MEDIAWATCH: Autopsy of a basic Stuff/Herald story
So this type of ‘news’ story that we are depressingly seeing more and more of in Stuff and the Herald will be written by someone with a ridiculous title.
It will be something meaningless like ‘Millennial Urban Social Media Deputy Editor’ and written by someone who desperately looks like they wish they could add their preferred pronouns in a font larger than their job title.
But smaller than their name.
The ‘news’ story will be something like this: Some social media influencer who is wearing next to nothing going into public and then complaining they can’t wear their string Bikini to the beach/flight/funeral.
The rest of the story is then a bunch of ‘you go girl’ comments from other people on the thread plus a comment from some academic claiming if people can’t wear string bikinis to funerals then it’s sexism trying to control women, which the writer will purringly agree with.
You can swap out whatever the social media influencer does but the body of the ‘news’ story is cut and pastes of other people commenting and the academic always saying any criticism of the social influencer will be sexist and against women.
On the Stuff version of these ‘news’ stories you get the extra fun of Stuff begging you at the bottom of the ‘news’ to help fund more banal shit like this by donating???
This despite Stuff having advertising to pay for the content PLUS all that creamy public money that they milk NZ on Air for!
So I have to put up with the petty culture wars of social influencers, their Woke lynch mobs and the undeserved smugness of the ‘Millennial Urban Social Media Deputy Editor’, WHILE they hold out their gold plated begging bowl?
Can’t all this ‘journalism’ go behind a giant paywall?
As you can see, our begging bowl is modest…
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I don’t believe that the Herald could possibly be as puerile as Stuff, but I don’t know, as the Herald paywalls their juicy looking articles, and the headlines of Stuff online stuff, act as a natural bloc to stop me reading them.
I wince with uncontrollable cringe at the adolescent content of Stuff stuff, and as a cisgender old duck foiled trying to transgender into a tall handsome rich young man, the girls baring their buttocks in abbreviated shorts don’t move me quite the way that old men in rolled up jeans can look crappy, jandals with jeans look even worse, and thinking that pollies who drive in flip-flops should have their feet confiscated and imprisoned. No dashing Roman, dead or alive, ever looked a pasty slob, and I’m sure that Jesus’s hair never looked as greasy as Brian the Bish’s.
Still flummoxed that the media has failed to publish the recipe for the scones which the Prime Minister of New Zealand baked for Ed Sheerhan, or to explain the significance of pink hair, and the implications of either – or both – not occurring at all.
This is happening a lot. It is getting similar to click bait.
Also, the women’s magazines are getting like this.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/gender-and-society/127368266/violating-transgender-passenger-upset-by-patdown-or-nofly-call-at-wellington-airport
Don’t you mean articles like this Martyn?
As I’ve said elsewhere: Stuff will piss on your leg, tell you it’s raining and demand you buy them an umbrella!
I was thinking this exact thought the other week. Every day the Herald seems to pad out their news section with ‘Lifestyle’ stories that are just twitter/insta scandals and their replies. Seems they have a staff member whose job it is to scroll through twitter/instagram for any drama then make a story out of it. It’s an easy story when all you have to do is imbed social media replies then write some text quoting them.
I woke up this morning at 5am to a flashing light through the blinds. I looked through the shutters and saw the car parked outside this elderly couples house. Next a hivizzed man approached our steps and put something in my letter box, The car then drove another 7 or 8 houses and stopped there. I then realised that us oldies were the only ones getting the herald delivered. I told my wife that you can read the news online and save $1000 per year. I dont read the herald stories – always negative anti Labour, hate Jacinda shit but look forward to the Sudoku and code cracker. I see herald are training up a new generation to carry on promoting the tories. They can start getting rid of dead wood/losers – osullivan, trevitt, young, joyce, prebble, hoskings, hooten and paid up letter writers to the editor or at least give the stories a bit of balance. Same with ZB and TV 1 pure natzact bias. Those media platform have been hard out trying to unseat labour/jacinda but have been big failures. Now NZ 1st is out of the way, the right wing dirty politics brigade will be focusing on the greens.