Wherever we happen to live, our end-of-year diversions usually include the media interest in New Year resolutions. Instead of that, however, I would prefer to give you my New Year hopes pertaining to things I would like to see disappear in the coming year. Looking ahead then through 2013, here are some things I can do without.
One of the items on my list would be those boring ‘Year in Review’ summaries, a particular favourite of the print media, that are a feature of the year-end hullabaloo every year. These backward looks, as inevitable as hangovers following too much booze, come at us in brief examinations on television and radio, but they are particularly noticeable in the print versions where they can consume several pages, in full colour, plus photos, with lavish graphic adornments. Why are our editors going to such elaborate lengths essentially to tell us news we already know? It happened. We were there. We read about it in detail for several days. Why are they telling us again?
Are we all beset by Alzheimer’s? I could see it if the stories were 20 years old, and we may have forgotten about them, but these are recent occurrences – some as recently as two weeks prior – so what is the rush to remind me? My editor friends will tell me, “But Dave, people read these things.” Sure they do – the people featured in the stories and their friends and associates; that’s the lot. For the rest of us, they’re a waste of paper.
I would be grateful, as well, in 2013 not to have to listen to the kind of gratuitous pap that passes for political speeches in this communication age. In countries ranging from the USA, at the top of the scale, to Guyana, considerably lower down, one is regaled
