Monday 27 April 2015

Questions

1. Does anyone else routinely, to their own bafflement, read newspapers from back to front - that is to say, starting on the last page and moving systematically to the front page?
2. If anyone does, are they also baffled by their behaviour, or can they provide a rationale for this quirk?
3. Does anyone else find that they don't get through the weekend papers until the week after the weekend after next (partly because on the weekend that each set of new weekend papers appears, they are still working their way [backwards] through the ones from two weeks earlier - this dilemma  is sort of akin to compound interest, in a remote sort of way.
4. If anyone else does get out of sync in this way with the weekend papers, have they noticed that the weekend papers actually improve by this crude form of cellaring? The stuff that seemed absolutely cutting edge in its hot off the press relevance has usually been superseded by the time the articles in question meet the eye. Which means there is much more time for the really interesting articles.
5. Speaking of which has anyone else caught up to the point of reading the Guardian of Saturday 18 April, and, if they have, did they read the astounding article about Cordula Schacht, daughter of Hitler's Minister of Economics, suing Random House for royalties for the Goebbels family because a Random House published biography of Goebbels uses quotes from Goebbels's diaries?

When Random House replied by offering to pay Schacht royalties, provided she give the money to a Holocaust charity, she refused the offer. Rainer Dresen, general counsel of Random House Germany believes that other publishing houses have paid for the use of Goebbels's diaries and Random House is the first not to. "We are convinced that no money should go to a war criminal" he is quoted as saying, "I [do]not want to believe that anyone can claim royalties for Goebbels's words".

The questions this story raises are endless. I will leave others to ask them and, with luck provide some answers. I am too angry to think rationally on the subject.

3 comments:

  1. Yes, you are not alone in this habit of reading old news. I can,t throw away an unread paper wthout skimming through it and the pile seems to get higher. Is there a cure, do you think ?

    Anne

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It does put things into perspective though, reading old papers, don't you think? You find out which things are actually important

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    2. It does put things into perspective though, reading old papers, don't you think? You find out which things are actually important

      Delete