Posts by Danyl Mclauchlan
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Your presence bears out something I learned very early on about the internet: it provides access to many people who have the attributes for journalism -- a sharp mind and a good prose style -- but are not in fact journalists.
If journalism is about providing objective information about facts or events then I have to say I haven't seen a whole lot of it about online.
On the other hand, if you look on journalism as a demented shouting match in which you scream insults about your political enemies while indulging in self-rationalising delusions about those on your own ideological team then yeah, the internet has plenty of budding journalists.
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He reminds me a little of Jason Schwartzman in the Wes Anderson films Rushmore and the Darjeeling Ltd.
That's probably gonna be McCain's next rationale for giving him military support.
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It should also be noted that a single woman (only a woman? Not sure) over 50 with no dependent children can get the DPB. Most of those people will be women who were out of the paid workforce for most of their lives raising kids, and who will have been divorced or widowed. They'll be in semi-retirement. What on earth kind of employment prospects will they have?
Retailers are still desperately screaming out for more staff; a 30-something relative of mine who suffers from a severe mental illness has a job for the first time in her life because of the dire shortage of workers in the retail sector. There's plenty of jobs out there for people with no skills who want to work.
great dog-whistle stuff though.
The selfish evil DPB beneficiary casts a large shadow over the psyches of the far right; lazy, greedy and sexually promiscuous they're kind of the conservative corporate version of the Soviet Unions wreckers and saboteurs.
Still, its worth remembering that only three years ago the National Party welfare policy was to punish women on the DPB who had additional children by totally cutting off all their benefits. Its a stark reminder of how far the party has moved to the middle, as well as how utterly batshit insane it really was under Don Brash.
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I won't try to ignore the sports; although I'm overwhelmingly bored by team games (rugby, football), watching individuals compete at that level is always compelling.
I am going to ignore TVNZ news for the next month; they always spend too much on these overseas pageants and then dominate their news broadcasts with hundreds of pointless live-crosses to nothing in order to justify the expense. Last night they crossed LIVE to an empty swimming pool as one of their lead stories. Its only going to get worse.
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We canceled our Listener subscription this week - Clifton and Easton I can read in the supermarket; does anyone know whats happened to their circulation in the last year or so?
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Its Tolstoy bitching about Gandhi, right?
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If you are my friend, stand up before me
and scatter the grace that's in your eyes.Sappho
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From Whaleoil
Of course all the luminaries and erudite readers of his “blog” have weighed in but they all neglect to observe the salient point that Russell Brown reads my blog.
You like me! You really like me!
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I can tell you from experience that all features, apart from fluffy, lifestyle ones, that appear these days in our major dailies (though can't speak for the ODT), are prescriptive. The angle and tone will be given to the reporter before a word is written.
That's not usually the case with political features. The tone and angle are largely up to the journalist.
I don't think the Herald is crusading to get the National Party elected. I think they're pretty sure they're going to be elected and they're positioning themselves to enjoy a good working relationship with the DPMC comms office in the post-election environment.
Although it will be interesting to see if any of the Herald journalists who've been so obliging for National end up working for Key after the election.
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The problem with the Herald piece is not that it was pretty soft, but that it was sold as an 'unauthorised biography' when it was clearly a team effort between the Herald and the National leaders comms staff.
If you're going to publish a puff piece at least have the balls to admit it - don't try and pretend you're being a journalist when you're simply making your newspaper a medium for a political parties propaganda.