Writing

Note: This Well Readhead entry by Leigh serves as an introduction to the special one-off piece she has filed, which is published directly below.

I may be telepathic. I can foresee what will appear in this year’s Christmas Day package on the 7pm ABC news - a grab from the Catholic Archbishop, a grab from the Anglican archbishop, shots of the homeless being served lunch at a shelter, shots of kids unwrapping presents if the reporter’s lined up a family early.

There could well be vision from Bethlehem of a Nativity re-enactment. The Pope in St Peter’s Square obviously. If the journalist gets really lucky, there might be some quirky sidebar such as a surfing Santa or a dog that can bark jingle bells.  And call me crazy, but I’m going to predict that on Christmas Eve on Channel Ten, the price of prawns will be skyrocketing.

Every journalist knows that there are certain stories that show up annually on the assignments board.  They’re so formulaic, the packages are almost identical from year to year: Australia Day, Anzac Day, the Easter Show (cue reporter piece-to-camera on a sideshow ride) and New Year’s Eve (Sydney’s fireworks are always the best in the world). 

Continue reading "Well readhead: breathing life into anniversary journalism" »

A journalist has written a story complaining newspaper stories are too long.

He says people like their stories short. Punchy. That’s why newspapers are dying, he says. That’s why the internet is alive.

The story was written by Michael Kinsley. A columnist for The Atlantic. Mr Kinsley complains that a 1,456 word report in The New York Times, on Obama’s health reforms, was too long. Mr Kinsley’s article, complaining about journalistic “verbiage”, ran to 1,940 words.

Continue reading "The new internet vomit" »

Here’s a few things we learned this week: lip-synching and Kevin Rudd are predominately out, keeping university colleges safe is in and we’ve all got something to ask Tiger Woods.

A selection of some of the best writing from this week @ The Punch follow after the jump. And if you’re looking for something else to help pass the afternoon,  watch the video above about a National Geographic photographer.

Continue reading "This week @ The Punch" »

Before Ben Cousins, there was Wayne Carey. The full forward from Wagga became the King of North Melbourne and the greatest train wreck of them all.

His legendary love of a bender – and a life without boundaries - culminated in a famous sex act somewhere between the tooth brush holder and the soap dish with his best mate’s wife.

Carey was the perfect example of a sports star whose self-loathing only increased the more the public fell in love with him. I don’t know if he’s ever met Andrew Johns, but you’d imagine they would have plenty to talk about.

Continue reading "Wayne Carey: Your typical angry white male" »

A few highlights from Punch staff and contributors are over the jump. For a bit of fun, check out the #medievalbumperstickers thread on Twitter from today. And here’s a video that’s worth another look.

One reader insight from this week is from Punch regular Zeta, with a considered position on asylum seekers (also over the jump). Have a great weekend.

Continue reading "If you missed them" »

Is there any way I could convince you to read aloud in public from a diary you kept when you were fourteen?

A group called Cringe is encouraging people to do just that.  Its founder, a blogger named Sarah Brown, started Cringe in a Brooklyn bar in 2005 and it’s since spread to London.  Members of the group get together and read aloud from things they wrote as teenagers – diaries, poems, letters, songs, plays, you name it. 

Sarah Brown has turned the best – or perhaps the worst – of the material into a book.

Continue reading "Well read-head: ‘Dear Diary’" »

‘Do not start me on The Da Vinci Code. A novel so bad that it gives bad novels a bad name’. That’s how Salman Rushdie described Dan Brown’s 2003 blockbuster in an interview with the Lawrence Journal-World in 2005.

Rushdie isn’t alone in his unflattering assessment of Dan Brown’s writing. More recently, professor of linguistics at the University of Edinburgh, Geoffrey Pullum told the Daily Telegraph that ‘Brown’s writing is not just bad; it is staggeringly, clumsily, thoughtlessly, almost ingeniously bad’.

And Pullum isn’t just being a high-minded literary snob, either; the professor has a point. To illustrate his case, Pullum cites a passage from Angels and Demons in which the lead female character hears about the death of her scientist father. ‘Genius, she thought. My father . . . Dad. Dead’ writes Brown.

Continue reading "In praise of Dan Brown" »

I admit it:  I’m in danger of being a language bore.

I’m that guy who, when you say you’re ‘honing in’ on something, asks derisively if you’ve ever heard of a honing pigeon or a honing missile.

If you call me a ‘font of information’, I’m liable to take offence on the grounds that a font is a shallow bowl used for church christenings, and I’d rather be a fount, thank you.

Continue reading "Some key learnings about the debasement of language" »

Recently, an oily looking salesman in a shopping mall unexpectedly grabbed my hand and starting rubbing some cream into it.

He had a mono brow and a lank, black ponytail at the nape of his neck. 

‘Oh, very dry hands,’ he declared triumphantly as he massaged in the cream.

Continue reading "Well read-head: Antidotes to people who spoil your day" »

Julie and Poh know what to do with century eggs, tempered chocolate and rabbit hindquarters, but even they might struggle with these ingredients: 1 x 425g tin of crushed pineapple, 1 cup of coconut and 1 x 250g container of sour cream.

Do you know what it makes?  Here’s a hint: ‘Mix together and leave for a couple of hours.  Serve on lettuce leaves.’

If you answered ‘Pineapple Salad’, then perhaps your childhood, like mine, included neighbourhood pool parties at which the adults downed shandies and Coolabah cask wine while nibbling on devils-on-horseback (prunes wrapped in bacon). 

Continue reading "Well read-head: Julie and Poh inspire a cookbook trip" »

Gen Y may garner more column inches than Sarah Palin, the GFC, and Madonna’s immobile forehead combined but they are the generation we love to hate the most, (myself included and I was unfortunately born smack bang in the middle of Y-dom), so I’m starting to wonder why our media landscape is bereft of any aggressive, arrogant scribes south of 30?

It’s not that I think we have anything particularly interesting or even fleetingly insightful or intelligent to offer on politics, popular culture or Paul Keating, but each generation before us has thrown up someone to wildly wave the banner of youth while trying not to choke on their own vomit.

Our papers are missing a trying-very-hard-to-be-controversial-and-on-the-edge ‘Youth’ columnist, chock full of the insouciance, arrogance and ignorance that comes from being part of a generation that can barely remember a time when casting a vote didn’t involve SMS. What they need is a Hip Young Thing, someone who can knock out a few wry paragraphs about blow jobs and recreational drug use, making a name for themselves with their frequent use of the word ‘f**k’ and poor grammar and syntax.

Continue reading "Wanted: youngster to write about drugs and blow jobs" »