(Above: Aborigines playing tunes on gum leaves, Deniliquin, 1934, one of a number of photos of the Women's Cricket Association tour of Australia 1934-35, here, proving there's more to life on the intertubes than a digital broadsheet newspaper scribbling to the 'leets about the desires of the workers).When you have a gum leaf, make sure it always plays the one tune.
The anonymous editorialist for The Australian turns in a trio of typical opinions today. Here he or she is, in Independent teachers have a right to defend schools:
The departure of the Independent Education Union of Australia from the ACTU after 30 years exposes the peak union body's remoteness from the values of mainstream working Australians and its increasing capture by activists on the political fringe.
Score one for the values of mainstream working Australians, which happens to involve supporting rich private schools. I suppose you might even award a bonus point to the notion that the Independent Education Union of Australia represents mainstream working Australian values.
Now quick, jump to the anonymous editorialist's Tilting at Green windmills:
Greens senator for South Australia Sarah Hanson-Young has demonstrated how her party is out of touch with working families, and perhaps with reality, by dismissing such concerns.
Score another point for working families. The concerns? Why it's for Whyalla, and steel-making, and we imagine the anon edit is still sobbing at the fate of Newcastle and Port Kembla. Of course in those days BHP was just seen as taking appropriate re-structuring ...
Where, The Australian rhetorically asks, will we source the steel to make wind turbines, not seeming to understand that having shipped all of our iron ore to China, the Chinese will quite happily ship all the steel back to us ...
Labor has touted broadband as a major infrastructure project but the network isn't much use to people struggling to get to work every day or businesses stymied by congested ports.
Strike three for struggling everyday workers, as The Australian demands big government embarks on socialistic nation-building endeavours, like road-building, and port-building, and never mind public transport, and especially not the NBN, even though in the very same piece, the Infrastructure Australia authority is quoted as proposing a concerted use of the National Broadband Network.
What's most remarkable in all this?
Well it's the way the anonymous editorialist assumes that a national paper with a circulation of under 130,000 copies a day (2% drop Jan-Mar 2011) and a total readership optimistically in the territory of 450,000, out of a total population of 22,643,508 (watch it grow) assumes and presumes it can speak for ordinary battling struggling working Australians, when in fact it's a wretched high end elitist broadsheet rag run for the direct benefit and profitability of an American billionaire. (And happily doesn't deliver any of that said profit to said American billionaire).
Really it's about time the anonymous editorialist cranked down the rhetoric about the average working joe blow, and the concomitant incessant references to world-weary, complacent inner urban elites.
Why even the Fairfax rags have more claim to speak to a more diverse and larger readership than the pride of the Murdoch fleet.
The further irony in all this is that The Australian has never been profitable in any meaningful sense of the word. From the get go, it's been a vanity publication, designed to bolster Murdoch's profile, subsidised by tabloids in the group and given a semblance of popularity by the weekend edition's solid sales. For all its rabid anti-green tirades and its support of the market, it has the commercial validity of a local, heavily subsidised Pravda ...
So here's to its ongoing illiberal, supposedly working class ranting, behind the paywall about to descend like a bamboo curtain, and for more on that, why not have a read of Tim Dunlop's Another buck in the paywall ...
If you are talking about a strategy for maximising the number people who will cough up - in perpetuity, week after week - money for your product, then The Australian’s partisanship is a losing strategy. In a market as small as Australia, trying to build a viable subscription base when you have spent a decade holding at least half your potential audience in utter contempt is going to be a tough ask.
Let me add, this is not an argument against paywalls. I'm just saying that, at the quality end of the market, any mainstream media organisation is going to struggle if they define 'quality' in partisan terms in a small market like Australia. If you are going to ask people pay directly for your journalism - as opposed to indirectly via advertising - it is best not to treat them as enemies.
Oh dear, that sounds like someone from the ABC, clearly outside the mainstream Australian values so solidly represented by The Australian's anonymous editorialist.
Bring on the paywall, and the sooner the better ...
Meanwhile, over at The Punch, Joe Hildebrand is busy in ETS backflip makes me feel green about the gills, explaining how the Greens are responsible for the coverage of climate change in the Murdoch press:
In short, it is my firm belief that the sky is green and that Mount Everest is actually a rockpool near Acapulco and any scientist who says otherwise is just lying to get a government grant.
These views are increasingly being given equal weighting in the public debate. And why?
These views are increasingly being given equal weighting in the public debate. And why?
Because even alleged broadsheets like The Australian have loved to stoke the fires, via any number of columnists and news reports, on the basis that printing the controversy is a sure way to the truth? And so turned the likes of Lord Monckton into a hero? Because, as Dunlop noted inter alia?
... The Australian's overt partisanship - which has seen them not only turn Newspoll into a tool for generating anti-Labor stories but has also led them to offer possibly the worst coverage of climate change of any broadsheet in the Western world -- has alienated a sizeable percentage of their potential audience.
No, no, silly, it's all the fault of the greenies:
Because once the loony left Greens showed themselves to be intransigent, extreme and unwilling to be reasonable on this most important issue, the loony right suddenly didn’t appear so loony.
Uh huh, and where do these greenies live?
And are they right? Do the Greens care more about political posturing and going to bed in their inner-city terraces with smug self-satisfaction than they do about saving the planet?
Yep, it's right through Murdoch-land, a meme of stereotypes, cliches and caricatures, no more capable of making sense of the world than devoted readers of the Old Testament.
Hildebrand fancies himself as a satirist and a humorist, but does sending yourself and your organisation up shitless constitute satire or produce humour?
We'll overlook the borrowing of 'loony', but don't worry Alice, if we're not down the rabbit hole with you already, we'll be there shortly ...
(Below: from Retail softness hits newspaper sales, click on to enlarge)
You made me feel all choked up and proud, as I recently cancelled the family subscription to the Australian. Flesh and blood could only stand so much, and I'll swear that I feel better already....
ReplyDeleteOh well done and though we strike only a few notes at the pond, what a splendid chord you've played ... and yes you will feel better, since hitting your head with a hammer only provides relief for the first few hours ...
ReplyDeleteWhy not celebrate by buying some decent reading instead? Books, magazines, intelligent people writing intelligent things, perhaps with bias but without a relentless ideological slant that sees the world as a hammer sees nails ...
Here at the pond we spend money on a half dozen magazines and ebooks now intrude and not one app involving News Corp needs to be involved, and what calm considered reading we can find ...