About me

The job of the newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

This pithy piece of prose got me thinking about why we write and the job of journalism where politics meets the media.

In fact, the quotation from which this blog takes its name turns out to come from a satirical source, that of Dunne’s Mr. Dooley:

“Th newspaper does ivrything f’r us. It runs th’ polis foorce an’ th’ banks, commands th’ milishy, controls th’ ligislachure, baptizes th’ young, marries th’ foolish, comforts th’ afflicted, afflicts th’ comfortable, buries th’ dead an’ roasts thim aftherward.”

Well, my ambitions are slightly more modest…

Andrew Bradley
June 2008