The Goanna, falling into line with Chairman Rupert, and putting poetry above profits

(Above: a nice picture of a goanna. You can read more about the goanna, here. Oh by the way, it's a wiki, so it's free).

In the wild, the goanna, a monitor lizard of the genus Varanus, is notorious for stealing eggs. Sure they like carrion, and love to feed on the carcasses of dead animals, and the smell of rotting meat is a sure way to call them home - safer and smarter than calling out "here bluey" - but above all they like an egg or two for a snack.

Perhaps that's the real reason why the National Times species of the goanna likes the resonances in the name, as he offered up - in his mission statement - his desire to flush out secrets and deliver them up for our delectation. A handy reptile cruising the corridors of power sniffing out tasty eggs.

Well sad to say, this particular goanna is just a tragic whinger and whiner, in the manner and tone of recent Chairman Rupert lackeys, and he wants the punters to pay for his lifestyle choices.

Instead of rising to the challenges in Mark Scott's speech about digital content on the intertubes (you can find the links here), his opening sally in No time for poetry when there are profits at stake is pure indignant froth and bubble:

Mark Scott, a long-time journalist and executive in the pay of the Fairfax newspaper empire - which has to live in the sordid world of actually making money from consumers - appears to have taken very happily indeed to a perch upon an ivory tower.

Phew, is that the smell of sour grapes, or just plain old red wine vinegar? Yep, sure is, as the goanna gets antsy about Scott daring to reply to Chairman Rupert and his gang for wanting to take out the BBC, or at least hamstring it, shackle it, denigrate it and reduce it to a whimper so Chairman Rupert can keep on making out like a bandit:

... he (Scott) took a shot at those who own current media empires for having the gall to try to turn things around and actually continue making money. In particular, he lambasted Rupert Murdoch for daring to suggest that he would try to persuade consumers to start paying for some of the material his company publishes on the internet.

Scott, however, neglected to mention that he is the only media executive in Australia who doesn't have to sit down every day and try to work out where the money might come from to keep his own organisation operating.

I guess that means SBS doesn't count as a network, or perhaps they too aren't worried about public service so much as chasing the advertising dollar (though they bung on some pretty strange shows if they want to make a quick buck or three).

Then of course comes the ritual disclaimer, known as the 'but billy goat butt' syndrome around here, in honor of a late unlamented teacher, who also used to assault roughnecks and thuggees with the line "beware this llama, it spits".

But I digress. On to the but:

The Goanna, it happens, is a lifetime supporter of the ABC. It's a magnificent adornment to Australian society and culture and consistently produces some of the most important and thought-provoking journalism, documentaries, drama, news and entertainment in the nation. The sound of the fanfare before the ABC radio and TV news is as comforting to Australians everwhere as a hot pie in winter. The Goanna, it should also be revealed, is a regular guest on ABC radio from Adelaide to Brisbane.

Phew, that's better. Wouldn't want to compromise the escape route so many Fairfax hacks have taken as they fled the rigors of working for a living and took up working for the bureaucratic man over at the ABC (not that we should get upset about the likes of Deborah Cameron, or Richard Glover, or David Marr or any of the others who've traipsed back and forth more times than desperate asylum seekers looking for sympathy from Paul Sheehan). And it's good to know that the goanna likes his bread buttered on both sides of his mouth.

But the question remains. Is he onside with Chairman Rupert and eagerly looking forward the the ham stringing, degutting and ring barking of what he fondly calls a magnificent adornment? Should it be made to pull in its online head and its news service and the bizarre notion that having been paid for once by the taxpayers, it would be inappropriate to ask them to stump up again, just so Chairman Rupert can feel he's on a level playing field?

Who knows. But the goanna does retain a splendid optimism about the future of the big mastheads, citing the cinema and iTunes as a way of showing how old media never dies, just changes form. Well good luck with that.

Meantime, if you like to pay for your content, you've probably already read Ken Auletta's amusing account of Google in The New Yorker, and how they're now circling the wagons for fear of being taken down (the abstract's here, but it's cash for content, naturally Ken Auletta also has a website, here).

Auletta starts out with an anecdote about the way Mel Karmazin, C.O.O, of Viacom, in June 2003 went in search of acquisitions and took a meeting with the founders of Google - a mere search engine. (Co-founder Sergey Brin arrived late, roller blading into the room, wearing a T-shirt and gym shorts).

Fast forward only a few years, and suddenly Google search takes in about four of every ten online advertising dollars, and last year Google's revenues exceeded twenty two billion dollars, more than two thirds of the thirty billion in total US newspaper advertising projected for the current year.

Say what you will about this phenomenon - and Google's wariness that some new punk is likely to come along and knock them off their perch - but it's both rich and pathetic that - after having missed the boat - old media suddenly turns its ire on public broadcasters. They were looking the other way, the train came along and knocked them senseless, and suddenly it's all the fault of the BBC (or the ABC, or whomever).

By way of endorsing the Murdochs, the Goanna falls neatly into line, like any Murdoch lackey, and quotes them with what seems like approval:

"There is a land grab, pure and simple, going on - and in the interests of a free society it should be sternly resisted," declared Murdoch the younger. "The land grab is spear-headed by the BBC. The scale and scope of its current activities and future ambitions is chilling."

And Murdoch jnr added: "Dumping free, state-sponsored news on the market makes it incredibly difficult for journalism to flourish on the internet. Yet it is essential for the future of independent digital journalism that a fair price can be charged for news to people who value it."

Oh spare me. Next I'll be reading how James Packer thinks that state-sponsored gambling is ruining the casino business. Luckily the world can live entirely comfortably without the Murdoch empire if it were to disappear tomorrow, not that it's likely (and the employees would likely be a tad sad), and when people get to talk about Orwellian governments, just as many will talk about the Orwellian Murdochs (come on back Citizen Kane, all is forgiven).

Then the goanna leads with a theory which might be called asinine if it wasn't so obvious. Would Chairman Rupert and his gang mount a campaign against the ABC in Australia, as it sought to get back it's old fashioned oligopoly, where the sheep got shorn, the Murdochs banked the change, and everybody was happy? Well shorn sheep and rich Murdochs give you that answer quicker than you can say goanna egg thief:

Could Mark Scott be concerned that Murdoch's News Ltd might mount an anti-ABC campaign back here in Australia, suggesting to the government that its power and funding should be constrained in the interests of giving commercial media a better go? Worse, that other media organisations might join the Murdoch push and try to get into the ear of government and its regulators?

Well yes, indeedy. Mr Scott actually mentioned within his speech that he expected just such arguments to be used against the ABC.

His lecture, therefore, ought to be construed as something of a preemptive strike.

Clearly the goanna has missed the ongoing war between the ABC and the Murdoch empire these past few years, even if he's picked up some of the Murdoch lingo, like perching in ivory towers and Scott stating the bleeding obvious, and - sob - the hardship of making a buck in these troubled times.

In a tragic attempt to provide a base for the ABC's paranoia, the goanna notes that there's going to be a showdown between the ABC and Sky TV over the Australia network, with Sky promising to turn it into the biggest international broadcasting network undertaking by any Australian media organization.

Well I'm sure that's all very well and important (and you can see the Australia Network details, including its broadcast footprint here), but it really doesn't matter a dime to consumers of domestic product. And nor does it particularly matter to Murdoch, up against the reach the ABC has established via its very successful online operations (with big plans to unleash even more content). So long as the ABC keeps dropping that content into the domestic market - especially the news service, not to mention the recycling of a lot of radio and television offerings - the embittered Murdochs will always look on the ABC with resentment and envy.

In fact, they might just have managed to ghost write the goanna's wrap-up to his column:

Scott, thus, might be seen as just as market driven as any of those frightful proprietors who are trying to survive and prosper, even if his lecture began with high-falutin' literary pretensions when he quoted part of W.H. Auden's poem The Fall of Rome, declaring it a "wonderful mosaic of decline".

Poetry, of course, was always the love of those who don't have to worry where their next dollar comes from.

Oh yes, quote a bit of poetry, and why you're one step from being a prissy poncy Oscar Wilde gadding about without a thought in your head about the toughness of being down the coal mine without a canary or a candle. Oh yes those ivory towered poetry loving bludgers, how dare they be so high-falutin'.

Well maybe the goanna should just get over it, and get out and do some of that investigative reporting that will tempt the punters to part with a buck or two.

One reader's already offered up his private fortune if it will put an end to the pop ups and other cockroaches that litter the Fairfax site, but of course it won't, in much the same way as you have the double pleasure of paying for content and to watch advertisements on pay television.

Another suggests - gasp - that Fairfax do an Evening Standard and give away their hard copy, but surely giving the rag away at airports and at the Opera House and other 'select, discreet' sites must count for something, if only as a way of keeping up those dire circulation figures.

A third suggests that instead of whining, old media might set about maximising its assets and building new ways to beguile the punters into parting with their cash.

Golly that sounds a bit hard. How much easier it is to fall into the 'droit de seigneur' sense of entitlement possessed by the Murdochs, as they seek to kneecap intertubes enemies and consign public broadcasting to the scrap heap.

Finally one punter puts in a plaintive plea for a story around Jon Stewart's The Daily Show, and gang raping in Iraq. And there's the problem. These days it's a global platform, and a global marketplace, and so much free poetry available on the internet that I have barely a moment to pause and think about how Fairfax's profits might be going down the gurgler.

Cue a totally irrelevant link to The Daily Show. Because it's there ... and for the moment at least I can ... Chew on that egg how you will ...

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