Tag: Andrew Symonds

Stable mates

Gordon Ramsay made a bit of a splash by insulting his Channel Nine compatriot Tracy Grimshaw. This can go one of two ways – the “all publicity is good publicity” way will keep him in the public eye and generate some buzz for his new restaurant – he can appear to be bravely raging against the network machine, or, he gets hammered by the press, loses his slots on Channel Nine, his restaurant fails and his star fades. So far it’s looking like heading down the latter path.

It was either a gross tactical error or the start of a Symondesque piece of career sabotage.

What he said wasn’t nice. It was a purile bid for some “sensational” media coverage. He’s gone the way of the Chaser, and thus been “unfanned” on my Facebook profile.

Picking on your colleagues at a television network is an odd move. But, and I’m not in anyway condoning the treatment Grimshaw received, she’d be hypocritical to make that point after her editorialising the Matthew Johns saga the way she did. There are no doubt some Matthew Johns fans feeling pretty smug today.

I saw Ramsay on the Today Show on Friday morning and he was pretty rude there too, perhaps he’s sick of the constant cross promotion he’s been forced to do on his tour.

Hit for headline writers

There’s a set formula for writing hackneyed cricket headlines that goes as follows:

“{Subject} hits {players name} for {six} or {actual figure based on the story}.”

You can alternate that with a passive voice format for variety. But very rarely should you ever leave that trusty formula completely. Unless you want to be interesting and engaging.

Case in point: CA hits Symonds for $4000

Ok, so I may be exaggerating- the SMH to its credit doesn’t have a whole lot of those. At the moment. But it’s such cliched headline writing.