Twitter journalism

Posted by Scott on Monday 18 May 2009
Categories: Media, The Internet  Tags: Tags: , ,

Sally Morrell, the Herald Sun’s most stunningly vacuous columnist, hates Twitter.

I LOVE the net, like the blogs, and tolerate even Facebook for the teenagers. But Twitter is for the birds – and the birdbrained.

[...]

But it’s now clear that “twit” was a noun just looking for a verb.

The beautiful irony? 18 out of the 25 paragraphs — a whopping 72% — in Sally’s “article” (the word “article” implies journalism so I put it in inverted commas) are under the 140 character limit for tweets, making Sally Australia’s best Twitter journalist. 140 character bursts of vapidity with no greater meaning or purpose, connected by not a single coherent idea. Perhaps it’s time to compile some more Sally stanzas.

Some rather Sally stanzas

Posted by Bridgit Gread on Tuesday 19 February 2008
Categories: Literature, Media  Tags: Tags: , , ,

Sally Morrell writes the most bland, vacant guff, full of motherhood statements and celeb-obs, yet the Herald Sun sees fit to give her a weekly column (probably because she’s Mrs Bolta). She’s also trying to break new ground on paragraph size, some formed from just three or four words. To relieve my abject boredom I skimmed through the last five of her columns, harvested all paras of <12 words, and jumbled ‘em up to make my own Sally (TM) poem. It reads like something from Wallace Stevens, or Ern Malley-meets-Richard Wilkins:

Madonna became a mother at 38 and had her second child at 42.
So congratulations, Nicole.
After all, she’ll be representing Australia on the world stage.
Give the woman a break. Didn’t someone tell these guys superwoman is dead?
Go girl.

Take Germaine Greer.
It was easy to think it was just a publicity stunt.
They’d better do something sweaty soon.
They only make us wonder why they bothered opening their mouth.
But I think Terri genuinely does crave a message from Steve.

I don’t believe in John Edward.
But why does John Laws want us to know his secrets?
Deep down he just wants us to like him.
And knowing you, we’re not necessarily liking you.

Maybe that’s why we still like them.
Or, rather, by the blokes hanging off them.
Ignore them, Therese.
Why must your love die with their body?
Think Jeannie Little on a bad day.

An extreme makeover was urgently needed, he said.
Trust me, Therese. You won’t be looking at Armani.
Go work on your putting or pasting.
Usually there’s a look-at-me reason behind all the revelations.
Oh, and yes, she has a new album coming out.

Well if anything it’s just as meaningful as the original source.



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