A Rum Business

Sir John Keegan's 'interview' with Donald Rumsfeld (Vanity Fair, Feb 2003) is an unpleasant mish-mash of ideas that fails to ever become a coherent feature. I use the inverted commas for 'interview' because though it is billed as a 'meeting' between Keegan and Rumsfeld, very little is said about the interview itself.

The problem lies in the fact that it is one famous person interviewing another. Though the idea of a conversation between a leading military historian and the US's secretary of defense [sic] must have sounded wonderful in the VF features meeting, the resulting article feels like two articles stuck together. One is 'Donald Rumsfeld and what he's like' and the other more pervasive strand is 'John Keegan and his views on military history and defence'.

It is painfully apparent that Keegan is not an interviewer - he has a faint stab at establishing some setting early in the piece with a few comments on Rumsfeld's mannerisms and appearance, but this completely disappears as the article wears on. It eventually becomes Keegan's views on modern military matters - how to deal with suicide bombers and terrorism - with occasional reference to Rumsfeld.

There is not even a direct quote from Rumsfeld in the second half of the article. Keegan occasionally references Rummy (as he's known - aren't we chummy and academo-military?) to back up a point, but it's not apparent what Rummy himself has said, what Keegan is inferring, or what Keegan has deduced based on some completely unrelated factors. The article would have been far more successful leaving Keegan to witter on about international relations in his dry academic style, and leaving a real interviewer to get to grips with Rumsfeld.

Because God knows, someone needs to.

Handy Bite-sized News.

Apparently a blog is meant to keep tabs on current events in the news. Don't seem to have done that very much. So here goes.

Iraq. That's all a bit rubbish, isn't it.
Kidnapping. Ditto.
Zimbabwe. Ditto.
English cricket. Ditto.
Climate change. Ditto. Unless you're from Cornwall, in which case you'll be able to sunbathe in January next year.

In happier news, Peter Crouch finally gets a goal for Liverpool, Manchester United get knocked out of Europe, Narnia wages brainwashing war on non-Christians worldwide and podcast is word of the year.

But does anyone know what it actually means?

Captain's Blog

Tuesday 22nd November. 5.40pm

Cold. Very cold. Was so icy this morning that I could see my breath when I woke up. I'm not an expert on such matters, but I don't think that's a good thing. Room has officially reached absolute zero. Human life is incapable of survival in such climates. The huskies I purchased yesterday have all frozen solid. Never trust an Eskimo pet shop. I did only swop them for 20 bags of ice though.

Can officially report that trying to capture hot air in a bin bag, then running quickly to cold room to release it does not change ambient temperature of cold room. Only succeeds in making one look like a bit of a tit.

It's strange that when it's so bloody cold outside, we expend a great amount of money and fuel on making the insides of our houses warm, and then within that warm space expend even more money and fuel to keep our food at the same temperature as it is outside. A fridge, as it's better known. Strikes me as being rather similar to constructing a hut in the middle of the Sahara and putting a sunbed inside.

I'm going outside. I may be some time. Probably because I tend to forget which pocket I've put my keys in. And I've got to pick up some stamps.

When Google became a verb...

In answer to my previous question, 'to google' became a verb some time circa 2002.

Meaning 'To be locatable in a search of the Internet', according to the wonderfully-named Wiktionary, the first mainstream use of 'google' as a verb was in a 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' (oh, dear sweet Jesus) episode in 2002.

However, as any cricket afficionado will know, 'to google' has been a recognised bowling ploy for far longer than that.

Here lies a prime example of the internet can be both infinitely informative and infinitely dull at the same time.

Slogspot and Blogapathy

I was going to write a hilarious and cutting article in which I would coin the term 'blogapathy' to describe the state of being too apathetic to make a blog entry. But then I googled it (at what point did 'to google' become a verb, by the way?) and found that the word 'blogapathy' had already been used by countless bloggers before me. Damn me and my bandwagoning.

However, I got an email from my sister today saying she had been looking at my postings, and I quote, "that your slogspot cheered me up". I mention this not because it's the first bit of positive feedback (hell, any feedback) that I've got on this diminuitive fruit of my labour, but because 'slogspot', typo though it was, describes my feelings towards this blog as well as 'blogapathy'.

The whole blog situation reminds me of the dilemma of undergraduateness (to coin a cumbersome noun - goodness, I'm just full of new words today). Though I was allegedly doing a 'current affairs' degree, by the time I had trawled through the various journals, textbooks and articles each week for the obligatory essay, the last thing I wanted to do was actually catch up on current affairs.

Similarly with blogging. I know that this is supposed to be a handy online chronical for our media-related musings, but by the time that I've churned out the various pieces of copy for our prodigious diploma and stared at a computer screen for 8 straight hours, I'm frankly in no mood to make small talk with a silent and sullen blog.

And it's not because I have no interesting thoughts. Honestly. I'm really really interesting. Just ask any of the lads in the Star Trek Appreciation Forum.

Woolgathering.

Everyone else's blog is very much more intelligent and far less self-indulgent than my own. I must start an ego-diet tomorrow.

Cardiff is ridiculously bloody cold. I have never had to don a bobble hat in bed before. Well, once, but apparently that's what the Icelanders call foreplay.

Blogging is the equivalent of buying fair-trade chocolate. You convince yourself that you're doing it for the greater good, and it's somehow going to make a difference, but in fact it is really just an excuse for some relatively guilt-free gratification.

I hate exclamation marks, with a deep and unabating passion. They're the lexicographic equivalent of the 'I'm mad, me' bloke in the office who prefixes every anecdote with 'You won't believe what I did the other day. It was just so funny...'

At some point I may feel obliged to work any of these fragments of stuff into an actual posting. Think of them as delayed drops, without the drop.

Look at me learning to write in shorter sentences. I'm flying, Dorothy, I'm really flying.

Ceiling Wax

Incidentally, the original quote that I maligned for the title of the previous post was from Lewis Carroll's 'The Walrus and the Carpenter':

"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes, and ships, and sealing-wax
Of cabbages, and kings
And why the sea is boiling hot
And whether pigs have wings."

Anyhow. When I was far, far younger, I always used to think that the third line was:

"Of shoes, and ships, and ceiling-wax"

I spent an enormous amout of time and effort trying to find out what ceiling wax actually was, and how one would go about waxing a ceiling. And why one would want to, for that matter. The best solution that I came up with was that it would protect your ground floor from flooding when you filled the bath too high upstairs.

And amazingly, ceiling wax does actually exist. It's the wax you use to perform the magic trick where you throw a pack of cards into the air and the 'chosen' card sticks to the ceiling. But I don't think that's Mr Carroll meant.

Of shoes and ships and sealing wax, and magazines and things.

Kim Hollamby was, in many ways, the antithesis of Richard 'I'm not a geek' Burton.

The Head of Electronic Media at IPC was a geek. I suspect he'd even admit to it, if pushed. And better than just being a geek, he was a boat geek. I'd never met one before, but they seem like very nice people. Kim's enthusiasm for journalism was rather contrary to Richard Burton's - it seemed to stem from a real love of the subject matter, rather than a love of news at speed. Whilst Burton seemed to view his audience as strips of flypaper at which news should be flung until something stuck, one got the feeling that Hollamby would rather like to sit down for a chat with every one of his readers and check that the font wasn't so small that it was hurting their eyes.

Hollamby also gave a good synopsis of the magazine/website interrelationship. Though it might sound self-evident, the ideal is to have the magazine and website complementing each other, but not over-lapping too much. For example, don't put your big wordy features onto the website, but perhaps use the site to provide further pictures, or a forum for feedback.

Furthermore, websites help to foster the 'community' of a magazine. A website is a far more interactive (yuck, what a late 90s buzzword) tool (yuck, what a late 90s buzzword) than a magazine, and through mediums such as forums and messageboards can be a good 'thermometer' for reader opinions.

Finally, websites are infinitely gigantic. Well, not infinite perhaps, but pretty big. So they are a good store of archived information, and a good medium for expanding small ads. I know it's all obvious, but it was nice to have someone high up spell it out. Even if he was a bit boaty.

On the Burton

I frankly found Richard Burton a touch scary. Not only because the great actor appeared to have mysteriously returned from beyond the grave to give us a lecture (yes, the joke was going to appear sooner or later, better to get it out the way quickly) but also the cut-throat attitude to journalism that the Telegraph Online editor had.

Don't get me wrong - I have great respect for Burton and what he has achieved, and within his field he has done an excellent job. However, I do hope that he represents one branch of journalism, and one type of journalist, to which we do not necessarily all have to aspire.

He showed a real dedication to speed - finding the story and getting it out before anyone else. Ditching football on a Saturday morning to speed across London to get a headline out, trimming vital milliseconds off the time it takes to send out Telegraph text alerts - Burton had an infectious enthusiasm, perhaps even addiction, to journalism at speed.

But I'm not sure it's for me. Essentially it seemed to be a 'middle-man' role, picking up stories from news agencies than then turning them into copy as quickly as possible. Burton's story about providing 'live' photos of a Tony Blair press conference, by hunting out an old archive picture of him in the same clothes and Photoshopping it, demonstrates this perfectly. Yes, it's quick - but it's a pretty no-frills form of journalism.

Even Burton admitted that his brand of journalism was 'less Premiership, more Coca-Cola League'. No bylines, no literary fun - just a team of 12 'geeks' trawling the world's headlines and firing them into the electronic ether ASAP.

Which is all fine. But for everyone's sake, let's hope that this isn't the route all journalism will eventually go down. Burton boasted of working with a tiny team - a fraction the size of BBC's online department. Of course, you can do that if you're just touching up news agency releases and hammering them into shape for the online audience. But it all rather reeks of this view of the future, where web-trawling bots present news for your pleasure, with no strings attached.

I may be a stuffy old idealist, but I still want to be surrounded by reams of notes, scribbled Postits and cups of coffee, awake 'till five in the morning crafting a feature of classical elegance and wit. It'll probably never happen, but I want to know it's an option.

But if you're reading this, Mr Burton, I'd love a job. Please.

Me and My Thing.

I realised the other day that I don't have a thing.

Which was a trifle upsetting to discover.

You see, most people I know have a thing. About half the population, I would imagine. And it's their thing that makes them interesting. It's a talking point, a bibelot, if you will. A lull in the conversation, and their thing pops up - suddenly everyone's talking.

For example, my esteemed colleague and Victorian impersonator Matthew Jones has a thing. A large thing, actually. His thing is bouncy gangsta cars. I believe he is keen on a spot of bling also. Other magazine journalists' things include fashion, science, music - in fact, any hobby, pastime or diversion you can name.

It's not because I'm boring. I'm really interesting. Honestly, I am. I love sport, music, travel, all sorts of things. In a very passionate and frankly carnal way. But I don't love any one of them enough to be, well, thingish about it. I could happily write features about cricket in Uganda, jazz in Cuba or stamp collecting in Cornwall, but I'm not sure I'll ever become so entrenched in any one of them that it will become my thing.

Is it bad not to have one? Maybe not. I like to think of myself as a itinerant writer - turning my pen (well, my coffee-splashed keyboard in honestly) to any number of topics. But a niche - a hook, as Matthew Yeomans would put it - would be a nice foothold, a way in to a closed market. So if anyone's got a suggestion for my thing, I'll happily consider it. Answers on a postcard please.

PS: It occurs to me that people's things may also be a hook. So be careful when you brush past Mr Jones in the corridor.