catch all

Why bother with newspapers, if this is all they offer? ... Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits—a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage.

Hunter S Thompson, 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas' (1971)