Would You Believe This?

[muninnhuginn]

Well, really, without meaning any disrespect, but are folk really that thin-skinned? Change the name of "The Two Towers"?

And also from The Times today

On a more seasonal note, something we could believe: Emin's Xmas Tree

Comments

[akicif.livejournal.com]

Nope. It's eejit Times reporters falling for an internet spoof site... Must be a slow news day, I guess.

Thank goodness for that

[muninnhuginn]

Didn't think Tracy Emin would ever do anything quite that sensible.

Oops, sorry!

[akicif.livejournal.com]

Hadn't looked at the Tracy Emin bit -- I'd say "good for her", to be honest. I was talking about the Two Towers renaming petition.

Re: Oops, sorry!

[muninnhuginn]

We know you were. A failed attempt ta humorous stupidity on our part.

No so sure ...

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

That was my first thought, but on reading the news article, I can quite easily believe that there are 3,000 AOL users out there that, when presented with the name of a *book* (whatever that might be) and the media enhanced hysteria over New York (yes it was really really bad, much worse that the death of Princess Di, and look at the hysteria over *that*!) that finding 3,000 (possibly 3,000 different people, maybe the same 500 six times) to sign an internet petition just isn't that unbelievable.

Yes there were spoof things going around at the time, but there are some very susceptible people out there and it wouldn't surprise me at all to find that there was someone somewhere that said to themselves "sure, it's the name of the book, but it doesn't have to be the name of the movie, certainly not this close to such a terrible tradgedy that has wounded the american psyche" (or some such bull pucky) and *really* came up with a petition. The surprise being, I'd guess, that they *only* got 3,000 signatures.

Re: No so sure ...

[akicif.livejournal.com]

There's some more stuff here at spiked (http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/00000006D8EB.htm").

oops

[akicif.livejournal.com]

You'll need to take the " off the end of the URL above...

Sorry

Interesting

[muninnhuginn]

We're not sure which is more irritating, the fact that people are that hyper-sensitive or that others are willing to pretend that they are.

And, Cheriegate excepted (or should that be Cheriegate included?), it did seem to be a very quiet day news-wise: The Times online had two LOTR stories and The Telegraph a further one. All trivia to fill those virtual inches.

Now, that treally is a thought. Bearing in mind the lack of physical pages to fill (which is presumably the "reason" that paper newspapers have non-news news stories) and presumably a similar constraint regarding time for the broadcast media, wouldn't it be so good if a vitual newspaper had the honesty to simply have little or no news and not fill the vitual space with trivia? It's not as if we'd be presented with blank column inches or minutes on silence over the airwaves; we could simply finish what was there and go and do something better.

Re: Interesting

[akicif.livejournal.com]

I suspect it depends on advertising - if a paper is contracted to carry a certain amount of adverts, then they need a particular percentage of pieces to pad them out.

On the other hand, you get online "papers" like El Reg (http://www.theregister.co.uk), that just add links to new stories to the top as they come in and delete off the bottom as the page gets too big.

Re: Interesting

[muninnhuginn]

Had to be the dictates of commerce, they caw cynically.