The Outsiders

Well, the kids on bFM are always fun to listen to. I suppose I'm young enough to be part of their demographic. Shame I'm in Wellington. Good that we have the magical interweb.

For the students of Auckland University, the most important thing was the Press Council's condemnation of journo Deborah Coddington in respect to her article in North and South. Go here and here, or even just here if you want the good ol' liberal approach to the story. Obviously, Ms. Coddington's former status as an ACT Party MP doesn't stand her in good stead as she chatted to Jose Barbosa. It's always fun listening to people get indignant when their integrity is questioned.

And as the ideological 20-something that you are, listening away to podcasts of bFM, you loved every second of it. Not that anyone else cares. When you think about it. Even those of us who have suffered from Deb's columns, sound-bites, and rantings with Larry Williams, have to admit that the Press Council is a fairly toothless organisation. I don't know, maybe you're a fourth-year student and are thinking about your future, and have maybe thought that being a conservative isn't that bad, because, hell, you know, it's a material world and all of that.
Anyway, kids like us say money's bad (because we don't have it), so remember Deb's just avoiding paying her bill, and accepting she was wrong to unfairly criticise Asian crime.

(To be honest, while Deb's interview was somewhat intriguing for someone like m'self who enjoys self-flagellation, the rest of the issue bores me sick. Deb made some valid points about the use of emotive language in feature articles, and, much as I hate to admit it, she is a reasonably good journo who tends to do her homework. At least she's not one of the journo school clones that seem to be polluting our airways these days. Those kids struggle to string a sentence together, and man, they can't pull off broadcast segment without sounding like a kid from the sticks putting on a bad impression of Warwick Burke. Sorry guys. The story just wasn't worth the effort. Hate speech is hate speech is hate speech is hate speech is not some article in North and South by Deborah Coddington. Not that anything interesting's happening today. Sorry about inconsistent ramble. Won't happen again today.)

Update: Yeah, big story. Go to scoop, scroll down, and compare the Editor's Picks with the Sitewide Most Read stories. First versus third.