Saturday, April 25, 2009

Gaah! (Plus: Backhanded Compliment of the Day)

There's been so much bad writing this week about Korea and expats (mostly thanks to the Korea times) that I haven't had anything to write here, because if I touch on any of the articles that have been written, I'll go into a blithering rant. The worst two of the lot were published yesterday, one of which was an obvious prank, and one of which was by a columnist I've mentioned before, and who now deserves to be tuned out and ignored entirely.

I'm formulating a response that might involve trying to get all my readers to flood The Korea Times with either protest letters, or prank letters...but I haven't decided which yet.

I once wrote that The Korea Herald is crap...but they got nothin' on the times.

Instead, to feel better, read the next post, and come out and have tea with me.

3 comments:

Jason said...

I say we do a month long email blitz to the KT. Each day we offer tips on critical thinking skills, editing methodology, journalism 101 materials, and ETHICS!

I'm in--who else wants to do it?

Roboseyo said...

I'm seriously torn between whether mockery or stern tongue-lashings will have a stronger effect. It's a tough call.

If anybody knows of a document online that gives a brief point-by-point rundown of basic journalistic ethical guidelines (for example: don't publish race-baiting articles or letters to the editor), I'd be ready to cut, paste, and explain to the KT their sins. If I have to write the whole thing out myself I might fritz out in frustration.

Brian said...

I think stern emails would be more effective. Yeah, it's fun to pull pranks, but I'm honestly tired of checking the opinion page each day to see what garbage has washed up (especially when pieces I write don't get in, but race-baiting from Koreans does).

Who knows how effective that will be. Remember last year---when my readership was a lot smaller, I admit---I asked people to email the KT to request comments be removed from the bottom of articles? Nothing came of that. But, yeah, I think next week we'll need to take the paper to task.