Journalism

Take a look at my bookshelf:

Judging from the available space, any books purchased after 2013 will need to be stored in the fridge.

You can see why an electronic book reader might appeal. I’m a serious book lover so have had some resistance to the idea of an e-reader. But I bought an Amazon Kindle late last year and have now been using it – alongside regular books – for about three months. I know the world needs another kindle review like it needs another Britney Spears crotch shot, but I feel obliged because I promised on twitter that I’d share my thoughts after I’d given the kindle a decent workout.

Continue reading "Well readhead: Take a look at my bookshelf" »

Our website The Punch is banning reader comments which contain words typed in all capitals. Why? Because they’re REALLY ANNOYING.

They not only LOOK HORRIBLE but they’re often a substitute for REASONED ARGUMENT. This is because they are generally employed by people who, rather than fleshing out their point, resort to SHOUTING AT EACH OTHER.

The rise of the internet and the explosion in online discussion on social media and on news and opinion sites has, by and large, been a terrific thing for democracy. For far too long journalists were allowed to fancy their output as being as sacred and unchallengeable as the tablet brought down from upon high.

Continue reading "Why we’re BANNING reader comments in SILLY capitals" »

IF you’ve been following the tech media this week, you’ll know that Google is in hot water over one of the most serious privacy breaches in its history.

You’ll likely have heard that Google launched a new product, called Google Buzz,  that was meant to create a social network out of its email users.

And that major privacy flaws in the product led to abusive men getting access to the details of their ex wives, political activists finding their contacts made public for investigators to peruse and journalists having their sources “outed”. I’m one of those journalists.

Continue reading "How Google managed to reveal my sources" »

There’s two words the British press love above all others. Two little words. One phrase. Love Rat.

Fleet Street hacks – most of who look a bit like the latter and don’t get enough of the former – have been frothing for nearly a fortnight over the England football captain’s affair with a teammate’s partner.

There have been more than 2,000 newspaper stories about the John Terry sex scandal - 500 more than those that mentioned the Prime Minister Gordon Brown. A Google search of John Terry + love rat brings up more than 4,300 results. It would seem like overkill but to be fair to the easily-titillated British public, the story has absolutely had it all.

Continue reading "Postcard from London: everyone loves a love rat" »

Note: This Well Readhead entry by Leigh serves as an introduction to the special one-off piece she has filed, which is published directly below.

I may be telepathic. I can foresee what will appear in this year’s Christmas Day package on the 7pm ABC news - a grab from the Catholic Archbishop, a grab from the Anglican archbishop, shots of the homeless being served lunch at a shelter, shots of kids unwrapping presents if the reporter’s lined up a family early.

There could well be vision from Bethlehem of a Nativity re-enactment. The Pope in St Peter’s Square obviously. If the journalist gets really lucky, there might be some quirky sidebar such as a surfing Santa or a dog that can bark jingle bells.  And call me crazy, but I’m going to predict that on Christmas Eve on Channel Ten, the price of prawns will be skyrocketing.

Every journalist knows that there are certain stories that show up annually on the assignments board.  They’re so formulaic, the packages are almost identical from year to year: Australia Day, Anzac Day, the Easter Show (cue reporter piece-to-camera on a sideshow ride) and New Year’s Eve (Sydney’s fireworks are always the best in the world). 

Continue reading "Well readhead: breathing life into anniversary journalism" »

The Defence Department posted this image from Afghanistan on its website on Tuesday. As you can see, the faces of the Australian soldiers were obscured.

For security reasons, we have decided to also obscure the faces of the Afghans in the photo.

The Defence Department released this photo along with a media release, which explained the men pictured were village elders and religious leaders of Chenartu, north-east of Tarin Kowt. The photo shows the Afghans laughing and getting on well with members of Australia’s Special Operations Task Group as they engage with Afghan communities across Oruzgan province.

Continue reading "First casualty of war is truth, closely followed by logic" »

A journalist has written a story complaining newspaper stories are too long.

He says people like their stories short. Punchy. That’s why newspapers are dying, he says. That’s why the internet is alive.

The story was written by Michael Kinsley. A columnist for The Atlantic. Mr Kinsley complains that a 1,456 word report in The New York Times, on Obama’s health reforms, was too long. Mr Kinsley’s article, complaining about journalistic “verbiage”, ran to 1,940 words.

Continue reading "The new internet vomit" »

I don’t get out much. I work from home and, generally, I sleep at home too. I seem to have lived the life of a butterfly in reverse, a few decade of delicate and delicious socialising, followed by a quite decade in my cocoon.

I’m not the only person who doesn’t get out much, mind, there’s quite a few, and in the northern hemisphere they often gather around the Guardian campfire and comment on the cricket as it happens on the OBO (over-by-over report).

Truth be told, the Guardian’s OBO isn’t just about what’s happening out on the pitch, it is like a potted philosophy of everything, with a particular preference for wit and that peculiar form of gloom that seems to descend over English cricket supporters even if they are six hundred runs ahead with two days to bowl the opposition out.

Continue reading "Real-time cricket writer who keeps the spirit of the game" »

Last night The Punch took a flight from Canberra to Melbourne and settled in for a viewing of Qantas’ in-flight news bulletin provided by Channel Nine.

Slowly recovering my obligatory takeoff fear of dying next to some guy in a Ralph Lauren t-shirt and blond tips in his hair, it occurred to me that the entire bulletin had not mentioned the biggest news story of the last few days: the failed terrorist attack aboard the Northwest Airlines flight to Detroit.

Absolutely nothing was reported in an almost half hour long broadcast about a failed terrorist attack aboard a passenger plane which a little group called Al-Qaeda have now claimed responsibility for. A story that still commanded high priority during their national news broadcasts that evening.

This wasn’t some shocking editorial oversight by a confused news editor, rather it’s very intentional Qantas policy not to inform it’s passengers of airline disaster related news stories.

Continue reading "Do we need to know about terrorism while in the air?" »

The turmoil of the opposition leadership spill made Parliament House an eventful place to be for a press photographer. But it has become harder than ever to satisfy the appetite of the news-hungry populace, as the increased bureaucracy is madder than ever.

The feuding within the Liberal Party highlighted the antiquated and ridiculous rules that dictate where photographers and TV cameramen can go and what they can shoot at any given time.

In an attempt to deliver a professional product to our millions of readers and viewers, we were forced to break all the rules, and it has got us into all sorts of trouble.

Continue reading "Shooting Turnbull’s end: how you almost missed it" »

There has been a lot of giddiness and hoopla surrounding the use of Twitter by journalists to cover the leadership ructions in the Liberal Party this past fortnight. It certainly made for high-energy reading – with its rawness and immediacy, it made the readers feel as if they were there as journalists passed on factoids from the mayhem and provided links to news and analysis of running events.

The downside of course was that it also gave tweeting journalists the ability to be 100 per cent wrong in real time – and I include myself among their number – where rumour and conjecture was shot into cyberspace, sending frantic packs of gallery journalists sprinting down corridors searching for a reputed Julie Bishop press conference, to find nothing but a Coke machine.

This real-time dissemination of both fact and fiction is an issue for the political parties head of next year’s election, where any degree of tail-chasing undermines their desire for a stage-managed and risk-averse passage through the campaign.

Continue reading "Web women unleash cyber hell on Holy Tony" »

The people who run my local coffee shop must think I’m a freak.  I fear I’m the only patron who ever shows up with both Who Weekly AND The Australian Financial Review. So that people won’t think less of me, I hide The Fin inside Who Weekly cover.

Even though I have a constant back stack of New Yorkers, Atlantic Monthlies, Economists and Spectators, the damned Who Weekly manages to suck me in every other week it seems.  The reason is that it constantly offers lists: Sexiest People, Most Beautiful People, Skinniest Celebrities, Fattest Celebrities, Best Break-Ups, etc etc etc.

I’ve always been a sucker for a ‘Best Of’ list.  This time of year is heaven because invariably newspapers and magazines rank the year’s top political scandals, celebrities, news events, films, natural disasters, photographs, books – anything you care to name.  Not only do I love to read a good list, I love to write them (as the oeuvre of this blog demonstrates).  And there’s no way I’m going to let the end of 2009 pass without a few ‘best of’ lists of my own.

Continue reading "Well-readhead: I’m a sucker for a “Best Of” list" »

I was a late Twitter convert, only joining up at the behest of a friend who regularly spoke of its virtues in connecting with her fellow poets and Gertrude Stein enthusiasts.

I am a bit ambivalent about contributing to conversations surrounding the latest social networking fads but the other day I had a realisation that I get most of my news from Twitter.

The realisation came to me as a bit of a shock, when I was talking to my housemate about the Liberal Party leadership woes.

Continue reading "Twitter: News at the speed of light" »

You say you want a revolution
Well, you know we all want to change the world ...
You ask me for a contribution
Well, you know, we’re doing what we can ...

You read news. So you know there’s a revolution going in the news industry, with much untargeted crossfire, rattling of virtual sabres and foaming at the mouth about paid content.

Rude words have been said. Like “parasite”. And “money”.

Continue reading "You’ve never paid for news, you never will" »

Note: We are required to publish rulings from the Press Council to show publicly whether they have been upheld or dismissed.

The Press Council has dismissed a complaint from Cailen Cambeul, of the self-styled Church of Creativity, South Australia, that the News Limited website, The Punch, misrepresented adherents of the church as uneducated, illiterate and prone to committing violence.

Mr Cambeul, who runs the church, complained that The Punch columnist, Tory Shepherd, insinuated that he had a criminal history, and had nullified his church’s right to be accepted as a legitimate religious body. Ms Shepherd’s column, which appeared on July 30, 2009, was written after she explored an array of unusual religious and political websites, including the Church of Creativity. She wrote that Cambeul had “a bit of a chequered history” and that the church’s members were just “a few loners looking for something to do with all their hate”.

Continue reading "Press Council dismisses complaint against The Punch" »

I recently gave an address at the Media 140 Conference in Sydney about the impact of social media on journalism.  I was invited to speak about the ethics and professionalism of the way I use twitter.  Today’s post is adapted from my remarks.

My guiding principle is ‘If in doubt, leave it out’. 

In other words, when it comes to what I put on twitter, I err on the side of caution - as I do with what I write or broadcast generally.

Continue reading "Well-readhead: How and why I use Twitter" »

The only time I’ve had people literally storm out of a presentation I was giving were news and current affairs producers at a commercial television network. My faux pas was telling them that the Australian viewing public was keen for positive stories that depicted the best, rather than worst, of our society. Furthermore, I predicted this trend to be a growing one.

It’s not that bad news does not attract viewers’ attention. It does. When there is motor vehicle accident up ahead drivers cannot help themselves but slow down to have a peak. But they don’t feel good about themselves for doing so. Similarly on television we watch those embarrassing themselves, acting outrageously or being publicly shamed. But here to, we don’t feel good about ourselves for doing so.

What the public is yearning for is optimism and positivity – reinforcing the good bits of life. When discussing the global financial crises throughout this year the consistent message was that Australians were simply switching off from the bad news.

Continue reading "From Jerry to the GFC, it’s time for some good news" »

Note: The ABC’s Mark Colvin from the PM program gave this speech yesterday at the Media140 conference in Sydney.

Since I’ve been asked to speak about Iran – and I will speak more about it shortly – I want to begin by acknowledging that in the last 24 hours, people – many of them young people – have been shot at, beaten and arrested in Tehran and other Iranian cities.

It’s the thirtieth anniversary of the sacking of the US Embassy in Tehran - a key part of the Iranian Revolution – which turned into the Islamic Revolution – and demonstrators have been out on the street, turning the Republic’s own slogans against it, shouting ‘Marg bar Diktator’, Death to the Dictator, instead of ‘Marg bar Amrika’, Death to America.

The reaction has been swift and violent. It’s a reminder that whatever power Twitter may have it is as nothing against determined men with guns and batons. I’m reminded of Peter Cook’s evaluation of the power of satire. It “did so much”, he said, “to prevent the rise of Hitler in pre-war Germany”.

Continue reading "Iran, Twitter and the new media world" »

Note: For the background to this piece read SA Treasurer Kevin Foley’s unprompted tell-all interview here.

Regardless of whether you think Kevin Foley is a good bloke and a talented treasurer, or a boofhead and an economic incompetent, only the most flint-hearted observer could watch his unravelling this week and not feel some empathy for the man.

In order to succeed in the often horrible business of politics, politicians must almost dehumanise themselves – that is, they must think through everything they do, what they say, how they dress, who they are friends with, how they choose to spend their limited free time, because everything they do has potential political ramifications.

Right down to the level of getting your partner and kids to put on their glad rags for the glossy mailout you send out to 20,000-odd households once every four years, projecting yourself as the very epitome of domestic bliss.

Continue reading "The politician mugged by his own humanity" »

It is grossly hypocritical of Paul Keating – or anyone else in the public eye – to complain about the media invading their family’s privacy.

I’m sick of politicians and performers, who trade their profiles for money, biting the hand that feeds them.

Keating’s daughter Katherine has a reputation for appearing at the opening of an envelope to promote her political lobbying business. But why turn up at a VIP party, sponsored by a vodka company, dressed as Amy Winehouse, if you don’t want to be papped by photographers?

Continue reading "Public figures want it both ways on privacy" »

The Punch has won its second major award in as many months after being honoured with the Chairman’s Award at the annual News Awards in Sydney on Friday.

The award, which recognises editorial innovation across News Limited’s many media brands, follows the site’s recognition at last month’s PANPA Awards as Best Specialist Website.

“The Punch isn’t attracting people because it’s new. It’s because it’s refreshing, unpredictable, intelligent, informed, fun - and fun is infectious,” News Limited chairman and chief executive John Hartigan said on presenting the award.

Continue reading "Award-winning Punch thanks its readers" »

OFFICIAL: Rolling Stone will not be putting Kevin Rudd on the cover.

His interview will only run on the inside of the magazine, meaning the Ruddster will miss the same honour as the Rayban-clad Paul Keating in 1995 and Barack Obama in the US last year. “The way it was reported out of Canberra this morning you’d think he’s running on the front,” sources at the magazine told The Punch just now. “But there’s no way that will happen, for the simple reason that politicians don’t sell. The Keating edition tanked.”

The Rolling Stone story - broken by our own Leo Shanahan yesterday - was used by Tony Abbott on Punch TV this morning as evidence that Kevin Rudd won’t do “hard interviews” with serious political programs and newspapers. There might be something in that, but we thought this one was just a bit of fun.

“We take all kinda pills to give us all kinda thrills, but the thrill we’ve never known, is the thrill that’ll getcha, when you getcha picture, on the cover of the Rolling Stone” – Dr Hook, Cover of the Rolling Stone

If there were such a thing as a periodic table of cool and uncool things in the universe Rolling Stone magazine and Kevin Rudd would no doubt be at opposing ends.

But now The Punch can reveal that Kevin Rudd will throw that order of things into chaos by becoming the feature story in the upcoming issue of Rolling Stone.

The rock bible has interviewed and photographed Prime Minister Rudd as part of a major piece, and possible cover story, for the magazine’s December issue.

Continue reading "Rudd does a Keating with Rolling Stone" »

In an interview on Sixty Minutes on Sunday Tara Brown asked Michael Buble why he became a singer.

He responded with ‘You want the truth or do you want a good story?’ 

Brown wanted the truth (being a journalist what else could she say?) and he gave it to her: ‘I wanted to get laid.’

Continue reading "The sad truth of celebrities is many of them are just dull" »

Not long before Patrick Swayze died, I watched Dirty Dancing, partly for fun and partly searching for an answer to a pretty callous question: why was I oddly upset about Swayze’s terminal cancer when not only was he a stranger, but an average actor whose only real hits, Ghost and Dirty Dancing, were twenty years ago?

Harsh, yes.  But it’s what I thought.

I still recall the day that I first saw Dirty Dancing.  It was 1987.  My three best friends and I were on school holidays and Melissa’s dad dropped us at the cinema at the Toombul Shopping Centre in Brisbane.  We were buzzing with excitement, no doubt wearing acid wash jeans and oversized shirts with our fringes sprayed and teased into concrete boards, like every other fourteen year old girl of the day.

Continue reading "Well read-head: The Time of My Life" »

This is what happens when a group of media are sent to cover an event but miss the “money shot”.

We’re going to take you behind the scenes. Our unedited video captures the moment some media crews faked an event not once but twice.

For the launch of author Dan Brown’s new thriller The Lost Symbol, various media assembled to shoot a group of speed readers. The idea was the fastest reader could give the book’s first-ever review. The trouble was, after two and a half hours of waiting for the keen readers to plough through 500 pages most of the media had their eyes off the ball.

Continue reading "Exposed: the fake world of “real” television news" »

There was so much fanfare when The September Issue first came out, with everyone caught up in the hype of “Anna, the Ice Queen” and “Anna, the Bitch” and “Anna, the Hardcore Alien” it was hard to assess the movie objectively because as usual, all the hype pointed in one direction. I, for one, definitely wanted to see it for the sole reason of judging what Anna was actually like in, you know, almost-real-life.

I wanted to see her cut-throat ways and watch her spiking staff with her whiplash tongue first hand. I wanted the camera to be in an elevator when Anna stepped in and watch the look of fear on the faces of those cowering out of her way.

This is the Anna I was expecting. Like Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada. Someone vicious and uncaring and completely insensitive of other people’s feelings.

Continue reading "Is Anna Wintour really a bitch, or just doing her job?" »

If you could design your own domestic news service, what would it look like?

Taking off my News Limited hat and speaking as a general reader, mine would involve a few things - plenty of hard news, mostly politics, stacks of AFL, provocative and entertaining opinion pieces, heaps of food, music and cinema journalism.

I’d never read celebrity gossip, clubby or dull business journalism (that is, almost all of it) or another impenetrable word of motoring writing about the latest unaffordable car with a 28 kilowatt, 6.2 litre engine and variable-valve timing control.

Continue reading "Extra, extra - pay for your content" »

Earlier this month I spoke at a social media conference in Melbourne. When you wear a badge that says you work for Rupert Murdoch at these events, it’s like sitting in the middle of the Collingwood cheer squad in a Carlton jumper. With some people the best you can hope for is that their initial horror will eventually subside to a mild hostility.

I was there to speak about strategy for social media, including Twitter, which The Punch has engaged to a fair degree of success. It is second only to the mighty Google in terms of the number of readers it helps the site reach. My presentation was on using social networks to connect with people.

The Social Media Summit 2009 came just days after the announcement that News Corporation planned to charge for access to its websites. It was the hottest topic of conversation in the wings and with the exception of one or two people, the view among the delegates was that it wasn’t going to work.

Continue reading "Psst, Twitter: You might want to help save big media" »

For an open, organic, freedom-loving Utopia, there are a great many wannabe digital dictators on the Internet, vomiting forth mandates on how we must behave, speak, and do business. The Ethos of the Web, they call it; they know what is right, what is wrong, what will work, and what will fail.

So in May, when Rupert Murdoch tabled the idea of paywalling his newspapers, the Glorious Leaders of Twitterstan took to their keyboards, and registered their disdain with an all-caps “FAIL!”

“You can’t charge for content! Information wants to be free! Show your support by donating to my PayPal account!” Every Social Media Expert and Futurist hustling for speaking fees and fat consultancies knows, unequivocally, that newspapers are dinosuars; one edition short of extinction.

Continue reading "Not all media dinosaurs have small brains" »

What will journalism look like in twenty years? Will newspapers still exist? Punch research journalist Kelly Simpson and four of her fellow students from the University of Technology Sydney gaze into the crystal ball…

Kelly Simpson – Postgraduate journalism student, UTS: How did you hear that Michael Jackson had died? That we’d lost the Ashes?

Print is dead, I’ve been assured. I’ve missed the glory days. There’ll be no ink smudged copy for me, no physical front page, no morning AND evening editions of the newspapers.

Continue reading "Degrees of uncertainty for students of journalism" »

The Punch is about to become a TV show. The marketing people want us to tell you about it, but frankly we’re kind of nervous because we’re all unkempt and untrained print people who think a live feed is something involving a crayfish in Chinatown.

Anyway - Punch TV debuts on Sky News at 12.30pm AEST today (Thursday). Our special guest is Sports Minister and occasional Punch contributor Kate Ellis, and our panel for this week is Punch deputy editor Tory Maguire, Punch sports columnist Luke McIlveen, and myself.

In keeping with the conversational spirit of the website, we’re asking readers to tell us what they’d like us to discuss on the show. We’ll obviously be talking to Kate about her piece below about yobbo sports stars, as well as her recent post on whether successful athletes should repay the AIS for the cost of their training, but any other ideas, please email us below.

The National Press Club has debased itself and damaged journalism by letting bikie gangs use its forum to indulge in an hour-long orgy of hysteria and lies about the proposed laws of criminal association.

Central to this non-debate - led by a fellow called Ferret, from the Finks - was the laughable assertion that the media somehow over-reacted in its coverage of the sickening bashing murder of Hells Angel Anthony Zervas in broad daylight at Sydney Airport earlier this year.

With a couple of exceptions among the journos - and with the audience heavily stacked with tattooed ratbags - Ferret and his friends were allowed to misrepresent this deserved coverage without challenge.

Continue reading "Bikies’ spin is criminal" »

It’s official. After the death of the world’s most famous newsman last month, Walter Cronkite, the heir apparent has been anointed. Drum roll, please. ‘The most trusted name in news’ is now, err, Jon Stewart. Jon Stewart?

Yes, The Daily Show host. A comedian.

At least, that’s the result of a Time Magazine poll, which surveyed 9000 people. 44 per cent said the faux journalist was their most trusted newscaster now that Cronkite has passed on.

Continue reading "It must be true, Jon Stewart said so" »

Violence against Indians in Australia is now so out of control that Indians have started attacking each other.

Not that you would know this from reading the hysterical coverage in the Indian press, because the latest case has been deliberately shorn of one key fact so that the white clique which runs this country can be held to account for an Indian bloke beating up an Indian woman journalist.

The ABC did a very thorough job on its AM program this morning documenting the extent to which sections of the Indian media has gone to maintain this beat-up about being beaten up.

Continue reading "Now even Indians are attacking Indians" »

The humiliation of Marcus Einfeld is now complete. The NSW Court of Appeal struck him off this week, concurring with the argument of the NSW Bar Association that he is not a “fit and proper person” to practice as a lawyer ever again.

Representing the Bar Association, Barrister Christine Adamson SC said Einfeld’s speeding case showed he considered himself to be “above the law” and displayed “extraordinary hubris” in thinking he could use his “skill and ingenuity” as a respected lawyer of some 40 years to trick a court into cancelling a speeding fine.

A $77 speeding fine.The public reveled in it, as Einfeld for many years had been one of the greatest offenders of the deep-seated Australian belief that being massively up yourself is close on the worst crime a person can commit.

Continue reading "How the Marcus Einfeld story was almost not written" »

While Kevin Rudd has never been media-shy (quite the opposite, what with his Twittering, website and blog), it seems his wife, Therese Rein, is finally ready for her close-up.

Back in May, I wrote ‘Rein Priming for Mag cover?’, suggesting that the likelihood of Rein appearing on the cover of an Aussie glossy was “about as likely as Susan Boyle landing the cover of British Vogue”. In the glossy media world, a picture of perfection sounds louder than a CV full of personal achievements, after all.

At the time, the media was going bananas over Rein’s apparent weight loss, which culminated in Woman’s Day bringing her down to gossip magazine level, publishing unflattering and unauthorised pictures of her exercising in her gym gear after the magazine was reportedly refused an interview.

Continue reading "Therese’s glossy reign" »

Today on The Punch we are running a special package on social media with a focus on Twitter.

At the moment news outlets are red hot with stories about Twitter and other social media platforms.

From reflective pieces about why Twitter is slowly sucking away our ability to communicate with each other in real life, news stories about its role in the Iranian post-election protests to authors looking to use the platform as a gimmick to publish their bad novel about “a San Francisco family forging its place in history”.

Continue reading "Twitter special: why The Punch says it’s okay to Tweet" »

For something that’s so easy to use, it’s suprisingly hard to explain exactly what makes Twitter so great.

But after sticking by a personal pledge to avoid Facebook for two years and having suffered the reeling effects of this decision on my diminished social life (why can’t people just email photos and invites anymore?), Twitter caught my attention straight away.

Furiously fast paced and jam packed with information, the 140 character tweets can bring out the best in succinct news reporting, people’s creativity or just a damn fine sense of humour.

Continue reading "Twitter: a guide for the uninitiated" »

If our linguistically challenged forefathers had the option to Tweet their grunts and moans, I’m almost certainly positive they would.

OK, maybe not. But I’m sure cavemen and women used to lay awake at night, stone and chisel in hand, thinking about the self-absorbed things they could etch for people in far away villages they would probably never meet.

Hi, my name is (@newsbee) Lanai – and I’m a Twitterholic.

Continue reading "My name is Lanai and I’m a Twitterholic" »

When the Opposition Leader has time to Twitter about his pet dog’s blog, you’ve got to worry that this newfound obsession with social networking is being taken too far.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a self confessed Twitter/Facebook junkie, hell, friends have to confiscate my iPhone to have a decent conversation with me over lunch these days.

And I’m the first to defend Kevin Rudd, or @KevinRuddPM as he is known in Twitter-land, for resorting to new-media to talk to voters.

Continue reading "It’s okay Malcolm, we don’t need to know about the dog" »

Social media proved itself an an extraordinary tool today with the best coverage coming out of the Jakarta bombings provided by people on the ground with mobile phones and Twitter accounts.

But today’s events also proved that no matter what you think of journalists and the major media outlets they work for - there’s a reason why we filter information and images.

There’s a photograph all over the internet right now you won’t find on any mainstream news site - and nor should you. It shows a victim of the bombing, believed to be from New Zealand, who is now being reported as having died from his injuries.

Continue reading "Citizen journalism: you might not like what you see" »

Recently, a stranger walked up to me in a café.

‘Is that The Sydney Morning Herald you’re reading?’ she asked.  She looked about 30 and her hair was tied back in a ponytail. I told her it was and she immediately drew closer to take a look.

‘I just need to see yesterday’s word,’ she said.

Continue reading "AMARKEEGO spells GEEK-O-RAMA: Well read-head" »

Gen Y may garner more column inches than Sarah Palin, the GFC, and Madonna’s immobile forehead combined but they are the generation we love to hate the most, (myself included and I was unfortunately born smack bang in the middle of Y-dom), so I’m starting to wonder why our media landscape is bereft of any aggressive, arrogant scribes south of 30?

It’s not that I think we have anything particularly interesting or even fleetingly insightful or intelligent to offer on politics, popular culture or Paul Keating, but each generation before us has thrown up someone to wildly wave the banner of youth while trying not to choke on their own vomit.

Our papers are missing a trying-very-hard-to-be-controversial-and-on-the-edge ‘Youth’ columnist, chock full of the insouciance, arrogance and ignorance that comes from being part of a generation that can barely remember a time when casting a vote didn’t involve SMS. What they need is a Hip Young Thing, someone who can knock out a few wry paragraphs about blow jobs and recreational drug use, making a name for themselves with their frequent use of the word ‘f**k’ and poor grammar and syntax.

Continue reading "Wanted: youngster to write about drugs and blow jobs" »

“News on the Radio”, said the American consultant breezily, “can never be more than a headline service”.

The speaker was billed as a radio ‘guru’ – a description which reminded me of the writer Francis Wheen’s definition of ‘guru’: a useful short word for people who can’t spell ‘charlatan’.

This guru had introduced herself to the seminar room by saying that she really appreciated the editions of AM, The World Today and PM that she had listened to.

But could she have listened to them at all?

Continue reading "Why radio current affairs has a long, bright future" »

Australia lost one of its finest writers today with the death of journalist Frank Devine, age 77.

Frank’s columns brought joy to thousands of readers. He wrote with grace, wit, humour and charm; he was politically conservative but he never thundered or railed, and was a master of dry self-deprecation - in one recent column, filed when he was aged well into his seventies, he joked that his affection for John Howard “bordered on the homo-erotic.” 

He was a terrifically kind and giving man who despite having soared as a journalist - he edited The Australian, The Chicago Sun-Times and The New York Post - remained affable and approachable, and a mentor to the young.

The Australian publishes a terrific celebration of his life here by former Liberal MP and Quadrant editor Peter Coleman.

The Punch is now one month old. We would like to thank our readers for getting us off to such a strong start. We would also like to engage you in conversation as to what more you would like out of this website - what’s working, what isn’t, what more we could do to make your reading experience more illuminating and entertaining.

The Punch had expected to get about 80,000 readers (unique browsers) in its first month. The official figures show we ended up with 206,281 readers. This compares to Crikey, which is five years older than us, and had 179,069 readers in the same period.

This funny little niche website run out of Melbourne has been obsessing about us since we launched, and it’s something we regard as proof positive of the navel-gazy bullshit which blights the media landscape, where journos both from the independent blogosphere and big media would much rather talk about each other than the readers.

It’s a fact demonstrated by the coverage of Wednesday’s Press Club address by News Limited chairman and CEO John Hartigan, which was a characteristically blunt and thought-provoking bomb-throwing exercise where Hartigan questioned the quality of Australia’s newspapers, including those owned by News Limited, challenged the work practices of his own staff in the Canberra Press Gallery, and bemoaned the fact that the readers were often the farthest thing from the media’s mind as it went about its journalism.

Continue reading "The Punch thanks its readers and extends an invitation" »

My name is Tracey and I am not a lesbian. Well, except for 15 minutes in 1987. At university. Does that count? 

Everyone is at risk of being ‘outed’ these days, as tabloid media organizations eat their own to get the next exclusive story.

Last week, journalists were salivating at the mouth at the prospect of using the name ‘Tracy Grimshaw’ and ‘lesbian’ in the same sentence, following Gordon Ramsay’s outburst.

Tracy has publicly denied the allegation, but she will be forever haunted by a claim that, until now, was only whispered by carpet-strollers in TV corridors.

Continue reading "Hysterical hunt for the only gays in the media village" »

A recent edition of the New Yorker carried a cartoon that depicts a man about to be executed by firing squad. Beside him an executioner holds out a mobile phone and asks: “Last tweet?” (You can see it here)

This is an incisive analysis of the wild variance of the content on Twitter. Suspected previous tweets for our cartoon hero: “Just about to go through security.” Or: “Putting on my hood now.” It’s the Twitter rollercoaster. One moment you can be reading about someone eating an egg sandwich. The next, you can be reading first-hand news of one of the stories of the year and looking at a photo like this:

Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s creator, says the service will be a success “when it’s not talked about so much”, and when people just use and accept it “like electricity”. Amen. The incessant hype and stream of stories has become a bore. Yes, it breaks news in ways traditional big media outlets cannot. Yes, it’s yet another challenge for big media companies to get to grips with. Yes, it’s a valuable search tool. Twitter’s success is proof, though, of something much more unsettling - or exciting, depending on your point of view.

Continue reading "Yeah, Twitter’s great. But what’s the next big thing?" »

I’ve always liked Tracy Grimshaw. She seems very nice. She does this thing sometimes with her eyes when she’s saying good night at the end of the show, it’s a little squint, it’s like she’s trying to make friends with an animal.

She’s into horses, and I’ve often wondered if hers watch her when she’s on, if they hear her voice and immediately start paying attention to the television, so that’s why she gives her reassuring blinking message. Unless they don’t watch A Current Affair. Horses are very smart.

So I can’t tell you how disappointed I was when Tracy said she’d agreed in advance not to ask Gordon Ramsay anything about his marriage, and whether he’d been shagging that other woman behind his wife’s back for all those years, meeting in hotels and sneaking around.

Continue reading "ACA abandoned journalism to suck up to Gordon" »

Well, not quite. While it doesn’t compare to Fleet Street’s notorious hidden camera shot of Princess Diana pumping iron at a London gymnasium, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is apparently filthy that Woman’s Day has put a paparazzo on Therese Rein’s tail to chronicle her weight loss program.

It’s a story which goes to the heart of the privacy tensions within journalism - the difference between the public interest, and what the public is interested in.

It’s a story which will also confirm how the reading public has it both ways - illustrated most dramatically when the same people who bemoaned the media’s role in Diana’s death, were often the same ones who had every edition of Hello! magazine in chronological order at home.

Continue reading "Paparazzi give Therese Rein the Princess Diana workout" »

UPDATED: The Punch is now five days old. For those of you tucking into some long weekend reading, here’s my post from Monday introducing the site…

A pinch and a punch for the first day of the month…and the first day of what we hope will be a welcome and valuable addition to Australia’s media landscape.

The Punch is a new opinion website aimed at every Australian with a love of ideas, discussion and debate.

It’s not a fancy, la-di-dah site aimed at people with three university degrees, nor is it a site for yobbos who want to engage in mindless abuse.

Continue reading "If you’re new to The Punch…" »

Last week, one of my colleagues on the federal government backbench was asked at 7.30am at the doors of Parliament to cite the federal deficit forecast for 2009/2010. I know her to be one of the smarter new MPs in the Parliament with a very sharp eye for technical detail.

She was, however, unable to nominate that figure first thing in the morning. And for that sin, she appeared as a headline in that day’s political newsreels and the next day’s papers. The “Gotcha!” moment for politicians and economic data now has a rich history. Less clear is its contribution to the Australian political tapestry.

Continue reading "The rise and rise of gotcha journalism in politics" »

Hooray for Barnaby Joyce. I don’t actually agree with much the Nationals Senate leader has to say, but at least he’s saying it in an interesting way.

In the political realm, he’s like a splash of bright puke-yellow on a beige lino floor.

In the daily ambush at the doors of Federal Parliament, where all the main players either try to slip through with a wan smile or stay resolutely “on message”, Joyce was asked about a survey that showed people think PM Kevin Rudd’s a massive tantrum-chucker. “The guy’s a psycho chook,” Joyce said.

“Who in their right mind gets onto a plane and because he doesn’t get the right colour birdseed has a spac attack?”

Continue reading "Rudd presides over an army of boring robot MPs" »

Today The Punch introduces some new contributors from other media outlets who are traditionally regarded as competitors of News Limited, and re-introduces a couple who you may already know from our own stable of journalists.

Continue reading "Our latest punchers" »

In 1991 I stood in a museum in Cambodia staring at a row of photos of people who’d been tortured and killed by the Khmer Rouge. I was a young journalist sent there to report on the United Nations arriving in Cambodia to set up democratic elections.

I dutifully took myself off to Tuol Sleng the former school where the Khmer Rouge tortured a bizarre array of people they thought were subverting their regime. No-one visits that museum without emerging horrified by the human capacity for irrational brutality. I wrote an article for the Sydney Morning Herald about my experience. Confident I’d broken new ground in feature writing, I asked a senior foreign correspondent what he thought of my effort. He told me: “Shallow and self indulgent.”

Moral outrage comes cheap.

Continue reading "Media moralists miss tough questions on group sex" »

In a week when the nation was confronted with a $58 billion budget deficit, when more than a million Australians were stripped of their private health rebate, when plans were unveiled to push the pension age to 67, there was obviously one story in town - Matthew Johns.

Knocking the federal budget off the front page of a major newspaper in budget week is no mean feat. The last people to do it were called Todd and Brant. They hijacked the coverage of Peter Costello’s 2006 Budget by spending the previous 14 days buried alive in a tiny air-pocket in the collapsed Beaconsfield mine.

While Costello was frustrated by his own burial on the inside pages, Wayne Swan might have been faintly relieved that, just two days after sheepishly unveiling our biggest-ever deficit, replete with some fingers-crossed growth forecasts which may have us not on the path to surplus but bankruptcy, Sydney’s Daily Telegraph devoted its first three pages to Matthew Johns affair.

Continue reading "Male silence at the core of Matthew Johns scandal" »