ABC
Talk is Cheap
Our public broadcaster is our most trusted source of news. So why does it spend so much time and money chasing cheap and predictable opinions from a small group of people who have plenty of other places to bang their tin drums?
Profession
FEIJOA Awards, 2012
Good journalists are troublemakers. They ask questions that others feel too uncomfortable to ask. They ignore the spin and seek inspiration from something other than the prefabricated fodder that forms the foundation of 90% of the PR masquerading as news that you see in the media most days.
With that in mind, it gives me great pleasure to announce the second annual F.E.I.J.O.A awards (The Failed Estate International Journalism Awards), sponsored by ________ (insert non-compromising and appropriate commercial enterprise here). (more…)
Business Models
Dawn of the Dead
Breaking news: The news business isn’t dead. But that’s not because the news business was ever alive on its own terms. It’s because news was never a business. In fact, the idea that you can make a living out of news is a dream that many people have yet to wake up from.
Journalists leaving the industry – and there are hordes right now walking the streets like extras in a George Romero movie – talk up the prospect of setting up collectives that “sell” breaking news directly. The truth is, however, the audience isn’t buying. People won’t pay for general news. They never have….directly anyway. (more…)
Books
Down to the Crossroads
Hundreds of young people in Australia enter communication degrees each year in anticipation of securing jobs in journalism that no longer exist. How must that make a journalism educator like Margaret Simons feel?
Well, not as depressed as you might think. In fact, as the title of her new book attests (‘Journalism at the Crossroads: Crisis and Opportunity for the Press‘), Simons – the director of the Centre for Advanced Journalism at the University of Melbourne – paints a tentatively hopeful picture of the future of the craft which has been her living for most of her life. (more…)
Government Policy and Regulation
Chest Beaters
ABC
Going Analog
It is less than 20 years ago that the US financial news organisation I then worked for started asking journalists to put an email address at the bottom of every story. I remember snorting at the presumption that our readers were as nerdish as our tech-head editor in Washington.
Move on two decades and we find journalists doing the bulk of their work over the internet – through research, finding contacts, sourcing background, remote editing and doing interviews. Technology has transformed the craft from one-to-many publishing to many-to-many. But for all the ease that digital newsgathering has provided, there is still something to be said for getting out from behind the screen and into the analog world. (more…)
Government Policy and Regulation
Freedom from the Press
- “There is common ground among all those who think seriously about the role of the news media and about journalistic ethics that a free press plays an essential role in a democratic society, and no regulation should endanger that role”: Opening words of the 468-page report of the independent inquiry into the media by former Federal Court Judge Ray Finkelstein.
- Labor Plan to Control the Media: Headline on Australian Financial Review’s front page splash on the Finkelstein report the following day.
Craft Standards
Groundhog Days
Just back from the US, where alongside the endless Republican primary circus and The Madonna of the Superbowl Festival, the media was preoccupied by Groundhog Day, in which the likely length of winter is prognosticated by a rodent.It seemed strangely familiar.
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ABC
Market Farces
As with everything in Australian politics these days, debate over the federal government’s media inquiry has become just another coat-hanger on which ideologues of every stripe can drape their off-the-rack worldviews. It’s why we’re hearing market forces are the fix for dodgy journalism.
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Blogging
Waiting for the Feature
It’s 11pm at a Coffs Harbour sports club. The lone gambler is $400 down and still waiting for the feature. This particular poker machine, The King of the Nile (pictured), is his favourite. When the coveted 15-free-games feature appears – all too infrequently – any winnings are trebled. Even better, Read more…