There is something in the power debate around the message, the medium and the voice that came to my mind when I read a four-word entry by AA Gill (one of my favourite writers) on the www.TravelIntelligence.com site. The review, of Jaipur India's marvelous Rajvilas Hotel, reads: "Phenomenal place, very luxurious", which, having been there myself, is all one really needs to say. The question, of course, is - is it enough to say only four words? It seems to be if you're AA Gill. I have bashed out over 600 words on the Rajvilas and published them in The Cape Times newspaper, but have no illusion that my 600 come anywhere close in weightiness to his four.
Do we (wearing my publicist's hat now) bestow this kind of power on journalists by the way we treat them in general and some key ones in particular or, as I suspect, is there unspoken agreement, some secret cabal amongst journalists themselves that determines the pecking order?
What is the elixir that magically gives one journo more power than the medium he represents? What is it about say, Barry Ronge, that makes him so powerful? At first glance the fact that he is visible across three media types around the same topic seems to be the answer - his expert status is created by being seen (in many media) to be expert. Does the same apply to AA Gill. I know he writes for The Sunday Times and GQ magazine as well as Vanity Fair so, is it the notion of celebrity, that gives him the power to write four words on a topic or, as I suspect, was his stay at Rajvilas at the behest of another medium where he wrote more extensively about the experience whilst his epithet on Travel Intelligence is merely an exercise in making himself grand by saying a big thing in the smallest way?