As I said on 612ABC with Kelly Higgins-Devine (filling in for Spencer Howson) this morning, the incident at the Walkley Awards ceremony last night does the already embattled reputation of the journalistic profession no favour.
I'm rather impressed by young writer Iain Hollingshead, even though I haven't read his novel Twenty Something. At 25, he's been named winner of the Bad Sex in Fiction Award ("to celebrate truly cringe-worthy erotic writing"), and he actually turned up to accept the prize! When he recieved his gong from rocker Courtney Love, Hollingshead said: "I hope to win it every year."
"A book becomes collectible when it's hard to find, and this will become very, very collectible, surely worth four figures." So says AbeBooks.com spokesman Richard Davies about the O.J.Simpson If I Did It book. The publishers have recalled it for pulping, but there's every chance that at least some copies will escape destruction. It won't be long before portions of the book and the television interview that was supposed to accompany it turn up on the internet. Then it will be up to each of us to decide whether we want to read it or not - and what the moral issues are.