Is journalism about truth or marketing? If you picked the former, go back three spaces.
Journalism, as it is practised for the most part today, is about packaging, framing and distributing information to match the world views and ideological biases of distinct target markets. But don’t take my word for it. (more…)
As the ABC mulls the falling ratings for its flagship 730 current affairs show, it might want to consider whether the problem isn’t so much the presenter or the physical set or the stories – but the conventional television narratives that have become so hackneyed that no-one can be bothered paying attention anymore.
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Why go into journalism? The industry that employs you is in decline, the on-the-job training is virtually non-existent, the business model is broken, the hours are long, the work involves endless and mindless churning of pregurgitated material, and the pay is lousy. Most of the population rate you just above used car salesmen and now the major media companies are farming off jobs to sweatshops.
Yet people are spending more time with news than ever as the technology that enables the creation, distribution and reception of news grows every more sophisticated. It’s just that no-one can work out how to make money out of it. (more…)
What do we think of the political media in Australia? Obviously there are some great individuals out there working as journalists, but the overwhelming impression of political journalists and editors – as expressed by an admittedly narrow section of the Twitterverse in a very non-scientific poll – is interesting. (more…)
What is news anyway? Young journalists are told it’s what’s new, noteworthy or unusual. It’s something that prompts an “oh, really?” response. You usually know it when you see it. But to be deemed as news, events needed to pass a certain bar. These days, though, they must be setting the bar particularly low. (more…)
Over at Club Troppo, Don Arthur has run a post titled ‘The Blogosphere’s Delusions of Grandeur’, regurgitating the now ritual meme that pits the apocryphal self-aggrandising blogger in pyjamas (usually venting about the meeja) against the hard-working professional investigative journalist risking everything for his readers. (more…)
The first the Australian public heard of the now infamous Say Yes television advertisement on climate change action was when The Sunday Telegraph told its readers that “Carbon Cate” Blanchett had “sparked outrage in the community” by fronting a campaign that no-one had actually seen at that point. (more…)
The Australian media is one of the least diverse in the world. At what point does the dominance of a single player become so great that our democracy is at risk? How, at a time of accelerating convergence in media and the slow death of traditional business models, can we encourage a multiplicity of voices while preserving and encouraging press freedom? And why is no-one asking these questions in the mainstream media space?
Do people want the truth, or a dressed up and airbrushed version of the same? The difference in the dollar price between the two is the margin between journalism and public relations. While it shouldn’t surprise anyone that PR costs more than journalism, the hard part these days is distinguishing between the two. (more…)