The billy’s boiling again over at new media upstart New Matilda, which has whistled out to its readers that it’s back in business (almost) and looking for financial backers. One can only wish them well, given the dire state of journalism emerging from their mainstream cousins.
Crikey remains our only going concern among new media boutique businesses and even then it’s hardly a thriving enterprise. The MSM’s ventures into online news commentary – the ABC via The Drum and News Ltd via The Punch – have made this market a crowded one, raising the question of whether New Matilda could make it as a paying site.
Kim at Lavratus Prodeo ventured that journalists these days are so busy opining about the few events they are reporting on that no-one is actually going out there are breaking news anymore – or at least developing new and different angles on developing stories that shed a fresh light on issues of public interest.
The media’s ping pong commentary last week over the Gillard and Abbott visits to Afghanistan was a case in point. All the cheap opinionating and commentary over questions of mind-numbing insignificance (was Abbott too jetlagged?) crowded out any attempt at proper analysis of the progress of Australia’s war effort and the foreign policy implications of our responsibilities there.
Making a similar point in Crikey (subscriber only) was former Age editor Michael Gawenda, who questioned why the ABC was spending money on an opinion site when it could be investing in real reporting. ABC News Radio, for instance, operates largely as a rip-and-read service with 15-minute repeating headlines on news, sport, finance and the weather. And the huge investment in ABC News 24, the television service, seems to be just spreading the meagre reporting resources ever more thinly.
The fact is that good journalism is built on the exercise of patience – in building contacts, establishing trust, developing understanding of complex issues and providing historical context. There is not an immediate return on investment in this business. But in the long run, the value of a media outlet’s brand reflects the time and money it takes to create the capacity to break news and forge quality analysis that holds readers and viewers and keeps them loyal.
What is happening now is that the new public spaces generated by evolving technology and changes in consumer behaviour are growing at a pace faster than the ability and resources of media organisations like the ABC to generate quality content that does not devalue their brand.
This is why they are all flocking into the “thumb-sucking” opinion market. It’s cheap. It fills all that white space without too much additional effort. And it requires no investment in time, no need to build and maintain contacts, no fiddly research and fact-checking and very little production work.
All that’s needed in Opinion World is for someone to say something provocative that starts an online conversation. Of course, there is a role for this sort of thing. But when everyone in the media has got their thumbs in their mouths, there are no hands free to do the digging that the Fourth Estate was built upon.
4 Comments
Anonymous · October 14, 2010 at 7:10 AM
I wish 'New Matilda' and 'Crikey' well. We certainly need every skerrick of media diversity we can get these days.
As for 'The Drum', what an indulgent waste of time and money that is. There are the apparently obligatory daily “contributions” from the Institute of Public Affairs (yaaaaaawn), the weekly blast from a Coalition MP or two, often a staff-written piece attacking the government and/or giving an easy pass to the Coalition, a smattering of smaller players, plus the regular Bob Ellis piece for leftist “balance”.
And that's the articles. The bulk of comments come from partisan activists and seat-polishers whose handles and biases are all too grindingly familiar to anyone who's browsed the bog, sorry, blog, more than a couple of times.
If it were up to me I'd bang The Drum closed, and the News24 channel too. Even if you don't know what the news of the day is, you so know that when you watch the news channel it will be the conservative slant that predominates, the coverage often supplemented by some Coalition MP or staffer, or other right wing shill scheduled in for “commentary”.
Well stuff that. If I desired a conservative slant in the media I consume I'd read the OO or listen to talkback or watch Channel 9. I shouldn't have the same torpid ideological bias foist upon me from the public broadcaster that I can get in abundance from the commercial media.
The ABC is required by its Charter to complement the commercial offerings, and to provide a quality service – not copycat the commercials with ever crasser, lowbrow rubbish.
Anonymous · October 14, 2010 at 8:52 AM
We think we are too busy, but we really are too lazy. We are too lazy to think for ourselves; so we stand idly by while the commercials and the ABC reduce their news and increase their mindless opinions.
I agree that we should save the resources wasted on The Drum and ABC24 and use them to improve the provision of news.
Love your work, Mr Denmore. Thank you.
Stop Murdoch · October 15, 2010 at 12:06 PM
Some of these Australians lamenting the state of journalism in this country wouldn't be short of a buck.
What would happen if the self-funded retirees and lefty academics who lament the state of journalism in this country put their money where their mouth is and started their own local news publications and local radio stations? End of their worlds?
David Jull does a credible job running the Logan City FM community radio 101.1 fm Brisbane, (Deep South of Brisbane, in more sense than one!)
Of course, you are absolutely right. When true journalism stops, old fashioned 'fascism' takes over.
The fourth estate needs to get its sh1t together and stand up to Ray's “carpet-walkers” not just because that's their job, but because the rest of us need them to do their job properly.
Andrew Elder · October 17, 2010 at 4:53 AM
If you're going to insist that journalism stays focused on non-news, it doesn't matter how few or many “journalists” there are generating non-news.
All you can do from a blog is treat journalism like any other service: insist on high standards and cane so-called professionals who don't deliver. Journalists laugh at pollies, business leaders and sportsmen who can't cop scrutiny, but the emergence of a critical mass of media consumers has the journosphere spooked.
Old-school editors/managers can harrumph all they like and insist that old ways were best – remember when you could spend all day at the pub, make two or three calls from the pub payphone, then ring a typist and slur a few grammatically perfect paragraphs down the line, then head back home on the tram and do it all again the following day? That's not much different to blogging really.
Journos must lift their game, and an insistence that a return to old ways is all that's needed simply won't do. You can't complain about trivia while producing more of it, and then complain that others are pointing out how trivial you are and calling them thumbsuckers. Journos have sown the wind of sensationalism, now you're reaping the whirlwind: whether others have opinions, suck their thumbs or whatever is not your concern.
You've gotta do what you can with what you have. Stop being trivial, stop doing the things that led people to realise they can do without you (I think you call it “journalistic traditions”, “Fourth Estate” or some other nonsense like that).