Discounted goods

Rita Skeeter and the decline of trust in journalism

Featured in

  • Published 20190507
  • ISBN: 9781925773620
  • Extent: 264pp
  • Paperback (234 x 153mm), eBook

WALK THROUGH THE doors of a suburban op shop and you’ll find the residue of household (de)composition that was once catalogued in rhyming newspaper-speak as hatches, matches and despatches. Along half-a-dozen shelves, tucked behind the racks of second-hand clothes and used cutlery, you’ll even find relics of that twentieth-century mass distribution platform we call ‘books’. There’s something a bit meta about them, just like journalism: the first of capitalism’s disruptors, now themselves disrupted. Almost ­insultingly, like journalists, they’re obliged to tell their own tale.

So, here in my local Vinnies, I’ve come to search – not quite at random – for a handful of books to use as the donkey to carry us through the unwinding of ‘that great black art’, as Rudyard Kipling called the daily press.

Already a subscriber? Sign in here

If you are an educator or student wishing to access content for study purposes please contact us at griffithreview@griffith.edu.au

Share article

More from author

When the park comes alive

EssayTHERE’S A SPECIAL moment in mid-February when the grass at our local park is so smooth, tended so carefully, that it’s almost like a...

More from this edition

Lessons from the Valley

Memoir THERE’S SOMETHING ENDURINGLY disconcerting about flying into Silicon Valley from Australia, where you arrive before you leave. If Silicon Valley can do time travel...

Me, we and them

GR OnlineTHE INTERNET IS driving a digital revolution in which audiences want an emotional connection, a sense of purpose and to be part of a...

Gum packet poem

PoetryMy arms flecked with brown                  stained with sun I masticate              ...

Stay up to date with the latest, news, articles and special offers from Griffith Review.