bleah
Day 2 of this media convergence course that I'm on starts in about half an hour, and I'm very much not looking forward to it. It's not the instructor's fault, he's a really nice guy who's trying very hard and, to his credit, he keeps replacing guest speakers for each course if there's been negative feedback about the previous speakers. But the whole course has neither structure nor objective and it feels like a massive waste of time.
The only bright spot are gems like this conversation that took place yesterday, between a fellow classmate I shall call GEY and a guest speaker I found myself judging a lot. She looked to be in her 40s, obviously very pretty once and still bearing the vestiges of handsomeness; but yesterday the well-cut forest green shift dress could barely hide her straining tummy and thick flesh coloured bra strap that kept threatening to slide down her arm. She also had that non-native-speaker-of-English thing going on, dropping articles and switching plurals and singulars. Don't get me wrong, I didn't dislike her or anything, just that she so clearly represented a subset of middle-aged females that I felt compelled to take note of every feature so I could store it in my make-sure-I-never-become-like-this archive. It's bursting.
Anyway, conversation. Woman is a reporter/editor at a news wire agency.
GEY, raising hand: I just want to ask about your agency's formulated way of writing articles. Why do they have to be so formulated? How do your reporters feel about producing such formulated articles all the time?
Woman: What exactly do you mean by formulaic (slight emphasis).
GEY: Well, your market reports are very formulated (growing emphasis). They all start by saying the market had ups and downs today, that is obvious, the market has ups and downs every day. It's so formulated.
Woman: Ah, I think I know what you mean by formulaic (doggedness starting to show).
GEY: Yes, why are they so formulated (refusing to give up)?
Woman: We have to put out the articles very quickly, so sometimes it can seem a bit formulaic, but it serves our purposes.
GEY: But how do your reporters feel about such formulated articles? Do they think it's real journalism?
-clear threat of descending into ugliness interrupted by instructor-
I love it when people think they're right and refuse to be gracious about it. So exciting, like courtside seats at a gladiator arena.
Ok damn back to course.
posted by zyn ::
9:29 AM ::
2 Comments ::
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