Oborne quits Telegraph (with damning open letter)

**Damien** · 17-02-2015, 18:03

http://order-order.com/2015/02/17/br...its-telegraph/

Citing pressure to ignore the HSBC story as well as the general clickbait nature that now rules at the newspaper.

This was been building for a while. They're been firing legions of staff from the paper and anyone who reads the site can testify to how the news pieces are becoming shorter and shorter and are instead being replaced by 'top 10' lists or Mail-eqsue 'quirky' stories from around the world that have probably been lifted from Reddit. Analysis pieces are almost non-existent for world events and the political analysis is usually one of their columnists writing an inflammatory article designed to engage the Internet. Osborne and Nelson were two of the few who write anything fair and interesting, they fired most of the rest. Even their sport section has turned to utter nonsense where they'll publish several stories of about 2 to 3 paragraphs for major club that say nothing. You can even see paragraphs copied and pasted from the other stories, they've just changed the focus of the piece.

Not just them either. A lot of papers are like that. The Guardian is increasingly shrill columnists like Owen Jones caught in a perpetual cycle of outrage over everything single thing from relatively worthy causes such as benefit changes to bizarre rants because someone didn't use the correct pronoun for someone else in a pub. Although I think they're forgiven somewhat considering they're publishing relatively large journalistic scoops often often (such as the NSA stuff) and their sports and science coverage is still ok.

The Independent is just buzz feed now.

heero_yuy · 17-02-2015, 18:15

And there I was thinking George Osborne. I wonder why?

Print press seem to be in a race to the bottom hotly pursued by the TV media including the BBC.

**Damien** · 17-02-2015, 18:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by heero_yuy

Print press seem to be in a race to the bottom hotly pursued by the TV media including the BBC.

The Times is still good. As are the weekly papers.

Osem · 17-02-2015, 18:35

I dare say some very influential people are delighted at the prospect that serious, investigative newspapers are being reduced to comics.

papa smurf · 17-02-2015, 18:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by Damien

The Times is still good. As are the weekly papers.

the good news is the sun is in the same place it was 20 years ago [on a nail behind the toilet door ]

**Maggy** · 17-02-2015, 18:49

I only read Private Eye who have been cataloging the comings and goings at the Telegraph for the last couple of years..After this I look forward to their next reporting of affairs at the Telegraph in their next issue..indeed I look forward to all their dissections of the news industry as a whole.

**Damien** · 17-02-2015, 19:29

Yeah Private Eye has been covering the amount of people that have left the paper. The final straw for me is that they never remember to keep me signed in and the way they have their login means it doesn't always autocomplete.

Osem · 17-02-2015, 19:36

Not connected I'm sure but I've noticed lots of typos on the BBC News website recently. Are interns running the show?...

Ignitionnet · 17-02-2015, 20:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Damien

The Times is still good.

Which is why we subscribe. Quality journalism is in very short supply.

**Chris** · 17-02-2015, 20:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Damien

Yeah Private Eye has been covering the amount of people that have left the paper. The final straw for me is that they never remember to keep me signed in and the way they have their login means it doesn't always autocomplete.

I never bother to log in any more. It's too painful. Just delete the cookies every time it says I've reached my limit. Which is a farce, as I am paying for it.

At least, I'm paying for it until next time I log on to my bank, at which point I'm going to cancel the DD.

You are absolutely right, they have sacked almost anyone who was capable of writing an interesting or engaging piece of commentary and filled their pages with click bait "Top 25 ways to [insert mundane grot from interwebs here] - in pictures".

Even the morning briefing email is now penned by some anonymous suit who seems incapable of proof reading or spell checking his work.

And half the time they don't even allow comments any more.

Ramrod · 17-02-2015, 21:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by Osem

Not connected I'm sure but I've noticed lots of typos on the BBC News website recently. Are interns running the show?...

The Telegraph has been terrible for spelling mistakes & poor grammar for about the last year. Really gone downhill.

rhyds · 18-02-2015, 06:51

Not surprising really. Copy needs to be online near instantly, so no cross-checking of spelling, and clickbait articles (a la the Daily Mail) are too damned effective at bringing in traffic.

I derided it at the time, but The Times' paywall seems, from what I'm told (I'm not a sub), to be the best way of financing a quality online operation.

**Damien** · 18-02-2015, 07:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by rhyds

I derided it at the time, but The Times' paywall seems, from what I'm told (I'm not a sub), to be the best way of financing a quality online operation.

The Times is good and a paywall is a good idea. In fact the papers that have succumbed to the clickbait business model all use a paywall instead. The Times, The FT, The Economist, New York Times etc. All are still good papers albeit not everyone can afford subscriptions to them and few will subscribe to all of them. The FT for example is an expensive paywall.

---------- Post added at 08:48 ---------- Previous post was at 08:47 ----------

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chris

I never bother to log in any more. It's too painful. Just delete the cookies every time it says I've reached my limit. Which is a farce, as I am paying for it.

At least, I'm paying for it until next time I log on to my bank, at which point I'm going to cancel the DD.

You are absolutely right, they have sacked almost anyone who was capable of writing an interesting or engaging piece of commentary and filled their pages with click bait "Top 25 ways to [insert mundane grot from interwebs here] - in pictures".

Even the morning briefing email is now penned by some anonymous suit who seems incapable of proof reading or spell checking his work.

And half the time they don't even allow comments any more.

A lot of the columnists they've let go still write at the spectator so you have that. I think the Weekly publications are swarming into the gap left by the demise of the daily printed press.

---------- Post added at 08:54 ---------- Previous post was at 08:48 ----------

Also you do get some really good in-depth articles online it's just spread out across many different sites. There is a site called Longform (http://longform.org/) which curates them. It's not great if you want analysis of current events but it does have some excellent non-fiction writing on there.

heero_yuy · 18-02-2015, 08:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by papa smurf

the good news is the sun is in the same place it was 20 years ago [on a nail behind the toilet door ]

At least it's being useful.

techguyone · 18-02-2015, 08:15

Interesting. I wonder if this is the evolution of language we're seeing. The Mail too has truly dreadful spelling, grammar proofing, but judging from the other comments, they're not alone, maybe it's cost cutting, or people don't care, I've seen it creep in (mainly on-line stuff) for a while now.

Regarding most on-line news publications, they've been turning into glorified gossip mags now, with the odd smattering of biassed news here and there.

Perhaps I'll give the Times a go, I'm getting sick of reading 'take a break' with headline news like ' Is this Britain's most selfish car parker'