News has always come at times inconvenient to Australian publishing. Ashes Tests that seem to be going predictably and then have a thrilling final session are misreported by newspapers. A press release issued at 4pm on a Friday (or at a time when the journosphere is flocking elsewhere) is never reported. A government can have its ministers refuse to give interviews, and not issue press releases – and does the journosphere find other means to get its info? No, it complains that the government has “gone to ground” and starts writing about the opposition.

Mark Scott might understand that, but he’s not doing much about it.

Durutti: it’s possible that Scott was so certain that the sorts of ideas you were advancing would go absolutely nowhere with Hilmer et al that at the time he could only shrug them off.

imho since the late 1980s australian media is the national equivalent of “cat stuck up tree” done as lift out advertorial….the battle, such as it was, was lost then, everyone’s flogging the proverbial….i live in brisbane..there is no journalism here…no press, no radio, no tv as I understand it of any kind…..there is just “queensland cat stuck up tree”..

imho if one wants journalism (rather than opinion – endless blogs, or reporting – press releases) about australia the last place one would even think of going is a media outlet in australia….

forgive me..you can get back to it now.

Here’s my take on his speech and Simons response.

But in the context of a changed media landscape … television isn’t going to go away until everyone in “gen x” is reaching retirement age. We grew up with it and I don’t think we’ll abandon it. In that context I think there will always be a role for the abc, but it could do with some serious reassessment. The abc has been screwed over for years and no proper assessment of its actual performance can be made without taking that into account.

If the situation ever evolves to the point that the abc is the only major braodcaster in the country then we’d need to have a serious look at whether it should be there. But by then it’ll be an obsolete medium.

I know that there are good programs on the ABC, and people always bring up Radio National (tried listening to Fran Kelly lately?) and I quite like News Radio and 702 sometimes, but I am saying that we need to re-think the point of the ABC, it’s role as a public broadcaster.
If it’s for relatively minority interest radio, then fine, fund that adequately and sell the rest off. There’s is simply no reason for its existence if it is a little more than a less extreme version of commercial media, as it is increasingly becoming.

I’m afraid, Ethical, that it already has. For example, Henry Blodget of the Huffington Post concludes that Murdoch’s MySpace Is Probably Pretty Much Worthless. I don’t think it is worthless, but it is worth a lot less than the 580 million Rupert Murdoch paid for it. He probably paid too much for it anyway, but was the massive price slide inevitable?

I doubt it. For example, MySpace became a tool for musos and artists to promote themselves; it allows them to upload their music and work so that others can download it. It sounds like a great place to get the latest music, except for one thing: your average muso site is (a) fugly beyond compare (b) starts up the music automatically (which many people hate). That drives people away.

If Rupert and co had taken the time to invest in the site – replace the godforsaken table-based layout with modern CSS, looked at the workflow and usability of people setting up their average site, and consider how to make it easy for folk to style their site without a graphic design degree – well, it might have been a loss. But not as big a loss as today. I guess these ideas never occurred to News Limited management.

I think you overestimate the competence of the news industry, Ethical.