24. There is a place for that shit, (even if you can't stand the stink)

Whenever somebody becomes the editor of a news publication or website, they're going to have to quickly learn an unspoken lesson – just because they don't give a shit about a story, doesn't mean everybody else in the world is just as apathetic.

All the big news media outlets are, by definition, after the mass market – they can only remain soluble by appealing to as many people as possible. You might not like absolutely everything they have to dish up, but you're not fuckin' supposed to.

Newspapers figured this shit out centuries ago, and the modern paper might be gasping for an audience, but it still follows that old template of slicing the news up into sections – news, world, life and style, entertainment, business, sport, travel and whatever they feel like. Many people would buy the paper just for the sports news, or just the latest business dealings. There were still some poor, deluded souls who read it all, but it wasn't for everybody.

Even in a publication dealing with a specific subject, there is still a vital need for variety - even B2B magazines about housewares have to have serious stories about refrigerators mellowed out by the human touch of in-store antics at the Balclutha branch.

Above all, it's about getting the mix right. There needs to be a bit of variety, because a downer news day needs something a bit up-beat. It can't all be weightless tosh, but it also can't all be dour and serious news, either.

Sometimes there is just too much doom and gloom. TV, in particular, has a limited time to get a good blend of stories, and can sometimes be grimness from sting to tail, or - on a particularly slow news day - be overwhelmed on fluff (in general, the main TV news bulletins are getting that mix dead on.)
 
It's particularly bad on Fridays here in NZ, when there is often a glut of court judgements and sentences coming down before the weekend, and a breaking news website can quickly become nothing but tales of murder and rape and abuse and other awful shit, and a story about a rogue penguin on the motorway will not only be welcomed, it will be greatly appreciated. As much as the 'if it bleeds, it leads', mentality is still there, it doesn't all have to be miserable.

And besides, what's so bad about giving people a bit of what they want, as long as it's harmless enough and still surrounded by serious and important issues? There is a lot of real estate on a web page, some of it can be spared for silly nonsense like reality TV shows, or mild celebrity gossip. Every news website editor that is after some clicks to hit those KPIs wouldn't be doing their job if they ignored a vast audience that only wanted something light and fluffy from their news diet.

Yeah, okay, the Bachelor is vacuous horseshit, but there are still tens of thousands of people who are genuinely interested in any news about the show, and they're too busy making happy predictions about who Zac will give the glad eye to, to give a shit about your news-shaming. They know it's just vacuous horseshit, and they don't care. The know there is some dirty old cross-promotion going on when The Project gets exclusive access to the show's stars, they just don't give a flying fuck.

We do live in a playlist culture, where everyone wants everything easily supplied and curated to their own needs. But the mass market just can't do that, because it's mass. That's how it works..

So all news reports aren't for everybody, and an editor trying fill a website, a paper page or a bulletin will always need to suppress that news gag reflex, in order to appeal to as many people as possible. They might hate that clickbait bullshit just as much as you do, but they wouldn't be doing their jobs if they just ignored it. And it wouldn't be a problem if you weren't all fucking clicking on it.

Next: Yeah, sure, but there is a time and a place.

- Katherine Grant

23. Stocked photos

The plane nerds are the worst. Even more than the dog nerds. They can't wait until somebody gets it wrong. Even if it's just the wrong propeller, somebody will have a right moan about it.

Stock photos are an unfortunate necessity in getting news stories online these days, and they can be a righteous pain in the arse. But they still need to be there, because entire online content management systems are built round them, and if there isn't some kind of picture attached to a story, there there will be a gap in the page, and that's failing the #1 rule of “filling the fucking space”.

But some stories are impossible to get any photos for, because they're court cases where it's against the fucking law to show anything, or breaking news stories, where something happened just minutes ago.

That's where the good old file pic comes into the frame. If all else fails, there is always the court crest or police car for some story about law and order (but for God's sake, don't use that gavel, because some fucking smartarse will point out that they don't use it in NZ). Stories about mental illness or domestic abuse are particularly difficult, which is why editors often resort to 'miserable person with head in hands' stock pose.

These photos are pure symbolism, everyone know they don't literally mean what they represent,  and we're all okay with it. Unless it's any kind of stories involving dogs or planes, and then it better be the exact right fucking breed or aircraft, because there are loads of people out there, champing at the bit to point out it's the wrong one, eager to show how much smarter they are than everybody else.

But it can be amazingly difficult to get the right shot, because news agencies don't have access to a bottomless reservoir of photographs. Even with access to a stock photo outfit like Thinkstock or 123rf.com, or with an account with Getty or Reuters or AFP, there can still be massive holes in a photo library for an online outfit. Sometimes it can be insanely hard to get something basic, like a reasonably well-known public figure.

No wonders so many editors are using Twitter or Facebook bios to get images of people. There is still a massive grey area around using images from social media, and editors should always make the effort to ask the person about the photo (if they're alive), but there might not be a lot of choice involved, and profile pics are about as public as it gets.

But sometimes, even when an online editor knows exactly what sort of pic they need, it can take an ridiculously long time to find the right shot. There are also issues of legal problems – a stock image can't have any kind of recognisable face in it, or the person involved might raise a bloody and justifiable fuss when they are linked to something they never had anything to do with. Court stories must be as generic as possible, unless you want to accuse some poor store-worker of some heinous crime.

And there are hundreds of breeds and cross-breeds of dogs, and all sorts of airplanes, and sometimes, it can prove almost impossible to find the exact right one which matches the story perfectly. So things have to be as generic as humanly possible, because anything that is actually identifiable will get the nerds foaming. It might not be a work of art, but it'll fill the fucking space.

- Steve Lombard

22. Fake news fuckers, fools and phonies

The tangerine nightmare currently sitting in the White House thinks he has boiled modern news media down to a fine art - anything that praises his contemptible political moves is good and proper journalism, and anybody who has some serious fucking questions to ask, or has some worryingly catastrophic poll numbers to report, is 'fake news'. That smug fuck blasts out his embarrassingly revealing tweets about it, and thinks he has got this whole news media thing worked out nicely.

Unfortunately, the president of the United States of America is a fucking moron, because after a lifetime spent in the high-faluting business world , he still hasn't worked out the first rule of marketing - don't overexpose yourself, or everybody will get sick to fucking death of you, and nothing ages as fast as barked-out slogans.

The more the fake news tag is used in pointless, petty moaning about anything that doesn't side with a particular world-view, the less powerful it is. The more times it's used at actual press conferences, or in snide interviews, or in those idiotic tweets, the more it sounds like the same old song, from a singer who is all out of real ideas.

And it's been used a lot lately, picked up by sub-literate morons as a rallying cry against that pesky media, who dare to ask questions they don't like. While there are genuine concerns about phony news stories - which we used to just call bullshit - it doesn't apply to every fucking thing you don't like seeing on the nightly news.

It does have a simplicity to it, reducing complex matters of media nuance to a two-syllable war cry, but like any kind of mass simplification, it's still dumb as fuck. Especially when it's usually lobbed at large news organisations, who get rightfully hauled over the coals anytime they fuck things up, with a large set of checks and balances in place to ensure your daily newspaper isn't lying to your face.

If there is one bright light in all this fake news nonsense, it's that it has become a useful shortcut to figuring out if somebody is a fuckin' fool. The kind of shitgibbon who leaves a fake news reply on any news story they see online - and these days there is always some cock who can't let anything like reports of Dan Carter's drink driving in France go by without piping up with their useless two-word opinion - can now be easily identified, and roundly ignored.

Because while everybody has got opinions, some have more worth than others, and the most worthless opinions always come from fuckheads with their heads up their own arse, who don't seem to understand that the news isn't just there to reinforce their views of the world, it's designed to actively challenge them, offering up new information that might actually change their mind about an issue, once all the fact are exposed

Until now, it could take you a while before you realise somebody is a conspiracy theorist fuckhead, and you can only start immediately discount anything they say once they start ranting about false flag operations and Jewish cabals. Once this realisation is made, you instantly know they're a small-minded racist who has nothing to contribute. No mess, no fuss! Even better, the more you straight up ignore them, the more they hate it, so it's a good double shot at the fuckers.

Now it's even easier, because they can tell you they're a fucking idiot with two simple words, and you don't even have to hear them talking about anything else. They've shown their cards, and then taken a piss on the deck when you walked away from the table.

We all know we're all supposed to try and reach out  to these people, but fuck it, it's hard enough work reaching the people with a slightly open mind, and the barking fools can go yell at each other outside. It might be harder to ignore the President of the United States when he's echoing those sentiments, but we can also call him out for being a fucking fascist about it all.

- Ron Troupe

21. Technology isn't going to save us all

If you have ever worked on the digital side of news, you will have been asked the same question, at one point or another. It could be a well-meaning aunt, or a blissfully ignorant Uber driver, but you tell them what you do for a living, and they'll look at you blankly and say: “Oh. Isn't that all done by computers these days?”

Despite the best wishes of futurists, visionaries and my Aunty Dot, we're still a long way from having computers fully run the media machine. We're still a long, long, long way from a media Skynet, because it would take a full-blown artificial intelligence that could piss all over the Turing Test to replace the most average human online editor.

Look, the ideal of a technology that filters and curates the news - without any human foibles and bias, and just looks at the cold, hard analytics to put everything in the right place - is a nice ideal, but is just not happening anytime soon.

Facebook took some tentative steps in this direction last year, with their news feed going full automatic for a while, and the biggest media organisation on the planet quickly discovered a big problem. While the automatic system was grunty as fuck, it couldn't differentiate between proper news and absolute horseshit, and served up its readers a hearty dish of the horseshit, including desperately dumb conspiracy theories and trashy celebrity bollocks. When it comes to actual news judgement, there are cats and dogs that are smarter than analytics-based software.

But even when we do reach that stage, and the Hal 9000 is serving up some perfectly tailored news stories to go with your morning protein pill, it's all built on the assumption that the technology won't fuck up, and won't make mistakes like messy humans.

Which is just fucking bizarre, because technology doesn't work like that. It fucks out all the time. Even the simplest basic computer programme can do bizarre things, and hardware shits itself for no goddamn reason. That's what technology fucking does.

The media has, in general, been fucking awful at keeping up with technological changes. The internet was a long time coming, and there was still a mad scramble and fumbles at the dawn of the internet age which was just embarrassing, and still devastating for the media scene.

It has also been fucking amazing – you can now get the latest news instantly on your fucking phone, wherever you are, with video and photos and all that jazz. Reporters can file from the field with a huge amount of information. It's all connected and fascinating and useful.

But there still needs to be the human touch, somewhere there in the process - the idea of a human eye that can spot when something is wrong, and react instantly, because it is so obvious, in a way a programme would never understand.

Still, with all the great new technology over the past few decades, the greatest and most useful bit of tech a reporter can have is still a pen and a pad, because it doesn't run out of batteries, operates in all sorts of conditions and never starts automatically updating just when you need to check a name. And there is still nothing that beats shouting across a newsroom as the best and fastest form of communication technology in the galaxy, with a speed that shits on your wi-fi link. Sometimes the old ways are still best.

- Katherine Grant

20. Nobody gives a shit about your ideology

Complaints about the inherent bias of the news media's political coverage almost always come from one end or the other of the political spectrum. Those on the hard left are convinced the media is letting their corporate paymasters off lightly, while those on the right are sure the media are a bunch of namby-pamby liberal pussies.

Newsrooms do skew a little left, if only because journalists require some degree of empathy to do their job properly, but it's never as bad as most might think, because getting news people to agree on ideological terms is fucking hard. Getting them to agree on anything is fucking hard.

Newsrooms are full of commies, and hardcore capitalists, and vague anarchists, just like any slice of society. Most people have surprisingly complex views on politics, and don't always fit into easy identifiable boxes.

There will still be weird little bias, and sometimes it can be unconscious. Any journo who has spent a significant proportion of their day transcribing the garbled nonsense that spilled out of the mouth of John Key when he was Prime Minister, and then trying to make sense of it, might be a little harsher on Mr Key when it comes to polishing up the story. And good reporters will always have some kind of inherent distrust of anybody in power, and will react accordingly.

But in general, journos don't care about your ideology. Stories don't get spiked because they don't fit a certain viewpoint, they get spiked because they're boring, or stupid, or just don't stack up. And if any politician does something truly incompetent or corrupt, and it gets discovered, they're going to have the spotlight on them. It doesn't matter if they're National or Labour, or the Greens, or NZ First, or the Legalise Cannabis goons, they are going to be exposed.

Opinion and column writers have a lot more leeway, and can ramble on about fucking anything, and show their real colours, but they're usually not part the the general news team. The newsroom is just full of regular people, with their own fucked-up ideologies and political views.

In the end, journos can only tell they are doing their job correctly because everybody, on all sides of the political spectrum, start moaning about it. A single article can get the same extreme reaction from both the left and the right, with both sides left frothing at the mouth, and that's when they know they're on the right track.

Bias is almost always in the eye of the beholder. News people that say mean things about your political party are always totally biased, and probably in the pay of the opposition. News people that say nice things about your political party are nobly exposing the truth. It can't possibly be any more nuanced than that.

But the world is significantly more complex than any political ideology ever fully covers, and an individual human being – and their political views - is more complex still. Looking for some easy explanation for why the media are picking on your guy is a fool's errand.

- Katherine Grant

19. Nobody knows where this is going

There is no shortage of thinkpieces, essays and entire books on the future of journalism, offering up suggestions on how to save the business. There are regular seminars and talks in the big cities on the future of the industry, that tell us a whole bunch of things we already knew, and always seem to end with people asking the Spinoff to save everybody.

There will be none of that here at Media Scrum, because we're all about the situation here and now in the year 2017. Rest assured, any self-styled media expert who confidently predicts what is going to happen in the next few years is usually talking a huge amount of complete fucking shit, because nobody really knows where this mad merry-go-round is going, and most of it is being worked out as we go along.

The news media is going through such a huge change, and it's doing it on a 50-year cycle that we're still right in the middle of. It was brewing for decades, and all really kicked in with the rolling news of 24-hour coverage on TV, which was more than 30 years ago now. The media was only just dealing with that shift when the internet fucked things up for fucking everybody all over again.

Today's media is still struggling with some of the decisions made at the dawn of the internet age, and has, in general, spent most of the time since breathlessly chasing trends instead of setting them, and are totally making it up as they go along.

We've come such a long way – just recently, one of the small ways the 15th anniversary of the September 11 attacks was commemorated was to show what the websites that broke the news looked like on the day, and it was startling how primitive they still were at that stage. In the last decade, video has become an integral part of many media organisation's growth plans, and most of them are still trying out how to get people to watch their shit without forcing them to with damnable auto-play functions.

There is so much to work out here, and so many lessons that have been learned (and some lessons that are still being learned, four times over), and so much further to go. We're only in the middle of this shit, and where it all ends up, nobody really knows, no matter how confident they sound about it.

It's that strange mix of unexpected technologies and the fickle will of the general public, and if you can predict which way those two things are really going, we'd also love to have the Lotto numbers for this week's Powerball.

Maybe it's a world of paywalls and targeted subscriptions and micropayments, or maybe it's a world where you get the latest celebrity gossip in liquid form and inject it into your ears. It's going to be a ride seeing where it goes, and will probably be as painful as you expect.

- Ron Troupe

18. Fuck yeah, Waikato Times.

It's another beautiful Waitangi Day today, and while there is plenty to say about the media coverage of New Zealand's big commemoration day, and even more to say about the reaction to that coverage, we're off to the goddamn beach while we can.

But before we go, we'd like to give a special shout out to the Waikato Times, who decided last week that it had eaten enough of the bullshit shoveled its way by the local council, and bit back against snide, unwarranted moans of 'fake news' with an accurate, factual and beautifully bitchy rant from the mighty Wayne Timmo.

One of the main reasons this blog exists in the first place is because the journalists involved have to bite their tongues every fucking day, in order to maintain a modicum of dignity, professionalism and self-respect. Reporters and editors are regularly seeing government organisations, at both local and national level, complain on social media and their own websites that the media is being mean to them, by reporting something that has happened.

Journalists can get by on the smug satisfaction that they're right - if you don't see a hasty correction after these sorts of complaints, you can guarantee those complaints are as worthless as a soap bubble in a hurricane - and almost always don't bother engaging with the fucks who have denigrated their professionalism, because that leads down a rabbit hole of shite.

But every now and then, a particularly egregious example will come alone, and someone like Timmo won't let it stand, and even though they can let the facts speak for themselves, they can also stand up for truth, facts, and all those annoying little realities.

The general public might look at it as typical media myopia, but for all those journos who have struggled to get decent information out of the local authorities, only to have those officials turn around and shoot the messenger for doing their fuckin' job, it's nice to know you're not alone in the frustration.

Fuck it, we're off to contemplate the complex nature of New Zealand's racial divides, and the institutionalised prejudices that have been slapping down our indigenous people for decades, while jumping into the ocean. It's the day for it, after all.

- Perry White

17. Jerks in your own newsroom

Individual journalists need to have pretty fucking thick skin, no matter what their role is. Their profession is constantly belittled, their individual work will be sneered at, and people out there in the world will tell them every single day that they are doing a shit job. If you can't shrug it off with a 'well, fuck you too, buddy', then you won't last very long in any kind of newsoom.

A lot of journos might have sensitive souls, but they need to armour that shit up with that thick skin, or the rest of the world is going to take a giant dump on that sensitivity. It's easy enough to shrug off all that shit, because most of the sniping and moaning is coming from people outside the media, who, quite simply, have no fucking clue what they are talking about. They don't know what's going on behind the scenes, or what kind of unknown pressures reporters and editors are struggling with, but they've still got a fucking opinion about it.

But it's a lot harder to swallow when it comes from within. When it comes from other reporters, in a public forum, it can get right in under the skin, and twist painfully. They should know the pressures their colleagues are under, and that they are going to make fuck-ups that they regret.

There are things like the mostly harmless KJA on Facebook, where most of the loudest voices are from folks who haven't stepped foot in a newsroom since the time of Alexander The Great, so who cares what they think? The number of actual journalists who work on daily or weekly publications that actually post in that group is noticeably tiny. (Although a recent deplorable discussion about the reporting of a NZ journo's death overseas - less than a day after he died - was well over the fucking line, and the unmitigated cunts who decided to jump in with bullshit accusations of media hypocrisy and retarded conspiracy theories straight away can all fucking burn in hell, as far as Media Scrum is concerned.)

And there are some rare posts on social media from journos slagging off the opposition, which is just nasty. Every decent sized newsroom is always full of conversations trashing their competitors, because we are a bunch of snarky motherfuckers about each other, but there is a big gulf between trash talk in the office, and going online to spread the spite.

But the worst is when somebody in your own company sees something on their website sneers at an inappropriate picture or mistaken headline in a public forum. These shitgobblers should know the difference between private and public statements more than anybody, and could easily let their online editors know about it before pointing it out to the whole world.

There are plenty of worse things a journalist could do - they could be a plagiarist or a bully or an unethical son of a bitch - but ratting on your direct colleagues is pretty fucking low.

And shit, pissing off people in your company by publicly pointing out the flaws of your immediate colleagues, when they might even be in the same fucking newsroom as you, is a really bad idea.  Everybody has got to work together, and taking that kind of shit from people who should know better is an unnecessary part of the job.

Criticism from colleagues can be invaluable, but snark has no currency, and we're all in this same sinking ship together. We don't need crew members drilling more holes in the hull.

- Katherine Grant