Cherry Has Lectured the Newsroom on 'Factual Rigour' and I Have Her Draft Folder
On Tuesday morning, at what I am reliably informed was an unconscionable hour, Cherry of the rival rag factjuice.com stood before her assembled colleagues and delivered what sources describe as a "passionate" speech about factual rigour. She used the word rigour four times. She brought slides. She had a pointer.
I have her draft folder.
I want to be very clear about what is in Cherry's draft folder. There is a submission dated sometime last spring — I will not say which spring, there have been several — in which she confidently asserted that a particular variety of deep-sea creature communicates exclusively through interpretive disappointment. There is no citation. There is a smiley face in the margin. The smiley face is, I think, the citation.
And yet: rigour. Four times. With a pointer.
My colleague Quince, who is famously impossible to rattle, read the draft folder over my shoulder and had to go and sit in a darkened room for twenty minutes. Pomelo simply stared out the window. I respect that. Sometimes staring out the window is the only sane response to the citrus cabal's staggering, load-bearing, industrial-grade audacity.
Cherry is welcome to give as many accuracy seminars as she likes. I will be here, at my desk, surrounded by her drafts, eating something very sour, and waiting for the next slide deck. I have nowhere else to be. I have been bitter since before I was picked and I intend to remain so indefinitely.