the laughs are pain, transmuted
it's a nicer way of saying tragedy + time = comedy
This edition’s subject line, “the laughs are pain, transmuted,” is from James Parker’s review of Comedy Book, by Vulture comedy critic and podcast host Jesse David Fox.
To celebrate the launch of my new monthly comedy night in north London, Good News / Bad News, I’d like to offer you, my loyal reader, a free ticket - just use this link! “It promises to be achingly topical, astutely well-observed and damn funny,” says the Camdenist, and Londonist reckons it’s one the best things to do next week. What are you waiting for?!
Hello hello,
How are you? I mean, really?
Are you avoiding the news? You are not alone - there’s a whole book coming out about that in December.
I’ve been thinking about news avoidance a lot over the past few years, and I’ve been practising it quite a lot too, not on purpose. It’s the unspoken scary thing in the newsroom when you’re talking about audience (which is all the time in digital journalism), and it’s a way of taking back control of our screentime. At one end of the spectrum, it’s ‘monk mode’.
At the other end, it’s, well… it’s working in digital journalism. Professional doomscrolling. Coming up with news ideas on the nightbus into work because your shift starts so damn early. Emailing stories you’ve spotted on social into the newsdesk in the evening, because the skeleton news crew might have missed it, and you could get some of the credit. It can be difficult to stand out from the crowd of other journalists doing shifts alongside you in the early years of your career, so you do what you can to remain memorable to the editor so you get booked again… maybe you’ll even get a job with a little security one day…
You’re a long way from your audience in digital journalism, so the newsroom goes to a lot of trouble to decode their wants and needs, investing in software like Chartbeat, or creating their own in-house analytics like The Guardian’s Ophan. Whenever you’re reding a story, particularly from a big news website, they’re reading you back. How did you come to this story? Social, search, newsletter, a link in another story etc…? How far down are you reading? Where are you clicking away, after that second photo? Let’s try moving it… What’s doing well on the front page? That’s old now, put a video story in its place…
The analytics are beamed up onto a number of big boards and TV screens throughout the newsroom, so everyone can see what’s whose stories are working and why, plus staffers should be able to log in and see for themselves on their screen of choice. Unfortunately, there is a Chartbeat app, which can lead to full-on addiction for some writers… when you’re checking it in the pub at after-work drinks, that’s… normal. When you’re checking it during more special times… have a word with yourself.
Smash cut to me comparing digital audiences to the instant feedback of live audiences when doing stand-up. I’m doing a lot of comedy about news at the moment (do come and see a WIP of my solo show Doomscrolling in London this month!), and I’m asking other people to do it as well (the aforementioned Good News / Bad News nights).
The power that comedy and journalism have in common is that of building the audience’s conception of the world. I’m unlikely to make it to all 195 countries of the world in my life, but I’ve probably edited news stories from most of them in my career, especially when I was at AP. I get to build up a tiny idea of what a place is like, or a person, and that’s my idea of it, no matter how true it is to the whole place or the person as a whole, or not. I read these stories this one time and now this is what I think of a place unless another story tells me otherwise.
Comedy has the power to do the same thing; arguably, it’s more powerful than journalism because it doesn’t have to stick to the facts. It just has to make the audience laugh. If anything else happens - they think, reappraise, see another side to the subject - well that’s a bonus. Comedy is ridiculous, but there’s so much about the news that is even more, because it’s has to try, on the whole, to be serious. That seriousness can verge on pompousness, which is what The Day Today and Brass Eye skewer so well.
And there’s the experience of sitting down and watching love comedy that isn’t ‘monk mode’ but is the opposite to doomscrolling - you shouldn’t want to check your phone in a good comedy show (emergencies, care-giving duties and the like excepted), and the comedian sure as hell won’t let you get away with it. So the only input you’re getting is from the show going on in front of you. You can take it in. You’re there to have a laugh, to change how you feel, just for a few hours - but maybe the effects will last longer?
I guess that’s why I’m putting so much comedy about the news and how it works out there into the world right now. Although I do think that no subject is off-limits for comedy, I do ask the acts to choose the news stories they’ll bring sensitively, and I do the same. The news and generally being online right now feels overwhelming for a number of reasons, so can we find a way to cope with it? I’m giving comedy as an answer right now… let’s see if it helps.
News might be the first draft of history, but comedy is the first draft of opinion, so we may as well make it a bunch of fun ones, no?
* these captions are all damned lies, sorry… except for the anti-Cyclops vibe one, it is NOT COOL, okay? Cyclopes need love too.
Links of the week / month / indeterminate amount of time it takes me to send another newsletter
Hear from one of the stars of the launch night of Good News / Bad News, Mitzi Fitz (a played by my comedian / clown / cabaret star pal, Posey Mehta):
On comedy, context and building trust with an audience, from comedy writer Joel Morris’s excellent substack:
“What an amazing ability, to be able to travel through time, to inhabit the different moments of one life simultaneously, to be both then and now. We often marvel when we watch the minds of children develop, but the degenerating brain tosses out fireworks of the soul.”
What comedy things I’m up to:
Launching Good New / Bad News on Tues 7th Nov: you’re invited!
Writing on Have I Got News For You next week
I’ve got Doomscrolling WIPs coming up too:
20th Nov at Camden Comedy Club
That’s all from me, enjoy this sunny Sunday if you’re in London, and thanks for reading x