(Above: The lizard Oz in self promotion mode, with "top honours" story here).
Most monumental exercise this year in self-glorfication, self-indulgence and self-promotion?
It marked the third time The Australian had been named Newspaper of the Year, following its successes in 2005 and 2007.
In a stellar night for the national broadsheet, associate editor Cameron Stewart received the award for the Scoop of the Year, while Susannah Moran was named Business Journalist of the Year and Eric Lobbecke received the Artist of the Year award.
The News Awards, which celebrate excellence in journalism among News Ltd publications, were judged at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney.
Rupert Murdoch, head of News Corporation which owns The Courier-Mail, said the awards acknowledged the commitment it takes to produce quality journalism.
Alan Anspaugh remembers the moment he realised life as he knew it at The Wall Street Journal was over.
As assistant managing editor, Anspaugh landed the job of squiring the newspaper's new owner, Rupert Murdoch, around its Princeton, New Jersey, editing operations in late 2007. Anspaugh recalls the tour took them past the wall of Pulitzer prizes and other journalism awards the WSJ had accumulated during more than a century in the news business.
"Well, Mr Murdoch," Anspaugh said, indicating the trophies, "This is what it's all about."
"No," replied Murdoch, pausing, perhaps for effect, "it's about selling newspapers."
As for that wall of Pulitzers, the WSJ has yet to add to it under its new ownership. But it has become the top-selling newspaper in the US.
(Below: the Sunday Terror stepping up to the challenge to win a News Award next season with a devastating expose of tattoos, here. Go team terror).
Most monumental exercise this year in self-glorfication, self-indulgence and self-promotion?
Surely it has to be the News Awards.
Now we firmly believe in the elephant stamp and a bunch of gold stars as a motivational weapon. How else would we be able to distinguish losers destined for the scrap heap, and the welfare system, so that thereafter and forever they can be berated as losers and spongers and bludgers and ne'er do wells.
And similarly it's vital to award some kind of laurel wreath to winners - it's hard to go past the gold, silver, bronze system - to acknowledge the triumphs of those who know how to take the right drugs at the right time. A little cash reward doesn't hurt either.
And so internal systems of rewards and acknowledgements litter the system, right down to the employee of the day, week, month or year you might find in an advanced hamburger store using modern management techniques.
All that said, it's impossible to read the high sounding, high falutin' nonsense of the "News Awards" without breaking into a smile. It's almost as silly as the AFI awards for the Australian film industry. 18 nominations for the one film? Come on guys, what's that say about the competition?
Naturally The Australian blows its own trumpet, and without a hint of irony, an off note or a raspberry:
In a stellar night for the national broadsheet, associate editor Cameron Stewart received the award for the Scoop of the Year, while Susannah Moran was named Business Journalist of the Year and Eric Lobbecke received the Artist of the Year award.
And so it goes on, the News team handing out awards to ... the News team.
You can do the same thing for yourself by heading off to a store selling sports trophies, and getting a handsome trophy engraved with 'wanker of the year', or 'best in class prize goose' or suchlike, and awarding it to yourself at the restaurant of your choice surrounded by your admiring loved ones and extended family.
Naturally all the Murdoch stable were in on it. Here's that rag the Adelaide Advertiser, preening and prattling in Advertiser and AdelaideNow win coveted honours:
The Advertiser and AdelaideNow received two of the top honours at last night's prestigious News Awards.
Yep, you can win an award for transforming your newsroom to accommodate digital journalism. How about an award for throwing out candles and hurricane lamps, and moving to accommodate to the role of electricity in modern life?
Naturally The Courier Mail was at it as well, in Courier-Mail writer Trent Dalton wins Feature Journalist of the Year award:
The Courier-Mail and Qweekend's Trent Dalton has taken out the Feature Journalist of the Year award at the prestigious News Awards.
By now you'll have noticed what the commentariat would surely call sinister Orwellian group speak, a kind of mindless rote repetition worthy of sheep on the farm. "Prestigious", "coveted",
"honours", "stellar night", celebrating "excellence" ...
Unfortunately the Courier Mail also spelled out the precise nature of the in-house antics, while publishing a full list of News Award winners who naturally happened to be hacks or companies within the News Corp stable:
Rupert Murdoch, head of News Corporation which owns The Courier-Mail, said the awards acknowledged the commitment it takes to produce quality journalism.
Which of course is a bald faced moment of being economical with the truth, since what they acknowledge is the glory of hacks working within the Murdoch stable, and the veritable wonders and splendours of that very stable.
There are of course genuinely competitive awards for journalists and publishers open to all comers, but surely this kind of self-praise is the best litmus test for a paranoid, insular institution intent on making its own rules.
Nobody gives us awards, or at least not enough of them to pay homage to our uniquely unique uniqueness, so we'll give them to ourselves ...
It makes it all the funnier to read this story published awhile ago in A wall of Pulitzers and a $6 billion question: 'What would Rupert do?'
It is of course another self-serving story praising Chairman Murdoch in the way we might expect of a Chinese film promoting Chairman Mao (and if you want an example of how that works, The Founding of a Republic serves as a splendid, numbing example, with Chairman Mao giving children piggy backs, and discovering the joys of merchants, capitalists and democracy, and somehow forgetting the mass executions that took place when the Chairman got power).
But we digress. The point of the 'what would Rupert do' story?
As assistant managing editor, Anspaugh landed the job of squiring the newspaper's new owner, Rupert Murdoch, around its Princeton, New Jersey, editing operations in late 2007. Anspaugh recalls the tour took them past the wall of Pulitzer prizes and other journalism awards the WSJ had accumulated during more than a century in the news business.
"Well, Mr Murdoch," Anspaugh said, indicating the trophies, "This is what it's all about."
"No," replied Murdoch, pausing, perhaps for effect, "it's about selling newspapers."
Love it. Perhaps pausing for effect, in a ponderous way reminiscent of an elephant stalking a bee. As for selling newspapers in the land of Oz, well who can say. The circulation figures are now regularly boosted by dodgy giveaways and cheap tricks, and even if you decided to trust them, the news isn't good (No good news in latest circulation figures). It's got so farcical that even the Audit Bureau of Circulation has decided to draw a line in the sand (Price under scrutiny in circulation review), by reviewing the trick of including "campus copies" in paid sales figures.
But back to the punch line to that Pulitzer column ...
Indeed. No point in having cheap vulgar awards like the Pulitzers when the very business of ink on the fingers newspaper hackery is selling newspapers ...
And down in the antipodes, what need for a wall of Pulitzers when you can take your very own News award home, and polish it for hours, or perhaps use it for a doorstop, or perhaps if stuck in the kitchen, as a can opener.
Strangely the News rags that didn't score any meaningful, coveted, glorious elephant stamps this year seem to have been a tad mute about the News awards.
The online Daily/Sunday Telegraph puts the IF awards for Australian films on a bigger pedestal, while a rare visit to the Herald Sun reveals the rag is off to the spring racing ...
Never mind team.
With Miranda Devine joining Tim Blair and Piers 'Akker Dakker' ' the fat owl of the remove' Akerman at the Terror, and Andrew Bolt still firmly in the chair at the HUN, both rags are hot contenders for the loon pond 'loonies' for the "most useless columns and the most outrageous comments in the cause of conservatism" awards scheduled for year's end ...
(Below: the Sunday Terror stepping up to the challenge to win a News Award next season with a devastating expose of tattoos, here. Go team terror).
An "A" for effort, Bob, but you had only to caption the pic of Rupe, who is thinking something like "We are well and truly r88ted".
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