The news

“I wonder why people are so wicked. You just wake-up in the morning to find your house entrance with heaps of feaces and nobody seems to care enough to take drastic action”. In another article I read the sentence “with various water sports like swimming, volleyball and table tennis the guests are thus profitably engaged”. Ever tried table tennis in water? Well, at least there’s no false pretence as to the goal of having guests: profit... The same newspaper compared some kind of manufacturing activity to a termite colony and then devoted a third of the article on explaining the workings of a termite colony... Educational no doubt, but I quite lost the lineof the argument.
Reading newspapers here regularly has me in stiches but it’s also often difficult to understand the articles. A sentence starting with “however” can serve to simply confirm the previous statement and you often feel like keeping your breath until the clue comes, only to find out that the clue consisted of an endless repetition of the same argument. Oh, and of course there’s the emphasis on describing the unimaginable greatness of the people interviewed, an emphasis lost in hilarious details.
Photos next to articles normally refer to another event or article, of some days ago. They don’t therefore offer more clarification, but they do make you laugh as photographers won’t ask their victims to pose but just ‘snap’ them at a random point of time. The facial expressions are often embarassing, and a story in itself.
Every topic is touched upon. From corruption to fashion, from political intrigues to magical witch doctors, from the financial crisis to the nearness of God. Having to read newspapers for my job has become an entertaining (though time-consuming) business, and I totally see how journalism can be called an art.