Tim Blair, all hail amateur bloggers and a pox on the poodles within the dominant News Corp tent ...

(Above: a once proud claim, now rendered meaningless by the number of lap poodles lick spittling as they pretend to be reporters while sheltering within the News Corp tent).

A partial selection of News Corporation's 110 national, capital city and suburban newspapers in Australasia, from the News Corp site here:

AUSTRALASIA
Daily Telegraph
Fiji Times
Gold Coast Bulletin
Herald Sun
Newsphotos
Newspix
Newstext
NT News
Post-Courier
Sunday Herald Sun
Sunday Mail
Sunday Tasmanian
Sunday Territorian
Sunday Times
The Advertiser
The Australian
The Courier-Mail
The Mercury
The Sunday Mail
The Sunday Telegraph
Weekly Times
Big League
Inside Out
donna hay
ALPHA

Let's not start listing all the international rags, we haven't got all day.

Let's just note the proud boast as per above: Our newspapers reach more readers in more countries than those of any other English-language publisher.

Read all about it here in pdf format. Oh sure, it's old news, but hey, just remember Rupert's still up there with close to seventy per cent of the newspaper market in Australia.

But what good is Chairman Rupert, not to mention his meandering minions, if News Corp turns out to resemble miniature poodles and bloggers win?

Yep, bugger all, it seems.

Here's Tim Blair, in Bloggers Win, hailing Matt Ridley, who is hailing tenacious amateurs:

In The Spectator, Matt Ridley hails tenacious amateurs:

Journalists are wont to moan that the slow death of newspapers will mean a disastrous loss of investigative reporting. The web is all very well, they say, but who will pay for the tenacious sniffing newshounds to flush out the real story? ‘Climategate’ proves the opposite to be true. It was amateur bloggers who scented the exaggerations, distortions and corruptions in the climate establishment; whereas newspaper reporters, even after the scandal broke, played poodle to their sources.

Moral? For the truth, and classy scientific insights, read an amateur blogger today.

Sure, they might be crazed, deluded obsessional loons, but at least (a) they're amateurs; (b) you don't have to pay for their content; (c) they might be thieving aggregators, but they're not bloody poodles; and (d) they don't play poodle to their sources, because it's always better to write a blog without reference to actual credible sources.

For lies, read a Chairman Rupert rag, wherein newspaper reporters played poodle to their sources. And pay cash for the pleasure!

After all, if you can't trust a corporation that controls such a large slice of the market, who can you trust.

Further moral?

Chairman Rupert's demand that we pay for content, in a bid to uphold all the fine investigative reporting and quality sleuthing by first class newshounds, is an outrageous scam. Boycott News Corp today; roam freely through the blogosphere today, because the truth will set you free ... for free.

What's worse, it seems Chairman Rupert is now a genuine certified sceptic, full of saucy doubts and fears, and yet he can't even direct his troops to follow him into the trenches, like any decent amateur blogger already exposing the truth to the world:

Personally, I treat private conversations with Rupert Murdoch on global warming as, well, private. But Des Moore goes public in announcing that Murdoch, who famously declared we “must give the planet the benefit of the doubt”, now harbors many doubts himself (here).

What's the point of searching for the truth when a crusade is what's required?

But hang on, you say, isn't Tim Blair himself a journalist, and doesn't he work for Chairman Rupert? Should we no longer trust him, but instead go in search of a truly amateur truth telling blogger? Or does being a cadet on the Melbourne Truth get you an exemption and allow you to call yourself an amateur blogger? Since the Truth's connection to the truth was often as remote as an amateur blogger's (here).

Or is there a kind of self-loathing going on? And does it extend to Andrew Bolt? Or does it just stay within the Daily Terror? Or perhaps The Australian? And is Australia's most delightful conversation, The Punch, excluded, because people get to write for the pleasure of sniffing an oily rag? So as virtually amateur truth telling bloggers their versions of reality will be so much better than what you might read in the New Scientist, or the Scientific American.

Shudder, there's that word science. How I hate and abhor it. What do scientists know about anything, compared to amateur truth telling bloggers.

Not to worry, it's always handy to be reminded that, as of today, thanks to Tim Blair's stunning research and scientific conclusions, there is absolutely no need to buy a Chairman Rupert rag, and even less reason to consult an actual scientist ... when a resident of loon pond will surely provide all the insight needed ... for free.

I maintain that two and two would continue to make four, in spite of the whine of the amateur for three, or the cry of the critic for five.
James Whistler

(Below: worse than an amateur blogger, even though it's just as free).