions? And hey, we tried - see it says there that we tried to contact them.

[Watchman]

Something I’ve noticed more recently is a writing style that resembles a cheap novel e.g. “the bespectacled senior servant, with neatly trimmed hair, and a comprehensive knowledge of orchids”

[Youngian]

Something I’ve noticed more recently is a writing style that resembles a cheap novel e.g. “the bespectacled senior servant, with neatly trimmed hair, and a comprehensive knowledge of orchids”

Like this odd first paragraph from the Indy. Are Marxist soft furnishings unchintzy? Or maybe Marxists all like hard chairs because Lenin did.

John McDonnell, the grandfatherly revolutionary with a taste in soft furnishings more chintz than Marx, is at his most soothing as he appeals for the rehabilitation of his old comrade Jeremy Corbyn.

[Bones McCoy]

Soft furnishing used to be code for feminine, effeminate or gay.

[Andy McDandy]

Stephen Fry has an anecdote about turning up to an interview in biker jacket, helmet and boots, and a rock band t-shirt underneath, then reading the finished article starting "Tweedy Stephen Fry...".

[Crabcakes]

Something I’ve noticed more recently is a writing style that resembles a cheap novel e.g. “the bespectacled senior servant, with neatly trimmed hair, and a comprehensive knowledge of orchids”

It’s all padding - the dead giveaway of a shit writer who doesn’t know the difference between writing about someone/thing and simply describing them/it. Bonus points for needlessly flowery language - and let me be clear I like flowery language when cleverly used or amusing, just not when it’s there purely to pump up the word count.

[Andy McDandy]

From Robert Hutton's "Romps, Tots and Boffins - the Strange Language of News":

Good style precluides the repetition of a word in the same sentence, or ideally in the same paragraph. But sometimes there just isn't an obvious synonym. Luckily, journalists are kings of the 'elegant variation'. As in this gem:

"Clarke, known as 'two pizzas' because he once scoffed a pair of the tasty Italian meals in one sitting..."

Friday quiz time what do the following all mean?

The popular microblogging social network
The secretive Stalinist state
The windswept South Atlantic archipelago
The yellowy metal
The yellowy colour

[Bones McCoy]

I'll give it a go:


The popular microblogging social network - That'll be Twitter or X
The secretive Stalinist state - "The Commie Terrorist Khan's" London (That's a guess).
The windswept South Atlantic archipelago - The Falkland Islands or perhaps South Georgia and the South Sandwich group.
The yellowy metal - Gold.
The yellowy colour - Old Gold, as worn by the Wolverhampton Wanderers.

[Andy McDandy]

3/5. They were:

Twitter/X
North Korea
Falkland Islands
Gold
Yellow

[Youngian]

Funnier than anything the Mail's highly paid columnists dream up and the comment is free.

[Bones McCoy]

Readers will have noticed Google's latest act of self harm.

Your query response now begins with half a page of AI generated summary.
It's usually bullshit that fails to address the query, but presents the literary skills of a teen authored fanzine.
You might be reminded of Georgina Littlejohn's work.

I'm pretty sure that whatever language model" Google uses could write most of the Mail.
Train it on the digital back issues, feed wikiXXXX conservapedia through it.
Then plug it into the Reuters, PA and AP feeds and watch it roll.

You'll need three editorial staff, spread across two shifts to identify stories of interest.
A couple of columnists - until you've trained the AI on enough columnist's styles.
A couple of comps for layout and picture insertion.

You'll have a shit product, with little quality.
But:
a) How's that different to today's Mail.
b) The Readers Digest was massive for many decades on a similar model (admittedly one that used people shaped cogs).

It's certainly a model that can keep rolling until the newspaper buying demographic dies off.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

From Popbitch:

>> Drinks (not) On Us <<
The pre-superinjunction era

Times are tough for the Mail on both sides of the Atlantic right now, with redundancies in the London and New York offices leaving staff feeling understandably pretty glum.

But fear not, because senior management in New York had a perfect plan to raise company morale. They decided to organise some last minute drinks last Thursday to celebrate the launch of Mail+.

Which - you might think is not a lot in the context of all the job slashing - but at least sounded thoughtful.

The intra-office message that was sent around announcing the little party told staff it was "because we deserve it".

And then came the one in which HQ explained their plan to the worker bees:

"Drinks are on you, but the good vibes are free!"