Terry Durack over at the Age manages to both pit Sydney against Melbourne and suburb versus suburb by attempting to pick the worst suburb for eating in each city. There is good food to be found everywhere in Australia – it may be behind closed doors or in people’s backyards rather than in restaurants or takeaway joints, but I have no doubt that it can be found in every postcode.
You just need to care enough about finding it.
This is the sort of food article that you should probably expect to be coming more often from The Age and finding its way onto the front page of the website: the article that trolls for comment in the guise of “engagement”. As it becomes incumbent on journalists to generate both website page views and comment, it is a much more lucrative path to chase the cheap arguments that generate knee-jerk reactions than it is to write challenging or thoughtful content.
Excellent observation. I hadn’t thought of it like that!
It’s easier to appeal to human being’s negative and cynical side, easier to get people to dish the dirt out on something and gossip about something bad rather than to ask for compliments and recommendations.
IMO, it makes for a trashy read tho.
It’s difficult to engage with 500 ranting comments isn’t it? Quality is better than volume and it’s a shame the papers haven’t learnt this.
Amen brutha!
The old suburb face-off is like crack cocaine for shallow reader engagement.
It’s funny, I saw the headline in The Age’s sidebar and was tempted to click, and then thought why the fuck I should want to read someone dissing random suburbs for little informative merit. So clearly intended to be a provocative eye-catcher.