The brand identity page of the teaser site for Factual includes a list of f-words defining a new scientific journalism. You see, by separating the opinionated goats from the factual sheep we can magically return News to the People, or something of the kind, and all for only 50 euros, Sir. Unfortunately Arcadi or his blurb writer chose to add gravitas by straying abroad, so that, coming in at no 5, we get

Faction … Del inglés fact (hecho). No ficción, en oposición a la fiction (ficción).

Well, no. “Faction” actually refers to the fictionalising of facts–generally discredited in the Anglocabrón news media, and diametrically opposite to Arcadi’s purported intent. A serious journalist would have looked it up in a dictionary or slipped 100€ to someone like me or Peter Harvey in order to cover his brand’s ass and his investment. So it looks like plus ça change etc etc.

(I didn’t look that up because, as you probably know, the future isn’t in serious or in professional journalism.)

Tags: Arcadi Espada, English, Factual, journalism, language, Media, sheep, spanglish, Spanish, translation
Categories: Les bourgeois

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1. “el Primo”
   November 23rd 2009 19:54

   And what were you expecting from this bunch of illiterate pawns?

2. Trevor
   November 23rd 2009 20:21

   You’re not the guy’s biggest fan, but even you would have helped him not shoot himself in the testicles on this one.

3. JM
   November 24th 2009 09:19

   You under-estimate Mr. Espada. He is a Spanish nationalist writing for a Spanish nationalist public, for which purpose a demonstrable ignorance of any other language is a prerequisite.

4. A Nun
   November 24th 2009 11:49

   http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/blogs/elmundopordentro/documentos/bibliografia_faction.html
   I think his sales pitch is, “I’m just as dishonest as the rest, but I’m a great writer.”

5. kalebeul » Factual/fucktual revisited
   November 30th 2009 21:36

   [...] The omens weren’t brilliant, but I wanted to like it. Thing is, there may be good content in there but getting to it is a nightmare–you can’t subscribe to RSS from the homepage, the RSS subscription page doesn’t tell you what each feed contains, you can’t share individual items (with Google Reader at any rate), there’s silly design-led stuff like having to roll-over the minarets to see quotes … and you have to pay. I wish them luck. [...]