What the Daily Mail can teach us about bad writing

When it comes to knowing just how left-wing politics have eroded the moral fibre of a nation, or when you really need to know which group of foreigners are out to ruin your life, you really can’t beat the Daily Mail. But this showcase of demented drivelling has something to teach writers – just how to write a truly terrible piece.

Take a look at this piece of sputum on a bunch of villagers running Google’s streetview car out of town.

1: Ludicrous Titles

A good headline is a key weapon in any writer’s arsenal. A good title should reel in the reader. By asking a question or setting up an intriguing scenario, you’ll appeal to a reader’s natural curiosity. A well thought out title will act as a springboard for your article. A bad title can alienate readers before they even know what your argument is. However, a ludicrous, hyperbole-riddled overstatement of a title will make you appear desperate. Describing a handful of small-minded rural types shouting at a car as an “English Revolt” seeing off a crack brigade of “Google Spies” is about as ludicrous as you can get.

2: Underwhelming Evidence

The first trick any persuasive writer knows is the “rule of three”. Using three pieces of compelling evidence lends weight to your argument. Using two weak examples makes your pitch look woefully underpowered. Weak examples like claiming a freedom fighter is big news in “Norway and Turkey”. Really? Both?

3: Wild Accusations Make You Look Foolish

When you’re writing for an audience who wear their predjudices on their sleeves, it can be incredibly tempting to whip them up into a fervour to generate a response. However, this runs the risk of alienating any new readers. For example, when the majority of your informed casual readership are excited about 3d maps, labelling it an “encyclopedia for the burglaring fraternity” makes you look like a reactionary luddite.

4: Monitor Your Comments

Not strictly a writing tip, but when you write a piece designed to generate debate and comment, keep an eye on your readership. If you’re cultivating a reputation as an intelligent and articulate blogger, the last thing you need is ill-thought out rants colouring people’s views of your content. However, if you’re a purveyor of emergency toilet paper, feel free to let Angry of Mansfield claim that a photo album is “a national security risk.”

Jade

Undoubtedly there’ll be more keystrokes spent discussing the rise and fall of Ms. Goody over the next few months than have been spent discussing the collapse of the world banking system, but there is a common thread linking the two.

Media Hypocrisy.

Admittedly, media hypocrisy is on the same tautological level as ‘wet water‘, but the about turns taken by some media outlets have been tremendous.

Take good ol’ Auntie Beeb for example. The broadcaster has spent most of the 21st Century showing us how to make use of cheap credit to buy a battered house, do some creative botching with MDF for a couple of quid, and then sell it on to some poor unassuming punter for a hugely inflated price. Now the credit crunch has kicked in to full flow and we’re all living in skips, the Beeb has stopped showing “Artificial Inflation” and started showing screeching news bulletins where economy experts berate us all for taking out ridiculous loans in order to buy run-down houses after seeing some TV brainfart. 

But even this “Get cheap credit – no – wait – why have you taken out a loan you moron!” backflip is put to shame by the way that the rags have decided  ”RACIST BULLY JADE” (Daily Mirror 1/04/2007), the national disgrace is now BRAVE JADE (Daily Mirror 14/02/2009), the national heroine. In the bleak face of the facts, she’s neither. She’s an ill-educated boor who seized her fifteen minutes of fame and was then struck down by an awful illness. The black and white facts of Jade Goody’s story are more than enough to let anyone with a passing interest decide what they think of her, but the press insist on keeping her centre stage. Whether as a figure of hate or a figure of pity, Jade Goody shifts papers. The sad thing is that she doesn’t shift them because of talent – she shifts them for the same reason idiots spent money they never had on MDF and subsiding houses. 

Jade Goody’s the credit crunch in reverse – she’s been thrust into our homes and taken from irrelevancy, to the villain, to a martyr. The legacy of her sad tale is that now the gutter press won’t just make you live in the glare of a camera – they’ll make you die there too. Be you a z-list celebrity or a system of world economics, they’ll gild your pedestal and then tear it down.

Words

2009

Duckspeak Doublegood.

Oddspeak Doubleplusungood.

Or, to put it in slightly less Orwellian terms:

It’s 2009. The wonderful bastardised mishmash that is the English Language is shrinking. Not quite in premeditated and calculated way of Orwell’s Newspeak, but in the same way that an unused appendage will atrophy and wither. 

Gone are the long, flowing and articulate sentences of the past, awash with character and charm. Replaced with the clipped and calculated Duckspeak of a mass media designed to whip the masses into a frenzy.

What opportunity for a coherent response is there when headlines screech and scream that the enemies are at your gates, amongst your children?

Desperate times call for desperate measures. The fast-paced media climate means that it isn’t enough for a news outlet to inform you. They require you to take them into your life. Hate when we say hate. Love when we say love. Grieve when we say grieve. “Here they are” scream the papers – “those who you must emulate and adore, those who you must shun and loathe. And we? We are the truth, the arbiters of the line between the one and the other.” Information and investigation has been replaced by brand awareness and mob culture.

But what of the people? A society’s vocabulary isn’t the sole charge of those who print the words. The media and the masses are intertwined – one must necessarily reflect the other. And the people have been bamboozled and browbeaten. Quantity and speed far outweighs quality and thoughtfulness. Why identify with an amusing anecdote when a hastily typed “lol” will do? Terrorist attack? “omg“. Dead Princess? “rip“. Three keystrokes and your sentiments on any subject can be thrown into the bear pit of the “interactive” media.

It’s not a matter of being asked to jump and replying “how high”.

JUMP! (Or else terrorist immigrants will eat your children)

“k“