(For a giggle, check out What PR people really think of journalists. I’m guilty of a few of those things myself.)

The original title of this post was ‘How many journalists does it take to interview one person and then write 414 words based on an eight-page summary of a report?’. But it wasn’t very catchy. The answer, if you read today’s Sydney Morning Herald, is two.

The story: Strong support for wind farms obscured, says CSIRO report

The journalists: Kelsey Munro, Ben Cubby (repeat offender)

The report: Acceptance of rural wind farms in Australia: a snapshot (this CSIRO page has links to pdfs of the report and the summary)

The only quotes in the SMH story come from Jim Smitham, the CSIRO’s deputy director of energy technology. The story notes that Dr Smitham was “one of the reviewers of the report”. One voice is hardly a balanced story. And how does it take two journalists to get quotes from just one person? If they were journalism students and submitted this story for a news reporting assignment, they’d fail.

I asked the CSIRO’s media department if either journalist spoke to Dr Smitham or if the quotes came from a media release. The answer: no media release was issued, and Kelsey Munro spoke to Dr Smitham. So what did Ben Cubby actually do to warrant his byline on this story? Perhaps he emailed Munro the link to the report.

Baffling journalist behaviour aside, let’s look at the story itself:
A peer-reviewed study by Brisbane researchers investigated attitudes to nine wind farms in various stages of development in NSW, Victoria and South Australia, concluding there was a strong level of support ”from rural residents who do not seek media attention or political engagement to express their views”.

By contrast, more than half of all wind farm proposals had been opposed by members of the Landscape Guardian group, the report noted.

That bit is important, particularly when you consider the final sentence in the story:
The Landscape Guardians could not be reached for comment yesterday.

Right. Is this story time-critical? No, it is not. The report was released on 13 January. So there was no need for it to be published without comment from the Landscape Guardians. Hell, you could even go nuts and interview a third person in order to write a balanced story that was actually useful to readers. After all, Brendan Gullifer from The Courier in Ballarat had quotes from five people his 327 word story: Questions arise over CSIRO wind farm report. Sure, some of those quotes came from media releases, and the article is more about local politics than it is about the report. And it gives more weight to people opposed to wind farms than to the peer-reviewed report, but even with these flaws it’s a lot better than the incredibly lazy offering from the Sydney Morning Herald.

Wow, what a great story! Did he get tiles that allowed him to spell out that there was an intruder in his house? Did he happen to play words in a particular sequence that is a known indicator of disease? Fuck no. That’s because Words with Friends didn’t save his life. A woman told her friend about her husband’s symptoms. Her friend told her doctor husband. The doctor husband told the man to see a doctor immediately. That is what saved his life. Saying that Words with Friends saved his life makes as much sense as saying Steve Jobs saved his life because he used an iPhone to call 000. You know, we’ve had the internet for a few decades now, it’s probably time to stop breathlessly reporting on it.

Which brings me to Facebook. There are few things the MSM loves more than a “Facebook killer”. If the killer met his/her victim on the bus, journos wouldn’t be putting “bus killer” in the headline. Yes, I understand that having an easily identifiable moniker helps for headlines – so people know who the story is about – but I find a name works pretty well for that.

And while I’m ranting about journalists coming in their pants over the chance to put twitter or Facebook in a headline, we have News Ltd sites dutifully reporting the tweets of Uncle Rupe, on an almost daily basis. Today’s story is about a tweet in which he says Google is a content pirate – something he’s been saying since 2009. Probably earlier. And because News Ltd sites have these stories, Fairfax sites also have them, because everyone has to have the same stories. Honestly, the only way you can tell you’re on dailytelegraph.com.au and not smh.com.au these days is the boobs. (Oh, ok, the boobs and the typos.)

Now, I’m not trying to make news boring. Boring news is a lack of ability on the part of the journalist to make the topic interesting. But if you need to pretend your story is about a popular game in order to get people to read it, then perhaps you need to think about whether this is the right career for you. There are jobs that pay a lot better than journalism.

Ok, that is a little harsh. Sheehan and Henderson are full of way more self-serving nonsense. But before you dismiss this is as another “embittered online rant” (as SMH journo Ben Cubby did on twitter when I pointed out the lazy journalism in one of his stories), please hear me out.

I am not anti-Fairfax. In fact, I am a subscriber (although I’m not sure how much longer I’ll persist with a newspaper in which it is becoming harder and harder to find adequate journalism, let alone good journalism). I read your newspaper every morning. I blog about the SMH because I don’t read the Oz or the Tele. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’d rather kick myself in the vagina than read News Ltd. Even when I worked there (part-time while studying) I didn’t read their newspapers. And when I want a good laugh, I look at their websites.

But I am baffled about this readers’ editor gig. You have been the readers’ editor for around five months now, and I’m yet to see any evidence of the stated purpose of the role. According to your page on smh.com.au, your role is to be an “in-house advocate for readers” of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Sun Herald. That sounds great, and I think it’s an important role for a news organisation that takes its audience seriously. We are, after all, the people who buy your product. But I’m not convinced Fairfax does take its audience seriously. Fom your columns each week, it’s clear that the role is less “in-house advocate for readers” and more “these are the reader letters that weren’t good enough for the letters page, so we’ll just quote them here without attribution and sometimes I’ll say they are wrong but I won’t explain why”.

Let’s look your column from Wednesday: Fast and furious came the bouncers, some quite wide of the mark. You quote unnamed readers complaining about the amount of cricket coverage in the news section, yet offered no explanation of why the editor placed these stories in the news section. Nor did you mention any in-house advocating you did on behalf of the readers. The only thing you wrote that wasn’t simply quoting readers was this:

I cannot agree with the criticism of either the headline or the piece… The headline was a play on “fire in the belly”, which is screamingly obvious, and Barrett was not glorifying bullying – he was merely reporting what he saw and heard, and what Pattinson said, in neither an approving nor disapproving way.

Riiiight. So this is what you think being an “in-house advocate for readers” means? In no way does your explanation deal with that reader’s complaint about the glorification of bullying, and you resorted to your own silencing of that reader by calling the headline’s play on words “screamingly obvious”. I’m surprised you didn’t add “or are you too stupid to get that?”. Now, I haven’t read the Barrett article (here’s a hint for online journos: link to the articles being discussed) so I don’t know if it was glorifying bullying or not, but saying that it wasn’t glorifying bullying does not make it so. And what’s with the attitude in the snide “merely”?

It is clear that the readers’ editor column is little more than an opportunity for the Heralds to say their readers are wrong to criticise them. Actually, it’s nothing more than that. If I want to know what readers think of your newspaper, I’ll look to blogs and twitter and, sometimes, the letters page. If I want to know what the “in-house advocate for readers” is doing to advocate for readers, I certainly won’t be reading the readers’ editor column.

Yours in hope for better journalism,
News with Nipples.

Today Simon Mann has 708 words in his story – Victorious Romney bites back against attack ads – and the first 581 are about who is winning in the polls. That’s 581 essentially meaningless words on the horse race, before he gets to information about the horses.

And by “information about the horses”, it’s just two sentences, 29 words out of 708, on what one of the five horses stands for:

He promised to cut the national debt and reduce the size of government, while eliminating regulations and repealing Mr Obama’s healthcare reforms. He also pledged to restore military dominance.

There isn’t a single word about how Romney reckons he’s going to cut the national debt. My guess is no journalist has actually asked him. You’d think that would be important, but naaah. There’s not a single word about how many jobs will be lost in Romney’s plan to cut the size of government, or about what areas he’s going to cut. And not a single word about whether the Republicans will have the numbers to axe the reforms and whether enough Republicans will want to axe them, and what it will mean for the general population. And what does “restore military dominance” actually mean? Does he mean nationally? Like using the military to respond to the Occupy protests? Does he mean globally? What country has more military dominance than the US? I DON’T UNDERSTAND HOW A SENIOR JOURNALIST THINKS IT ISN’T HIS JOB TO ASK QUESTIONS.

Yesterday’s story – Opponents take aim at Romney firm’s tactics – is 612 words of fuck-all information:

Mitt Romney’s commanding lead in New Hampshire has been pegged back amid stinging attacks on his corporate record, according to latest opinion polls, but the Republican Party’s 2012 presidential nomination is still his to lose.

So, you’d think the story would be about his corporate record, right? With the journalist doing some research into this record? Ha ha, don’t be silly. It’s 315 words about the horse race, then these two sentences:

The pro-Gingrich group known as “Winning Our Future” said it had set aside more than $US3 million to screen its commercial, which was cut from a 30-minute documentary made by a former aide to Mr Romney’s failed 2008 nomination bid. Portraying Bain Capital as a “jobs destroyer” rather than creator, the film depicts its principal as a Wall Street raider whose firm “destroyed the dreams of thousands of Americans”.

And then another 228 words about the horse race. A story that is supposedly about Romney’s corporate record contains just two sentences on what someone with a vested interest thinks of that corporate record, with no attempt whatsoever by Mann to verify if the claims being made by Romney’s opposition are true or not. This is some incredibly lazy reporting from a senior correspondent. If I was SMH editor Amanda Wilson, I’d fly to the US just to personally kick his arse back to Sydney. But that would require looking at the SMH’s stories through the eyes of their paying audience and snowflake hell and all that.

This raises an interesting point – given there are many excellent sources for information (twitter, blogs, primary materials, those MSM writers who we applaud and value) this lowering in value from the MSM is perhaps not such a big deal… if the MSM is left to those people who can’t be bothered doing anything more than buying the same paper they’ve bought all their life, and the rest of us rely on news sources we trust and respect, is the denigration a problem?

It is an interesting question. One we’ve talked about before, but it’s worth re-visiting at the start of the new year.

My answer is yes, it does matter. But you knew I was going to say that, right? It matters because not everyone has the time, knowledge and internet access to find reputable news from other sources. It matters because newspaper reading is still the best way to increase awareness of public affairs, because when you flick through a newspaper you see all the stories, not just the ones you’re going to read (Schoenbach et al, 2005). This finding wavers when looking at election coverage, but I’ll get to that later. It’s worth noting that there is no evidence that news websites encourage the same level of civic engagement as newspapers (Lee, 2009). No doubt because, in Australia at least, news websites are nothing more than a collection of stories about accidents, stories about videos of accidents, stories about twitter, stories about celebrities on twitter, stories about sex crimes, and stories about turbulence on Qantas flights. News organisations don’t take their websites seriously, so why should we?

Back to why it matters. I’m gonna stamp my foot with indignation and say it matters because we shouldn’t have to go hunting for adequate reporting. If journalists can’t even do basic reporting – Who, What, When, Where, Why and How – then why the fuck are they wasting their time being journalists? Go and do something that pays better and has a more secure future.

Now, to any journalist who says audiences don’t want “serious” news, I say that just means the way you present serious news is boring. Consider this: a 2004 study from the Pew Research Centre for the People and the Press found that 21 per cent of 18-34-year-olds learned about the presidential campaign from Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, which is almost equal to the 23 per cent who got their campaign info from network news (Feldman, 2007). What makes this very interesting is that the National Annenberg Election Survey revealed that Daily Show viewers knew more about election issues than newspaper readers and tv news watchers.

There is no reason why news can’t be informative and entertaining. And no, that doesn’t mean turning news into a jokey re-write of a media release or putting an infographic into a story that has been written in the usual dull as dogshit way, interviewing the same people and pretending there are only two sides to the story and they are “slamming” each other. If that’s the best you can do, then please change careers and save the rest of us from your mediocre vision.

References not linked to in text:
Feldman, L (2007), ‘The news about comedy: Young audiences, The Daily Show, and evolving notions of journalism’, Journalism, vol. 8, pp. 406-427.

Lee, C (2009), ‘Pixels, paper, and public affairs: a comparison of print and online editions of The Age newspaper’, Australian Journalism Review, vol. 31, no. 1, pp. 91-104.

Schoenbach, K, de Waal, E, & Lauf, E (2005), ‘Research Note: Online and Print Newspapers: Their Impact on the Extent of the Perceived Public Agenda’, European Journal of Communication, vol. 20, pp. 245-258.

The mainstream media isn’t giving us the information we need because it can’t be bothered.

I’ll add to that: journalists all do the same thing and so they haven’t noticed that what they do – get media release, call someone who is going to criticise it, make sure juicy quotes are at the top – results in a story that only looks balanced to a journalist. In political reporting, of course the shadow minister is going to disagree with the minister, so put that quote right at the bottom and use the important space to explain the information and speak to experts. You know, those people who are not politicians. Yes, it will take more than the 10 minutes it currently takes to read the media release, email a few generic questions to the minister’s media office because if you get a quote that isn’t in the media release you can put your byline on the story – although that doesn’t stop many online journos putting their bylines on re-written media releases. It’s about whether you want to be a good journalist or if you’re happy being a mediocre journalist.

(And while on the subject of political reporting, wouldn’t it be nice if this year, Fairfax and New Ltd editors told state and federal politicians that they will no longer publish quips. That unless a politician gives a serious answer, they will not feature in the day’s news because they have nothing worthwhile to add. Ah, I’m a dreamer, eh?)

In journalism courses you are taught to always ask the five Ws and one H: Who, What, When, Where, Why and How. The Why is almost never asked in modern journalism, usually because it requires big picture thinking on the part of the journalist, to see how this current announcement fits in with other announcements. But the What is also a casualty of modern journalism.

If any j teachers want to hang on to it, today’s Sydney Morning Herald is a good example of what not to do.

On the front page is this story by Simon Mann: Romney wins Iowa caucus by eight votes:

MITT ROMNEY has taken a first, tentative step towards the Republican Party’s 2012 presidential nomination, clinching victory in the first ballot by the narrowest margin ever – just eight votes.

The one-term Massachusetts governor, long considered a frontrunner in a relatively weak field of candidates, pipped a fast finishing Rick Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator and deeply conservative Christian, in Iowa’s famed caucuses.

In 729 words across pages one and six, there is no explanation of why Iowa’s caucuses are “famed”. It’s a story about American politics for an Australian audience that doesn’t even explain why this event is important. That is a basic journalism fail.

Another front page story – Millions wasted on Aboriginal job projects, by Anna Patty – is based on a report but doesn’t even name it. It also mentions a second report, but again, no name. What is the story about? It’s about a report. What report? I don’t know. So it fails the What requirement.

I’m going to skip to page five here, because it’s a page that keeps giving and giving, and who has time to read a critique of every story in the paper?

A story by Jen Rosenberg about students who did well in the International Baccalaureate – ‘Intellectual freedom’ pushes students to top of the class – doesn’t explain what the International Baccalaureate is. How is it different to the HSC? What subjects are offered? It’s an international program so how are these subjects taught? How are they assessed? Do they sit exams at the same time as the HSC exams?

Louise Hall’s story – Ex-Scottish baron convicted of murder plot invokes ancient law in release bid – doesn’t adequately explain this “ancient law”:

THE former Scottish baron Malcolm Huntley Potier, who is in jail for twice plotting to murder his former de facto wife, has launched a fresh attempt to gain his freedom under the ancient law of habeas corpus.

The only explanation of habeas corpus is this:

Representing himself, Potier said he was seeking the issue of writ of habeas corpus, a legal action from 17th-century England through which a prisoner can be released from unlawful detention, after his most recent bail application was refused.

It is taken straight from the first sentence on Wikipedia:

Habeas corpus (Latin: “you may have the body”) is a writ, or legal action, through which a prisoner can be released from unlawful detention, that is, detention lacking sufficient cause or evidence.

Definitions straight from wiki or a dictionary happen, and sometimes the way it’s worded is the best. But are you any wiser about what’s going on in this story? I’m not. I think what’s happening is that, despite being convicted, this guy reckons he should be let out of jail while he tries to prove there was a miscarriage of justice, and the law allows that to happen. That doesn’t seem right, otherwise everyone would be doing it. And if it is right, then the story should say this. I shouldn’t have to read a news story several times, and go elsewhere to work out what the term the whole story centres on actually means, in order to get a vague understanding of what’s going on.

Ben Cubby’s story – La Nina whips unseasonal weather into a wet frenzy – doesn’t even explain what La Nina is.

And still on page five, this story by Saffron Howden is a media beat up: No policy to restrict killer’s access to passport or licence:

NO GOVERNMENT agency sought to restrict killer Trent Jennings’s access to passports or licences before he was allowed out unsupervised of a psychiatric hospital on day leave.

OH MY GOD THE GOVERNMENT AGENCIES FAILED TO BLOCK HIS ACCESS TO THESE DOCUMENTS! Er, no. The spokeswoman from the Department of Foreign Affairs and the spokeswoman from Roads and Maritime Services both said prisoners are entitled to passports and licences, just like non-prisoners. But that didn’t stop Howden or the sub sensationalising the story to the point of stupidity.

So, what do we – their audience – do about it? Not buying the SMH isn’t going to work because I’d rather kick myself in my own vagina than read News Ltd publications. Instead, every time you read a news story that is inadequate, blog about it. Tweet about it. Use the hashtag #journalismfail. We are their audience and we demand, at the very least, adequate fucking journalism.

Ok, the headline was written by the sub. But the sub writes the headline based on the article and the word “father” isn’t mentioned. Not even once:

DANIELLE TROY thinks compassion rather than punishment should guide the federal government’s new approach to teenage mothers… A trial program is being introduced this week that will compel teenage mothers on welfare.. carrots the government is offering to help young women…

It’s clear from the quotes in the article that when Horin interviewed people, she only asked them about teenage mothers.

By perpetuating the bullshit attitude that parenting is something that only women do, the article is wrong. Not wrong as in “it’s wrong to do this because it’s sexist”, but wrong as in it is pretending that young men are excluded from this Government program. They are not. It is the Teenage Parent Trial and nowhere on the department website does it mention teenage mothers:

The Teenage Parent trial is designed to increase the level of educational attainment among teenage parents and to ensure that the children of teenage parents have the best chances in life.

This is Journalism 101 stuff. Seriously.

As Andrew Elder writes in The information you need (I highly recommend reading this post):

The mainstream media isn’t giving us the information we need. It is giving us what they think is good enough for people like us, gathered by people that mainstream media organisations regard as competent; but this is not the same thing at all.

Parenting is something that single mothers do, that single fathers do, that transgender people do, that heterosexual couples do, that gay couples do, that lesbian couples do, that transgender couples do, yet the mainstream media continues to pretend that it’s just women’s work. Even to the point of misrepresenting a Government program. This is why we’re not getting any closer to equality.

Anyway, because I can’t afford ANYTHING by the fabulous Isabella Blow:

Isabella Blow lobster necklace (Image: Strawberige)

And it’s a little known fact that the UN sets limits on how much Tatty Devine one person is allowed to own:

Tatty Devine lobster necklace

I made this:

Imitation is the best form of being a poor uni student

And it was only $5.95.

And it squeaks when you squeeze it. Bet Isabella Blow didn’t think of that.

So I thought I’d try writing through it. Any old crap and see what happens.

What happens is this post.

Apologies in advance.

I’ve started writing fiction again, starting with a short story. Haven’t done that in 15 years. I haven’t got the ovaries to post it here, but trust me, that’s a good thing for you guys. For the last two days I’ve been on a two-cider-block-buster: after two drinks, I just write with a vague plot in mind, safe in the knowledge that I can cut cut cut. And I will cut cut cut.

So I sat down to write a post about writing.

I got up and vacuumed the floor.

I ate a biscuit.

I photographed it:

One bite in

I came back to the post and uploaded the photo.

I admired the “swan vase with evil dragon face” that I bought on ebay yesterday:

Swan vase with evil dragon face

I mopped myself in a corner with the computer, in a less extreme version of this:

I went to the gym.

I sat back at the computer and looked at this post.

I have a very clean house.

So, I said I’d post the recipe when I made the plum pudding vodka and brandy butter ice cream. The vodka I made on Saturday. Recipe can be found here, but it’s very easy: put brown sugar, dried fruit and spices in a bowl and pour a bottle of vodka over it:

Plum pudding vodka

Leave it for a week, then strain it into a bottle. The dark brown liquid doesn’t look very good, but is very tasty. You can stir the vodka-y fruit into ice cream, although I’ve been known to have spoonfuls of it for breakfast. Functioning alcoholic, moi?

We’ll have the vodka as a shot over brandy butter ice cream, because, really, who actually likes Christmas pudding? The only reason people have it is because a bowl of brandy butter for dessert looks bad. And since brandy butter on ice cream is good (almost as good as my childhood favourite, yoghurt on ice cream), why not combine the two?

I started with this recipe. It’s egg-less, so that makes it an American-style ice cream and not a French-style ice cream, or something. But this recipe has one major flaw: it’s backwards. Beating softened butter into whipped cream doesn’t work – you end up with over-beaten cream with lumps of butter in it. Then, of course, once you put the mixture into the frozen ice cream machine to churn, the lumps of butter just harden. I say “of course”, but this didn’t occur to me until it had been churning for a while.

So, ignore the order in the recipe. Whip the cream and milk and set aside. Cream the butter and icing sugar, then add the brandy and vanilla, then fold in a bit of the cream mixture, and then the rest:

Ice cream mixture in the mixer

I know that this photo is unnecessary because combining eggs, sugar, milk and cream ain’t rocket surgery. And it’s possibly also of the first, lumpy, effort. But I noticed – from the container in the background – that I always cook in the same spot on the bench. That’s not very interesting either. Sorry.

So, put the mixture in the ice cream machine. Then make a cup of tea. Perhaps your machine is better than ours, but I always have to put it in the freezer to finish the job. But not in the machine – that will make it freeze solid.

This is just the test batch. I reckon it could use more brandy and more sugar. But that could be because my taste buds are a little off, since I burned them on my magic soup for lunch.

I haven’t included a photo of the frozen ice cream because you know what ice cream looks like. So here’s a photo of our oven mitt, because I was in the kitchen with the camera:

Silicone oven mitt. Also good for getting ManFriend's bottom.

Cooking soundtrack: Wide Open Road (the best of The Triffids), followed by In bocca al lupo, by Murder by Death.

Update: DO NOT MAKE THIS ICE CREAM RECIPE. When it freezes, little lumps form in it. A bit of internet research reveals that this is because the fat content is too high. I’m going back to the normal custard-style ice cream.