Tag Archive for 'News Limited'

End of the road for Glenn Milne?

Published
by
Kim
1 day, 4 hours ago
in Media
. 39 Comments

There’s an intriguing little piece by Jason Whittaker in Crikey’s media briefs today, implying that Glenn Milne’s days as a columnist for the News Limited Sunday papers (and full time staffer) are over. I wonder what that signifies? Continue reading ‘End of the road for Glenn Milne?’

Abbott and Murdoch

Published
by
Mark
1 month ago
in Media and Politics
. 38 Comments

The News Limited papers have been pounding Stephen Conroy for having met Kerry Stokes while holidaying in Colorado, prior to the Rudd government’s hand out to free to air tv stations. [For the record, Conroy denies the two events are linked or that there's anything improper about his meeting.]

This afternoon, Crikey broke the story that Rupert Murdoch met Tony Abbott while he was in Australia for his mother’s birthday celebrations.

Bernard Keane writes:

There’s now a simple test for News Ltd – whether it covers Abbott’s meeting with its proprietor in the same way as it covered Conroy’s, and whether it demands the same details of Abbott as the Sunday Telegraph demanded of Conroy – what was discussed and what hospitality did Abbott enjoy from Murdoch?

And, most of all, was there a deal made between the two for favourable coverage?

Those are good questions, though it’s a bit hard to imagine how Abbott’s coverage in The Australian could be any more favourable than it is already…

Update: Trevor Cook on Stephen Conroy’s defence of the licence fee decision.

ABC News 24/7

Published
by
Mark
1 month, 3 weeks ago
in Media
. 111 Comments

There’s been some discussion on the ABC’s decision to introduce a 24 hour news channel on a related thread, and it deserves consideration in its own right.

Mark Scott’s announcement was accompanied by the now ritualised shots across the bow from News Limited columnists. As Margaret Simons observes:

…it is another example of how one of the chief battles of the media decade will be between public broadcasters and commercial viewer-pays services.

Indeed. But it also raises the question of whether the ABC’s limited resources should be targeted towards jumping into the same space already occupied by Sky News. Mark Scott’s strategy for the ABC, when you substract some of the bells and whistles about ‘user generated content’, is increasingly looking like turning the ABC into a major competitor in a range of news and public affairs spaces.

The temptation in these debates is to default to a simplistic response, something along the lines of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’. But profound shifts in the public broadcasting landscape require a more nuanced evaluation. As Simons herself notes, the question of the ABC Charter will be raised, not least by commercial vested interests.

However, as Jason Wilson argues at New Matilda:

…as news consumers and taxpayers, we’re entitled to pause for a moment and wonder whether it actually makes sense for us.

Go read the rest of Wilson’s piece.

His conclusion: Continue reading ‘ABC News 24/7′

The ABC of Drumming up some online opinion analysis

Published
by
Mark
2 months ago
in Media and The Web
. 27 Comments

When the ABC’s Drum was launched, Margaret Simons cited a piece by Media Watch host Jonathan Holmes on internal discussions of ABC journos writing opinion pieces, which I referred to in this post:

Simons then looks at the cult(ure) of personality attached to high profile journos, and questions whether non-witty, non-pretty, non-Tweeting writers are perhaps missing out in a new age of “audience engagement”. She also worries about objectivity, which is another distinction which is hard to maintain.

I was thinking about this again yesterday, prompted partly by the renewed criticism of the right wing balancing act on the ABC, and partly by a snippet from a Crikey reader (more of that later). Annabel Crabb also popped up to discuss her practice as a ‘political sketch writer’ [deconstructed here by Andrew Elder]. Continue reading ‘The ABC of Drumming up some online opinion analysis’

Media paywalls will target business, not consumers

Published
by
crankynick
2 months ago
in Media
. 22 Comments

Margaret Simons has an interesting piece up at Crikey talking about some research on whether people will pay for online content, and the likely move of The Oz to a paywall system.

It’s an interesting piece but she falls, like most others who’ve been talking about the issue, into the trap of assuming the default target for subscriptions will be individuals and the general public.

I doubt very much that it will be. There will be very few people at News Ltd that will be under the misapprehension that consumers will pay for content – the studies are pretty clear, and their analysts are in the business of making money off clear plans, not blind hope.

Unless you keep the subscription rates very low (less than $30 a year, say), there would be little prospect of getting individual subscriptions for basic news content – and that money would probably be more of a hassle to collect than the revenue is worth.

But there’s an alternate model. Continue reading ‘Media paywalls will target business, not consumers’

The future of the ABC and of journalism

Published
by
Mark
4 months ago
in Media
. 44 Comments

I made some observations a little while ago about Mark Scott’s A. N. Smith memorial lecture, principally concerned with his intervention in the debate about News Limited’s paywall strategy. Much of what Scott said has been discussed in a frame heavily shaped by the claim that there is a developing conflict between public broadcasters and declining commercial media empires, a perspective which Scott himself certainly encouraged. Much less attention has been paid to the implications of the ABC’s digital media strategy itself.

That’s a topic Marni Cordell takes up at New Matilda:

Scott’s speech was warmly welcomed by most if not all of the journalists, new media pundits and academics in attendance at Media140. Not a single hard-hitting question was asked of him at the time — or indeed, since, in any coverage of the event that I have read (people seem to be too busy firing shots at the very soft target of News Ltd journalist Caroline Overington who dared to talk about her own media organisation’s digital ‘vision’). I find this bizarre.

Don’t get me wrong, I think Scott’s efforts to align himself with the cutting edge of digital technology are commendable — a good public broadcaster should keep on top of new media developments and the ABC has mostly done so pretty well.

But how is that going to contribute to the production of “quality journalism” that these very same punters like to fret about? Missing from this debate — and from the uncritical applauding of Scott’s foray into community-driven content — seems to be a collective recognition that Scott oversees a very large part of a dwindling resource: that is, money to be spent on good, original journalism.

In comments on the piece, Cordell recognises that she ommitted to mention one question put to Scott at Media140 by a commenter on the thread – whether the ABC’s new local community hubs (for which 50 digital media producers are being hired) will pay people for their contributions, and if not, what that does to the income opportunities of freelance journos, film makers, and so on. The answer, as she notes, is probably obvious. In that context, it will be interesting to see whether the new ABC Online opinion site – to be edited by Jonathan Green, currently Crikey’s editor – will follow The Punch and The National Times and not pay contributors.

The hackneyed debates between social media proponents and opponents usually tend to obscure the central fact that both big and small media are contributing, whether consciously or otherwise, to a trend to outsource the production of content to unpaid or poorly paid labour. That’s recognised by some contributors to the debate, but tends to be obscured when the big guns are fired. Notions that “journalism will become an avocation” are tossed off too glibly, and in such a way as to obscure the political economy of the emerging media space. It should not be so, and ethically, I would strongly argue that public broadcasters have a duty not to be complicit in this trend.

Elsewhere: Margaret Simons.

Continue reading ‘The future of the ABC and of journalism’

News(poll) hits new lows

Published
by
Mark
4 months, 1 week ago
in Ethics, Immigration, Media and Polls
. 58 Comments

At politicalowl, Richard Farmer quotes Gary Morgan on the Newspoll released today, which asked questions about the Prime Minister’s handling of asylum seekers but which also included questions about voting intention. But the results of those questions were not printed by its owners, News Limited:

The evidence was clear. Yet the publication of News Ltd’s poll (Newspoll) in the first place had already had a major impact. The evidence showing the ‘error’ of Newspoll was literally ignored by media discussion (e.g. the Insiders on ABC TV and the impact of the ‘rogue’ poll was allowed to run unabated).

Pollsters and those who publish the polls have a responsibility to report the facts and the truth.

Newspoll should have conducted another poll as soon as possible when they saw the dramatic change in their results — and if different, released the data to correct the misconceptions caused by their ‘rogue’ poll.

It is extremely worrying that today’s Newspoll on “boat people” clearly did include questions on ‘Political support,’ but the results from the ‘Political support’ question were not published.

A statistical analysis of the data reported on Australians’ attitudes to “boat people” issues — specifically the breakdown by ‘Political support’ — suggests the ALP vote in that poll was very strong. The percentage supporting each political party clearly should have been released.

Polls and their publishers should not seek to set the agenda by selectively releasing polling data.

Polls and their publishers are powerful but with that power comes responsibility.

Predictably tonight, the ABC and SBS news, and the 7 30 report ran with lines shaped by The Australian’s coverage of Newspoll, with no or just a bare mention of the Nielsen results. It may be that the voting intention results will be released tomorrow, but the delayed release and the lack of context to the results on questions about asylum seekers presents a picture which is deliberately distorted, stoking the claims about “crisis” and inflaming the issue further.

This really is getting to be a complete disgrace.

Update: William Bowe on Chris Mitchell’s explanation:

Queried by Andrew Crook of Crikey, The Australian’s editor Chris Mitchell explained that “even Crikey” should be able to understand that a non-fortnightly set of voting intention figures would cause a disturbance in the force. Mitchell further invoked a Beatles-and-the-Stones style arrangement between Newspoll and Nielsen in which they have agreed not to step on each other’s releases. Yet just one month ago, on the same day that Nielsen produced its regular monthly poll, The Australian published a “special Newspoll survey” on the Liberal leadership in between its regular fortnightly polls, and was not in the least bit shy about informing us that the sample produced the same 58-42 split in favour of Labor as recorded the previous week. In fairness, it should be noted that Crikey “understands that on Sunday morning, Newspoll chief Martin O’Shannessy contacted his Nielsen counterpart John Stirton and agreed not to release the two-party preferred vote to The Australian”.

Murdoch on how we’re all thieves now

Published
by
Mark
4 months, 1 week ago
in Markets, Media and The Web
. 27 Comments

Rupert Murdoch on Sky News:

Make of it what you will. It seems pretty incoherent to me. I think Cory Doctorow’s pretty much right – these musings are fantasies, and his editors are going to have a horrible time trying to implement all these confused thought bubbles.

Elsewhere: Gary Sauer-Thompson.

Keating on Costello (… and everything else)

Published
by
Mark
4 months, 2 weeks ago
in Media and Politics
. 91 Comments

Paul Keating hasn’t been reticent lately about letting people know what he thinks … though, perhaps he never was. PJK has been in the news decrying the artistic establishment for neglecting Geoffrey Tozer, pondering cities and dubbing Canberra “a great mistake”, musing on the evils of the media and News Limited, and now taking a pot shot at Peter Costello:

Mr Keating excoriated Mr Rudd’s ”goodie two shoes” approach and said there were surely better candidates. ”Kevin Rudd must have no respect for the Future Fund in appointing Peter Costello to it.

”The Future Fund is all about national savings, yet during Costello’s period as treasurer, national savings were so depleted … Costello was the debt-builder extraordinaire.

”When Peter Costello had the debt truck running around in 1996 it had $129 billion painted on its side. Had the truck kept pace with Costello’s profligacy it would have had $705 billion on its fiscal odometer.

”Costello was a policy bum of the first order who squandered 11 years of economic opportunity … His sole claim to a structural measure was the GST and that was introduced by [John] Howard over the top of him.”

Whatever you think of PJK’s other opinionating, it’s very hard not to agree with him on this. The cynic in me suspects that Kevin Rudd might be hoping one day for some sort of post-Prime Ministerial role on the world stage, and thus doing a bit of pre-emptive insulation from criticism. His “Australia of all the talents” thing certainly works as a political tactic – enabling him to appear bipartisan and above politics while being anything but – but I’d have thought some of his appointments could be described as mediocre, to put it charitably.

Of media empires and public broadcasters

Published
by
Mark
5 months ago
in Consumerism, Markets, Media, Politics and The Web
. 31 Comments

ABC Managing Director Mark Scott has created quite the stir with his A. N. Smith Memorial Lecture in Melbourne last night. Scott took a pot shot at Rupert Murdoch, characterising him as a “frantic emperor”. Decline and fall of old media empires, and all that.

As Jason Wilson observed yesterday in New Matilda, Murdoch’s previous business plays were built on positioning himself for oligopolistic market shares in emerging media. This strategy doesn’t work in the world of online content, so Murdoch is trying to reshape that world to suit his modus operandi. Cutting public broadcasters out of the equation would be an essential component of such a strategy, but despite the fact that he’s leveraged political influence in the past for his own private interests, Murdoch finds himself isolated. Gordon Brown, Barack Obama and Kevin Rudd are hardly likely to do him any favours, and the very fragmentation of audiences and platforms he’s seeking to counter has reduced any potential for his implicit political threats to have teeth.

Public broadcasters, in other words, have a unique role to play in preserving the openess and competitiveness of new media ecologies.

There’s been lots of commentary on Scott’s speech. Margaret Simons writes at Content Makers, Gary Sauer-Thompson chimes in at Public Opinion, while Ethical Martini and Trevor Cook both put somewhat different and interesting perspectives to work in analysing Scott’s lecture.

Update: Guy Rundle.

Update: Sophie Cunningham.

Update: More from Margaret Simons in today’s Crikey.

Update: Ben Eltham in New Matilda:

As I watched Scott’s speech and the ensuing questions, I began to get a sense of how clueless many media executives really are. I’m fairly certain Scott knows more about this stuff than, for example, Roger Corbett does. In fact, Scott pointed this out later in his speech, arguing that old thinking and internal barriers to reform are the biggest problems for media organisations. “We have seen the enemy, and it is us.”

If Scott is among the savviest — and he may well be — then the path ahead for big media organisations in this country will be rocky indeed.

In the land of the blind, the man with a print-out of a Clay Shirky blog is king.

The National Times

Published
by
Mark
6 months ago
in Advertising, Consumerism, Media and The Web
. 13 Comments

Fairfax has revived an old masthead for its new opinion site. In some ways, that’s probably the most interesting aspect of the launch – those who remember the old National Times might well also recall the days when genuinely hard hitting investigative journalism in the public interest was the stock in trade of at least one Australian newspaper.

Commentary and analysis on the new commentary and analysis site has concentrated on the claim made, in this instance by Darrin Goodsir, that this sort of online opinion vehicle somehow represents ‘the best of journalism’. Something similar was said by David Penberthy when News Limited launched The Punch.

Jason Whittaker:

Enough spin, from publications that also boast their commitment to cutting through it. Let’s call these websites what they really are: another cheap web platform for advertising.

Margaret Simons:

Everyone has been asking me what I think of Fairfax’s new National Times website.

The answer is: not much. From Fairfax’s point of view, I can see the sense. Why wouldn’t you slice and dice your content in a different way, given the opportunity and the low costs involved? By doing so you maximise the national audience and create more real estate for advertising. As for the content, so far it is unremarkable – a mixture of stuff aggregated from the Fairfax papers’ staffers, and extremely variable content from other contributors.

Simons also hones in on the practice of not paying contributors who aren’t staffers. I guess that’s the logical extension of hoovering up traffic through encouraging long comments threads by writing provocative content as a ‘blog’, which has been the typical approach of the MSM mastheads to interactivity. Unless this stuff disappears behind a paywall, it looks like it’s the proverbial citizens (and a motley crew of pollies and academics and interest group folks) who are going to be the putative financial saviours of Big Media.

I also wonder if they’ve been skimping on web designers. What is it with these sites and really busy layouts that break most of the rules of design?

What if the paywall works?

Published
by
Mark
6 months, 1 week ago
in Consumerism, Culture, Markets, Media and The Web
. 35 Comments

At New Matilda, Jason Wilson takes on the prevailing wisdom about the News Limited paywall plans:

The notion that News Corp’s proposed paywall “won’t work” is in danger of becoming common sense. The problem with this is that, on the contrary, I can see how it might well work.

While some of the caveats Wilson enters about the received narrative are no doubt valid, I don’t know that he is actually providing “facts” that have been “overlooked” – as the tag line says (though that may be a bit of sub-editing, rather than Wilson’s opinion). Among other points, he argues that bundling selected niche content might find a market, in a similar way to Foxtel style channels.

I can (just) believe that there’s a chance that people might pay for sport, but I think if there was a huge paying market for right wing opinionistas, they wouldn’t be giving Quadrant away free to so many libraries.

The missing question that needs answering is how much of the content News generates is actually stuff people want at all, and then how much do they want it… I suspect MX is a better representation of what most people want to read, but I doubt anyone would pay for it. You can bundle up celebrity stories with a heap of other stuff and make a magazine that will be purchased at the check out, but I’m still not sure that most of this ‘content’ has any market value online – in part because the way people read online is very different from print.

Elsewhere: Debra Adams.

Rudd vs. The Australian

Published
by
Mark
7 months ago
in Media, Politics and Sociology
. 59 Comments

Some time ago, I made some observations on the significance of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard’s attacks on various News Limited papers, and on The Australian.

The thrust of that commentary was that – the immediate antecedents of the stoush aside – there had been a recognition in Government circles that the damage newspaper campaigns can do is much over-rated, and has significantly diminished with a change in the mediascape. This is often ascribed to the internet, but in fact – as with the misconception of the problems facing print media (which lie more with advertising income than declining sales) – its causes are both more profound and of much longer lineage. It’s more that a tipping point has finally – and belatedly – been reached where perception has caught up with reality.

Over the fold, I’ve excerpted some paragraphs (with permission) from Bernard Keane’s piece on this in today’s Crikey. It’s very much to the point, particularly the comparison with Fox News – rather than the “heart of the nation”, the News Limited flagship actually increasingly operates on a business model where a small minority of hardline partisans get their worldview catered for. Politics – in the sense of the partisan stoushing that dominates political coverage – is the concern of a very small minority of Australian voters. For all the claims about “spin”, Rudd’s message is resonating not because of some particular cleverness in its conceptualisation and execution (though that’s there) but because he’s speaking to a mass electorate using the only mass media available – radio and tv – and speaking to concerns that are real. That needs to be recognised.

Continue reading ‘Rudd vs. The Australian‘

The Mad Monk

Published
by
Mark
7 months, 3 weeks ago
in Authoritarianism, Books, Writers & Writing and Politics
. 121 Comments

I’ve got a feeling that the mix of a seemingly random collection of crazy authoritarian policy ideas (covenant marriage, raising the pension age to 70, bringing back WorkChoices, the federal government taking over everything) and arrogant self-congratulation that appear to make up the content of Tony Abbott’s book based on the extracts that have appeared is not doing him or the Liberal Party any good.

And will anyone actually buy the thing?

Possibly the only winner in this publishing deal is Labor (and maybe News Limited…)

Elsewhere: Andrew Bartlett.

Rudd attacks The Australian again

Published
by
Mark
7 months, 3 weeks ago
in Media and Politics
. 32 Comments

In a speech to the Tasmanian ALP Conference, Kevin Rudd has taken another swipe at The Australian. Interesting media strategy from the Ruddster. He again disses the commentariat and editorial staff at The Australian, and they will predictably whip themselves up into another mad frenzy, further discrediting the claim to objectivity they hide behind, and reducing the impact of their attacks.