Sunday Papers

If you can remember Elvis Costello, then you should remember Joe Jackson. In Jackson’s 1979 debut album ‘Look Sharp’ was the song ‘Sunday Papers’, which had the classic line, “They wouldn't print it if it wasn't true.” In fairness to Jackson, he couldn’t have anticipated the Internet.

Below is a screen shot from Sailing Anarchy today. The top story is a press release from Groupama 3. The middle story concerns a rumor that the Rule69Blog.com likes to distribute. The bottom is a smack against Scuttlebutt about press releases. This last bit is a hoot given the inclusion of the top story, and in how SA uses BYM News as their sailing news source, but fails to recognize how they are largely a re-publisher of press releases.


Wikipedia.com defines a press release as a written or recorded communication directed at members of the news media for the purpose of announcing something claimed as having news value. Scuttlebutt gets a lot of these, as does every member of the sailing media. For the releases that have actual news value, we will consider them for publication, often rewriting them to fit our format. The others get deleted.

Scuttlebutt also included the story today about Groupama 3, but rewrote it. SA did not. Considering that SA has made a career of taking jabs at people and companies that it feels has disrespected them (him), it is hard to imagine that any of this matters to us. It doesn’t, but occasionally, we just wish Jackson was right.