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I’ve been trying to write a coherent post about various interconnected subjects involving journalism, especially print journalism – most notably, the thorny tangle of connected issues surrounding whether professional journalism has a future, what exactly that future might look like, and jesus just how fucking grumpy is David Simon?

Unfortunately, I’m a slow, long-winded writer, so I haven’t found time to write a coherent post. Instead – rather than a mammoth post sitting unpublished in my drafts folder for the next two years – over the next few days, I’ll just be publishing out-of-context snippets from my broader argument. These will, by their nature, be odd and a bit shit and acontextual.

The two things that prompted this were Alan Rudbridger’s talk on “Why Journalism Matters” for the Media Standards Trust on Wednesday night – part of an ongoing series – and the much discussed Columbia Journalism Review article by creator of The Wire and former Baltimore Sun journalist David Simon, in which he grumpily calls on the New York Times and the Washington Post to collude with each other, withhold their journalism from the non-paying public, introduce paywalls, and blackmail every other American newspaper and news agency to join them.

Part 1: On the most bollocksy thing David Simon said –

(Assuming that I’ve already pointed you to Shane Richmond’s post detailing how many others have said that Simon is totally up the wall on this.)

- The most weirdly inconsistent part of Simon’s argument is his simultaneous assertion that there are virtually no new media outlets offering quality local reporting, and that the local papers are being killed by the internet. He actually explicitly says that the newspaper industry has not lost out to a “new, better product”, but “to the vague suggestion of one”. A nice, pithy phrase… and one that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever if you consider the actual behaviour of real-life consumers. People didn’t stop buying newspapers because they woke up one day dreaming of a future where blogs were magically better, any more than men will stop buying four-bladed razors because they can imagine what a hypothetical, mythical seventeen-bladed one might look like.

The widespread collapse of local newspaper readership and advertising revenue in both the UK and the US certainly needs explaining, and the internet may well play a part in that (less interest in local affairs when the internet offers wider horizons? The rise of online shopping squeezing the local retailers who used to be advertising mainstays, and Craigslist et al destroying the classified ads market?) but blaming non-existent competitors isn’t an explanation, and won’t help anybody find a solution.

So there’s been this internet brouhaha for the past few days, which isn’t of any real direct interest to you unless you have a reluctant but obsessive fondness for Blog Drama!!! (to which I plead guilty). But I think it does illuminate – or at least confuse in an interesting way – a lot of the problems that people are having adjusting to the still-newish world of mass online publishing, so I’m going to try teasing my thoughts out, as much to legitimise the many hours I wasted reading all the threads on this over the past couple of days as anything else. It’s a hugely overlong brain-dump, more about organising my own thoughts – obviously, I’d appreciate any comments you may have.

In brief, Boing Boing, one of the biggest blogs in the world, and a longstanding voice arguing for openness, honesty and user engagement in the public sphere, at some point decided to delete all their old posts that had linked to or mentioned Violet Blue, a generally tedious sexblogger of whom they had previously been rather fond. As is the way with the internet, somebody eventually noticed, it came to the attention of both Violet Blue herself, and tech gossip blog Valleywag. Things spiralled from there - a huge blog that regularly rails against censorship and secrecy had been caught ‘censoring’ their own site, and despite frequent enquiries from other bloggers and the media, they weren’t saying why. Rex from Fimoculous compared it to the deletion of post which had linked to him, which he speculated was because the BB crew found out he’d written a post slightly critical of them. It made the front page of the LA Times website. A MetaFilter discussion began, and quickly achieved some sort of insane critical mass.
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After a hiatus last year, when I forgot to do it, here’s the 2007 instalment of this blog’s ongoing project to fight the crude pigeon-holing tendencies shown by other end-of-year lists. No longer shall Neon Bible be relegated to the “best albums” parade, just because it was, in fact, an album. If Gordon Ramsay’s refurbished gastropub in Limehouse wants to compete for Best Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game, rather than best restaurant, then it is free to do so. We not not bracket, compartmentalise, or divide. We celebrate unity through diversity.

So, here you go – here are the 19 best things of 2007:

19. The Arcade Fire at Glastonbury
Was it such a borderline epiphanic experience in spite of the drug-addled hippy with a poor sense of personal space who kept on trying to walk through my back during the entire set – or was it, in part at least, because of him? No. It was nothing to do with him. But thankyou anyway, kind sir.

18. Tony Blair fucked off
And for a precious, golden few days, it seemed like good sense, quiet competence and a dignified sense of principle might be restored to our government. Of course, not so much. But it was nice while it lasted. A clear winner of Vegetarian Restaurant of the Year.

17. The finger-tapping, eye-staring thing that The Rock does in Southland Tales to indicate that he’s going mad which is a bit like someone doing a Stan Laurel impersonation except they’ve never actually seen footage of Stan Laurel and have in fact just read about him on Wikipedia
Majestic.

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…Christmas, one and all.

A while back, Chris twittered about the marvel of precision design that is the Tabasco sauce bottle: his point was that it’s a beautifully engineered piece of fluid management. One drop. At. A time. No more, no less, even when the bottle top’s become caked with dried tabasco remains. Drip, drip, drip: perfect for precisely measuring out the exact amount of sauce needed to add the required zing to whatever you’re making (note: ten drops minimum, or you are weak and feeble.)

I bring this up only because I’ve noticed another piece of bottle engineering that is, in its own way, equally impressive. The makers of Angostura Bitters have somehow managed to craft a bottle that, no matter how gently you tip it, will always send the first drop shooting several inches beyond whatever you were trying to put the bitters into. That it is able to consistently achieve this, regardless of the size of the receptacle or its distance from the bottle, shows an awareness of its surroundings and an ability to make complex calculations on the fly, strongly implying that some form of advanced AI inhabits the glass. And that it is able to propel a drop of liquid a good distance, regardless of the energy already present in or added to the system, clearly has major implications in the world of physics and engineering; initially in the field of inkjet printer manufacturing, but ultimately for space travel as well.

Give me my hour back, you bastards.

EDITED TO ADD: Whoa. Did anybody see what happened there? That’s right, in trying out Alex King’s Twitter Tools WordPress plugin, something went a bit wrong, and a new blog post got made from every single thing I’ve ever sent to Twitter. Some of them even had several identical posts made out of them. Eeeek. Watch out for that, if you’re thinking of using the plugin – the “Create a blog post from each of your tweets” option (which I didn’t mean to activate anyway) is retroactive. Aaaargh.

• Completely shattered after party and long night bus journey. Must fall asleep. Hmmmm. Might just watch one episode of Heroes first… #

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HEY YOU KNOW I THINK MAYBE I SHOULD START POSTING HERE MORE OFTEN. THAT WOULD BE GOOD!

It’s been a bit quiet round here of late – sorry about that. The usual reasons. Busy at work, uncommon tiredness, an overwhelming sense of sodden ennui at the trivialities of modern life hanging damp and heavy like an autumn fog…

Basically, every time I’ve thought about writing anything, I think about the issue a bit, consider it from all angles, toy with a few choice and witty phrases, then decide that I don’t care about it in the slightest and I wish nothing but misery and pestilence upon all of humanity for having the sheer, tedious, petty-minded fuckwaddery to think it’s important in the first place. The only thing that actually stirred my interest was the idea of abolishing limbo – which struck me as being unaccountably funny – but then the Pope didn’t actually make a decision, leaving both the word, the place and my blog-post about limbo, in, ironically, limbo. The rat bastard.

Anyway, that’s what’s been happening. So there. More writing, I assure you, will happen soon. Probably.

BBC: “Keane happy to team up with Quinn”

Following this lead, I hereby declare this day, August 29th, Everybody Lie For The Benefit Of Sunderland Day. Every year on this date, now and henceforth, I call on all like-minded individuals to come together and, in the manner most befitting to each person themselves, to lie through their teeth in an attempt to make Sunderland more happy.

I’ll kick off:

“I don’t see how a place that gave the world Bryan Ferry and Lauren Laverne can possibly be described as ‘Britain’s Least Creative City’.“

I just noticed something today.

Evening Standard columnist Anne McElvoy looks like a man.

Now, I don’t mean this in a crass “hurr hurrr she looks like bloke I wouldn’t would you lads” sort of way. No, I mean she looks like a very specific man. Someone really familiar.
But I can’t work out for the life of me who it is.

It’s clearly a quite fine-featured, very pretty sort of guy. I briefly wondered if it might be Ioan “Hornblower” Gruffudd, and yeah, there’s a certain resemblance there, but I’m not quite convinced that he’s the one. So I put it out to you, my loyal 2½ readers – name that dude. Who’s the sneaky gent who’s dragging up, sneaking into the Standard offices off High Street Ken, and writing opinion columns? Extra credit given for any nifty photo comparisons, emailed to the usual address.

(And anyone who says “it’s Nick Cohen” is getting IP-banned)

Oooh. A big welcome to any fun new people who might be passing through as a result of Teresa’s post. I swear, if I wasn’t in the process of moving house, moving job, moving hosting company and redoing the site right now, there’d be a small chance of finding something worth reading here…

But do feel free to pull up a chair, make yourselves comfortable. Sorry about all the boxes. Hey, I think there’s a bottle of wine open. Um… not sure there’s any clean glasses. Is a mug okay?