PAPERS

In 1900 everyone in the world bought a newspaper, sometimes more than one. Admittedly, there weren’t as many folk about in those days but there were about one and a half billion people. Allowing for the folk buying several newspapers, we’ll call it two billion. These newspapers didn’t have any pictures, apart from a few cartoons of the Prince of Wales and his ilk. The words were very small and had ‘f’ instead of ‘s’. Still, the plebs lapped them up and the rulers seethed at constantly being portrayed as fat scrounging arseholes. Now, in the 21^st century, the world population in seven billion plus and newspaper circulation in the UK, is in the low millions. Of these, 97% of papers sold are The Sun and The Mail. These right wing and reactionary rags sell to the Great Unwashed because they feature: tits; celebrities; football and what bastards immigrants are.

                The average Sun reader will get up in the afternoon; have a fag; watch Jeremy Kyle and then amble down to the newsagents, or ‘Paki Shop’, as they like to term it. They will take their staffie, also known as the Guide Dog for the Thick, so it can have a shit on someone’s lawn and also scare any old person they may meet.  After buying their rag they will tell Mt Singh (who is a Sikh and comes from India) that ‘You fuckin’ Pakis and Polacks are taking our fuckin’ jobs. He will then amble back in time for Celebrity Antiques Roadtrip, allowing adequate time for Ripper to shit in someone’s drive.

                On his sofa, he will read, in words of five letters or less, roughly what he told Mr Singh; look at the football scores (he supports Man Utd even though he lives 300 miles away) and toss the rag onto the floor-bin, with the soiled nappies and the dogshit. He will then request that his light of love bring him some ‘fuckin’ beer’; tell her to shut the fuckin’ kid up and fall asleep, whereupon, Ripper will piss on his leg, thus securing his trip to the dog rescue centre, where he will be put down. Some Sun readers however, read the ‘paper’ while driving their white vans at 90 mph through town, while texting, egged on by a spotty youth on an ‘apprenticeship’.

                Readers of the ‘Quality’ papers such as the Guardian and the Times, don’t actually buy any newspapers. Their readership read the paper online, where the adblocker removes any unwanted distractions. In the case of the Times and the Telegraph (which is the Mail with bigger words), no one reads online either, as you have to pay. What has brought newspaper readership into such decline. One factor is that the papers are full of shite. There is no news in the redtops and biased and or government directed bullshit in the ‘qualities’. Why is this?

                Well, once, long ago the way to the top of the newspaper industry went like this:

                You got a job as an apprentice printer, where you spent your life up to the bollocks in ink, sorting out the mess that had developed when Cedric, the Head Printer had tipped all the lowercase B’s into the D into the same box and getting a crust of bread for your lunch.  Then, through dint of hard work, you progressed to being a printer. Then after you had spent six years at technical college (remember those?) you penned a letter to the Editor who was impressed and set you on as a junior reporter, where you started at the bottom again, writing accounts of how many times Prince Teddy farted at the annual Review of the Navy. Eventually you become Editor and after that owner of the paper, whereupon you spent most of your time getting pissed with Winston Churchill and buying up Somerset.

                These days, to become a newspaper magnate, you either: get your Daddy to buy you a paper; accumulate wads of cash by slightly dodgy means and buy one as a hobby or have one given to you, because it is fucked and  because you once raised the profit of a chain of shops by half a percent, before robbing it blind and stealing the pension fund, people think you can help. You are surrounded by sycophants and then the reason dawns on you – these papers aren’t making any money because NOBODY KNOWS WHAT THE FUCK THEY ARE DOING.

                There are two main reasons for this. One is that a lot of the people employed got their jobs because of what school/college they went to and not because they knew anything. These people are irrelevant, because they don’t actually do anything except get pissed at five hour lunches and screw the secretaries/each other. The main reason however, and this is the pisser, are the vast amounts of people who have arrived at the job, because they have a degree. Not just any degree, but a degree in Media Studies. This is a meaningless and useless qualification (equivalent to the PPE degree that qualifies you to be PM, or at least towel-folder to an MP, while you become PM). It has no relevance to the world of journalism. It is the reason that the papers are so badly misspelled, even in headlines. It is the reason that the papers are full of drivel and it is the reason, when these drones are promoted that the papers are fucked. These people don’t know shit from chocolate; they have no idea how to run a paper, it wasn’t in Journalism 1; nobody told them about stuff like this. So, they just fill the papers with: tits; celebrities; football and what bastards immigrants are, thinking, that this is what the public wants. Add this to the drop in literacy and you have a hiding to nowhere.