I used to work for a freesheet, so I was well versed on the litter-versus-personal-responsibility debate that surrounds the papers. I still feel the product is strong and has a good niche, but you can’t argue the environmental aspect. There’s a lotta paper left over every day.

This idea tickles me, so. An artist in London is making a house out of leftover freesheets. The size of the house is dependant on how many people show up with papers.

It did get me thinking, however, about corporate tie-ins where everyone’s a winner, environmentally speaking.

Surely these guys, Warmcel, who turn newspapers into loft and wall insulation material, have thought of fronting the cost for collection bins for Metro/HeraldAM etc, and scooping the tonnes of discarded papers for raw materials? More than nine tonnes are left on the London Tube alone every day.

If Warmcell could get their hands on the freesheets, the papers’ consciences are assuaged, in that not only are their papers going to be recycled, they are further aiding the planet by adding to energy efficiency. Would that not insulate freesheets from bad press?

It’s amazing how two people can say effectively the same thing about th’internet, yet say it so differently.

One sounds like a simple Luddite cretin, the other a hesitant sceptic, yet to be convinced but fully aware if its potential.

Twenty currently has John Waters tacked to his dartboard for his execrable comments on blogosphere standards. Listen and read it all here.  Bloggers listen to the radio, too, John. And they’re going to be ALL OVER johnwaters.ie when it kicks off. All over it, baby.

AC Grayling, on the other hand, makes his comments, aptly, via the Guardian’s Comment is Free blog, here. Nothing new here, but it’s reasonably well put. As quoted by Slugger:

“The downside is the volume of rubbish, the anonymous viciousness and sneering, the ad hominem attacks, the paragraph-long pretensions to authoritativeness, the degrading of debate it freely permits, making it what I’ve before now called the biggest toilet wall in history.”

To which the immediate response comes in the comments:

“Don’t be too hard on yourself, some of your blogs are OK”

By the way, AC, great hair.

Irish Times journo Shane Hegarty has been posting about the dos an don’ts of interviewing recently (here and here) and unwittingly highlighted a blog post I wasn’t all that happy to inspire.

I interviewed author John Connolly for the Irish Echo in late July, during his promotional tour for The Unquiet. Walking out the doors, all seemed to have gone well. I was happy with the gathered quotes, my dictaphone had worked perfectly, I already had the framework for the piece bubbling away in my head.

Then, this.

A phrase from Connolly’s interview rang loudly in my ears at this point.

“The best piece of advice I ever got was in the context of an interview I did with James Lee Burke – who for me is one of the great crime writers – he once said: ‘You have to learn to ignore both the catcalls and the applause’, and he’s right.”

Not having read his book was not a catcall, but I simply didn’t have time. As the main journo in a small paper, my job covers all areas. Last week, for example, I wrote about business visa issues, plastic bag taxes, covered a rape case, a case of serious assault, television reviews, interviewed a double amputee, wrote about two separate Antarctic adventures, Irish pubs, Ireland’s top female triathlete, the Sydney-Hobart, and grilled two comedians on how to start a career in stand-up for a large feature, and then sifted the wires for several pages of Irish news, which I subbed into the pages I laid out, before running in corrections and proofing several sports pages.

Objectively speaking, Connolly isn’t my cup of tea. I struggled to last past three chapters of the first Charlie Parker novel I read, but loved dipping in and out of Nocturnes, his collection of umbral and unnerving short stories. The Book of Lost Things, which he clearly regards as his personal opus, is on my ‘must read’ list, purely out of curiosity.

So, feeling slightly niggled and realising that he wasn’t one to take the advice he dispensed, I had a childish stab at him through the resulting feature, which you can read in full below the fold. I won’t lie to you. It felt good.

[Read more →]