The Terrible Journalism & Tom English Thread

[Dons_1988]

f**k sake do I need to do EVERYTHING round here?

Spoiler

 

Thank you

[7-2]

15 minutes ago, Bairnardo said:

22 minutes ago, 7-2 said:

David Tanner in a journalism thread, terrible one or not. Ooft.

I couldnt find the Tanner Watch thread. Either of those tweets in isolation are bad enough but I just stumbled across his twitter after hearing the Terrace lads laughing at his McIntyre rant and couldnt quite believe someone paid to talk about football could be so ludicrous.... I mean some folk you would say they were courting controversy, but not him. Hes far too stupid for that

I shall forgive you.

[nsr]

How do people who make stupidity into an art form get these jobs and why does everyone else involved feel the need to play along?

[GNU_Linux]

Saw this on Twitter,  Jim Spence is an utter and useless imbecile. 
 

[Arch Stanton]

 

[The Master]

8 minutes ago, Arch Stanton said:

 

McGowan's face is a perfect reaction to the Tweet. 

[TheScarf]

That fucking hair.  Get that shaved m8.

[Melanius Mullarkey]

On 18/05/2019 at 20:44, gogsy said:

 

Jim Spence probably thinks 

Ha ha good ane. 

[CaspianChris]

On 18/05/2019 at 20:44, gogsy said:

 

Jim Spence probably thinks 

That clown does not have the capacity to think and just spouts any old nonsense.   A completely useless journalist who should be ditched and ignored by any media company.

[Dee Man]

1 hour ago, TheScarf said:

That fucking hair.  Get that shaved m8.

Couldn't agree more. He'll probably suit it as well - let's face it, it can't look any worse - plus it'll make coppers think twice when they look at him. 

Kelly Brook loves a shaved head. Do it Gowser. 

[Sarto Mutiny]

3 hours ago, TheScarf said:

That fucking hair.  Get that shaved m8.

HAIR ISLAND

[Darren]

Sky Sports News referring to Celtic winning 1-0 against Hearts at the weekend.

[Mr Heliums]

The BBC's 'Around the Web' Scottish Football section now reduced to linking exclusively to The Scotsman's clickbait:

 

[Mr Heliums]

This sentence illustrates a failure in both arithmetic and English.

[Monkey Tennis]

1 hour ago, Mr Heliums said:

This sentence illustrates a failure in both arithmetic and English.

Yes I saw that and was utterly baffled.  I wondered if I was missing some in-joke.

Just unbelievable if it was simply someone trying to half a half, and winding up with a third.

[A96]

9 hours ago, Mr Heliums said:

This sentence illustrates a failure in both arithmetic and English.

I get the failure in arithmetic, but I can’t see what’s wrong with the English in that sentence.

[Mr Heliums]

1 hour ago, A96 said:

I get the failure in arithmetic, but I can’t see what’s wrong with the English in that sentence.

It's way too convoluted.

[Guest JTS98]

On 5/14/2019 at 23:02, nsr said:

How do people who make stupidity into an art form get these jobs and why does everyone else involved feel the need to play along?

It's something I've actually thought about quite a lot in the last year or two in relation to football journalism in general. The standard of person it attracts - in terms of intelligence and ability to write and make basic judgements based on evidence - is frighteningly low. I have some ideas about this.

First up are the old-school bunch. In Scotland probably typified by the likes of Chick Young and Jim Spence. Loads of contacts in the game, almost never slag off anybody who is going to cost them an interview. No manager deserves the sack (unless foreign and keeping a guid 'oanust Scottish manager out of a job), no player is rubbish (unless foreign and keeping a guid 'oanust Scottish laddie out of a team). These guys are undoubtedly of value to their employers on the basis of their contacts, but tend to have come into the job when formal qualifications didn't matter much. They are interview-getters and their contacts get them stories, but they are utterly appalling at analysis and are in the weird position of being journalists covering a subject that actually don't know an awful lot about. I've never heard Chick Young, Jim Spence, Graham Spiers, Barry Glendenning, etc say anything about football that you couldn't get from the average punter. Yet they are paid to write and speak about it. That is bizarre.

Think about it for a second. It's deeply strange and wouldn't ever really apply to any other topic. But their contacts keep them in the job. Media outlets, and the public, I suppose, want interviews with names and exciting rumours more than they want someone who can actually write or talk with clarity, objectivity and authority about the game and issues around it.

Next up are the slightly younger middle-class generation of football journalists. Go through the names that appear in The Guardian football section and associated podcasts regularly and you'll find a lot of these. However, I personally know a couple in Scotland . One of them gets regular work with the BBC and the other from various newspapers. A quick scratch of the surface of the CV finds that most of this group of journalists were in the financial position to take on unpaid 'journalism' work while at uni, or upon leaving uni. Again, this allows them to build up contacts and contacts are all that matter. Both of the ones I know are relatively nice guys, but neither really have anything other than the most surface-level understanding of football. One, a supporter of a team that plays in red up in the arctic north, is rabidly partisan in his writing, to the point where I'm astonished that it gets past any editorial checking (assuming such a thing takes place).

This generation tends to have a raging stauner for things like XG, Wyscout and using phrases like 'low block' as much as possible. They probably know more about the game in a technical sense than the older generation typically do, but are often so keen to be relevant that they obsess about modern methods and ideas and worship the formation in denial of the clear reality that much of what happens in football is purely random. To acknowledge this would remove their perceived 'expert' status. Can't have that.

What links these two groups is a phone full of contacts. That is basically all anybody cares about. My acquaintance at the BBC went for an interview with a newspaper in London a couple of years ago and took with him a selection of his work etc. But the interview went no further than 'Who do you know?' and he was bombed out as he had essentially no contacts in England whatsoever. That was the interview for the job of being a football journalist with a national newspaper.

The good news is that there is some excellent football journalism out there. Andrew Jennings and David Conn do excellent work, as does James Montague. All have their own niche areas, but they excel in them and produce work a bit more interesting than your normal football celebrity-based garbage. Most football journalism is essentially a Hollywood magazine with a different topic. "YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT STEVIE G SAID TO THIS CANCER-STRICKEN CELTIC FAN!!!!".

World Soccer still produces some excellent football writing and When Saturday Comes covers the game in a more cultural than on-field sense, which I enjoy. I've also been giving The Blizzard a whirl recently. Some of the writing in it stretches to pretentious nonsense, but there's some great stuff in there.

Anyway. I'm sitting in my flat waiting for the rain to go off and ended up typing out this rambling shite. Main point, most football journalists are charlatans who got their job despite very limited subject knowledge or intelligence. But there's some great stuff out there.

Edited May 24, 2019 by JTS98

[nsr]

So it's who you know, not what you know.

[Darren]

4 hours ago, JTS98 said:

These guys are undoubtedly of value to their employers on the basis of their contacts, but tend to have come into the job when formal qualifications didn't matter much. They are interview-getters and their contacts get them stories, but they are utterly appalling at analysis and are in the weird position of being journalists covering a subject that actually don't know an awful lot about. I've never heard Chick Young, Jim Spence, Graham Spiers, Barry Glendenning, etc say anything about football that you couldn't get from the average punter. Yet they are paid to write and speak about it. That is bizarre.

Think about it for a second. It's deeply strange and wouldn't ever really apply to any other topic. But their contacts keep them in the job. Media outlets, and the public, I suppose, want interviews with names and exciting rumours more than they want someone who can actually write or talk with clarity, objectivity and authority about the game and issues around it.

This could apply to a lot of jobs in journalism, it certainly isn't limited to football coverage.