crazybrave

The fact that I have recently read two really quite dreadful detective stories by Donna Leon* has made me hungry for a decent read. I found it at adelaide writer, where thirdcat says:

It wasn’t a lie. It wasn’t one of those things she just made up so that she could talk to someone she liked, but didn’t know. What Adelaide said was true.

Isn’t that just beautiful? Such grace and economy in expressing that observation, and such nuance in the observation itself. Not just how we (mothers of young children, prowling public spaces) sometimes search for another grown-up to talk to, but also that instant attraction to someone – I’d like to know more about you. There’s a new woman in my mother’s group that I’m drawn to that way.

* Worse than dreadful. Duck loaned them to me to read through the post-op drug fog, but sheesh. Lazy books. You couldn’t make a movie out of them, because they don’t even have a sub-plot. In a detective story! The only bloody red herring’s for lunch, after risotto and before the stewed pears. But thanks, Duck. It’s the thought that counts and all that. Still read all of both of them.

Dr David Conley is a University of Queensland journalism teacher. “Journalism courses force-feed a shrinking market”, his article in yesterday’s media supplement in The Australian (not online), contained some mildly interesting stuff about media companies hiring cadets with a degree, but not necessarily one in journalism or communications.

But it also contained some real idiocy:

“After all, doctors and lawyers need certification to prowl someone’s biological or legal innards. Anyone, in contrast, can declare themselves a journalist. The internet has accentuated this anomaly, with countless bloggers becoming instant reporters and publishers.

Anomaly? Perhaps they’re busy being bloody bloggers and not everyone in the world wants to be a journalist? Not to mention there is a difference between declaring yourself to be something, and having that declaration accepted, said the Queen of Sheba in Canberra late yesterday afternoon.

But even better, was this next bit, utterly without trace of a supporting argument:

If it’s important for medicine to be practiced only by professionals then it’s even more important that journalism be held to similar standards,” said Kerry Green, former president of the Journalism Educaiton Association and ahead of the University of South Australia’s school of communication, information and new media.

Now of course journalists and media outlets can significantly affect people’s rights – which is why there are defamation laws and conventions about what matters fall within the public domain – but this argument is so stupidly overstated it makes me think those media companies might be onto something in not requiring that their cadets have been trained by Dr Conley and his colleagues.