Subscribe to RSSMetro Doesn’t Like Any Of Us!
Last month, I got stuck into the relaunched Metro magazine for the poor job it did with an article about Auckland’s public transport. In the post, I called it a wasted opportunity and took time to look back over our city magazine’s history and how it had become a woeful shadow of its former self , in terms of circulation, influence and the state of its journalism.
After its relaunch effort, I didn’t even think about buying it again but Jarbury kindly alerted me tonight to the news that its latest October issue has a go at me about the post.
That’s fine by me. If I dish it out, I deserve to have discussion back. I had expected to find it picking my argument apart rather than just immature sneering which it does about the whole pro-rail lobby , taking you down with it. It says the post “gave us more than an inkling why the train lobby doesn’t get much traction.”
In the glory days, the magazine apparently knew how to be bitchy. Now it doesn’t even do that well. If it knew how to be witty and clever, it’s sadly lost that art too.
Anyway as Jarbury points out, it ends up promoting this blog by promoting the web address so that’s a bonus. If the magazine readers got a poor understanding of the city’s public transport issues, then hopefully they’ll check out this site now and be exposed to a more informed view from my posts and your comments!
And if Metro thought I would be upset,I read it and laughed especially after discovering the slang for “anorak”*
* From Wikipedia: in British slang an anorak (pronounced /ˈænəræk/) is a person, usually male, who has a very strong interest, perhaps obsessive, in niche subjects. This interest may be unacknowledged or not understood by the general public. The best known explanation of the term, is the use of anoraks (a type of rain jacket) by train spotters, a prototype group for interest in detailed trivia.
Although the term is often used synonymously with geek, it suggests a greater degree of social awkwardness and isolation.
9 Comments
Final proof Metro is irrelevant. They won’t be around by the time Auckland rail gets electrified. Oh, hang on. bad example. We might not be either.
This sort of thing is what prompted my post on the CBT forum about “Is this forum ruining our chance of better PT”
I don’t think that Metro is irrelevant - I think that, rightly or wrongly, those who support trains are seen in this light by a lot more people than we would think.
p.s. I support trains too!
If we don’t press for improvements, no one will. It’s dangerous in a democracy to cave in and say nothing. Metro failed to do a good job in pushing the PT case. I enjoyed the comment “Given that Steven Joyce is a Minister with some very challenging portfolios in which he is achieving massive upheavals very fast I find it highly unlikely that he is taking a few minutes out each day to read the CBT forums.”
Metro who?!
He personally might not but you can bet that his staff will have some sort of search bot that will be looking for anything with his name in it…..
”If we don’t press for improvements, no one will. It’s dangerous in a democracy to cave in and say nothing.”
Absolutely agree. We can’t be intimidated. Just keep soldiering on, keeping the issue in the public eye. Thats the only way we’ll ever see improvements in Auckland. You’re doing a great job.
A bit sensitive from Metro, are they that eager for readers they’ll try and start fights with blogs..?
I remember posting that the article was weak as it required quite a detailed knowledge to get the whole Monty Python analogy and then proceeded to write an article that spoke to the public like 5 year olds…
A strong article about the history of Auckland Transport, our current situation and what our future should be, given past lessons and looming threats, was what the article should have been and by failing to write such a piece I think it can be accurately described as a missed opportunity…
I think that the final page of the article - when it listed the things that we needed - was good, and the main article was OK. But yeah, the whole Monty Python thing went on for far too long and wasted space that we kind of needed to be dedicated to the message that the article was trying to get across.
Nevertheless, I think it (along with a few other things) might have contributed to Joyce coming across as a bit “rattled” over public transport in the last while. I don’t imagine anyone likes to be perceived as stuck in the middle ages, while it was also interesting to see him off-side with people like John Banks and Ken Baguley - hardly left-wing wackos!
There’s a nice free couple of print-inches with the blog’s address on the third line.