The Record’s Desmond piece was an insult to all readers, not just Celtic fans.

The desperate Daily Record produced one of the most ludicrous clickbait articles I have seen in a long time yesterday, in an effort to get Celtic fans clicking on their dire content. I say that as someone who has spoken at length about the worthless tone of a lot of the content produced by that paper and other outlets.

Even by their standards this one scraped the bottom of the barrel so hard you could almost hear it. The article in question involved Celtic shareholder Dermot Desmond.

There is nothing about it that does not stink like a fish left to rot under a radiator.

Let us start with the headline:

“Dermot Desmond breaks Celtic cover in secret Cheltenham cameo that TV cameras missed.”

Celtic’s name appears in that headline for one purpose only; to make Celtic supporters believe the story is relevant to the club. It is not.

Dermot Desmond attended the Cheltenham Festival. That is the entire story. There is no connection to Celtic whatsoever.

The headline itself is nonsense even before you get to the content.

What exactly is a secret Cheltenham cameo?

What does that even mean?

Desmond attended Cheltenham. That is it.

Where is the secret?

Was he in disguise? Did he sneak in under cover of darkness?

Why call it a cameo?

The word comes from theatre. It refers to a well known actor appearing briefly in a small role, often in a single scene. It does not apply to businessmen turning up at social events.

This is a national newspaper forcing words together like some cheap AI generator and hoping something vaguely coherent falls out the other end.

The article also makes much of the fact that TV cameras missed the appearance.

Well, of course they did.

Do you know how many people attend the Cheltenham Festival?

Tens of thousands.

The cameras probably missed ninety nine percent of them because the people operating those cameras are not tasked with scanning the crowd for random businessmen.

Unless someone is genuinely famous or relevant to the broadcast, they are not going to be singled out. Dermot Desmond may consider himself extremely important – he clearly does. But in the grand scheme of things, he is not important enough for television cameras to be searching him out in a crowd.

If a presenter had suddenly pointed him out on screen and said, “That is Dermot Desmond,” most viewers would have had absolutely no idea who he was or why they should care.

The article then continues with another gem.

“Celtic principal shareholder Dermot Desmond has made a rare public appearance at the Cheltenham Festival.”

Again, what does that even mean?

A rare public appearance? Is Desmond some sort of reclusive super villain hiding in a mountain lair? Does he never leave the house? Does he not attend dinners, meetings, business events or social gatherings?

Here is the more likely explanation.

Dermot Desmond is out in public all the time. The Daily Record considers these appearances rare because when he goes out in public most people simply do not notice or care and why anyone should care here is beyond me.

Nobody gives a toss what Dermot Desmond does in his personal time. His private life is none of my business and it certainly is not news.

A more honest headline might have been something like:

“Rich businessman attends social event with other rich businessmen.”

The reason they did not write that headline is obvious.

Nobody would click on it.

The media industry is currently in crisis. If the problem is not AI generated nonsense flooding the internet, it is endless streams of low quality junk like this.

The internet is full of it.

Tons of good content is buried under that avalanche. Advertising revenues are collapsing. Newsrooms are shrinking. Outlets are closing. Journalists are losing their jobs.

If you happen to work at the Daily Record and you are worried about the future of the industry, you might want to walk past the desk of the journalist who wrote this and ask him what he thinks he is doing.

You might also want to knock on the editor’s door and ask the same question.

Those are the people putting your industry out of work. These are the people burning once credible titles to the ground. They are doing it by publishing pointless garbage like this.

When the day finally arrives where the mainstream media is reduced to churning out hundreds of low value articles a day just to stay visible online, those responsible should not wonder how it happened.

They should look in the mirror. That is where they will find the answer.

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