There's a theory that in the future, news will be free, and the only value to be found in newspapers online will be the 'value-add' of their pundits and commentators.As a theory it didn't hold much water when the New York Times tried to charge for the content of its chattering commentariat class. Spring for a David Brooks opinion? Why not try to sell me a cilice instead?
But it does raise the question as to what punters will be springing for when The Australian elevates its slow to arrive paywall around its precious must have content.
Today's as good a day as any to take a look at the wares on offer, and you have to wonder whether you might not be better off just getting a feed from the Liberal party's media centre.
There's Niki Savva launching into Chairman Rudd with Nobody laughs when PM jokes about revenge, wherein she discovers that politicians and big business know how to deliver coathangers, and then Michael Stutchbury announces in No pay equity in mining boom that Julia Gillard's move to reduce the gender gap is bad for the economy. After all, let's face it, any attempt to reduce the gender gap is just the bitching of the "new industrial feminists".
Well I suppose that makes a difference to the bitching of agrarian feminists and pre-industrial and luddite and syndico-anarchist feminists.
Everything is grand in the job world for women, especially for teachers and nurses, which Stutchbury explains, are "caring" professions. Yep, you send your kids off to school, not for an education but for a kind of extended, albeit expensive, day care.
We could go on for hours dissecting and nitpicking the rampant chauvinism - in its modern sexist sense - embedded in the musings of Stutchbury, but time waits for no scribbling man, and away we must rush to Malcolm Colless's Liberal hardheads thrash out strategy, wherein Colless acts as a cheerleader for coalition tacticians.
But if you spend too much time brooding about Colless urging strict party discipline as an essential requirement for defeating the Ruddster - do they pay him for his coaching rather than his scribbling skills? - then you'll miss some quality time with the resident war mongers, as Greg Sheridan charts a Long road ahead to win the war. That's right, we haven't been in Afghanistan nearly long enough yet to secure the supply lines for the opium and heroin trade.
Meanwhile, Amanda Hodge is determined to pump up the volume in Our small yet critical presence, where the Aussies, oi, oi, oi, are making all the difference in Afghanistan.
But wait, if you brood too long about the jolly successful campaign in Afghanistan, then you might not have time for Peter van Onselen's Julia needs to act to save the party, written with the kind of rhetorical flourish we usually associate with Chicken Little announcing that the sky is falling down. It seems Julia is defying the will of the people, who somehow miraculously have channeled their entire being and thinking into that mighty vessel van Onselen. Well I guess it beats attending a spiritualist seance to find out about political directions and imperatives.
But wait, I know you always demand an extra set of steak knives when reading opinion pieces, and of course there's more as Dennis Shanahan offers up a firm, incisive ALP living on false hopes, in much the same way as Shanahan himself can only read the runes, or decipher the I Ching in one myopic way.
It's almost a relief to get to PM flaunts his linguistic flair for a joke about shit storms and Chinese tones.
Meanwhile, if you happened to be an ultra masochist, you could drop in on the editorials, where the advice to People in glass houses ... is that they should stop stop throwing rocks at billionaire miners, because they're fragile possums, poor things, along with the news in Kevin can't see we've changed that the Labor party is working off an outdated template of Australia, as opposed to John Howard, who worked off the brand spanking new modern template of a nineteen fifties suburban picket fence.
It would be tempting to have purchased the paper, if only so it could be flung aside, while muttering "drivel, so much drivel sir, of a right wing kind."
Ironically the only column of interest is one penned by John Mendoza, Mental health lacks cash, echoed in a righteous editorial This cry for help must be heard, as the Labor government pursues the kind of mental health free market approach enshrined by John Howard and TonyAbbott.
The irony? The only time The Australian can countenance talk of socialist medicine and public expenditure on health is when it can be used as a baseball bat on the federal government.
Bring on the paywall. Is it any wonder a small dedicated sensible minority pay for The New York Review of Books, and watch Jon Stewart for free?
Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me, get me to read eight columns in The Australian, what exactly did you put in that fucking moonshine juice? Or am I a fucking idiot?
And now since it's too tiring to contemplate the existence of The Australian, here's Jon Stewart for some light relief, and while I won't do a spoiler about the punch line, it has something to do with health!
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| An Energy-Independent Future | ||||
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You are so right! I am at the stage where I cannot bear to read them any more - after such a long and systematic change to denigrate the government.
ReplyDeleteThey keep harping on about the insulation installation and the schools building programme, but where are the shrieks of outrage about all the shonky businesspeople who cheated, broke the health and safety laws, and massively overcharged the government - and thus all of the people - without the hint of a blush. Evidently it is fine to rip of the government and all the taxpayers.
As for the tax on profits, as I read that the man whose plane crashed has a personal fortune of $985 millions, it seems that the industry cn well afford a tax on super profits.
Amen to that.
ReplyDeleteIt irritates me that the insulation industry which has always been full of dodgy brothers getting away with their dodgy brother behaviour, in the style the private sector free market indulges in all the time, yet all we hear about is the dangers of government, not the spivs and spiffs in the sector who ripped off the government and their clients.
Did the insulation program actually reduce fire risk? is the kind of angle you have to head off to Pollytics to read:
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollytics/2010/02/24/did-the-insulation-program-actually-reduce-fire-risk/comment-page-1/
Who knows if the Possum's figures are right? But who can learn anything at all from the hysterics at the Oz?