Satirical fiction in newspaper form
Park media’s second annual Month Without Metaphor (MWM) begins today!
The initiative aims to gauge the effectiveness of reporting the news “without embellishments, comparisons, and the painting of pictures for the reading public,” according to its organizers.
You can follow Park media as they tweet through the month at Month Without Metaphor (MWM).
Ronald Grouse has declared war. But we’ll only be able to print that until Monday.
Just a few days before the start of Park media’s Month Without Metaphor (MWM), The Avian Messenger’s chief political analyst and newly-elected MWM director held a press conference this morning in which he himself used the war metaphor. And many more.
“It’s time we declared war on some of the tools that media use,” he said. “We need to communicate better and more effectively. We need straight talk: just the facts, no hyperbole. And we need to stop manipulating our readers. Our job is to inform, not to perform,” he said.
Grouse, who has in the past criticized the direction in which Park media appeared to be headed, said he is looking forward to May’s event.
“I look forward to steering Month Without Metaphor toward success,” he said. “The challenges we face as Park citizens are serious ones that require us to be clear-eyed and open-minded. I hope to be able to engage the hearts and minds of readers and listeners and build momentum toward creating a more honest and open media that will help with the problems we face.”
With just two weeks to go, The Park’s media organizations are gearing up for what some have called the biggest experiment in the history of journalism.
“All systems are go,” pronounced Alvin Tinamou with pride, at a hastily-organized update at his office yesterday afternoon. The subject was May’s “Month Without Metaphor,” but the Elephant in the room was the state of the industry, itself.
“It’s no secret that the modern era has presented us with a huge challenge,” Tinamou admits, but he backs away from any suggestion that the industry is on its last legs.
In fact, the publisher of The Avian Messenger winces at the term “experiment” to describe the month-long initiative of which he is one of the organizers. Instead, he refers to it as the “Grand Resuscitation,” an ambitious description that some in the profession say it could well turn out to be.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if it kickstarted interest, especially among the newspaper readership,” says Noburu Akita, Executive Director of the Centre for the Study of Newspaper Activity in The Park (C-SNAP). “Whether the media and, particularly, our newspapers, can hold that interest, though, is the question.”
Gertrude C. Owl, Dean of UWT’s Cuthbert School of Journalism and Mammalian Daily senior political correspondent agrees.
“I think it’s a brilliant idea, really, inviting the public to, almost, scrutinize the business…allowing them to feel a part of it, while still keeping the boundaries clear. I’m cautiously optimistic about it, but I think it will take more than one go at this type of thing to be truly effective,” she says.
The Mammalian Daily’s longstanding policy of not revealing the names and species of its reporters could jeopardize the success of Park media’s third annual Month Without Metaphor, says Alvin Tinamou.
In a front page piece that appeared in his newspaper today, Tinamou—the publisher of The Avian Messenger and one of the organizers of the May event—called on TMD managing editor Orphea Haas to “modernize” and to “get out ahead of your colleagues’ criticism.”
“We are living in an age of incredible transparency, yet Haas runs her newspaper from the darkness of a cave. Those old ways of wielding authority in that manner have given way. It’s high time The Mammalian Daily let its readers know who is reporting their news so they can judge its quality and its authority by themselves,” he wrote.
Tinamou also accused The Mammalian Daily of being hypocritical by participating in Month Without Metaphor (MWM), saying the annual media event was meant to strip news reporting of its “fiction, obfuscation, and obscurity” and replace it with simplicity and clarity.
“How can this event be taken seriously by other media and grow in to the movement it was meant to be when one of its major participants refuses to stop pulling the wool over its readers’ eyes?” he asks.
The staff at The Park’s Month Without Metaphor initiative (MonthWithoutMetaphor) has been working hard all month to gather the words and phrases that journalists and readers across The Park have submitted as items they’d like to ban from media in 2019. Director Priscilla Weevil says she was “gobsmacked” by the sheer number of submissions and the “intensity of emotion” that accompanied those submissions.
“There is clearly, across all media, the feeling that we are not serving our audience well,” she said.
Below are the most frequently-submitted words and phrases that Month Without Metaphor received:
Despite criticism that he’s been too hard on Park media this May, Month Without Metaphor director Ronald Grouse has received almost unanimous support from The Park’s journalism community for his efforts on behalf of tomorrow’s Media Circus.
The jam-packed event, which Grouse had originally planned as a two-day affair, had its origins in the 2011 celebration hosted by the Association of Media Outlets of The Park (AMOP). But the purpose of that event was far different from what Grouse has planned for tomorrow.
“I worked on that first media circus and I remember it fondly, partly because of the innocence of it all and its sense of openness. It was very pro-journalism. We were all proud of what we did and we wanted to share that with Park residents. We also wanted to encourage young Animals to consider a career in journalism,” he told The Mammalian Daily.
“But Park media have grown in the past six years, and we— as well as our audience— are suffering from our growing pains,” he said.
Tomorrow’s event, then, will be more focused on, as Grouse says, slyly using a metaphor, “righting the ship.”
“This circus is for all, but part of it is for our own edification. I think of it as holding a mirror up to ourselves. Journalists need to take a cold, hard look at what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and what results we’re looking for. I want to start an ongoing, thoughtful conversation about that,” he said.
Part of that conversation will include Grouse’s favourite topic, the language of manipulation. And our sneak peek into the media kit confirms that. The kit, which will be given out to all attendees, includes some of Grouse’s least favourite journalistic tools: metaphors, similes, trite expressions, and—best of all—heart strings that are meant to be pulled.
The irony isn’t lost on Grouse.
“Yes, the media kit is manipulative, but it’s all for a good cause, and that’s to do our jobs better,” he said.
“The kit illustrates what’s gone wrong and we hope it will spark some realizations. After all, our job is to present the facts as we know them, not to use words to manipulate the minds and hearts of our readers and listeners.”
The Park’s Media Circus will take place 31 May 2017 at the Ancient Open-Air Theatre, from 09:00 until 16:00.
Fleck + Stone’s Chief Architect has been chosen to deliver the University of West Terrier’s commencement day address. Read the full announcement here.
Month Without Metaphor (MWM) director Ronald Grouse announced yesterday that he won’t be issuing the usual “mid-term” report this year. Instead, he said, all statistics on the initiative will be published at the end of May.
Ronald Grouse, the director of Park media’s Month Without Metaphor, has taken Park media to task over what he describes as the manipulation of their readership “in the style of advertisers.”
In a scathing editorial this morning, The Avian Messenger’s chief political analyst criticized Park publications, calling them “complicit with advertisers” in their descriptions of products, places, and events.
Grouse, who has only been at the helm of the media initiative for a month, singled out The Rodent Commoner for its recent article on the shortage of burrows in The Park.
“The use of terms that evoke emotion, such as ‘home,’ ‘hearth,’ ‘shelter,’ and the invocation of ‘family,’ is inexcusable in a publication that is supposed to be dedicated to presenting unembellished facts,” Grouse wrote.
The MWM director didn’t stop at The Rodent Commoner. Using examples from almost every Park newspaper, he demonstrated the manipulation that has come to be seen as the norm.
“News media are not in the business of pulling heartstrings,” he wrote, apologizing in the next sentence for the metaphor. “News media are in the business of presenting the facts as they are known or have come to be known. We are supposed to allow the readers to make their own judgments, based on our presentation. We are not supposed to lead them to feel anything.”
Grouse concluded his editorial by saying that he is deeply disturbed by the growing willingness of publications to shill for companies without thought to the consequences.
“You can be sure that we will take this up further at the Media Circus at the end of the month,” he wrote.
Five years after The Park’s first media circus, the new director of Month Without Metaphor is about to “revise and remake” the event for a different purpose.
In an announcement this morning, Ronald Grouse confirmed rumours of his recent talks with Rodolfo van de Gier, president of the Association of Media Outlets of The Park (AMOP), who was in charge of the 2011 event. Grouse’s announcement said the two have agreed to work together on a “new kind” of media circus that will have an “altogether different” purpose, but it offered scant details.
“We are planning to host a two-day event toward the end of the month that will have the full participation of Park media. We also extended an invitation to The Park’s literary community, including writers, publishing companies, and journal editors, as well as representatives of the University of West Terrier’s Cuthbert School of Journalism. Together, we are hoping to have a full and open discussion about the dissemination of information, the use of language and the responsibility of all those who are involved in communication,” the announcement said.
No exact times or locations were mentioned, nor whether the “fun and games,” such as playing reporter or hosting a mock interview, would be included in the new event.
