Journo jostler Peter Costello (pictured below, far right) no longer heads Nine Entertainment Co. but he surely would have been proud of the efforts put in by The Sydney Morning Herald subbing and online production staff on Thursday night!

Media Glass House refers to the sterling work of those staff members who wrote the heading for James Massola’s think piece in the hardcopy Friday book (above left) and the online plug for the piece (above, right).

Before we continue, youse BUGgers out there are invited to read the only paragraph in Massola’s piece that mentions the words “Airbus Albo”.

Massola was spot-on, or course. The failed “Airbus Albo” line, given repeated full-throttle engine thrust by the Australian mainstream mediocre for a long, long, time was one of countless LNP tactics, slogans and policies over the last term of parliament that gave Labor 94 seats at the last election.

It really does make you wonder whether those SMH workers are paid by the aforementioned Nine Entertainment group or directly from the LNP. And whether Massola had the cojones to put a rocket up whoever spoiled his piece by blatantly pushing it as LNP propaganda. Particularly the sub who compounded the Airbus Albo bullshit with the very misleading and biased “stuck on runway” kicker! There’s not a single word or phrase in Massola’s opinion piece that suggests Albanese’s current OS trips or the international messages he’s been delivering have failed to lift off. Not one fucking single word.

So why does the supposedly slightly better, more balanced, more independent section of the metropolitan media go out its way to push this AirBus Albo, anti-Labor rubbish?

Hint: Because it never really was any of those things? Or if it once was, those days have long gone?

***

Okay! While we’re getting stuck into the SMH production people, let’s go back a night to Wednesday!

The washed-up, bitter, old hacks who compile this column realised a long, long time ago that their campaign for sub-editors at the Herald to show just a hint of professionalism and get the basics right is never going to end. Not by The Bug, anyway.

They refer, of course, to the never-ending inability for those subs to ask a very simple question when they plop their lazy arses down for a shift – how are we numbering tomorrow’s edition? Our stock-standard cartoon we use for this never-ending campaign sums this up.

Over many months now, the main culprits have been those subbing on a Wednesday night on the Thursday’s edition whenever it has a four-page advertising wraparound and the fake front cover inside is folioed as page 3.

If The Bug had a dollar for every time that stories that flow inside from that page 3 have been designated by those hopeless subs as coming from the Front Page or the Cover Page … well, we would have that many dollars!

We have lost count of the times we’ve tried to educate those subs to the grim reality that not since the printing press was invented in 346BC or thereabouts (subs, please double check this) no printed newspaper has ever called its page three its front or cover page! Well, not until Hardly Normal came along.

And, every now and then, those Wednesday night subs really go the full stupid and call page three page one!

Just like Wednesday night!

Ouch! And what a slap-in-the-face for us as pretend journalism 101 educators!

Want to be alerted immediately a new blog hits Australia’s longest running and most offensive satire site? Simply click on the Follow sign or the link below to be emailed new yarns the moment they are uploaded! The very second we go far too far – and trust us we will – you can then quickly unfollow via the three dots!

Follow The Bug Online on WordPress.com