The Guardian Gogarty Gaffe

There's been an almighty hoo-ha on the Guardian's website this weekend over a travel blog. Max Gogarty is a 19-year-old embarking on a gap year trip to Thailand. The Guardian thought it would be a good idea to let him document his journey in a weekly blog. The readership thought otherwise.

Firstly the many dissenting comments felt that young Max had fuck all to say. Then someone spotted that he was obviously the son of a Guardian writer (his dad is actually a freelancer who has had articles in the Guardian amongst other publications). If you read the piece it's dull as fuck pish, but the newspaper seems stunned that it launched hundreds of furious comments.

This is just the nature of the internet. I've said before if Charles Dickens or Albert Einstein had blogs on the Guardian's website, within ten minutes five folk would be on calling them plums.

This is Max's blog entry here. This is the travel editor's response to the many, many comments saying the Guardian's standards have slipped dramatically. Finally the editor sums the situation up.

The other odd thing about it is that Max writes 'bits' for Channel 4's yoof drama Skins. Inexplicably the url includes the words 'skins_blog'. The travel editor says this was a working title he forgot to change and in no way was it a plug for Skins. Why the fuck would you use it to save the piece if you didn't want to link the two?

Anyway here's a round up of forums and such discussing it.