John Morrish

By virtue of owning the JournoList.com domain name, I have been granted an insight into American political debate. “JournoList” was the name of an email mailing list for liberal-minded hacks in Washington. Although my site predates that, people doing a Google search for the name have been directed to my site. The result is that I have been receiving a steady trickle of hate-mail intended for those liberals. I have to say that the standard of argument, and literacy, is not high. For example:

you idiots are outed now.  shame on you.  no wonder main stream media is going under, with political hacks and sycophants like your little club out there.  enjoy unemployment.

Yes I disagree with your lord god obama, your pathetic democrat party.  No, that does not make me a racist.  Beat you to it, didn’t I?  BTW- I am minority myself, however, I pay taxes, served in the military and work for a living.

ha…..keep it up…….keep exposing yourselves as the low life snake political metrosexual red diaper doper babies that you are

I have been reading some of the so called journalist’s political rants and am appauled by the unsubstanciated viewpoints and lies from both sides of the spectrum. I am neither ribofflicans or dummycrap but I lean more to the right than the left because of the leftist socialistic Nazi stormtrooper additudes. The shameful exhibition of the naacp and the dnc have shown how ignorant, and corrupt the present political administration and the political majority. I have become so ashamed of this government and the so called leaders and the liberalist in academia. The people we trust to instruct our children have become so liberal and totally ignorant about the real world they are beginning to twist, warp, and corrupt history to suit the liberal aganda which is trying all it can to distroy this country, history, and brain wash our children to think as they do as Hitler did with the youth in germany during WWII. They preach about the made up hate and racism that the tea party has not exhibited but has been reported by a racist party that is part of the present administration. The tea party, right, and anyone who speeks openly about the dissatisfaction of the administration have been the target of the liberal bleeding heart baby butchers of the dummycrapic party, the naacp, criminal unions, and the people who support the head baby butcher and his criminal cabinet and administration. They have proven to the people that they are not fit to serve as a representative of the citizens of this country and are falling like flies. We will see in November just how dissatisfied the real citizens of this country are. I feel that if Rush can be attacked by some ignorant left wing liberal socialistic baby butcher then I feel it is only fare that this person be procecuted for hate crimes and fired from her evident liberal media lesbian profession. Her comments show just how despirate the liberals are over the upcomming elections. Her ignorance and incometence shows the effects of the leader she so stupidly follows. Hate. If you want hate, wait until the true citizens of this country organize. Then we will see hate.

There is more, but I think that gives you a flavour of it.

Plans are afoot for a third edition of Magazine Editing. The update is being done by Paul Bradshaw of Birmingham City University, who is an expert on online magazines. It will come out under our joint bylines some time in 2011.

Russian cover

This is probably not the right time to be boasting about this, but I’ve just received my first copies of the Russian edition of my book Magazine Editing. I’ve worked out where my name is, but I wish I knew what the rest of it said.

There is nothing like watching a goalless draw between two relegation-doomed sides in January to lower the spirits. And that seemed to be where we were heading on Saturday, until a sudden flurry of activity in stoppage time led to Cheltenham scoring against the run of play and collecting the three points.

It was supposed to be a special occasion for the kids in my son’s football team, replacing their usual Christmas party, and they seemed to enjoy themselves despite the dreary spectacle on the pitch. For me it was a reminder of a slightly guilty feeling I have; for a large proportion of the time, football at this level is pretty boring.

I spent a couple of hours this afternoon quickly bodging up a little site to go on my johnmorrish.com domain. What does a journalist put on his home page? Originally I was just going to stick my phone number and email on there and leave it at that, but that looked like I wasn’t trying. A picture of the author? I think not.

In the end, I put up a couple of bits of fairly recent writing. I’ll add some more when I get the time. The problem is that the sort of writing you do for magazines and newspapers is much too prolix for the web. As a reader, I have read long pieces online, but it’s a struggle. Most people suggest breaking long pieces into manageable chunks, but I hate reading pieces like that. I’d rather scroll down, and down, and down.

The other option is to stick some pretty pics in there, but that’s cheating. Also, you’ve got to have the pics.  And a visual imagination. I’m one of the least visually-orientated people you could wish to meet. I even started taking drawing lessons to see if that would help, but it didn’t. It was fun, though. If I could work out how to load up images in WordPress I’d stick one of my efforts up here.

I’m sitting here listening to the Beach Boys’ Sunflower on vinyl, having finally worked out how to connect the manky little turntable I liberated from my parents’ house to the Mac. Gorgeous singing, terrible audio.

Hi-fi, remember that? My friend Mr Cooper has just been regaling me with stories of his latest purchase in that line. I, in turn, attempted to tell him about my encounter with a bunch of hi-fi mystics, who thought they could improve the sound of their systems by using what, to all practical purposes, was witchcraft. I wrote a piece about them for GQ, back in the days when it used to put men on the cover and carried earnest articles about grooming. (No, not that kind of grooming.)

Anyway, I dug out the piece, which was in some long-deceased Apple format, and managed to turn it into something I can read now. And I skimmed through it. Pretty good, I thought; this guy can write. And then I noticed the date: 1994. 

I’ll stick the piece on the site. It might still raise a smile. 

I’ve spent most of the last year working on The Folk Handbook, and I’m delighted to see that its first review, in the Independent On Sunday is favourable. Read all about it.

What is pleasing is that Charlotte Grieg, the reviewer, picked up on what was for us the central idea of the book; that these songs are not twee, and they’re not about Merrie England, and there is very little hey-nonny-no about them. They tell timeless stories, and their tunes have a power and simplicity that, if you give them time, will surely win you over. 

The problem, really, is us, the English. There is a terrible prejudice against this kind of music, something that you don’t find in the same way in other countries. In one of my pieces for the book, reproduced here, I tried to examine where that prejudice came from, and whether we can ever get past it.

If you are looking for my JournoList site, it’s here. Unfortunately, the What’s New section hasn’t been updated for a while, because I broke it. But the archives are there.