The Guardian: Jan 30th 2008: “As a Tory MP faces suspension from the party over payments to his son, should nepotism be banned, asks Pamela Hutchinson”
The Guardian: Feb 14th 2008: “Max, 19, hits the road”
Ah, so this would be the new blog chronicling the adventures of Max Gogarty, an overprivileged teenager off to “find himself” in India and Thailand. How fantastically original, and how deserving of a regular column on the website of a national newspaper.
It’s just odd that the same national newspaper already has a travel writer called Paul Gogarty, who just happened to have a thirteen year old son called Max when he want to Thailand in 2002. A coincidence, I’m sure.*
* Yeah, ok, so it’s hardly news that there’s nepotism in journalism, but the young lad’s blog is worth a quick look anyway just for the savagery unleashed on him in the comments (or just read some of the best ones here). There’s also the outside possibility that the whole thing is just one big spoof (and/or some kind of viral marketing for the new series of Skins, given the URL of the blog post and the fact that last year young Max wrote an “unseen” webisode for the series…)
Update: The Guardian’s travel editor responds…
No one snuck Max through the backdoor. I called him purely on the strength of his track record. On the back of his writing at his comprehensive school, he was invited on to a young writers’ group at the Royal Court theatre, and since then he has worked as an occasional writer on the TV series Skins. I think that’s pretty impressive for a 19-year-old.
Oh so he did some writing at school and wrote that myspace episode of Skins? Ah well then that’s fair enough.
Hang on, you called him? Since when did national newspapers start ringing up 19 year olds with no journalism experience and offering them a writing gig? And how did you know he was going on holiday?
One thing that came out of yesterday’s posts was that you want to hear a lot more from real people rather than journalists, so I’m going to be putting up a lot more readers’ recommendations and writing. I hope you like it. I’m sure you’ll let me know.
No, no, no, no, no. As one of the comments on the response says:
“Surely the one thing to come out of yesterday’s posts is that ‘citizen journalism’ and ‘user-generated content’ is generally bollocks, and people much prefer things done by professionals, rather than well-connected amateurs?
So the opposite of what you’re saying.”
Also in the comments is the dissapointing revelation from someone calling themselves “maxdad” that “Max won’t be writing any more blogs”. Shame. I was rather looking forward to them…