Well, I think it’s safe to say that a full scale war has broken out between News Ltd and Australian independent media operators.
Posts today at Crikey, Larvatus Prodeo and The Oz’s Mark Day.
Day amused me with this in his piece.
More than anyone else, Hartigan is plugged into worldwide trends, information, research, experiments, technologies, think tanks and consultancies. As part of the global News Corporation (publisher of The Australian) he is at the cutting edge of the media experience.
This fact alone makes Hartigans earlier comments on media even more alarming. How can you have so many resources at hand and still not understand the changes that are occurring – not to mention insisting your old business model still has legs.
It’s interesting watching the smart, small and quick take down a giant.
Once again I’ll repeat, the mistake being made by the media giants is in thinking they are the destination, but with aggregation via whatever method you choose (RSS, Google, Social Media etc) the web itself is the destination – I see specific sites as just a subset of that destination.
I don’t go to News Ltd sites, I go online.
And it’s not that they are getting smaller, it’s that the web is getting bigger.
As someone who straddles the media divide, I have to say that my money is on the smart, small and the quick because we’re quite happy to plug whatever we do into the web media stream and ride it – not attempt to hoard it for ourselves.
That’s the cutting edge of the media experience.
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A perfect example of that “not hoarding” is Chris Wallace’s breakfast politics – pretty much all you want to read in that day’s papers without having the wade through significant annoyances such as the SMH’s regularly offensive and sexist story illustrations. At 7 am, jeebus knows when she gets up.
Nice link.
As for The Australian..”smashing looms since 1964!”
What with a war against the Rudd Govt on also, history tells us fighting a war on two fronts leads to disaster, all I can say to Ltd News re Hannahs Dad comment elsewhere nice one, is carry on regardless
And he owns Newspoll.
‘As part of the global News Corporation (publisher of The Australian) he is at the cutting edge of the media experience.’
Gotta love these appeals to corporate authority. Let’s play around with some changes and see how good the argument is:
‘As part of the global Lehman Brothers Corporation (owner of Grange Securities) he is at the cutting edge of the finance experience.’
‘As part of the global General Motors Corporation (owner of Holden) he is at the cutting edge of the automobile experience.’
‘As part of the global conservative movement (inspiration for the Liberal Party) he is at the cutting edge of the politics experience.’
Insert names of your choice … don’t want to cop any libel actions.
If someone says they’re at the cutting edge of something, you know they’re not.
Haven’t read the Day article … maybe I should, but I try to avoid the Murdoch stuff as much as possible. But it is a bit of a shock coming from someone not entirely opposed to liberal ideas.
You’re sure it’s not a satire? In the manner of some of those Dryden poems, where patrons paid him a bundle for an ode of praise – little realising that from another angle it was seriously sending them up.
Never heard of flatulence with a cutting edge before.
What the traditional news outlets have which the Blogosphere does not is access to the halls of power i.e. to Rudd, Gillard, Swan, Turnbull etc., of course because they need each other to further their mutual ends, namely, money and power
That means for now the Blogosphere is more dependent on the traditional news outlets than vice-versa. Overwhelmingly so.
Blogs will be equal competitors to News Ltd et al when we have equal time with the halls of power. It’s difficult to foresee how that can happen. Rudd needs Lavartus Prodeo or Catallaxy for what exactly ?
“Hartigan”
Why are they discussing him in their sheets? Hardly any of their readers would know who he is and if they did couldn’t care anyway.
Just amazes me that they wan’t to have a tiff withe blog world which can only enhance it’s status and also advertise it and do no good for themselves.
Indeed. If I was New Ltd I wouldn’t even be debating this in the paper. I’d be lobbying the communications minister to regulate the internet so that all bloggers of a political nature would have to be licensed and be open to complaints of bias.
Bury blogs in red tape.
“Rudd needs Lavartus Prodeo or Catallaxy for what exactly ?”
Well he may need Catallaxy for a good laugh.
Shorter Mark Day – “Oh, shock, horror, all those people out there on the blogs refuse to pay for the rightwing political crap in The Australian.”
The Australian charging for content. Heh. That’s why the Mark Day’s and Glenn Milne’s of the Oz are becoming more and more shrill: they’ve seen the future and they are unlikely to be in it.
Indeed. I f I want to read right wing screeds (or left wing ones for that matter) there are loads of places I can do so for free.
I wonder how Newscorp’s supposed desire to sell their influence-peddling American political weekly (the one staffed by free-market think tank folk) fits into the cutting edge of Hartigan’s experience. http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ct-standard10-2009jun10,0,3353859.story
Mark Day from the post link:
Back in the infancy of consumer radio (early 1920s) some bright sparks reasoned that the best way to ensure that their transmissions were commercial was to compel radio owners to listen to their stations and their stations alone.
Accordingly, these “plugged into worldwide trends, information, research, experiments, technologies, think tanks and consultancies” entrepreneurs marketed sealed sets permanently tuned to a single wave-length.
Sadly for these clear-sighted futurologists, these sealed sets didn’t sell well. Folks could build their own sets very easily, complete with a handy tuning dial.
Looks to me like Mark Day and News Ltd are thinking about marketing the sealed internet set.
Ridiculous? You betcha!
Poor old Mark Day ought to learn a bit of media history, otherwise he’ll continue to make a fool of himself.
Crikey does selectively pay content, doesn’t it?
Mark Day says that news is the most important thing about journalism – not sniff – opinion puff pieces like wot the blogosphere consists of. However when I read stuff on news.com like ‘a study’ suggests that men who marry women 15 years younger than themselves are 20% less likely to die earlier – because the woman does all the childminding and puts food on the table for them – well – charge away!!!
Mark Day
Mon 06 Jul 09 (06:02pm)
I fully agree on the complementary nature of newspapers and blogging. The blogosphere is a very worthwhile marketplace where you can choose your own products but it is not the complete village.
So there are other, darker, more worthwhile forces at work….
Abstract of Mark Day’s article : Ha! Ha! you are all going to have to work and earn your keep, you lazy rotten free-loading left-wing blodgers!!!
Katz (comment 17): “Sadly for these clear-sighted futurologists, these sealed sets didn’t sell well. Folks could build their own sets very easily, complete with a handy tuning dial.” I reckon you could be onto something there! Apple computers used a similar reasoning, limiting access to their system for software producers, whereas IBM PC’s had an open system. IBM had been losing the game to Apple up to that point, then they took over the market. I suspect the IBM clones grew the pie (“people built their own sets”), and an army of software people wrote programs for the subsequently larger market (“complete with handy tuning dial”). Limiting access may be limiting the potential market?
war!!
As I’ve said elsewhere I was struck by how similar Hartigan’s offering was to John B. Fairfax’s speech in March – very, very similar: All we need to do, chaps, is stand fast by olde-worlde journalism, rehashing press releases and sstuffing them with a quick phone call from a mystery source, then the day’s your own. You know, the very thing that has been bleeding to death long before the interwebs.
I think it is safer to say that a full scale storm in a teacup has broken out. News Ltd is dying because their rivers of gold are drying up.
Self-plugging link.
Don’t forget real time traffic and grocery pricing info, Andrew. That’s the future of news, according to Harto. Mark Day thinks it’s exciting.
Yes Jacques, we know that rivers of gold stuff, it’s all part of the picture but this post wasn’t about that.
Oh.
If the future of journalism isn’t EveryBlock, then at the very least future journalists are paying a lot of attention to Adrian Holovaty’s transformation of journalism into a branch of computer science.
Ken – great observations.
Ah, Phil, so the other darker more worthwhile forces at work deep down below is just the rumbling of the advertising revenue collection service – just as the sound of the beginning of the universe sounds a bit like a lawn-mower on a sunny afternoon.
Well why would their advertising revenue ever dry up? Bloggers and media corporations all over the Net rely on it. In fact there’s an advertisement right on this page right now saying ‘Reduce Debts Fast’.
Actually Mark Day and Hartigan are all just hot air. They’ll go through the charade of saying Net-surfers are going to have to start paying their way just to keep up the right-wing ‘free market forces’ facade, but in reality if News.com start doing that they’ll lose valuable advertisers who’ll want as wide an audience as possible. So they’ll just shoot themselves in the foot and lose even more money – probably driven shivering through the sodden, sleet-ridden streets wet to the skin right to the door of Larvatus Prodeo and answer the helpful ad on reducing debts.
Did anyone notice David Uren’s post on the “Current Account Blog” on the OO website. Apparently the Government has stopped advertising on “commercial internet sites”. Does that include all the Ltd News sites?
Governments have their own Internet sites to protect – JobsNSW and the APSGazette, I expect.
A couple of years or so ago the West Australian’s website (about as crappy as its newspaper) decided to charge for access to its content.
That lasted at best a few months, after which, without fanfare or even a bleat, they went back to free content.
I’ve often wondered whether any other newspapers have actually tried this stunt, as obviously all major Australian newspaper sites now have free access.
It does not pay as well per reader as traditional display advertising, there are no barriers to entry for new inventory, inventory is growing faster than potential readership and thus rates are falling like a rock.
Maybe not yet Baraholka, but for example, Senator Andrew Bartlett has been a “blogger” here for some time. Huffpo is worth looking at as an example of perhaps, where “blog news” is going.
(Catallaxy is of course the place where Jack and the whipped right go to see how dead horses are flogged when they don’t come to life here.
And Birdy is like he’s another Galaxy 1000 light years away, so it’ll be some time before two way communication is possible.)
Catallaxy…
Isn’t that the Tourette’s Syndrome Self-Help Collective (Male Patients) Site?
Perhaps after his run-in with that air stewardess, Mr Rudd feels that he needs to visit Catallaxy for some aversion therapy.
tssk, even the misguided idiots at News can’t possibly believe that a law or regulation will save them, however the point about the symbiotic relationship between journalists and existing players (politicians, personalities, powerful ppl) has more credence.
I think the “war” is a smokescreen for the transition of traditional newspaper content to an online version, albeit one that protects as much as possible the interests vested in such institutions. I wouldn’t be surprised to see some sort of copyright test case appear in the courts despite the failure of litigation by the MPAA.
Mick 2 31,
There are a lot, and I mean a lot, of people around who can’t afford to buy a computer because they’re too poor. I only have one because over the past few years I’ve been given, repeat, given it, and that was the case with all my computers, Mac Word processor, Windowsa 98 and Windows 2000 Professional. Certainly could not afford to buy one for myself (apart from when Kewv gave us the December stimulus package) on my usual pension.
Peter @ 35
I think you might be right. Generation Y (apparently) does not go to traditional sources for anything including news, does not join clubs etc., so tracking them down for merketers means chasing them all over the Net and into Games Consoles.
When Generation Y are a decisive votes market they will be courted with all the royalty of Alan Jones’ listeners at 2UE(?).
Bartlett blogs because he likes blogging.
Rudd will give blog interviews when there are serious votes in it.
Well New Ltd will be fuming. Media Watch had a swipe at them comparing old media stories about Michael Jackson vs new media.
The poor dears. Everyone’s picking on them and all they’re trying to do is safeguard democracy and the right of major corporations to protect us from ourselves.
Ah yes, the “media commentator” Mark Day, a very very longtime News hack and butt monkey*, suggests that Harto’s venomous address was just “provocative” and “designed as a rallying call to a nervous newspaper industry”.
I can tell you Mark Day, it was designed to placate the nervous among the News Ltd employees who are likely to be shed as part of a “restructuring process”.
We know that Harto has been slapped around for missing the boat on online advertising that has hit the local rags in the empire particularly hard, some of the titles losing up to 80 per cent of their revenue to online.
Online start-ups went from nothing to 60 per cent of the market in a couple of years on Haro’s watch. No wonder he is spitting chips. If I were Murdoch I’d give Harto the flick. He is costing him real money.
But talk is cheap, Harto and Mark Day.
____________________
*Footnote: Says Day: “The blog loudmouths are not the entire market… relatively few people repeatedly push their own barrows on a large number of outlets. They make a lot of noise but contribute very little other than their obsessions.” Well, that’s a bit rich coming from a News Limited spruiker paid to do his bosses bidding. At least bloggers push their OWN barrow.
Now lets count how many newsworthy media pieces are generated each day by the so called independent media?
Hey, Harto…..suck on this, pal.
http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/72706
Peter @ 35
Just saw on 4 Corners that Obama invited a Blog editor to a White House News Conference on Iran so Obama could be asked questions coming directly from Iran via the Internet.
The utility for Obama is that he is seen to be supporting the Iranain democrats. Where there is utility for politicians to support Blogs they will do so.
Not many blogs provide that utility yet.
In fact most of the better blogs provide disutility for politicians as they are not part of the interdependent game of money, power and prestige. Long may that continue.
Dis-utility Baraholka in the case of Youtube, (a blog with a difference) Senator Allen, and one word “Macaca”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r90z0PMnKwI
(And weren’t so many of us so happy to see that racist bite the dust.)
The shanahan family rules at Limited News:
http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/hey-check-out-the-truck-our-political-summernats/
and the Punch target demographic is a very shallow pool.
Interesting take on Media Disruption here. Apparently the editor of the NYT also did a Harto in April, but with less spleen.
What the traditional news outlets have which the Blogosphere does not is access to the halls of power i.e. to Rudd, Gillard, Swan, Turnbull etc., of course because they need each other to further their mutual ends, namely, money and power
Their access is wholly dependant on the media’s ability to influence the public. If that influence transfers to a new medium, i.e. blogging, then the pollies have nothing to gain from continuing to fete the mainstream media and everything to gain from courting bloggers.
The biggest obstacle to blogging taking its rightful place within the political process at the moment is just how hopelessly partisan it is. There are few blogging sites perceived as ideologically independent, and none with the resources to actually undertake genuinely independent investigative reporting. The biggest barrier currently protecting the mainstream media is the lack of a large and diverse blog that actually has the funding and will to pursue the truth, rather than convenient ideological truths.
As soon as one pops up, and becomes a publicly accepted source of genuine information (rather than opinion), the pollies will give it access.
Trends?
WaPo’s loss is Huffy’s gain.
“In yet another sign of how online media outlets are strengthening as their older establishment predecessors are struggling to survive, The Huffington Post has hired Dan Froomkin to be its Washington Bureau Chief and regular columnist/blogger. Froomkin will oversee a staff of four five reporters and an Assistant Editor, guide The Huffington Post’s Washington reporting, and write at least two posts per week to be featured on its main page and Politics page.”
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/07/07/froomkin/
Reading this late but with enjoyment after listening to Future Tense on RN this morning (talk by Joe Trippi) which looked at new media and the Obama campaign amongst other things and used the metaphor of David and Goliath – with ‘Goliath’ organisations (like News Limited, the Clinton and Bush campaigns, the old music industry etc) very slow to catch on.
The latest example of News Corp’s highly ethical journalistic standards.
I don’t know about you, but I feel so much safer knowing that these guys are protecting our freedoms.