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From Citizen Kane to Citizen Mayne
Ten years ago, online publisher Crikey under then owner Stephen Mayne fought a fruitless battlewith the Howard government to win access to the budget lock-up in Canberra. Despite producing what was...
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Mad Tax
July 1, 2012: The day the insanity began. Towns deserted. Streets no longer safe. The Carbon Tax appeared to have destroyed every semblance of civilization. No-one stood in its way. Except one man.His...
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News Values
The gnashing of teeth in print journalism about how to save the industry is understandable. But like a shipwrecked crew on a melting iceberg, the victims might spend less time wishing for a change in...
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Chest Beaters
Noticed how everyone is a passionate champion for "freedom" nowadays? In fact, among Australia's pinstriped and share optioned media executives, there is more chest beating on this subject than in a...
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Future Shockers
"Prediction is very difficult, particularly about the future." Journalists would do well to keep in mind that aphorism from influential Danish physicist Nils Bohr when quoting "experts" about the...
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The Murdochratic State
Anyone beguiled by appeals by the Murdoch press in Australia for the defence of "freedom" against the Leviathan of the state needs to read Tom Watson's 'Dial M for Murdoch' - a forensic examination of...
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Typecast
Cast your mind back 17 years. A Reuters journalist prepared a report on the jobs data. loaded his script on the autocue, turned on his TV lights, positioned the ISDN camera, loaded his DIY graphics...
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Groundhog News
News is what's new. At least that's the traditional definition. But in the case of a heavily concentrated Australian mainstream media, news is defined by the same half-dozen issues constantly rehashed...
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Springtime of the Peoples
For a group where lip-curling cynicism is the mask of choice, journalists sure seem to have gone all hand-on-heart, high-falutin'. It's impossible to read an editorial these days without being slapped...
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Estate of the Nation
If it hadn't been Grog's Gamut, it would have been someone else. The unmasking of the popular political blogger by The Australian newspaper in 2010 served in retrospect as the moment when blogging in...
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Blinkered
Journalists, even the good ones, are perhaps one of the last groups one should seek the counsel of in the debate over media regulation. It's like asking a policeman about who should investigate...
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Old Angry Men
Call it the Grumpy Old Man business model. At a time when our busted mainstream media are axing the jobs of hundreds of hard-working journalists, the market for menopausal male misogynistsin print and...
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For Whom the Bell Trolls
The professional bullies of talkback radio and the tabloid terrorsphereare bellyaching about trolls on Twitter. This is like Bernie Madoffcondemning shoplifting or BPticking off householders for...
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March of the News Bots
In financial markets, there is a debate about the influence of program-driven trading systems in which complex algorithms working at lightning speed seek to take advantage of microscopic movements in...
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Talking Back to the Wireless
A long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, people would sit in their lounge-rooms listening to the news on the wireless. The rounded and reassuring tones of a voice-of-god announcer would...
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News Judgement Fail
Global media:Local media:One principle in journalism is that the closer you are to a story, the less likely you are to see it. It's why wire services rotate people around the world. Journalists who...
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Ordinary People?
“Grandma, tell me about the Great Cyber War. What was it like?" “Well, dear, on top of hill were the well-armed, but rapidly depleting mainstream media corps defending their turf to the death, or at...
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Contesting the News
The fierce debate over perceptions of Julia Gillard's parliamentary speech on sexism - the press gallery take versus the public one - has touched a nerve among journalists for a simple reason. It has...
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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...
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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...
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