81. We're all in this shithole together

The use of profanity in news publications and broadcasts has, in general, been getting more liberal for a while now. There are few words that are really not allowed in modern news, just the big swear words, and the vast majority of words that are unacceptable tend to be racist, sexist or homophobic language.

For a long time, subs could rely on a basic rule of thumb - if the Prime Minister or the Pope said it, it was fit for publication. But like everything else in this crazy, upside-down world of ours, that's been thrown right out the fucking window by the current President of the United States.

Donald Trump's reported use of the term 'shit-holes' to describe countries that were full of brown people sparked a lot of earnest discussion in newsrooms across the world, and New Zealand's media was no exception. Most of them went straight ahead and used the phrase without any censoring, while some came up with some impressively complicated ways of reporting on it, without ever actually using the word.

There is some irony in the news media losing their shit over the use of a swear word, because newsrooms are famously full of profanity. People whose job it is to produce straight-faced reports are only too happy to let fly with all sorts of vulgar language in the safety of a busy team of reporters, editors and producers. The more restrained they are on air or in print, the more they enjoy cutting loose when thousands of people aren't listening to them.

In fact, one of the few great perks of working in a newsroom full of broadcast journalists is getting to hear the most sensible voices in NZ media sound off with a healthy dose of words that would get them in deep shit if they ever went out over the air. John Campbell, for instance, is an absolutely legendary swearer, punching out profanity with as much passion as he puts into his social commentary, and there is all sorts of delight in hearing all the newsreaders slip in the odd unacceptable word when they're rehearsing for the next bulletin.

Of course, the use of such language by journos has inevitably led to claims of hypocrisy, because there have been so many news stories about Mr Trump's presidential language, when it's the kind of vocabulary that the media are only too happy to use in their daily lives.

But this misses the point of almost all of the coverage of Trump's shit-hole remark. The language doesn't matter, it just reinforces the odious opinion behind it, and that's the real story. It's not what he says, it what he means.

Profanity is never the actual point, it's a just a linguistic technique that puts the emphasis on something, that highlights a point, or shows how passionate about a particular subject the speaker is. It underscores their basic idea, it's not the actual idea itself.

In the case of Trump, it doesn't fucking matter what exact words he uses, the real story is that he was revealing his own racist tendencies, by writing off parts of the world as pure shitholes. His true feelings were exposed.

By using the shithole term, President Donald Trump wasn't just telling the world that he's a racist dick, he was telling us that he is a fucking racist dick.

Language is an ever-changing creature, and the way we decide what words are acceptable and which aren't inevitably change over the years. We're still a long way from seeing the words like fuck or cunt in headlines, but with the current shit-gibbon in the White House, who the hell know how long that is going to last.

- Katherine Grant

80. If you can't sell this...

Anybody working in the editorial department of a print publication in the past few years will have heard the same speech. They have probably heard it a few times.

They will be told that they have done some great work, and have reached and breached all their KPIs and goals, and have done a terrific job under stressful circumstances. They will always then be told that unfortunately, the sales and advertising teams have come nowhere near their targets, so editorial resources are going to be slashed again and the news team will need to do that same great job under the new conditions. They will need to do more with less.

There is probably a scientific equation that shows the impossibility of 'doing more with less', but you only have to look at the general deterioration in the quality of the product to see it for yourself.

Advertising has been coming up short for a long time now and the failure of a publication to rack up enough ads has been blamed on a lot of things in those years. For a long time the global financial collapse was used as a catch-all excuse for falling revenues, and the continued rise of the internet in the 21st century - and the continued expectation that all content should be free - hasn't helped matters, especially with the hoovering up of valuable bucks by tech giants like Google and Facebook.

It all contributes to that fall in advertising, and the accompanying spiral of a decline in overall quality and actual readership.

Still, as bad as things have been, there was always the hope that content that was strong enough would always attract the money; that if the end product was noticeably gaining an audience on the strength of its own writing, and did things like keeping a local focus, it would inevitably find advertising support.

But that hope took a kick in the fuckin' teeth this month with the revelation Paperboy would no longer be published.

An unashamedly Auckland publication, Paperboy had some strong writing and genuinely useful guides to local restaurants and attractions. It was properly multi-cultural in a way mainstream magazines rarely are, and had some surprisingly meaty articles. None of which helped it last more than a year.

There might be several reasons why Paperboy went bust - maybe Simon Wilson is right and it just needed to be a bit snarkier and get some gritty reviews in there - but the central reason given by the publisher still rings true: it just couldn't get the advertising to cover its costs.

Which is pretty fucking alarming, because Paperboy had huge readership and name recognition among some primo demographics - young people with loads of disposable income in the country's biggest city all read it, it was in all the inner city cafes and available wherever there was public transport. They printed 100k every time, and the display cases on the street were often running dry of new copies within a day or so, so they were certainly getting picked up and read.

And the advertising crew at Bauer still couldn't convince anybody to throw some advertising dough their way. And if it couldn't, what will?

The concerns about the revenue shortfall in news media companies has been building for years now, but it really feels like it's all about to come to a head. With the failure of the StuffMe merger, publishers shitting their pants over Facebook's latest moves and continued concerns at almost every publication in the country, the folding of Paperboy is a heavy suggestion that 2018 is going to be the year the shit really hits the fan, and it's going to get fucking everywhere.

All we can do is close our mouths and hold our breaths until it settles. Happy new year!

- Steve Lombard