I logged on to Blogger just now full of ire, ready to throw my tuppence in to the ring (mixed metaphor? Why the blazes not?) on this whole Times paywall, 'isn't Murdoch evil?' debate, but then something happened. Something that made me angrier even than the thought of my profession being taken over by ill-informed freebie blogs like, well, this one.
You see up there, there in the big bold bit we shall henceforth refer to as the 'Title' or 'Headline'? Yup, the one that says 'Will Paywall Pay Off?' Right. Well at the start there is a symbol widely known as the 'hash'. I use one of these at the start of each of my 'Titles' or 'Headlines' to make it obvious to the four people reading this blog that I am producing something of a list, a list of things which make me blood boilingly grumpy, things which make me clench my teeth and grind while muttering like a Surrey raised Foghorn Leghorn.
So anyway this 'hash' thing... it's a widely used symbol is it not? Indeed that well known social networking site with the cute picture of the bird and loads of people on it talking about some ten year old with hair like a lego man even has a thing called hashtagging which allows one to label one's post specifically or, conversely, search for lego-hair related posts.
Which suggests that a hash key is a fairly useful thing to have on one's keyboard.
So where, dear friends, WHERE ON GOD'S WHITE SHINY LAPTOP IS MY HASH KEY?
Let me take you back in time, back to Thursday July 8th, a more innocent time, a simpler time... *wiggly hands demonstrating going back in time*. There beside my bed, gleaming like a beacon of wonderful pinkness, pinkness which cost me an extra hundred quid because, in my infinite wisdom, I believed - yes, foolishly - that a pink laptop might encourage me to work more and harder (in fact it has only encouraged me to bounce off of the settee in glee and yell 'look! Donna on Neighbours has the same pink laptop as me!'), is my beloved Sony Vaio laptop.
This laptop is efficient, it's simple, it bears a Percy the Green Engine sticker, it has a whole new LCD screen since I chose to stick my tongue out behind my husband's back when he advised me to 'pick it up by the body, not by the screen', it has all of my stuff on it - links to my favourite cake recipes, some random lists for holidays I've already been on, my sister's CV, some of that aforementioned 'work' stuff.
The one thing that this laptop does not like (apart from big clumsy thumbs being shoved through its screen) is water. This fact has apparently passed by my nearly three year old son, AKA Hurricane Ted who, it appears, thinks that pink Sony Vaio laptops need to drink pints of water.
Back to the present and I am sharing my loving husband's Mac. This Mac, for the uninitiated, was rather a bone of contention on its purchase. Long story short, I wanted a Mac ('writers ALL have Macs, I'd probably write a bestselling novel if I had one'). Husband advised against a Mac ('it's too difficult for you Techno-bimb, and we can't afford it seeing as you spent all of our hard earned on shoes'). I sulked ('Fine I'll get a Sony but it WILL be PINK'). He bought himself a Mac ('cos I'm cleverer at computers and that').
Now, I have an iPhone which I know and love. In fact I have loved it so hard I have given myself RSI (this is nothing to do with it's vibrate function you sickos). So please know that I am not anti-Apple, quite to the contrary, anyone who makes a bigger version of their small thingummy under the guise of usefulness whilst in fact knowing full well that people are only buying it in order that they can pretend to be a midget OR to have accidently stumbled in to the Land of the Giants, is alright with me.
But here's the thing Jobs, Jobsy, Jobby (yes, Jobby as in a big steamy POO), I NEED a hash key. There's nothing cool and shiny and Apple-y about leaving a key off and making one do alt-3 - eventually, after much 'it must be here somewhere'-ing and plenty of 'come the fuck on now!'-ing - to get a hash.
Nor is this whole pressing-command-instead-of-shift malarkey.
And no, don't think that I'm laughing at the @ hiding over there above the 2 while it should be somewhere over, ''''''', yep, here.
As for the no right click...AAAAARRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.
Therefore I conclude the following:
Jobs and his Apple cronies are more evil than Murdoch. Murdoch's trying to make some dosh he doesn't need, Jobs is just fucking with me. And laughing in to his iCoffee while he does it. That's not nice.
I do not like change. Especially not on my keyboard.
Which leaves me with just enough space to mention another change, a change which should, by rights, be more pertinent to me but which was overshadowed by what we shall, in Heat-esque journalistic laziness, henceforth call 'hashgate'.
The Times has stuck a bloomin' great pay wall on their website. The Guardian are all over it like a snobby ol' holier-than-thou rash.
In short I understand the decision to make users pay for online news, we happily pay for papers, iPhone apps and so on, why should we not be expected to pay for online news? Will this push readers to find their news from other sources? Perhaps. Do journalists, as news increasingly finds itself pushed online, deserve to be paid for their work regardless of whether it's online or in print? As a web journalist I believe so - the service I and my cohorts provide is (or at least should be) of a higher quality, impartial where needs be, well researched and reliable.
It's not often that I'll support a Murdoch decision and disagree with my old pal the Graun all on the same day but today is that day.
If the pay wall works and the Guardian implement it (which, if it is they will) they're going to look utter buffoons. If it doesn't work, on the other slightly shaking hand, does it not suggest that traditional journalism is very much on the first bus outta Dodge? Eek.
