Who will rid me of this turbulent wankery?

I don't like the Guardian website. Not just because of the commas; because it's crap, and more opinion than news. Opinions, for that matter, about things that don't belong in serious newspapers and can be settled in two words, like about Heath Ledger being dead now (he is) and Martin Amis being a dick (he is).

It's the rise of click-journalism at a tired old franchise, fitting in beautifully with the New-Labourish concept of reward-based administration. No point writing good articles, not if you can just write poorly edited pieces of shit with celebrities' names in them, not if you can measure the success of your articles by the number of people who open them. This sort of thing illustrates how clueless people are about internet marketing. You try to sell advertisers on your site based on the number of people who visit it, but any company that advertises on the sort of 'oooo-er I can't believe it' story which is relentlessly recycled for each celebrity death, that I open because I can't fucking believe the Guardian has got so very crap, is not a company I will want to deal with in the future.

Of course, based on who's advertising on the Guardian site, it doesn't seem to have been working. A tourism trade fair in Madrid and, uhm, a bunch of in-house products, from today's brief survey. Here's a link to their online advertising policies. Containing, of course, a HUGE photo of the lady in charge of online advertising, before giving some insubstantive, badly phrased information about advertising online. 'Zeitgeist'? Holy fuck. Heath Ledger being dead, Martin Amis being a twat, and the new James Bond title being crap counts as the 'spirit of the age'? Fuck you, buddy. You can't talk about my age that way. 'Spirit of the wank' is more like it.

All that notwithstanding, the sports section is pretty good.