Journalism as she is taught

The craft of journalism once expected of what academics these days like to call “its practitioners” a few basic skills. One of those inky educators is Canberra Times columnist Jenna Price, who teaches at the University of Technology, Sydney. If her own writing is an indication, any UTS student with a weakness for tautology, an imprecise grasp of grammar and language, a compulsion to repeat the previously stated and, above all, a tendency to elevate florid rhetoric to dizzy heights can expect those shortcomings to pass unnoticed.

Here are the first few paragraphs of her latest effort, which argues on the basis of no named or identifiably sourced evidence the existence of an ongoing campaign of genocide against Aborigines. Allowing that the corrections below were made, Ms Price might earn a D+ :

Don’t ever sit comfortably in your armchair and describe the sStolen gGenerations as a thing of the past. Don’t do that.

At this moment, there are 14,000 Aboriginal babies and children in foster care, out-of-home care, or and residential care. The attempted annihilation of the First Peoples continues.

Karen, a Kuku Yalanji woman, was the proud grandmother to a new baby. Her daughter delivered the baby infant in hospital. Three days later, while the baby breastfed, Karen says,  child welfare staff came into entered the hospital ward and removed the baby from the breast, from the mother, who The baby’s mother suffered terrible postnatal depression. Two years later, – never again having set eyes on her darling child ever again, – the mother hung hanged herself.

The Canberra Times now sells a paltry 27,000 copies per day. No wonder.

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