Completely Half-Baked: Britain's First Artisan Journalismery Opens

"We live in a Post-post-Leveson world," he muses, cupping his b*lls. "People expect their journalism to be fresh, healthy, handmade now. We sell ours at journalism markets - truly horrifying f**kfests which take place in Stoke Newington school playgrounds and attract the very worst kind of smug pram-pushing broadsheet reader."

Why would a band of City high flyers give up properly-paid jobs to become penny-pinching home-based hacks? What drives the men who set up Britain's first artisan journalismery?

In a railway arch in east London (well it wouldn't be anywhere else in Britain, would it?), with egos rumbling everywhere and pitiful ephemera collected from various predictable world travels self-consciously littered about the place like so much quasi-cosmopolitan detritus, Jeremy Fukbaskaets plunges his hands onto a laptop computer.

He's starting a process that - four hours from now - will result in a crushingly p*ss-poor feature for some magazine or website or something that simply needn't have ever been typed in the first place. "It's alchemy," he says, with wonder in his eyes.

This cabal of young guns have inexplicably given up careers with levels of remuneration commensurate to their qualifications and swapped it all for a laughably underpaid calling: journalism.

They're up with the foxes, slaving away to craft content people seldom even bother to read properly - let alone digest and give anything approaching a sh*t about. The air here is thick with the smell of half-baked journalism.

'I've been playing Draw Something all morning," coughs Jeremy Fukbaskaets, the group's swaggering leader. "I was trying to draw "Gary Numan's c*ck". That's the best material you're ever going to get for a colour piece right there.'

Fukbaskaets puts his iPhone down and perches on an Ottoman like a heron, scratching his chin as he ponders. He sits totally naked ('I find it freeing') and behind him on the wall is a poster for the sitcom 2 Broke Girls.

"Our story, this one, is just the kind of Godawful tosh that out-of-steam features editors absolutely adore," he smiles.

"You know - when someone starts making ANYTHING in London by hand. I have a friend who keeps a herd of cows in his studio flat. He's setting up an artisan yoghurt business - when he's not busy developing his cloud-based bicycle basket rating app, of course!"

Every morning Fukbaskaets and his asinine friends rise early and use the finest ingredients and sources to make their journalism. The end result is thus thoroughly overpriced.

"We live in a post-post-Leveson world," he muses, cupping his b*lls. "People expect their journalism to be fresh, healthy, handmade now. We sell ours at journalism markets - truly horrifying f**kfests which take place in Stoke Newington school playgrounds and attract the very worst kind of smug pram-pushing broadsheet reader." He winks: "People, in fact, like you and I."

It's not just journalism either. "It's not just journalism either," says Fukbaskaets, snapping shut this month's issue of Wired magazine with a flourish. "The artisanal movement is sweeping across the media landscape like a fart on a tennis court."

Fukbaskaets' girlfriend - human-to-digital conduit (and blogger) Oulu Franchester-Hellcombe - recently set up a community management night market in Dalston where you can buy community management from a dozen al fresco stalls as a DJ plays in the background.

Fukbaskaets playfully offers me a syringe of heroin. "Organic; straight from my Turkish friends on Green Lanes," he smiles. I decline.

He shoots up and slides into his own personal oblivion. I leave through the first floor window, shaking my head.

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