Some weeks, writing this column is easy. All it takes is for an influential person – a politician, a business person, perhaps even a fellow columnist – to say something dumb and I get to spend a thousand words or so explaining precisely why they’re wrong. The “why x is wrong about y” construction is the columnist’s best friend: it’s as old as the hills and even easier to build a house on.
Some weeks though, it’s even easier than that. Someone will say something so breathtakingly wrong – so tracheotomy-cravingly moronic – that I don’t need to explain anything. Simply quoting their words back at them is sufficient to make the point.
Step forward, Jimmy Wales.
Speaking this week at the Guardian’s Guardian Changing Media Summit, Wales – the founder of Wikipedia – uttered the following statement when asked about the future of newspapers…
“I don’t see the added value [of opinion columnists] and question whether a newspaper should be paying large sums of money for them anymore… The best of the political bloggers are easily the equal of the opinion columnists at the New York Times.”
Those words could stand alone as a monument to Wales’ wrongness – a warning for future generations on why we must never heed the advice of a man who calls himself ‘Jimbo’.…
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