The Rise of Trollnalism

I have decided that there's a type of 'journalist' who writes more for the reaction they get than any genuine beliefs they may have on a topic. These people I am going to call Trollnalists and they include Richard Littlejohn, Toby Young, Melanie Phillips, Samantha Brick and others.

They're job is to write something so ridiculous that the main purpose is to drive traffic to their websites. Whether they believe the nonsense they write is irrelevant. Perhaps they do. In a way I hope they do because to write this stuff purely for mercenary purposes would be truly soul destroying.

What trollnalists do succeed in doing though is annoying their opponents into publicising their work and driving traffic to their various sites (although as you can imagine the Daily Mail is the real fountainhead of Trollnalism.)

In fact the Daily Mail is a fine example of a newspaper that has become a black hole for actual news or facts but almost purely filled with opinion and trollnalism. That's partly because its very sweary editor - if Private Eye is anything to go by - is clearly on a mission to drag Britain back to the 1930s and he'll do that in whatever manner he feels is appropriate. The fact that he's wouldn't recognise his own hypocrisy if it was dancing around in front of him wearing a black shirt is not unexpected. Trollnalism is by its very nature without memory.

So when Mrs Thatcher dies they call for respect for her memory, whilst forgetting what they wrote about Michael Foot. Or they belittle the state for preventing them from having free speech in a fog of post-Leveson hysteria but demand the banning of a song on BBC Radio because it is insufficiently respectful. Freedom of speech is only something for the Trollnalist, not for us.

I'd argue that Trollnalism is becoming the key driver of a lot of what passes for journalism in the British press these days. Facts are no longer sacred, or even relevant. Opinion, especially strong opinions, are it. Of course Trollnalism saves a lot of hassle and hard work with fact checking, research or thought. Angry about something or someone: write a column. Found a stick with which to beat someone who can't possible argue back: write a column.

Always the anger. Always weeping for a better past that never really existed. Never seeing anything positive. Name calling and spite aimed at people who disagree with you and always they disagree with you for the wrong reasons. And, of course, it is always them that has standards.

Trollnalism: the present and future of newspapers desperate for readers. Why bother with facts when an angry opinion will do.

And I should know.