KEY POINTS:
This is the sort of a column where one has to make a disclaimer at the beginning: This is no bitter, old-man rant; nor is it a defence of all things journalistic.
God knows, we in the trade get it wrong often enough and, sneaking through the broad
umbrella of journalism have come some woeful drips - splashing coldly on the heads of unsuspecting readers.
I refer to bitter-sweet, funny-tragic things like that famous heading in Britain's Sunday Sport (B-52 Bomber Found On Moon) and a personal favourite from the News Of The World: Wife Found In Bed With Chinese Hypnotist From the Co-op Bacon Factory.
The latter is unusual, not only because of the subject (how many hypnotists does a bacon co-op need?) but because there is pretty much no reason to read the story after a headline like that.
Even in the noble art of sportswriting, we have our fair share of clangers. As a genus, we sometimes tend to the hysterical over-reaction. All Blacks lose: Sack the coach, scream the rugby writers and the columnists (including me, sometimes; how's it going Graham?). All Blacks win: What's wrong with the Springboks? Woe betide international rugby. Gloom, doom and despondency
You get the picture. To a certain extent - and to a much greater extent in the UK and Australia - such things are part of that basic human need: the need to sell.
Yes, folks, believe it or not, the media is a commercial beast driven, like every other business venture, by the need to make a profit.
Which makes it interesting is that a Tauranga academic by the name of Dr Paul Kayes, writing in the New Zealand Herald last week, chose to lash out at the standard of sportswriting in this country ('endless garbage', apparently).
He criticised the failings of white, male and over-40 hacks who ignore the charms of waterpolo, waka ama, surf lifesaving, mountain biking, kite surfing, fishing, soccer and netball.
He then sounded off about rugby not being our number one sport any more and how minority sports wouldn't be minority if only Asian and college sportswriters could be given their head in our newspapers.
Now, ahem, as a white, male and over-40 person, I should take umbrage at this. But Dr Kayes has a bit of a point. As a sports editor, hand on heart, I know there is always more we could do for sports like mountain biking and other 'minority' sports although I think Dr Kayes is talking through his academic hat when he mentions soccer, netball and surf lifesaving.
You see, there's just one thing that would happen if we filled the sports pages with waka ama and kite surfing. No one would read it. The paper wouldn't sell. No sales, no paper. No paper, sod-all space to run waka ama stories whether they are written by middle-aged sports reporters or by the Dalai Lama or Jimmy Olsen from the Daily Planet.
So, while the heart often wants to do one thing, the realities of the market and our readership demand another. It is also a popular concept that newspapers and media in general have some kind of community responsibilities. And, of course, we do. But the first priority of any newspaper is to turn a profit and I know of no broad-based publication which has successfully done so by catering mainly to the community needs of minorities.
British broadcaster Derek Jameson once said: "Can you imagine lying in bed on a Sunday morning with the love of your life, a cup of tea and a bacon sandwich, and all you had to read was the Socialist Worker?"
Well, quite. If Dr Kayes will forgive me, that's the trouble with academics. They tend to inhabit a rather different world from the rest of us where they polish up and gaze adoringly at their shiny white principles whilst ignoring dull, grey realities.
US literary critic Stanley Fish published an essay called "The Unbearable Ugliness of Volvos," a look at some of the more puzzling elements of a life in academia.
While it was highly US-centric, Fish mocked the fashion among academics and other self-absorbed members of the upper middle class for boxy, stiff-driving Scandinavian wagons. He suggested the Volvos represented the academics' ability to project that they didn't care about material things while, at the same time, making it clear they paid as much as they would have for a Mercedes.
According to Fish, academics will do anything to distinguish themselves from "the realities of the marketplace."
Which is kind of what I am accusing Dr Kayes of doing - although, I have to confess, I have no idea what car Dr Kayes drives but I drive a Volvo... so I am not quite sure what that says about me.
However, in the pages of this publication this week is a piece on another branch of sport probably under-represented in the nation's sports pages - women and marathoners. Nina Rillstone is a charming woman who is right up there with the world's best - and who has had precious little ever written about her.
So we do try, although it must be said that it is always good to have critics like Dr Kayes snapping at our heels to remind us of our other obligations.
It's just that calling people's work 'endless garbage' may not be quite the best way to get results.
