The Independent C/D

Really don't understand who this is supposed to be aimed at. The covers of the Independent could be eye rollingly bad, but the ones on i seem totally bizarre. Someone writing a book about the comparethemarket.com Meerkat and MacDonalds banning happy meals in San Francisco, hardly compare with the political upheavals in the US.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/utter-PR-fiction-but-people-love-this-shit-so-fuck-it-lets-just-print-it-2269573.html

lol

ugh everyone is retweeting this today -- surely we've been through the whole http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/doesnt-matter-what-goes-here-2269573.html thing already at least twice

yeah sorry forget about that.

lol indie

lol "fuck"

Darius Guppy is entertaining.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/darius-guppy-growth--it-aint-happening-2295967.html

Bit of background for people who may not have heard of Mr Guppy.
Darius Guppy: Here in Iran, we look with horror at the country that Britain has become

Best bit - Look at Britain's urban hell and you will see young girls and boys armed with knives, swearing, half naked, vomiting the previous night's attempt to stifle their pain and their emptiness. Turn on the radio and listen to laddettes boasting about what they did with their boyfriends in bed the day before, but tune in to Iran's airwaves and you will hear poetry and beautiful music.

wow wtf did they print that on paper? no way im reading it, though when he brought up usury i wondered, it being the indie, where he might take it.

he's a mate of boris johnson iirc

I cannot imagine they did - it's the ultimate tl/dr. I managed to get all the way through but it never reached the splenetic highs of his previous work.

He phoned up Boris to try and get the address of a journalist he wanted to "have a word with" back when he was directing his ire at tabloids rather than international capitalism.

but tune in to Iran's airwaves and you will hear poetry and beautiful music.

Plus live coverage of this afternoon's stonings at Qom on Iran Sports Xtra

OMFG that Guppy article is like reading Ezra Pound on economics back in the 1930s.

Darius chatting with Boris...

http://www.channel4.com//services/videoplayer/popup.jsp?name=Dispatches_BorisAudio

"...he will not be put into intensive care..."

OMFG that Guppy article is like reading Ezra Pound on economics back in the 1930s.

― aka best bum of the o_O's (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, June 14, 2011 2:10 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

i've never been bothered to get into it and barely know what it is, but it's sort of fascinating how little 'social credit' survived as a thing

it's got a small element of accurate analysis of the way banking system works, a big slice of scrawled-on-the-back-of-a-mental-hospital-napkin economic theory, and a dash of anti-Semitism to go

the independent on sunday is possibly even worse than the observer

http://fleetstreetblues.blogspot.com/2011/06/independent-columnist-johann-hari.html

http://johannhari.com//2011/06/27/interview-etiquette

https://twitter.com/#!/search?q=%23interviewsbyhari

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwlQ2B9trr0

hari is dogshit

xp lol

Johan Hari in "total idiot" shocka

What he did was wrong and not common practice but I get the feeling that a lot of the outrage is more to do with finally having a legitimate lightning rod for prior annoyance with Hari than the seriousness of the offence.

I've distrusted Hari, even when I want to agree with him, for years due to a suspicion of overdramatisation and I've been proved right. Exactly the sort of writer who gives left-leaning columnists a bad name.

Well, at least he's only putting words in someone else's mouth. http://devukha.blogspot.com/2003/03/ooooh-topical-or-what-just-as-i-was.html

Any bets on who is going to be eviscerated by a Twitter lynchmob tomorrow?

graham linehan?

ok probably not, but ive learnt the hard way that you've got to embrace hope

Any bets on who is going to be eviscerated by a Twitter lynchmob tomorrow?

Twynched?

His attitude of "Gideon Levy never objected, and guys it's me, Johan, everything I do is amazing!" isn't particularly helpful to his cause. Of course I'm paraphrasing remarks he made in another context, or wrote, or something.

Twynched?

twatted

dl otm

Although Toby Young having a pop at him over ethics on the Telegraph site it is a bit rich. There have been plenty of plagiarism accusations against him, which involve him taking other people's words as his own rather than putting them in the mouths of the people who said them, albeit at different times.

kinda feel sorry for him, almost, having to write for the independent being terribly overpromoted at a young age. i would have killed to have been overpromoted, obvi, but it can't be good for you really.

See: http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2008/10/did_toby_young_plagiarize_pass.htmlAnd: http://assistantbrighton.blogspot.com/2007/02/toby-young-and-plaigiarism.html

Sorry, I'll try that again.
See: http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2008/10/did_toby_young_plagiarize_pass.html

And also: http://assistantbrighton.blogspot.com/2007/02/toby-young-and-plaigiarism.html

being terribly overpromoted at a young age

Surprised to learn he's 32!

apparently lolrie penny (wordplay) is an indie colum nist now?

Non-attribution of quotes is totally unacceptable, and Hari's Twitter mates should be ashamed for supporting him on this. (I used to hang out a bit with Johann when I was younger, and like him very much, if that matters. But he's got no leg to stand on here. It's just obviously wrong.)

it seems such a weird thing to do. i don't know why anyone would do it, let alone think it would be okay.

i sort of understand how it happens. from what i can tell the q&a format is a bit of a swizz. and he's pushed it further. it is wrong though, the making things up.

but taking stuff out of other stuff the person has written and pretending they said it to you: so bizarre.

i mean, i get guilty when i don't let on in a piece that the interview was a phoner and that i can only describe the subject's location because they told me what the room they were sitting in was like.

but taking stuff out of other stuff the person has written and pretending they said it to you: so bizarre.

yeah this is the main thing: he leaned into me, all that

im shit at interviews

I'm trying to imagine a music journalist asking a rock legend for an oft-told anecdote, getting a rushed version, and then printing the vivid, detailed version from the star's memoir. That would be weird. I can't imagine it ever crossing my mind as an option.

"When I talked to DL about his bafflement about Hari's approach, I noticed a sad but steely glint in his pixels..."

why has this story only "broken" now? it was going around twitter a couple of weeks ago. initially i wasn't outraged cuz it was just one interview seven years ago when he was like 12, but knowing there are another two recent ones and that he's defending the practice, it's just stupidly egregious.

that said i think his "the plural of anecdote is data" style of writing is actually far more insidious a form of bad journalism that he's far from alone in. and regardless of the interview plagiarism he is just a pretty annoying writer.

it is so weird...i feel guilty if i add in an "and" or split up sentences to make the piece have a nicer rhythm...

I dunno, I totally understand the impulse for doing it -- interviews are high pressure if you're writing for a big publication and the interviewee doesn't "deliver". Or you fudge it. But it totally seems... not on, like cheating at a pub quiz or something.

I usually compensate for my subjects' rambling in speech by condensing slightly, but if I think it's going to be an issue I discuss it with the subject before we start and get their permission to smooth things over in print. I mean, one of the most annoying things about listening to playbacks is my own umms and ahs ASKING the questions. If my subject had given an answer that was lacklustre in comparison to written eloquence on a particular question, I'd quote from the text (cited as such) and contrast it with the warm slice of DUH provided on the day. THAT is how to handle JH's stated dilemma.

Yes, it's weird because it's effectively harder work to copy a quote and "insert" it an to just cite it directly. Besides, quoting a book seems doubly appropriate if your interviewee actually wrote the thing.

Sorry, should be "THan to just cite it"

Tidying up an interview response is fine: most speech when directly transcribed is messy. But tidying up just means taking out the ers, deleting the false starts (and sometimes not), and helping the subject get from a to b. It doesn't mean taking their words from somewhere else entirely.