Sunday 5 October 2008

Now that's what I call news, volume 1

When is a newspaper not a newspaper? When it's the Cityscape show daily. The event doesn't start until tomorrow (it runs until October 9th), yet each day's edition is already done and dusted. The cut and thrust of journalism at the "world's largest real estate event"...

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

finally...something that hasnt been left till the last minute!

Anonymous said...

isnt news supposed to be last minute?

Anonymous said...

yes, if you remove the sarcasm

Anonymous said...

A show daily not actually prepared overnight to bring you all the latest news from an exhibition? Oh no!

Cityscape, like all exhibitions is just a series of timed press releases and big announcements so unless there's a murder in the main hall the news is all preordained.

What do you think - someone's going to run it at midnight yelling "Stop the presses, Nakheel is doing a super tall building!"?

Anonymous said...

Get a grip - it's just a real estate supplement. All these expos do them.

I mean presumably every press release / announcement that occurs at these events is pre-prepared well in advance and can be included on the relevant day.

What do you think they are going to miss out on by not being 'live'? A story on a par with the assasination of JFK?

It's just a flim-flam handout for a flim-flam event. Relax!

i*maginate said...

Sorry - didn't know an exhibition newsletter can be classified as journalism? LOL!

Anonymous said...

Isn't the point of the post that every edition has been finished the week before the event, including the show-closing edition?

That means everything reported about the show itself - visitor numbers, deals made, countries represented, feedback - is fictional. The same information will also be uncritically reported in the press.

I know we're used to invented statistics, but people could at least put the effort into pretending there's some basis in reality/ realty.