Alex Callinicos/SWP vs Laurie Penny/New Statesman Facebook handbags

[framed]

Too busy researching to reply:

Laurie Penny ‏@PennyRed
So I'm writing a big ol'essay about journalism and what it means in the wake of leveson, Occupy, etc. What's changing, what needs to change?

7m ago

For 'research' read scrolling through relevant threads on Urban...

Elbows should copyright his posts on those threads before she steals 'em all!

 

[ViolentPanda]

I love Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds too. Don't recall much class politics in their work though.

You mean you can't see the class politics in a song like "red right hand"? For shame, young man! For shame!

 

[inva]

I've always thought that the only people who could be forced to sing it were Tories. Anyone else would be happy to, given the sentim,ent of the lyrics!

shouldn't that be "sen'iment"?

 

[lauriepenny]

I do have a couple of questions, actually, if anyone can answer them for me:

1.What are you actually hoping to achieve with this thread?

2. If you really do hate my work and everything it stands for, why have you spent 215 pages discussing it, and why do you continue to hang around on my twitter feed and read my articles?

 

[butchersapron]

I do have a couple of questions, actually, if anyone can answer them for me:

1.What are you actually hoping to achieve with this thread?

2. If you really do hate my work and everything it stands for, why have you spent 215 pages discussing it, and why do you continue to hang around on my twitter feed and read my articles?

No, you answer our questions.

1)How many pages of this thread have you bothered to read?

2) What are the good bits of critique that you claimed it contained - and where are they?

 

[Blagsta]

I do have a couple of questions, actually, if anyone can answer them for me:

1.What are you actually hoping to achieve with this thread?

2. If you really do hate my work and everything it stands for, why have you spent 215 pages discussing it, and why do you continue to hang around on my twitter feed and read my articles?

One of your recent articles got some praise on here iirc.

 

[ViolentPanda]

You know, don't you, that this is why we can't have nice things. Like a revolution.

I'm sure your hearts are in the right place, but collectively you come across like a bunch of creepy bedroom bullies.

The reason people appear to come across like that to you is probably related to your route into journalism. If you'd "come up the hard way", you'd have been inured to any form of bullying after your first 6 months on a local rag, as well as being able to sort criticism from bullying.
And yes, this is a bit of "class struggle" criticism. UK Journalism has spent most its' history in thrall to Oxbridge grads, to the detriment of what gets reported. So much so that people like Hari and yourself are pretty much "token dissenters", employed to give a bit of edge, a bit of whatever the middle class version of "street cred" is, to the outlets you work for.

 

[framed]

I do have a couple of questions, actually, if anyone can answer them for me:

1.What are you actually hoping to achieve with this thread?

2. If you really do hate my work and everything it stands for, why have you spent 215 pages discussing it, and why do you continue to hang around on my twitter feed and read my articles?

We were on a mission to see how many pages it would take for you to bite...

 

[ViolentPanda]

And the burning socialist workers just add to the ambiance

The people or the papers?

(The former please, O Yahweh! The former!)

 

[ViolentPanda]

shouldn't that be "sen'iment"?

I slur, I don't elide glottals.

 

[rekil]

I do have a couple of questions, actually, if anyone can answer them for me:

1.What are you actually hoping to achieve with this thread?

2. If you really do hate my work and everything it stands for, why have you spent 215 pages discussing it, and why do you continue to hang around on my twitter feed and read my articles?

What other threads on the site have you looked at?

 

[lauriepenny]

"If you'd "come up the hard way", you'd have been inured to any form of bullying after your first 6 months on a local rag."
Actually, I spent a year working for minimum wage at a small mental health industry magazine to support myself through my journalism training course, and then worked as a sub-editor on the Morning Star. Your research appears to be a bit off: I didn't just walk out of university into a job at a national magazine.

 

[ViolentPanda]

What will you do come a revolution? Flash the press card?

The place of the media is always a problem in revolutionary situations, Bish. Are they lackeys of the capitalist scum that employ them, or are they honest strivers trying to change the system from inside, and simpatico with the aims of the revolution?
I tend toward the former answer, because for every one of the latter, there's a dozen of the former.

 

[butchersapron]

"If you'd "come up the hard way", you'd have been inured to any form of bullying after your first 6 months on a local rag."
Actually, I spent a year working for minimum wage at a small mental health industry magazine to support myself through my journalism training course, and then worked as a sub-editor on the Morning Star. Your research appears to be a bit off: I didn't just walk out of university into a job at a national magazine.

How did you get the morning star job?

 

[Belushi]

I do have a couple of questions, actually, if anyone can answer them for me:

1.What are you actually hoping to achieve with this thread?

2. If you really do hate my work and everything it stands for, why have you spent 215 pages discussing it, and why do you continue to hang around on my twitter feed and read my articles?

You know what Laurie, I really like the fact that you've come on here to argue the toss because its a real bear pit and that takes some guts. And I think you're sincere in your beliefs and mean well, but amid the slagging off on this thread there is a real point, and that is that even though you dont realise it for some of us you're part of the problem with the British left not part of the solution.

 

[butchersapron]

"If you'd "come up the hard way", you'd have been inured to any form of bullying after your first 6 months on a local rag."
Actually, I spent a year working for minimum wage at a small mental health industry magazine to support myself through my journalism training course, and then worked as a sub-editor on the Morning Star. Your research appears to be a bit off: I didn't just walk out of university into a job at a national magazine.

So you were earning for that year right?

 

[Firky]

The internship system is already expensive enough to exclude all but the richest and most fortunate young people from popular jobs. I could pretend, for example, that it's my winning smile and blatant genius which have enabled me to find work as a journalist - but a year's unpaid interning, during which I survived on a small inheritance from a dead relative, had just as much to do with it. Any graduate or school-leaver without the means to support themselves in London whilst working for free can currently forget about a career in journalism, politics, the arts, finance, the legal profession or any of a number of other sectors whose business models are now based around a lower tier of unpaid labour.

 

[Hocus Eye.]

The place of the media is always a problem in revolutionary situations, Bish. Are they lackeys of the capitalist scum that employ them, or are they honest strivers trying to change the system from inside, and simpatico with the aims of the revolution?
I tend toward the former answer, because for every one of the latter, there's a dozen of the former.

So VP does that mean that come the revolution you will give Laurie Penny a fair trial before shooting her?

 

[Firky]

...jinx!

 

[Delroy Booth]

I do have a couple of questions, actually, if anyone can answer them for me:

1.What are you actually hoping to achieve with this thread?

Personally I just find some of the things you say uninentionally hilarious and cringeworthy. It's like watching an episode of Nathan Barley unfold in real time. I mean I was doing the same thing, trying to tear my own face off with embarassment whenever you write something, before I stumbled upon this thread.

2. If you really do hate my work and everything it stands for, why have you spent 215 pages discussing it, and why do you continue to hang around on my twitter feed and read my articles?

I don't hate all your work, occasionally you've written things I like. I just resent how you've been promoted as this Voice of the Downtrodden, because I've read your stuff and it reads like someone ponitificating about issues she doesn't really understand and about people whose lives she knows nothing about.

I read your articles out of morbid sense of curiosity these days, and because they're unintentionally hilarious.

Also, the whiff Hari-style fabrication and hangs around you like a bad perfume. These are all things I'd thought to myself just reading your work, and clearly there's a few other people who've thought the same thing too, who've managed to coalese around this thread.

 

[lauriepenny]

How did you get the morning star job?

The normal way. I applied, and then I had an interview.

 

[butchersapron]

You know what Laurie, I really like the fact that you've come on here to argue the toss because its a real bear pit and that takes some guts. And I think you're sincere in your believes and mean well, but amid the slagging off on this thread there is a real point, and that is that even though you dont realise it for some of us you're part of the problem with the British left not part of the solution.

Belushi is a very nice person, he doesn't pick on people, he doesn't bully, he isn't in a clique - he is saying this to you.

 

[ViolentPanda]

"If you'd "come up the hard way", you'd have been inured to any form of bullying after your first 6 months on a local rag."
Actually, I spent a year working for minimum wage at a small mental health industry magazine to support myself through my journalism training course, and then worked as a sub-editor on the Morning Star. Your research appears to be a bit off: I didn't just walk out of university into a job at a national magazine.

I haven't claimed that you did, have I? Surely, though, you're cognisant of the fact that a small industry mag bears very little comparison to what happens at local daily or weekly?
And subbing, while a difficult job, especially if half the journalists are so old they use half a dozen different forms of shorthand between them, doesn't feature quite the same "coal face" exposure as being a lowly cub

 

[ViolentPanda]

What did you eat in Harvesters when you had dinner with Stephen Lennon?

e coli, most likely.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Welcome Laurie. The internationale is a good tune but it is really hard to get the words to scan to it.

Only if you're sober, comrade.

 

[butchersapron]

The normal way. I applied, and then I had an interview.

That's normal? Did i miss it? Normal how?

Why is this the first post of mine that you've replied to? .

 

[lauriepenny]

And subbing, while a difficult job, especially if half the journalists are so old they use half a dozen different forms of shorthand between them, doesn't feature quite the same "coal face" exposure as being a lowly cub

I advise you never say that to a sub-editor who's within throwing distance of a stapler, my friend.

 

[framed]

"If you'd "come up the hard way", you'd have been inured to any form of bullying after your first 6 months on a local rag."
Actually, I spent a year working for minimum wage at a small mental health industry magazine to support myself through my journalism training course, and then worked as a sub-editor on the Morning Star. Your research appears to be a bit off: I didn't just walk out of university into a job at a national magazine.

So it was you that was responsible for putting the 'mental' into mental health then?

Sub-editor on the Morning Star... jeez, I wondered why their circulation was dwindling so fast. The demise of the 'socialist countries' (sic) and employing you seem to have been the final nails in that particular coffin.

You've put me right off buying it as part of my Saturday morning guilt trip now.

 

[Bakunin]

Actually, I spent a year working for minimum wage at a small mental health industry magazine to support myself through my journalism training course, and then worked as a sub-editor on the Morning Star. Your research appears to be a bit off: I didn't just walk out of university into a job at a national magazine.

Neither did I, I was too busy trying to fit scribbling in and around going to demo's, organising and helping run camps, attending meetings, supporting people who were up in court, doing press releases/letter writing/police liaison work, travelling round the country on my own time and at my own expense and also fetching, carrying and generally making myself useful. Also, even when I was a press spokesman, I ALWAYS avoided using that role to promote anything other than the groups I worked with.

Involving myself in causes wasn't something I saw as a career move or a means to pander to my own ego.

 

[butchersapron]

I advise you never say that to a sub-editor who's within throwing distance of a stapler, my friend.

Now we're already getting, but i'm a journo - listen to my tales. I'm Ann Leslie.