Thank you, Crikey reader Tim Deyzel for this comprehensive shellacking:
Re. “Thorpe’s ‘many medals for Qantas’ — just a dash for cash?” (yesterday, item 6). Odd that radical changes in the Arab world, ongoing WikiLeaks leaks and a massive cyclonic slap to Queensland were less important to Crikey than the return to a pool of a bored (possibly broke) swimmer. Three full-length articles dedicated to the hopes and dreams of an individual and his sponsors are noise at best.
If you’re beset by production/technical problems, and short on editing resources, then here’s an easy way of gaining some perspective:
1) Run all three articles through a word cloud generator:
2) Pick the most frequent (i.e. biggest) words. In this case let’s say the top three
3) Take ‘Thorpe’; ‘return’; ‘swimming’ and rework into a meaningful sentence or headline
4) “Thorpe returns to swimming” will do
5) Insert as a one-line entry in ‘Media Briefs (if you must)
6) Wait until 2012 for your next installment when you report “Thorpe Not Selected”, “Thorpe Wins X Medals” or “Thorpe Wins No Medals” (if you must)
Any more coverage than this and you’re just pandering to the national insecurity, which equates the national sporting interest with the national economic/commercial/political/security/etc interest.
In our defence, Tim, we took the opportunity to run yesterday’s entire edition through a wordle, tag cloud thingummy:
But point taken, nonetheless. Can we interest you in a trip to London in 2012 to provide our poolside coverage?
Tim’s right. I would hazard the guess that Thorpe’s swimming career is of practically zero interest to most of us in a Crikey context, and anyway those who want to know more can get an eyeful from any tabloid or commercial TV station.
Okay, so three articles on Thorpe might have been a bit much, but don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. I like seeing sport being given the Crikey treatment.
Passing reference would have sufficed. Bit over the top though from Tim.
I’m with Tim.
Three stories? Can’t say I noticed because I always scroll past such stuff.
Crikey sports obsessed? They are based in Melbourne, ’nuff said.
But, as someone who has done research on skin cancer, did no one remark on Thorpe’s incredible skin yesterday (on tv reports which one can hardly scroll past quickly unless previously PVR’d). I thought my tv colour control had gone astray but no. He has seriously OD’d on sun, even worse if he continues to do that in Dubai or Abu Dahbi (but maybe all the pools are inside and climate-controlled?). Poor example for Australian youth.