ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
The rivers of gold that once flowed from Facebook and Instagram into the newsrooms of The Betoota Advocate thanks to the Media Bargaining Code are set to be dammed upstream as the tech giant walks away from the deal.
After negotiations broke down between this masthead’s editor, Clancy Overell, and Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg earlier this week, the decision was made to cut costs where this news media conglomerate can.
The first thing to go was the beloved Nespresso machine in the break room, which Clancy smashed to pieces with a Ping Eye 2 beryllium copper 9 iron before the staff arrived for work this morning.
There are 300 unused coffee pods in the break room cupboards now that cadet reporter Wendell Hussey fears he will now have to individually open and steep in order to get a morning cup of java.
Hussey told our reporter that while he supports cost cutting measures in the hopes that everyone can keep their job when the media publishing winter takes effect, smashing a perfectly good coffee machine to pieces was unnecessary.
“We have a 5kg drum of International Roast in there now where the machine was,” he explained.
“And there’s hundreds and hundreds of unused Nespresso pods in the cupboard. What are we going to do with them now? I’ll have to poke the foil with a fork and try force boiling water through it. For fuck’s sake.”
It’s understood by our reporter that the Media Bargaining Code was worth $300 a month to The Betoota Advocate and our associated neighbourhood newspapers such as Le Chat Autiste in the French Quarter and the Heights Argus in Betoota Heights.
Facing a future without social media’s considered yet unethusiatic handjob, Mr Overell said The Advocate will simply find a way to keep going.
“If we have to go back to growing cannabis in the old print room then so be it,” he said.
“God forbid journalists will have to work a bit harder in this country.”
More to come.
