(Above: Doonesbury does newspapers for the week. It starts here, and reminded me how strange it felt last week at the Sydney Symphony to pick up an actual newspaper - a circulation boosting freebie - and hold it and read it).
It's been awhile since we dropped in on Mark Day, but golly does he deliver a zinger from the get go in Nanny state won't save newspapers and worries about the future of journalism:
On the world stage we have much fretting about the future of journalism and discussion of proposals to, in effect, swaddle our ailing profession in bunny rugs.
Am I right to worry that we might be rushing headlong into the nanny state? Or are we already there?
Can you follow that impeccable line of chauvinist logic?
Female politicians + ailing journalism + swaddling bunny rugs = nanny state.
Yep, quicker than you can say supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, Day has cut to the core of the issues confronting the Australia media, and then has the cheek to nibble at the Illawarra Mercury for comparing Julia Gillard to the face of Redhead matches.
Meanwhile, in his usual way, Day mans the ramparts for Chairman Rupert. Oh faithful minion, marching off to war with the Ultimo cardigan wearing socialist tea sippers at the ABC.
You see, there's Chris Uhlmann doing a little tub thumping last Friday about Breaking the story that broke Kevin PM, and how it was the ABC wot dun it.
I'm proud of my colleagues and the job they do in the large and small parts of the ABC. And, in the end, the proof of the pudding is in the quality of the ingredients.
As one minister told Mark Simkin: "I didn't know about it. But the fact that the ABC was running it meant it had credibility".
Okay, I'll confess. Like most of the commentariat, I prefer to listen to the ABC. They all do it - the Janet Albrechtsens, and the Gerard Hendersons, if only so they can rail, or so they can avoid free market advertising, or the shriek of their own kind, since who wants to listen to Alan Jones when a bullet to the brain would be speedier and still have less impact on your ability to think?
If I'm not soaking up the quiet charm of ABCFM, then I'll be picking up the news on either Radio National or news radio, which seems to mainly recycle the BBC when free of the stench of parliament, and while I can do without the ABC's personality radio, in a pinch I'll even listen to James Valentine encouraging people to rant (as we here at the pond encourage all people to indulge in stress-relieving ranting).
It's a singular reality, but time spent in Britain reminds you of the pleasure of the BBC, while any time spent in America reminds you of what monstrosities a free market mindless media machine can produce (yes Fox News, thank you Chairman Rupert).
But back to Mark Day, and his feeble retort to Uhlmann's boasting:
I'll leave the Rudd-Gillard political commentary to others, but, from a media perspective, it is worth singling out the exceptional work of Sky News and its political anchor David Speers. The Sky team were all over the story from the moment news of the impending putsch was broken by Chris Uhlmann and Mark Simkin on the ABC's 7pm news. Whatever advantage this gave the national broadcaster was squandered by its inability -- or unwillingness -- to follow the story live as it unfolded on Wednesday night.
See! The ABC might have broken it, but Sky News was all over it like a rash once it had been broken, proving second dibs at desert is always the most cunning play. No need to be first any more when you can boast about being second.
And what's more you get to shell out to go behind the paywall for Sky, as opposed to enjoying what your taxes have served you up.
The rest of Day's piece is the usual tortured stuff about what to do with the newspaper game now that it's fallen on hard times, and he checks out a couple of discussion papers about future options:
Both papers put forward options. The FTC asks: should the law be changed so that publishers receive money from online aggregators who "steal" work without payment? Should there be a "hot news" definition that prevents news scoops from being appropriated online? Should news-reading gizmos such as the iPad be taxed and the revenue given to publishers? Should newspapers be given tax breaks to help them continue their important role in democracy? Should news items downloaded to mobile phones be taxed?
Indeed. But there wouldn't be a day go by that Chairman Rupert's minions make off with other people's work. Why there on The Punch today, to illustrate Carrie Miller's piece about Julia Gillard is a copy of the front page of The Australian Women's Weekly. Is that fair use, or stealing?
While they try to do the right thing with a few in-house cartoons, the editors can't resist embedding (not just linking to) the Madonna song Like A Virgin, up on YouTube from the Music Video Awards of 1984, as an accompaniment to a story alleging Gillard is still in virgin territory. The YouTube uploader provides this quaint disclaimer ...
© 1984 Warner Music Group
And it's not just The Punch. The tabloids, like the Daily Telegraph, do it all the time too, 'recycling', aka stealing others' work as they make out like Swedish pirates, or bandits.
But to be fair, the main thrust of Day's piece is that government intervention - or government subsidy as offered by the perfidious French - isn't the answer, and that in the end market forces will decide:
Indeed. Which is why we fork out cash for The New Yorker and the New York Review of Books, and Harpers. And not a jot or whit for Chairman Rupert. Put your money where your mouth is if you want quality for the quality end of the market. And the pond does so love quality, well at least in the time not spent thinking about the loons.
Day has a nice fantasy about top gun reporters being gathered together like the A-Team or the Justice League or Marvel's Avengers to out baddies, and then he goes and ruins it all:
Outsourcing special investigations in a horses-for-courses play is not exactly new. It is, in effect, what The Australian did when it called on its top reporter Hedley Thomas to review the role of Victorian police chief Simon Overland in Operation Briars.
Oh dear, you can sense some deep brooding still going on in the bunkers at The Oz, no doubt still irritated by the ABC's Media Watch, and its story about Hedley Thomas, the OPI, and Heckling From The Cheap Seats:
The Australian has chosen to take sides in a factional war, but few of those who've reported on police corruption in Victoria believe it has chosen the side of the angels.
Hedley Thomas seems sincerely to believe that he's breaking important news. Others see an old story turned into a week-long, front-page campaign. The Australian shouldn't be surprised that many in Victoria are deeply suspicious of its motives.
So, I have to say, am I.
Hedley Thomas seems sincerely to believe that he's breaking important news. Others see an old story turned into a week-long, front-page campaign. The Australian shouldn't be surprised that many in Victoria are deeply suspicious of its motives.
So, I have to say, am I.
Those blasted cardigan wearers. And that's not the first time Media Watch had a bite at the Murdoch biscuit, along with its cup of tea, as back in May it also tackled the question of Hedley Thomas, The Oz, and the OPI in News Bites Watchdog.
Day might think that The Oz is doing top notch investigative reporting, but you don't have to be a Media Watch sheep to think that they managed to produce a storm in a teacup, dredging up old news and pretending they were on a righteous crusade. Not so much the A-Team as the B-Team. Yes Mr. T, you tell 'em, they should get some nuts, or at least a better nut cracker.
Meanwhile, Day rounds out his piece thus:
Figuring out the future of journalism and the media is very much a work in progress. It is best left to the pros. It's nice that academics, governments and concerned citizens are taking a nurturing approach and contemplating ways to wrap us in cotton wool to shield us from the harshness of the cruel world, but we are best left to experiment and learn our lessons free of government intervention. Meddling politicians, no matter how well meaning, are not wanted.
Indeed. Nor meddling consumers either. Which is why I feel no need to subscribe to Sky News, or to pay for The Australian. I'll leave that to the pros.
All I demand is that News Corp brings on a paywall in the antipodes so that I can righteously refuse to pay for News Corp content.
It's the least they can do ... it would cut the examples of scribbling worthy of loon pond status by ninety per cent overnight ...
UPDATE: and while on the subject of corporate piracy, why not head off here to Mumbrella, and Fairfax and content theft, where Fairfax cops a fair degree of stick. And so they should. Not only did they rip off a funny Hitler Downfall routine in relation to Chairman Rudd (which you can see here) but in claiming it as their own, they removed all the 'fucks'. Well fuck that, they should have fixed the spelling for jovial, which comes out as jovail. Well fuck them and their piratical ways, no way I'll link to their videos, and it seems they've now done it for the Upright Citizens Brigade here. The only difference between the big bandits and the little pirates is that the former get to spout all the righteous indignation while rifling through the till ...
(And now a little more Doonesbury. Go on, give him a click through here, and catch up on the mudline, and the 'Say What' teaser, which today reads
"This ice loss appears to be unmatched over at least the last few thousand years and unexplainable by any of the known natural variabilities."
-- from abstract of new report, History of Sea Ice in the Arctic
What's that you say? Say what? That's not what I read about climate change in The Australian.
Or is this link a trick to get me to go to a Chairman Rupert page? Don't worry, it's perfectly safe. The site is owned by The Washington Post Company, doesn't charge for access and is supported by advertising revenues).
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