WHEN I say journalists write some shite, trust me - I know that of which I speak. What bricklayer hasn't walked past a wall he laid ten years ago and winced a little at the thought of how much better a job he'd do now? What teacher hasn't read a newspaper report of wee Johnnie getting sent back to Maghaberry and wished he'd spent more time with him instead of putting him in the Mooners first chance he got? We can't always be on our A-game and the most effective way we have of coming to terms with that
lamentable fact of life is to try to do better next time.

At the risk of breaking the confidence of the Magic Circle, I will reveal here today that the main reason that journalists knock out nonsense is not the oppressively looming deadline, as the romantic view of the inky trade traditionally suggests. Because in one of the great paradoxes of the digital age, the great leaps forward in technology have in the newspaper business meant not more up-to-date news but considerably less of it.
Ireland's Saturday Night, for instance, the defunct Saturday sports sister of the Belfast Telegraph (known by my da as "the Ulster), did Herculean work in getting late football and horsey results printed by teatime. Journalists are no longer slaves to the deadline in the way they used to be because the industry has succeeded in managing reader expectations: there are no late-breaking stories in the Tele any more because it's a morning paper, like all the dailies. And like all the other papers, nothing that happens after 9pm the previous evening gets into the print edition.

So who is the big enemy of the modern journalist, I hear you cry? Well, it's the wordcount, stupid.

Mostly a journalist's problem with the wordcount is that there's too much information for the space allocated for a story or feature. The trick is usually not writing 300, 500 or a thousand words; the trick is keeping it under those numbers. If you hit the target you can generally rest easy because you know it'll go in the way you wrote it. But if you stray over the wordcount, your purple prose is going to be cut to pieces by a subeditor who likely knows more about nuclear fission than they do about what you're trying to say.
But occasionally the problem with the wordcount becomes a lack of information and data to meet the required volume of sentences. And when that happens, stories end up with more filler than the bodywork of a 1972 black taxi. And while filler takes all kinds of shapes and forms, quotes are the greatest antidote to writer's block. If you're stuck glumly on 250 words when your target is double or even triple that, then other people's words are your friend as you write: "Indeed, the thoughts of the poet and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry are so fitting in this context that they demand to be quoted at length..."

Cut, paste, print, and, as Antoine himself might have put it, Bob est ton oncle.
Never have the word- building skills of Belfast journalists been put to such a gruelling test as in the past ten days in the wake of the conviction of former DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson on rape and sexual abuse charges. The demand for good old-fashioned journalism is so great, the thirst for coalface reporting of the best tradition so
chokingly intense, that paper shop sales have risen and online hits have rocketed. Trouble is, there is only so much that a journalist can write in relation to the bare facts as they unravelled at Newry Crown Court. And when the need to maintain those sweet, sweet shop sales and those addictive online hits is so overpowering then anything will do as long as it's got Jeffrey Donaldson in the headline and the first par.

Trouble is, when you've finished the court reporting, when you're out of yer actual facts, when the accused disappears into the yawning, impenetrable maw of the prison system, knocking out a thousand colourful words when you know very little more than the bloke on the Glider is a hell of a challenge. It's then that journalism becomes sleight of hand and mind; it's then that the journalist becomes showbiz mentalist.

If you've ever been to a mindreader show or if you and your pals ever chipped in to hire a medium, chances are you'll have been impressed. But you shouldn't hve been, because the trick is old and tired, even if some performers are more adept at breathing life into it than others. What you do is you posit a series of statements and questions that seem prescient at first blush.

"There's something going on in your life that you're not happy about, isn't there?"

"Your mother was a very proud woman, wasn't she?"

"You feel undervalued by others sometimes, but you don't speak up about it."

"You had a unique relationship with your father, didn't you?"

The thing about these lines - and there's a million of 'em - is that they are at the same time so banal and so meaninglessly specific that they can apply to every one of us if we want them to. And by being in the presence of this person, we want them to. When a skilled mentalist or medium provokes conversation via these gambits, they can mine a rich seam of clues and tells until it seems like they're inside your head.

Journalists have been trying to convince us that they're in the jail cell with Jeffrey Donaldson; or if not actually sitting on his bunk with him, at least getting the lowdown from his personal jailer. They're not, but whoever bought the paper for
the headline or clicked on the web piece wants to be there, so an open door is being pushed. And it all sounds so... compelling... so real... so illicitly intimate.
But just like the medium telling you all about your dead ma, they're just taking simple ideas, painting them gold and sprinkling them with glitter.

Fact: A court has deemed Jeffrey Donaldson a nonce and nonces aren't in the general prison population, they're locked up with other nonces. So..
"Shamed former DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson has been threatened/ befriended by (name and bio of other notorious nonce/s) in the nonce/hospital wing of Maghaberry as he begins life as a convicted rapist."

Might be true, might not. Who knows?

Fact: Jeffrey Donaldson is well known for his strong Christian beliefs. Christians are allowed access to a Bible in chokey. So...
"Donaldson cut a lonely and pathetic figure as he spent his first day as a convicted rapist alone in his cell reading the Bible and silently mouthing prayers."

Might be true, might not. Who knows?

Fact: They don't let you wear suits in prison and we've all scen prison documentaries. So... "In his grey prison sweatshirt and jogging bottoms, Donaldson seemed a very different man from the soft- spoken, well-dressed politician who preyed on
vulnerable minors and hid his darkest secrets from the world. For a man so famously careful about his appearance, his prison uniform is a constant reminder that his days in the limelight are over."

Might be true, might not. Who knows?

Fact: Maghaberry won't let Eleanor in to cook for him and Just Eat don't deliver. So...
"To a portly man who has spent his life dining in the finest restaurants of the world's capitals, his first Maghaberry breakfast of dry toast and porridge came as a sobering blast of his new reality."

Might be true, might not. Who knows?

Piece of cake, right? Fair enough, think that if you want. But before you go applying for your NUJ card and start writing sample articles to send to editors, let me tell you that stretching this out to a thousand words is no easy task. And doing it for ten days in a row is positively Homeric.