Helen Parish blog

steven · Tennis legend

RE: Helen Parish blog

Ratty · County player

Yes, I agree, that article is truly atrocious, on so many levels. To use a technical term, it is just utter crap.

But although the Press & Journal presumably pays its "journalists", I doubt whether it pays very much. Journalism as a career has been in decline for many years.

Maybe (ha!) I'm being harsh, but I find HP's efforts a bit "high school essay". A blogger should (I think) be either snappy and opinionated, or learned and in-depth. She is neither - at least at the moment.

Sorry.

SMC1809 · All-time great

You can please some of the people all of the time....

But you can never please Ratty. smile

indiana · Tennis legend

I agree Helen's "Tennis parents" article is not exactly controversial ( though in some other articles she has been quite prepared to be pretty far from supporting the establishment ), but as I have found with all her blog articles I have read I found it a good worthwhile read.

She can be quite wordy but gets away with it by actually really good writing, and I like a player who can write like that and give personal insights which vary depending on the article.

Bloggers clearly can be snappy and opinionated ( and I find she can be quite opinionated ) or learned and in-depth ( she's fairly in-depth and learned in that she speaks as a player ). But each will have a style. Some readers may take to it, some may not and that's fair enough. I can like good snappy. But all I know is, for me, I do like Helen's articles, which I find very well written and interesting, in that while they can be quite long I do want to keep reading. If your general high school essayist is writing anything like as well as this, I am very impressed with the rise in standards.

Good stuff.

As to the Press and Journal item, what a wretched article ! You can tear it apart from so many angles and I started to but it's not worth the effort.

steven · Tennis legend

Helen's first blog post/essay for a while at http://wp.me/p1fYzB-7W tells the story of the last few months, the latest serious setback and how, ever resourceful, she is doing her best to deal with it.

The gist of it won't be particularly new if you follow her on twitter, but it adds a fair bit of detail to her tweets of the last few weeks and will probably strike a chord with other players who have seemingly faded away for much longer than seemed likely when their original injury came to light and then sometimes reappeared as if out of nowhere.

You have to admire her determination (well, you don't have to, but I certainly do!) and I hope we see her back on the circuit one day, able to give it a proper go. After all, even if does take 3-4 years to recover fully, 25 is the new 20 in pro tennis, so why not! smile

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I didn't reply to Ratty's post back in April because indiana had already said most of the stuff I wanted to say. Seeing this thread again, I am inclined to agree with Ratty that Helen's posts have the character of a high school essay (perhaps not surprisingly, since she isn't that long out of high school) rather than that of a typical blog, though as indiana says, if all 'high school essayists' write as well as this, there must have been a mind-boggling rise in standards recently!

Where I disagree with Ratty is with the implication that this (the middle ground between 'snappy and opinionated' and 'learned and in depth', if you like) is a bad thing.

I know it is not 'en vogue' at the moment to see all sides of a story and to put opinions across in a relatively gentle, logical way (as opposed to making them scream out of the page), but personally I prefer it to the style of some journalism these days. Indeed, I try to write like that myself on the rare occasions when I have enough thinking time to get things clear in my head.

Like indiana, I also don't mind 'wordy' (you can probably think of a good reason why we'd both say that, admittedly, but at least we're consistent! wink ) if the writing is really good and coherent - I find it much easier to read a long, well-structured piece in decent English than, for example, a much shorter piece with too many loose ends, unsubstantiated opinions and English so bad that it distracts from what is being said. (I hasten to add that I am not saying that with anyone here in mind!)

* mini-rant ends *

-- Edited by steven on Wednesday 16th of November 2011 08:15:05 AM

steven · Tennis legend

The first blog post from Helen for a while, but well worth a read, especially if you know someone with M.E. who has difficulty explaining what it's all about - she explains it all a lot better than most sufferers with complex, 'non-obvious' illnesses often manage - not an easy thing to do at all when you're the person affected by something like this.

http://bit.ly/J7rpLv

The pun in the title is worthy of this forum, I'm sad to say wink

Jan · Hall of fame

Thanks Steven - Helen writes in a style that's easy to read, yet includes all sorts of useful and sometimes complicated information. Very helpful.
I'm glad to hear that she's making progress - good luck to her!

steven · Tennis legend

There is a good article at http://bit.ly/17yaKHP about what Helen has had to deal with over the last few years and her progress to date as she starts to play again.

Despite the odd howler (eg. it describes her physio as also being one of her hitting partners), it is pretty accurate by local paper standards. The ad underneath it is kind of appropriate too - probably by coincidence, but who knows