OK, so we have a long and noisy media beat up over alcopops and fuel prices

Fuel prices = beat-up, precipitated by poor opposition policy
Alcopops = precipitated by poor government policy, so not a beat-up

Yes, the media needs something to write about, and as what many on this site would call “substantive issues” does little to sell newspapers and turn over people meters, they have to write about issues like fuel prices and alcopops.

The Coalition are not built for opposition, and therefore are not very good at it, as displayed above. That is also a story, but not a deep one.

the opposition don’t actually know what their position is

Hence the dubious nature of the one-term assertion.

If you can point me to a serious policy critique from one of these columnists, I’d be very surprised indeed.

I’d be hard-pressed these days to point out a serious anything from any columnist anywhere. They’re all shite. They need to get a job.

Milne may have a point about the Toyota thing, but that’s hardly his central concern, and the opposition don’t actually know what their position is. Let me say this – there is a big difference between scrutiny of government decisions on their policy merits and subsuming them all under a narrative that “there’s no narrative” and that it’s all spin. That’s what they do on the whole – in lockstep with the opposition.

If you can point me to a serious policy critique from one of these columnists, I’d be very surprised indeed.

And it’s not just the punditariat – it’s the headlines, the selection of news, etc.

I’ve come to the firm conclusion that the “honeymoon is over” proclamation issued by the media en masse a few weeks ago with reference to the Rudd government and Kevin Rudd himself means nothing more than the media decided to report everything the government did with some spin about “symbolism over substance” and “lacking a narrative”

The media can’t really work that way can it? Such a comment suggests that journos will get together and make this decision about how they’ll spin the Rudd govt. Certainly there’d be a ‘group-think’ at play but one of the media’s jobs is to criticize govt. The question you’ve got to ask is if this ’style over substance’ schtick has currency. Thing is the govt’s honeymoon is over when the media stop swooning and start booting. They have, it is.

…most recently exemplified in another complete waste of newsprint from Glenn Milne whose Sunday column this week lacks anything but rumour, gossip and speculation

I’m not sure it was a complete waste of newsprint Kim. Even if it lacked anything but gossipy, rumour and speculation (it is a column after all).
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Milne outlines an episode in Japan that, whilst electorally irrellevant, does bely a confused strategy. The $35 million subsidy to Toyota might be good politics (pleasing the blue-collars and the ‘luvvies’) but it’s bad economics. There’s been a general agreement on this. I’m not sure that Milne’s ‘one term’ speculation is justified. In fact I think it’s codswallop. But the essential message that Rudd’s been running into rough waters and hasn’t exactly performed spectacularly is sound.

Glenn has had years of treasury documents, then BAM! Cold Turkey.

And it’s not coming back. The government’s strategists now practice what they knew all along; that swinging voters don’t read the newspaper, and print journalism is impotent in terms of influencing elections.
Just like the NSW government finally woke up to the fact Alan Jones was preaching to a choir, and stopped granting him influence, the newspapers only had the power that government gave them.

The best we ordinary plebs can do is boycott the worst offenders, like Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, which set the standard for trashing tabloid journalism.

As far as “internet activism”, you have to wonder whether linking to News Ltd stories in order to criticise them serves much purpose, given that any publicity oxygen inflames the “controversy” on which they feed.