Making news

Alasdair Thompson has been dumped from his role at the head of the Employers and Manufacturers' Association - but he cannot escape the media scrutiny.

As he dashed through the rain outside the Newmarket railway station this week, he kept his head down under his umbrella, avoiding people's gaze. When recognised and asked what he was doing now, he refused to comment.

Thus writes Kieran Nash in the Herald on Sunday. Another way that Nash might have written this story would be:

Alasdair Thompson has been dumped from his role at the head of the Employers and Manufacturers' Association - but he cannot escape me.

As he dashed through the rain outside the Newmarket railway station this week, he kept his head down under his umbrella, avoiding the rain. When I recognised him and asked what he was doing now, he refused to comment.

But that would not be so much fun. Of course, I may be wrong about this; Nash might have heard this story from one of a horde of journalists who pursued Thompson through the rain outside Newmarket railway station but who decided not to write this story and instead told Nash. But I think not. I think Nash was the media on this occasion and his intrusive question was the media scrutiny.

We have become accustomed to the media making the news but here is another first for New Zealand : one member of the media writes about his failed attempt to get a story but represents himself as the media and that failure as the story.

In the future, all news stories will be like this.

In other news:

Architecture students
Are like virgins with an itch they cannot scratch
Never build a building 'til you're fifty
What kind of life is that?