Depending on which source you consult, the collective noun for a group of turtles is either a ‘bale’, ‘nest’, ‘turn’ or ‘dole’. But does anyone know the correct term for a collection of stories about a restaurant opening?
Readers of the Staines section of the Get Surrey website would have struggled to let the opening of a branch of Caribbean-themed chain eatery Turtle Bay pass them by this week – with no less than seven consecutive stories on the subject appearing on the site, five of which remained on its homepage as of 2pm yesterday.
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HTFP – hang your collective head in shame. This is the kind of powerful, hard-hitting journalism TM is committed to providing its readers (sorry, content consumers). Putting this essential coverage in “Friday Funnies” is an affront to everything we hold most dear about our hard-won freedoms. Anyway, what’s the jerk swordfish and pineapple rice like at this place? We need to know that, at least.
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Yes, the current appetite for stories about new restaurants opening is on the face of it worrying.
In HTFP this week a colleague noted that journalists seemed to be more interested in burgers than burghers.
My own local obediently tracks the announcement of this or that food chain opening a branch on their patch, follows it up with countdowns to the launch, attendance at the grand opening where a handful of balloons and t-shirted staff can make for a fantastically stunning pic on a smart phone and even reader polls on the fare offered.
I can only put it down to canny PR firms knowing that journalists march on their stomachs, they always have and probably always will, and that a burger and chips or a tasty treat buys a lot of column inches.
Is this right – well, that’s for others to decide. Me I’m still living with a Krispy Kreme donut addiction from when those pernicious pedlars of delicious dough and icing delights came to my town!
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This is really, really depressing. I have nothing else to say.
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On another thread, TM are promising the Welsh Assembly quality journalism. I’d laugh if I wasn’t so depressed.
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Did somebody mention freebie?
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This is the TM group that’s just recreated a tier of management by appointing a new managing director in Gloucestershire to add to the existing regional MD. Just what hard-pressed journalists, short-staffed subs and a skeleton ‘features’ team need when they’re working 11-12 hour days, day in day out as a norm, without recompense, churning out whatever they can to fill the voracious demands of web and still trying to piece together printed papers, too. Thank heavens for another tier of management, I hear them cry.
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