Emma Gibson of Canberra Review replies in defence of her Bunch of Fives Review

I’m looking forward to it!

Bulldog, we look at a lot of crap to bring you this site. CityNews at least tend to sentences and a spell-check. You should see the livejournal and msn spaces crap that comes up.

If they have a noteworthy story we’ll give it a go.

That doesn’t happen that often.

Fair call K, we’ll let the jounalists off the hook for now.

We’ll still feel free to express our opinion of the chief editor and his sidekicks producing what amounts to be a mind-numbing rag.

Most of the stuff is written by PR companies or (the poorer written drivel) by the advertisers themselves. The editor appears to take no responsibility whatsoever and is only interested in money in his pocket and not someone else’s. Jorian takes responsibility for the Review section and yes, does get his mates to write reviews but no one seems to care since they’re probably not getting paid. There are huge fights every week about how much space the review’s getting and whether the ads are deserving and so on and generally the office is unpleasant for the naive uni students co-opted into working there. As to high school students working there, yes. The hiring process is particularly dodgy (I was hired after 4 hrs ‘work experience’ and a resume that probably wasn’t read).
I don’t want to defend the publication, I want to defend the staff (not managers) who do a great job getting the paper to press each week.

I have several backdated issues of City News in my loo at home. I find it makes pleasantly inoffensive reading at times when my concentration is needed on other matters.

point is, it may be thinly veiled cash for comment, but as a product, it still has a worthwhile use in my day to day life.

and its amusing to boot.

K:
Someone has to be responsable for the drivel that is being passed of as ‘News’. If not the journalists (and I use that term very loosely) than the editor or manager. I’ll accept that the people writing for City News may not be the ones to blame, but it is still a terrible publication.

I would be curious to know that if 90 percent of the magazine is not written by their journalists, then by who? Is there some website full of mediocre stories about mediocre events written by mediocre high school students? Is there a central crap source? Or are the editors writing their own stuff to push their own agenda’s?

I suspect the latter may be the case, as it seems that the journalists are happy to write glowing reviews of their bosses. Perhaps due to the high staff turnover they feel that writing nice things about the boss will guarantee a paycheck for the next week…

In any case, I don’t claim to be an expert; however I know what I like. I don’t like City News. If less people read it the world would be a smarter place.

Bulldog:
Approximately 90 per cent of what is published in City News is not written by their journalists. And probably about half of that is never seen by them, unless they absolutely insist on looking at everything because they have some strange idea that things should be checked before being published. They have a fairly high turnover of staff, so journalists don’t get much time to work out what’s going on and establish themselves, but do their best given the circumstances (and lack of getting paid). The majority of the production work is done by a few kids in their early twenties. There are no subeditors and no checks on work done by work experiencers.

Despite all this, I believe the people who work there do their best to get the paper out, regardless of what they think of the content. Which most of them have no say over.

K

JB; Why are you still reading City News? It’s self serving tripe written by “journalists” who would seem to be more at home wielding a crayon and butcher’s paper.

City News tries vainly to pass itself off as edgy, informative, entertaining and intelectual. They fail. At best they can be described as laughable due to the transparency of the articles, or more accuratley, paid endorsements of ‘local personalities’ and their businesses.

Furthermore the skill and integrity of City News “journalists” is highly questionable. However rest assured Players, because after graduation from high school, there may be a bright future in hospitality awaiting them.

Now, I don’t know Ms Gibson, and I’m sure she’s an upstanding citizen. This is not a personal attack. That being said I would like to ask her to stop taking herslef and her ‘work’ so seriously. For God’s sake, you’re not working for CNN. Remember that when you feel enraged about a (fair) review of your review.

Yep, and the main asset any promoter has is credibility. Once you start undermining that (by, say, running reviews of stuff you produce that, however innocently intended, contain jokey references blurring the lines between reviewer and participant), your credibility starts to be undermined.

The “reviews” section of the Canberra review is usually fairly decently written, in my opinion (the articles not so much so – at least, not the still-too-common recycled press releases). Which is why it’s a disappointment when the line between promoter and reviewer is blurred.

Nah, everyone gets an opinion.

my initial complaint remains that an arts promoter running a review in a small town needs to be above reproach, to be adhereing to higher, not lower standards.

And when paid advertisement is being run as editorial comment how are we to know what credence to place on any content at all?