When I was growing up, my understanding of who and what journalists actually were was largely defined by the staff of the Daily Bugle, employer of Peter Parker, better known as the Amazing Spider-Man. In particular, they were defined by this chap, the infamous J. Jonah Jameson:
Now, despite then lure of the Marvel Comics app on the iPad, I'm not much of a comics reader these days. But this news from the creators of the current Spider-Man comics should be enough to send a chill down our collective spines:
In the Spidey-verse, I think one of our best ideas was making Jonah mayor. The possibilities of that remain endless, and with newspapers dying, it was a terrific way to give him a powerful presence.It's the off-hand way that a creator from another branch of the publishing business dismisses the future of our industry that stands out to me - they think that newspapers are now so unimportant that the character doesn't carry the same weight as an editor as he once did...
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'Media reptiles' huh? Well let's see...
Piers Morgan would be one of those brightly coloured geckos who can't flinch from putting on a display for mating or ego purposes.
Paul Dacre would be an aggressive rattlesnake with a penchant for putting the squeeze on his prey with devastating constriction.
Ann Leslie would be an ancient, solitary sea turtle that occasionally pops out to chomp away at any vegetation of the political flavour.
Alan Rusbridger would be a Casquehead lizard who can occasionally lose communication with its compatriots and get lost in tangential behaviour.
Andrew Marr would be a Gharial, given his thin snout. However he is an oddity amongst croctypes in media in that his pensive persona prevented him from capturing big mammalian prey hence his later life being in telejournalism not dirty old Fleet Street.
Andrew Neil would be an elder Knob-scaled lizard with a love of moist interactions with mates - his bumpy scales are symbolic of his ride through journalism that inluded angering chief alligator Murdoch.
Daily Mail columnists would typically be Scincidae who zip about with a permanently sour expression and no significance relative to other breeds.
Satire press online and off would be a varied mix of crocs, vipers, pythons and collared lizards. Feeding on other, lesser lizards is common with a portion of this crowd.
Were I a 'media reptile' I'd be a really fat yet casual crocodile that is mostly sedate but can occasionally be aroused to aggressive and abrasive behaviour. Long moments basking or roaming would be punctuated by the occasional concerted ambush or attack - much the same as other media people of the crocodile or alligator orders. I'd attack other reptiles almost as much as would the weasels, antelope, wildebeast, pigs and peacocks.
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Let's say we're in 2110, one hundred years from now. I plan on being dead by then but let's just keep up the hypothetical...you know monarchs and past figures? Kings, queens, composers and so on?
Well they are portrayed in a lot of entertainment in much more lighthearted and even comical a way than they were ever looked upon at the time. Same as past authority - think Colonel Klinkk or the recent Inglorious Basterds Tarantino flick. We demean, humorize and generally distort past figures into archetypes or rough caricatures of their former selves.
Whether that's good or bad depends on opinion, though consensus can seperate crapper takes on news editors from the better ones.
Rather odd that the archetype of the overweight, lazy, bullying, sarcastic and cutting waster editor has made only minimal impact in entertainment. That sort of editor is common in the local press but also the big tabloids...yet seldom appears in movies.
Maybe you should count journalism lucky as not having this nasty side exposed as much as it might have been by now?
-Pete @ dirtygarnet.com