Journalism

The two biggest stuff-ups of the political year to date have said little about the conduct of our politicians and everything about the judgment of the advisors they employ. Given that 2012 is not yet five weeks old, these two remarkably stupid episodes confirm the extent to which the black art of media management has become an unchecked cancer on modern politics.

The irony is that in both cases the very people who were hired to make life easier for our politicians, ostensibly with their capacity for crisis management and flair for finessing a message, have in one case created the crisis and in the other mangled the message.

This should not be of interest solely to political tragics and Canberra insiders. The punchline to the joke is that the mugs who are footing the bill are, of course, the taxpayers, who over the past two decades have funded an ever-increasing number of spin doctors, speech writers and media advisors for politicians of every hue at both the state and federal level.

Continue reading "First, let’s sack all the staffers" »

You know that shirt really makes your eyes look amazing. I bet you know lots of really important stuff. Would you like to go back to your place and show me all your confidential files?

A report has been handed down in the UK by Dame Elizabeth Filkin, “The ethical issues arising from the relationship between police and media”, prompted by allegations the News of the World phone hacking scandal was not properly investigated by Scotland Yard.

It’s a fascinating document, surprisingly free of the usual bureaucratic mangling of the English language, although it does contain case studies with a traffic light system of assessing risk - red for high, yellow for medium, green for low. But the most up-front part carries the title: “Ten tactics used by some in the media. Watch out.”

Continue reading "Public service message: Beware flirty journalists" »

I’d been mapping out a strong, passionate critique of the media inquiry on my computer for the past fortnight. It was going to be the best article ever; a high water-mark in awesomeness.

I was going to suggest that yes, a lot of very ordinary journalism gets published in newspapers these days (“Hey, this bloke just sent us some old nudie pics of someone that sorta looks like Pauline Hanson! How about I run them on the front page?”), but that’s absolutely nothing new.

And if we’re going to start investigating the state of journalism then we probably ought to start with the crap on Today Tonight (which is sometimes is the highest rating show on a weeknight), given the broadcasting spectrum, as opposed to paper, is a finite public resource.

Continue reading "A pointless, political inquiry that misses the point" »

From a crowded field, one of the more embarrassing moments from my troubled phase as a teenage Trotskyist involved selling issues of the socialist newspaper Direct Action on the streets of Adelaide. On occasions I sold it outside Football Park, Adelaide’s home of Aussie Rules, where I hoped to capitalise on that niche readership of people who both loved their footy and loved the idea of capitalism being paralysed by its contradictions.

In hindsight “selling” isn’t the right word. On a good day I sold three copies of Direct Action. On most days I sold no copies of Direct Action. The reason I sold no copies of Direct Action is that it wasn’t a very good newspaper. It was a crap newspaper. It was preachy, dour, earnest, poorly designed, massively overpriced for what it was, and full of articles which were about as far away from mainstream sentiment as you could imagine, with discussions of whether indigenous organisations should take up arms against their oppressors, calls for trade bans with pariah nations such as the United States, editorials calling for transgender prisoners to be given sex changes on Medicare.

Today, about three million Australians will shell out a couple of dollars to but their favourite Sunday newspaper. They do so because they like and enjoy it.

Continue reading "Trotting out nonsense at an inquiry into nothing" »

This is a difficult column to write. It involves a matter of principle which is important to me. It also involves a colleague whose work leaves me cold.

If this were a year 10 debate we would take the gentleman’s option of inserting the obligatory declaration from the French writer Voltaire, the tiredest quote in political philosophy, where we state that we disagree with what Andrew Bolt says but would defend to the death his right to say it, and everyone goes home feeling good about themselves.

I am not inclined to defend Andrew Bolt to the death. Not even close. His columns make me laugh in disbelief or fold up the paper in anger. I am sick of seeing Bolt being held up as if he were a company spokesman. He is no such thing.

Continue reading "Deeply irritating columnist versus seriously flawed law" »

Paul Keating’s fondness for picking up the phone to relay his displeasure about media coverage is the stuff of legend. From the half-dozen spirited conversations I’ve had as a publisher with the former PM, the most memorable went to the issue of privacy.

An item had appeared in Sydney Confidential about his daughter being spotted on a date with a rugby league player at a city bar. The article didn’t suggest any hanky-panky, simply that they had met for a drink. Keating didn’t think it should have run at all and took particular issue with the accompanying photograph, which had been tagged as digitally altered, featuring separate merged images of his daughter and the said footy star.

Keating prefaced his remarks by reflecting on the level of moral bankruptcy which would attract someone to a career as a gossip writer, and indeed a career as the publisher of their work. To give you a sense of it, in his opening salvo he described gossip writers as “ugly biker’s molls who couldn’t get a root on a troop ship, couldn’t get a root on a troop ship coming home” and he concluded that whenever he rang editors about articles of this kind he routinely received a lecture about public figures and the public’s right to know which had no relationship to the “horseshit” we chose to publish.

Continue reading "The right to privacy would come at a social cost" »

If Julia Gillard is looking for a shoulder to cry on about the torrid media coverage she has been receiving she could always pick up the phone to another recent prime minister in John Howard. If she were to do so she would find that, far from getting a sympathetic ear, she’d be politely advised to stop whining, harden up and get on with governing.

Ms Gillard once said, misleadingly, that her chances of seizing the leadership of the Labor Party from Kevin Rudd were as great as being picked to play for her beloved Western Bulldogs. To use an AFL analogy Ms Gillard is currently like the hapless footy coach who finds their team 10 goals down at half time and starts complaining about the umpiring.

It might be an over-simplification but the question Ms Gillard should ask herself is this. Is Labor on a record low primary vote of 27 per cent because of negative media coverage? Or is Labor getting negative media coverage because it’s got a primary vote of 27 per cent – that is, because its leadership has been so haphazard and its policies so poorly sold that the media is simply reflecting, not creating, public disquiet at its performance?

Continue reading "Crappy coach complains about the umpiring" »

The Federal Press Gallery’s Midwinter Ball was last night and this morning Bob Brown will be calculating how much contamination from big business he has received.

Senator Brown, the Greens leader, has attended past Midwinter Balls and to my knowledge has emerged with a smile and no scars.

This year he seemed to have forgotten what it is all about. The venue, the Great Hall of Parliament House, was “insidious”, he said recently. He was forced to dine with corporate executives, and it all resembled a strategy to divide and corrupt the Greens.

Continue reading "Brown’s getting his knickers in a twist over Ball" »

Lindsay Tanner isn’t happy with the mainstream media’s treatment of politics and politicians. The mainstream media is lazy, superficial, biased, banal. It has a pack mentality and a short attention span. It cooks up or makes up stories, fails to correct errors, and can be easily conned. It is unwilling or unable to examine big ideas and serious policy debate.

As for social media, well, that’s just frivolous nonsense. All those people writing their silly tweets. And politicians shouldn’t have fun or show their lighter side. Costello dancing the Macarena – what was that about? Just stupid.

With his furrowed brow, his Brylcreemed widow’s peak and his dark and dated suits, Lindsay Tanner has long had the demeanour of someone who is 50 going on 75. It befits him to have authored such a grumpy and meandering book, Sideshow: Dumbing Down Democracy. This crotchety polemic combines random anecdotes from federal politics with haphazardly-selected quotes from professional haters of mainstream journalism to bolster his thesis that politics is stuffed, and that it’s (almost) all the media’s fault. 

Continue reading "Tanner’s one-sided sideshow lets the pollies off the hook" »

It has come to the attention of the Australian Greens and their supporters that members of the media have been questioning politicians about how policies such as the carbon tax will affect people’s lives. To its shame, even the ABC has succumbed to this disturbing trend.

A petition has been organised by activists on the GetUp! website urging the national broadcaster to pull 7.30 Report anchor Chris Uhlmann into line. In an interview last week Uhlmann had the temerity to ask Greens Leader Bob Brown whether he still believed Australia should phase out the coal industry. When Brown suggested that this was a wicked misrepresentation of his position by those of us in what he calls the “Murdoch hate media”, Uhlmann helpfully reminded the Greens Leader that it was actually a direct statement by Brown himself in an opinion piece he authored just four years ago.

Details, details.

Continue reading "Grizzling Greens want power without scrutiny" »

One steamy night in February 1974, I went with friends to hear the great blues guitarist B.B. King in concert at Sydney’s Hordern Pavilion.

All went well until, an hour or so in, King collapsed on stage and had to be carried off. I left the Hordern in search of a phone box.

The first one was broken. Finding one that worked, I stuffed some money in, rang one of the copy-takers at ABC News and dictated five lines of copy.

Continue reading "A journalist kicking it old school on Twitter" »

An old lady rang Tony Delroy’s late-night program on ABC Radio after midnight on Tuesday with a complaint. She was a contestant in his popular quiz, and before she tried to answer a general knowledge question, she chatted with Delroy about how fed up she was with the saturation coverage the Christchurch earthquake was receiving.

She said she couldn’t believe that most of the free to air television stations had interrupted their regular programming to run continuous coverage of this event. She was upset that her usual soaps and game shows weren’t on. It’s probably not as upsetting as being in a massive earthquake, but there you go.

It struck me as a selfish and heartless complaint. But perhaps this old lady had an acutely-developed sense of that natural human repulsion towards tragedy.

Continue reading "The media takes no joy from tragedy" »

An exhaustive survey of Aussie Rules fans by Melbourne’s Herald-Sun found that dumped football commentator Kelli Underwood was regarded as the most annoying caller on television by 39.5 per cent of respondents.

The survey could show two things. It could show that 39.5 per cent of people surveyed are football purists with legitimate concerns over Underwood’s grasp of the game.

Conversely, it could show that 39.5 per cent of respondents are sexist dropkicks who think footy is a man’s game and that girls should stick to talking about cosmetics and recipes.

Continue reading "One thing Kelli Underwood lacks as a footy commentator" »

Julian Assange’s extradition to Sweden for alleged sex crimes is destined to become an ugly, inconsequential sideshow to history.

Wikileaks’ revelation that Saudi Arabia egged the US into attacking Iran over its nuclear ambitions? A footnote. Australian Senator Mark Arbib spying on his colleagues and countrymen for the US government? Grubby trivia, at best.

The real historical weight of the Wikileaks saga lies within the undiscovered country of its endgame.

Continue reading "There will be a winner and a loser in the Wikileaks saga" »

Conservatives regard him as a treasonous anarchist who is jeopardising the security of the free world and imperilling the lives of soldiers and diplomats. Progressives hail him as a hero for his determination to ensure the unfettered release of any and every bit of political information which comes his way, by publishing cables which shed light on the conduct of wars, reveal the secret assessments of the foreign service and expose the character flaws of world leaders.

He is Julian Assange, the Queensland-born founder of Wikileaks, the renegade website which has spooked the world’s spooks and sent a shudder through government spines from Washington to Westminster, and beyond, by indiscriminately releasing thousands of diplomatic cables via the internet.

A warrant is out for his arrest, Interpol want to sit him down and shut him down, but Assange is undeterred. He is promising that his next step will be to target corporate America with a dump of internal documents which could bring down one of the biggest banks in the United States. He has also apparently obtained and is sitting on some 1500 cables relating to Australia. Who only knows what they could reveal.

Continue reading "Killer content: should the media follow every Wikileak?" »

The latest Wikileaks disaster for the U.S. government may centre on the actions of its diplomats rather than its soldiers, but Cablegate and the Afghan and Iraq War Diary data dumps are all crises of information control and management.

In a press briefing on Monday U.S. State Department Assistant Secretary P. J. Crowley was quizzed about the government’s policies and practices of storing information.

There is, as Crowley said, tension between “the need to protect or the need to know” when it comes to information – and this is true in all spheres, not just government bureaucracies.

Continue reading "The Wiki leaks are not the end of all secrets" »

Hello England. You’re that island (or portion thereof) adrift in the North Sea somewhere near, gee I dunno, Iceland or something right?

England, I’m told you used to be this terrifically confident place which belied its speck-on-the-map geographical status by civilising the world with such benevolent and enduring cultural endowments as the Westminster system, cricket and The Benny Hill Show.

But suddenly England, you’ve gone all insecure and snipey. England, I can’t tell you how genuinely shocked I was to read this piece by journalist Matthew Norman in The Telegraph the other day. Here’s the really surprising bit.

Continue reading "Land of no hope and vainglory" »

I remember once going to Guantanamo Bay on assignment and reading “Lolita” on the military jet en route. 

I didn’t think anything of it until I noticed a few people giving me sideways glances. 

It made me wonder if it weren’t slightly inappropriate reading material for a public place.  Sort of like clipping your toenails at the dinner table.

Continue reading "Well readhead: the most arrogant interview ever" »

Is conflict an essential ingredient in a successful creative partnership?

Two memoirs released during the past fortnight beggar the question. 

Life, by the seemingly indestructible Rolling Stone Keith Richards, reveals greater animosity in his relationship with Mick Jagger than anyone imagined.

Continue reading "Well readhead: relationships, conflict and creativity" »

There’s been a curious role reversal between Channel 10 and Channel Nine in the past 5 years or so, made even more compelling with James Packer’s new 18 percent stake in 10.

The networks used to be opposites of the TV spectrum – Nine the heavy-weights in both budget and exposure – Ten the cut-price youngsters.  Nine had a stable of headline stars. Ten was a quiet achiever. Nine had a formidable newsroom of senior journalists. Ten had a bunch of bright, hungry 20-somethings.

Then they started morphing into each other. Nine began carving away the newsroom budget, chunk by chunk. A lot of fat was shed, then a bit more. Young, ambitious 20-somethings started to feature in the 6pm line up. The tone changed from stable, solid (and sometimes predictable) to a more American, flashy, invigorated product.

Continue reading "Nine, Ten, countdown to Channel Nineteen" »

Much is made of the depressing and irrational intrusion of the “Politics of Fear”. 

We all lament how our political parties are prone to distorting statistics, leaving out facts, stigmatizing minorities, corrupting words, oversimplifying situations and events or just plain making stuff up. 

We criticize the media for their willingness to spread the “politics of fear” throughout the population and most of all we just hate the fact that it seems to work. Given its ever-increasing influence it’s worth pondering why.

Continue reading "The politics of fear and why we love it" »

There was a moment in last night’s brilliant episode of 4 Corners that might have undermined Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott’s argument the whole filming exercise was about posterity.

As the deliberations over the hung parliament arrived at absolute crunch time Bob Katter got uncomfortable with the ABC camera and said he would rather the crew left the office where he was meeting with his fellow regional independents.

But Windsor and Oakeshott had other ideas. You can watch the whole episode here.

Continue reading "Recording a moment in history or self indulgence?" »

A challenge from a former Howard Government spin-doctor on Twitter this week set me to thinking, not for the first time, about how journalists, especially ABC journalists, in the age of social media, can maintain and protect their impartiality.

You should know first that I use Twitter mainly to disseminate work by other people that interests me. I post links to articles, essays, video or audio, and jokes to leaven the mix, which reflect the fairly wide selection of reading I do on the internet every day.

A proportion of what I post is also breaking news. So for example, when the Deputy Speakership was decided this week, I posted three ‘tweets’ in quick succession, giving the vote numbers: one from @annabelcrabb, one from the political blogger @mfarnsworth, and one from @ABCNews.

Continue reading "Taking the twit out of Twitter and finding value" »

If the Commonwealth Games doesn’t go ahead, we have a substitute in our own backyard. And it doesn’t cost a cent.

Why not watch the High Jump at Villawood? Or the Target Shooting in south-western Sydney?

Every big news story these days creates a circus, and it’s not just the media.  The rooftop protests at the Villawood Detention Centre attracted hundreds of onlookers, many of them young children.

Continue reading "I like to watch" »

One of the things I’ve always loved about foreign languages is the way they throw up the perfect single word for a complex concept which takes many English words to explain.  Perhaps the most famous of these is the German word ‘schadenfreude’, meaning the delight we take in another person’s misfortune. 

For Lateline, I recently read a book called ‘Tokyo Vice’  that included a number of fascinating Japanese examples.  My favourite was ‘doki’ which refers to a group of people who join a corporation at the same time; the sort of work family which whom you form a strangely unique bond which endures even after everybody moves on. 

There were also a number of different words for the generic English word ‘sadness’.  ‘Setsunai’, according to author Jake Adelstein, is “a feeling of sadness and loneliness so powerful that is feels as if your chest is constricted, as if you can’t breathe; a sadness that is physical and tangible”.  Another word ‘yarusenai’ means a grief or loneliness of which you can’t rid yourself.

Continue reading "Well readhead: now with less schadenfreude" »

Sometimes a response to a polling question comes along that makes you re-evaluate your preconceived ideas, where the public’s refusal to confirm your gut instincts forces you to have a fresh look at the evidence before you.

Asking people to cast stones at the media’s reporting of the federal election seemed like a simple enough exercise, the public would confirm the media did a poor job and we could all wring our hands about democracy once again denied.

But hold the presses. Something is amiss. Fewer than a quarter of respondents to the Essential Report join the party.  One third rate the coverage at election time ‘good’, a further 40 per cent ‘average’. And far more say the media ‘gave fair coverage of all parties’ than thought they favoured a particular side.

Continue reading "Stop the presses: the media aren’t that crap" »

With the whole nation absorbed in post-election intrigue, I’m declaring today’s reading list a politics-free zone.  But before I do, I’d like to nominate my favourite ‘what the?’ moment from the coverage of the election campaign.

I rule out going with Mark Latham’s transformation into a ‘journalist’ because it’s far too obvious.  An in-depth analysis of the size of Julia Gillard’s earlobes is a hot contender but also too predictable, given the fun cartoonists have been having with that issue for years.

A front page profile of Rhys Muldoon certainly caught my fancy, complete with its ‘Underbelly’ style photo, implying that the ‘Playschool’ actor had some sinister inside influence in Canberra. But to my taste, nothing topped this rolled-gold quote in a revealing profile of Kevin Rudd: 

Continue reading "Well readhead: the politics-free zone" »

The three biggest-selling metropolitan dailies in Australia - in descending order, Melbourne’s Herald-Sun, Sydney’s Daily Telegraph and Brisbane’s Courier Mail - have used today’s traditional election-eve editorials to urge their readers to back the Coalition and turf out the Gillard Labor Government. The national broadsheet The Australian has also backed the Coalition, as has The West Australian.

The Adelaide Advertiser has broken ranks with its fellow News Limited dailies and backed Labor, as did Australia’s biggest-selling newspaper, The Sunday Telegraph, in its editorial last week. The two biggest Fairfax papers - The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age - have also backed the ALP. However the Fairfax papers have fewer readers in the swinging seats which decide governments so their final say on the vote has less influence.

The election eve editorial is a long-standing but controversial feature of newspapers, with the rationale going that if it’s good enough for voters to be forced to make up their minds on polling day, newspapers which devote their very existence to chronicling the events of the day should also put up their hand and offer a balanced and thoughtful take as to their allegiance. But many readers regard editorials as an impertinence and as confirmation of bias.

Continue reading "The editorials: biggest newspapers back Coalition" »

Did you hear the news about the stripper from the Gold Coast whose breast implants exploded while wrestling a crocodile? No? That’s probably because it never happened, and the story was never written. But rest assured, if it was a story, most of the traffic that goes through news sites in Australia would have read it.

It’s rather telling that days before a federal election, most of the news that the country seems to be interested in relates to sex, violence, and celebrity gossip. This isn’t an attempt to be judgmental about it at all - I’m guilty of clicking on the ‘interesting’ links as much as anyone else is – its simply an examination of the facts.

Let’s have a look at Sunday’s takings. In their top five stories, Australian news sites boast 10 stories out of 55 that are vaguely politics related, with half of those belonging to The Australian (which seems to be the sanctuary for those interested in politics). Other offerings include a top sex story at the Daily Telegraph (an alarmingly precise ‘I’ve had sex with 5000 men in 3285 days’), a similar enticement at news.com.au (worse ways to go with ‘”death by hooker” for sacked city banker’) and the colourful Adelaide Now temptation (‘bikie in bottle shop rampage’).

Continue reading "The news we want versus the news we get" »

All aboard the conspiracy bus.

The media pack following Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, in the absence of external stimulus in the form of policies, has turned inward.

We now theorise wildly about everything to do with this campaign. The trip is tightly controlled (although apparently not as rigid and paranoid as the Gillard campaign, where the media pack is rumoured to
be on the edge of revolt).

Continue reading "All aboard the conspiracy bus" »

The CIA, the Pentagon, the British Government and presumably the Taliban are all looking for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Well, I found him. And had I been paying more attention I could have saved the entire US military-industrial complex from disgrace.

Around four or five years ago Julian Assange came to my house for dinner.

Continue reading "Wikileaks founder tracked down at my dinner table" »

Sunday, with Election 2010 barely twenty four hours old, the first heavy hitting advertisements of the campaign hit our screens and appeared in our Sunday newspapers.  They had surprisingly high production values for election ads but in my view they went straight to the heart of what this election is all about – the fight over which political journalist will win the most viewers.

We’ve heard that Channel 7 will go “Beyond the spin”, a new ABC TV Channel is competing with Sky News, Sky News is still great and Channel 9 still has Laurie Oakes. 

After two days of the campaign we’ve seen more advertising by news organisations for their election coverage than we have from the major political parties.

Continue reading "More sizzle than substance in election coverage" »

The plummeting sales of newspapers worldwide have brought about an epidemic of soul-searching about the future of journalism: do people still want straight reporting in the age of blogs?  Is there room any longer for large reporting organisations like newspapers and network TV News? Above all, who’s going to pay?

Whatever the answers to those questions, it’s a good time to be reminded of what journalism can be at its best, and the Washington Post has produced exactly such a reminder. If you read nothing else this week, bookmark this site. 

Over two years, two Washington Post reporters have been assembling an investigative series into what they call Top Secret America, and the results are fascinating.

Continue reading "Quality journalism exposes the counter-terror industry" »

There’s been some buzz around a recent article in New York magazine titled: ‘All Joy and No Fun: Why Parents Hate Parenting’. The cover of the publication shows a mother holding her baby with the cover line ‘I Love My Children.  I Hate My Life’.

The author Jennifer Senior (a mother herself) explores a wide range of research on parenting and reports that it overwhelmingly supports the view that parents are not happier than their childless peers, and in many cases, are less so.

She writes about the changing views of childhood in Western society, arguing that before urbanisation, children delivered their parents an economic advantage that’s no longer evident:
‘If you had a farm, they toiled alongside you to maintain its upkeep; if you had a family business, the kids helped mind the store.  But … as we gained in prosperity, childhood came increasingly to be viewed as a protected, privileged time, and once college degrees became essential to getting ahead, children became not only a great expense but subjects to be sculpted, stimulated, instructed, groomed … kids in short went from being our staffs to being our bosses.’

Continue reading "Well readhead: Everyone’s talking about parenting" »

It’s an analogy that’s been used before but is worth using again, chiefly in the interests of promoting that landmark cinematic work The Naked Gun as an analogy for public life.

One of the best lines in the film – apart from the scene where, during a raid on a sex shop, the lady behind the counter looks at Lieutenant Frank Drebin and says “Oh, Hi Frank” – involves a wayward ballistic missile hitting a fireworks factory and igniting thousands of catherine wheels and flame-spewing rockets in the night sky. As the crowd gathers to watch this marvellous scene Lieutenant Drebin stands in front of the rubber-neckers and says “Show’s over folks, move along, nothing to see here.”

Some years ago when Eric Roozendaal was the state secretary of the NSW Labor Party he suggested that there was an inordinate level of media interest in a story involving Illawarra Labor identity Neville Hilton, a man who can best be described as morally dubious, who when not defending the rights of the working man in the ‘Gong was also the proprietor of the Southern Belles knock-shop in Port Kembla.

Continue reading "Pollies get pity but Shane suffers in his jocks" »

Three new books about groundbreaking figures in Australian journalism - a proprietor, an editor and a reporter – provide some interesting insights into the contemporary media landscape.

The three men are: Rupert Murdoch, who needs no introduction, Graham Perkin, revered ‘60s and ‘70s editor of The Age after whom we name one of our highest journalism awards, and Alan Reid, guru of the Canberra press gallery from the late ‘50s to early ‘70s.

The three books are reviewed in the June issue of The Australian Literary Review today. Les Carlyon, no slouch himself, looks at Alan “The Red Fox” Reid: Pressman Par Excellence, by Ross Fitzgerald and Stephen Holt; former Fairfax editor Max Suich tackles Breaking News: The Golden Age of Graham Perkin, by Ben Hills; and Clive Mathieson, a rising star at The Australian, considers his boss’s big deal in War at the Wall Street Journal: How Rupert Murdoch Bought an American Icon, by Sarah Ellison.

Continue reading "Journalists in lycra tights - say it isn’t so" »

The Punch turns one today. We launched on June 1 last year and, 365 days later, here we are, all of us diagnosed with a bad case of RSI at wading through just over 110,000 reader comments since we turned the thing on.

We would like to thank everyone who has contributed to The Punch as a writer, a reader and especially as a commenter over the past 12 months. We have had a lot of fun setting up and running the site, and have been blown away by the level of reader engagement.

Thanks to you all.

Welcome to another glorious instalment of Suburban Tales – now moved to the business end of the news week. Finally, snippets of council curiosities and men doing strange things in sheds can rub shoulders with news of political intrigue and social schism.

We leave it to you, dear reader, to decide which is more ridiculous.

The rolling ballad of spin cycle Kimba: The internet is awash with tales of the age-old battle between pet and household appliance. Cat v microwave, dog v ride-on mover, hamster v sandwich, the list goes on.

Continue reading "Suburban tales: cat versus washing machine" »

David Campbell has a lesser right to privacy than an ordinary citizen, for a number of reasons.

The first is that as a politician his entire existence is underwritten by the taxpaying public – his salary, his car, his living arrangements, his ability to travel, all of it is fully or partially funded by the public, and to an extent which massively eclipses the average wage earner. The second is that as a politician he wields enormous and direct power over the way we live our lives, even own financial status. 

The third is that as a politician he has chosen to project an image of himself in order to win votes – the happily married father of two, who has used his wife and children as a visual backdrop for his campaigns for local and state government. The fourth is that he is part of a government which has been distracted, to say the least, by a series of scandals in which poor decisions, corrupt conduct and even criminal conduct have prevented a minister or member from doing his job.

Continue reading "Why David Campbell has a lesser right to privacy" »

The other day at dinner, my friends and I were discussing the Ten Commandments.  It’s party, party, party when you roll with my posse.

My friend George claimed that God originally made Eleven Commandments, but that one of the tablets was smashed so only ten were left (the actual Bible story is that there were two lots of Commandments; Moses smashed the first batch in anger and then a second series were produced).  Whatever the facts, George’s story excited me enormously.

“I’ve got a great idea for a movie!” I cried.  “The Eleventh Commandment!  What if it wasn’t really smashed and there was a race to find it, like secret treasure?”

Continue reading "Well readhead: There’s Nothing New Under the Sun" »

“The trio give birth to an amalgamation of vintage keyboards”

Dear Music Critic,

I have a problem with your review.  You see the thing is… I don’t actually know what you’re talking about. To me, the above quote makes me conjure up a mental image of three people give birth to old rusty keyboards. Ouch. I can see you’ve given the album four stars… but the seven paragraphs between the photo of the album cover and the four stars reads to me like a mountain of musical gibberish.

Continue reading "I’ve seen the future of rock, but I just don’t understand it" »

There’s nothing wrong with the Beach Boys per se. The album “Pet Sounds” routinely shows up on best-of-all-time lists. But I’m feeling a bit less fondly towards them after recently having the chorus of “Help Me Rhonda” stuck in my head on a loop. It reappeared several days in a row. 

This experience is called an earworm. Germans first came up with the term ohrwurm to describe the musical itch that apparently affects almost everyone at some stage or another. Research into earworms has found that virtually any piece of music can become one. Most people have a particular song of their own that they find uniquely irritating. But more generally, there are factors that make certain songs more likely to become earworms than others. 

One of the world’s authorities on earworms is Professor James Kellaris, a marketing and music expert at the University of Cincinnati.

Continue reading "Well read-head: I’ve got worms" »

A new messiah arrived in the US over the Easter weekend, ready to save the world’s flailing print media industry.

Sandal-less and sleek, it was, of course, Steve Jobs’ new fantasy tablet, the wildly anticipated, possibly revolutionary, definitely state of the art, iPad thingymajiggy. And America threw a bonza welcome party for its latest chosen one. Australia will have to wait a month to throw theirs.

Apple sold 700,000 iPads in two days, with 300,000 plucked from shelves and UPS men on Saturday, the first day of sales. By any standard that’s a massive take-off; even by Apple standards. The now ubiquitous iPhone sold 200,000 on its first day in stores in 2007, a third less than its plus-sized cousin.

But it was the media laying the palms for the iPad’s arrival more than the shoppers.

Continue reading "Will the iPad save the news?" »

When tennis legend Andre Agassi won Wimbledon for the first time, he telephoned his father afterwards.

“Pops?  It’s me!  Can you hear me?  What’d you think?” Agassi asked him.

There was silence at the other end of the phone.

“Pops?” said Agassi.

Finally his father spoke.

“You had no business losing that fourth set,” his father replied.

Continue reading "Well-readhead: The memoir boom" »

In recent weeks there has been a lot of debate about the conflict between the expansion of the ABC and other media providers, including subscription television and potential online subscription services.

Jonathan Holmes in The Drum called it ‘the showdown over Australia’s new media landscape’, and correctly observed that the conflict derives from the foray of the publicly funded Aunty into markets that need to make money in order to survive.

The temptation is to portray this as another public-interest-versus-private-interest argument. But it’s not. Holmes’ article refreshingly didn’t fall into this trap, although he accurately set out the revenue implications for companies like FOXTEL of the ABC’s planned new services. As a businessman, this hurts—as does the long list of anti-competitive and wasteful subsidies and protections given to Seven, Nine and Ten. But it also hurts as someone with a passion for television and someone who believes in the potential of television to be more than just wires and lights in a box—as the Ed Murrow character in the movie Good Night and Good Luck put it.

Continue reading "The ABC’s waste of money on nothing new or original" »

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" »