The column that has fun with the smaller mistakes and missteps of Australia’s mainstream mediocre; those sweet little fishes that individually don’t amount to a full meal but collectively can cause a tummy upset the overall state of the once great and noble craft of journalism in this country.

Is the music scene this bad off?

Mediocre Bytes and its senior sibling Media Glass House used to have a lot of fun with the dangling participles that tyros, especially in the electronic mediocre, seem hellbent on using in just about every report they put to air.

You know the type. “Fleeing from the liquor store ramraid on foot, police quickly …..” and “Lying on the footpath and bleeding profusely, paramedics worked ….”. They’re so common – and not just among the tyros, come to think of it – that our columns stopped covering them.

But let’s have a look at another dangler of sorts. Here’s Scout Wallen on Brisbane’s ABC 7pm news on Sunday: “Tucked away in a storage unit on the city’s southside, Brisbane’s music scene is experiencing a new hay day…”

The Bug talked to seasoned live music insiders and we’ve been assured that while gig opportunities for up-and-coming bands in and around Brisbane are pretty bad at the moment, the city’s music scene is not tucked away in a storage shed on the city’s southside. We’d also take exception with “hay day” as the music scene remains way, way down on what it used to be.

The introduction to Scout’s piece explained how many emerging bands now have to build their brand on social media platforms and our industry insiders concurred, saying these bands use platforms such as Instagram to promote themselves and make a quid by flogging their product that way.

Which was exactly what Scout was trying to convey. Up and coming band Platonic Sex, is one of five bands sharing this large storage space to practice and video and promote songs for sale.

We wish Scout a long and professional stint as a journalist but – and we’re assuming she’s getting fuck-all training from older hands if Aunty is like another modern newsroom – we really do urge her to always take a critical review of each and every one of her assignments. That way, she will develop an innate sense of what makes sense and warning bells will then automatically sound when the notes scribbled down for the newsroom production booth or for a to-camera piece aren’t right.

With that insight and experience, something like this will flow easily in the future.

“In a large storage unit on the city’s southside, an emerging band is showing what needs to be done to hopefully make it in a vastly changed Brisbane music scene…”

Or something like that. There are other options that don’t tuck away the city’s music scene in a storage unit regardless of its size.

***

Of course, it’s not just tyros who make mistakes. ABC News Breakfast’s Melbourne reporter Stephanie Ferrier on Monday morning reported on a looming meeting when the Victorian Liberal Party would take a vote on whether to expel MP Moira Deeming “from the Parliament”.

Ferrier, of course, meant to say “from the party”. Mediocre Bytes is not sure of relevant Victorian laws but in some other places it’s a crime to try to force a pollie from their elected duties, be they honorable or in Deeming’s case obnoxiously revolting.