Tag Archive for 'Writings'

Journos versus bloggers round #49503

Published
by
Mark
4 months ago
in Books, Writers & Writing, Culture, Media, Politics, Sociology and The Web
. 45 Comments

Some of the themes I wrote about in my recent contribution to the Pacific Journalism Review on that tired, tedious and irritating bloggers v. journos meme have been starkly illustrated in recent days - in particular the co-optation of the space of blogging and indeed the persona or role of the blogger by big media. As Kim noted, Andrew Bolt, in a “my hits are big, really” misadventure (demonstrating his capacity to ignore evidence that’s drawn to his attention about what statistics actually mean) suddenly became an outsider Insider, or an Insider outsider. Or something.

Andrew Bolt is so proud of his “million page impressions” - take that, lefty journos! - he’s written a column in the mainstream media paper that employs him to write his blog to decry the media and talk up “blogging”. Which is what he does. Not media. Go figure. I imagine he’ll take his outsider message to Insiders on Sunday.

Then we’ve got a panel at the Byron Bay Writers Festival about blogging where the “blogger” doing the discussing is… George Megalogenis. Continue reading ‘Journos versus bloggers round #49503′

Bolt’s hits are bigger smaller than LP’s hits

Published
by
Kim
4 months ago
in Advertising, Culture and Media
. 20 Comments

We haven’t got around to posting the stats on our readership and advertising income (earned rather than paid still!) for June yet - to come shortly - but I did want to note Tim Watts’ post about Andrew Bolt’s stats post:

Thanks very much for all your support. The figures for the month aren’t all in, obviously, but we’ve already cracked the million: 1,077,334 hits for July.

Watts notes - rightly - that whatever you think of Bolt’s choice of subject matter and approach to it, he is one of the very few MSM “bloggers” who does get the form and do it well. But he doesn’t seem to get metrics. I’m not the first person on his thread to point out that “page impressions” doesn’t actually give you a direct take on the number of readers - if he were to disclose the number of unique visits, it’d be a much more worthwhile exercise. By way of comparison, LP got 1,442,702 “page impressions” (in Bolt’s terms) in July and topped one and a half million in May and June.

For those who are interested in these things, a recent check on how much of that traffic was to images suggests only about 1.4%. But page impressions or page views really just tells you how many of each and every page with a url of its own was viewed. In LP’s case, a not insignificant amount of this is the “long tail” phenomenon and consists of accessing old posts. It’s exclusive of bots doing indexing and spammers, and I imagine Bolt’s figure is as well, but he needs to put it in its proper context.

Update: Andrew Bolt is so proud of his “million page impressions” - take that, lefty journos! - he’s written a column in the mainstream media paper that employs him to write his blog to decry the media and talk up “blogging”. Which is what he does. Not media. Go figure. I imagine he’ll take his outsider message to Insiders on Sunday.

Dead white male bloggers

Published
by
Kim
4 months, 1 week ago
in Activism, Books, Writers & Writing, Culture, Ethics, History, Imperialism, Life, Media, Philosophy, Politics, Sociology and The Web
. 23 Comments

Boing Boing reports:

The Orwell Prize will mark the 70th anniversary of the Orwell Diaries by serializing them, one day at a time, on a blog — reminiscent of the way that Phil Gyford syndicated Pepys’s Diary.

That’s so cool. Though actually I suspect Pepys would have been the better blogger. He was LJ circa 1660.

The whole revival of Orwell thing is weird and so overdetermined. On one hand, there’s the Orwell as anti-po/mo theme. On the other, there’s Orwell as the “hero” of the “Decent Left” theme (cf. you know, everything Christopher Hitchens has recently written). What’s ignored and effaced totally is Orwell the polemicist in favour of imagining a postwar social democracy. If you read what he was saying in the 1930s, what he was wishing for - as a “realistic utopia” - was something very like what was envisaged in the whole Beveridge/Keynes libertarian social democracy vision. 1984 was also really meant to be more about the distortion of this “new Jerusalem” by the statist Labour Party than “Stalin”. But anyways… Orwell as a writer - and here I’d gesture to the almost forgotten Burmese Days - is also much neglected. Perhaps his diaries will stimulate a respectful consideration of him in regard to his own concerns not some dumbarsed political point scoring about teh war on terror or whatevs.

They’re “bloggers”, so it’s new…

Published
by
Robert Merkel
4 months, 1 week ago
in Climate change, Culture, Levity and Media
. 77 Comments

Warning: snark ahead

According to last night’s Lateline, “A growing number of bloggers are now using the internet to attack the science of global warming. Written by climate change sceptics, the blogs are hosting a new scientific debate over whether the world has become hotter or colder during the past ten years.”

The reporter’s evidence for this “new scientific debate”? Andrew Bolt and Jennifer Marohasy. You know, Bolt. The long-serving columnist with a regular gig in the Herald-Sun and Insiders. And Marohasy, the IPA employee whose glass-half-full schtick on the environment has been making its way into the mainstream media for many years. Both do run blogs (in Bolt’s case, to give him credit, he does genuinely blog in a way that most journalists haven’t tried), but the idea that they are in any way new voices on the scene is complete rot. And their “new scientific debate”? A rehashed version of the “world is cooling” nonsense - based on a high-schooler’s level of data analysis - that they’ve been running for years, which as Paul noted has been debunked in detail by any number of experts.

Note to John Stewart (the Lateline reporter, not the Daily Show host): just because somebody says it on the Internet doesn’t make it new, scientific, or interesting. And if you really want to report on climate change blogging, might I suggest there’s a whole other world of it out there that’s been doing a whole lot better covering not only the problem, but the merits of the various solutions, than your program has managed?

Reality and unreality in the pundits’ world

Published
by
Kim
4 months, 1 week ago
in Books, Writers & Writing, Climate change, Economics, Energy, Environment, Immigration, Media and Polls
. 17 Comments

Let’s take a look at today’s political “news”, News Limited style, and the ongoing construction of the “media narrative” that according to the press gallery gang, is the only news fit to print.

As noted here, The Opposition Organ spent a bucket of dosh to add extra questions to Newspoll, and chose to run with “Voters Want Costello” as its front page headline over the (presumably less welcome to the masthead of denialism) numbers on climate change, showing overwhelming majorities attributing climate change to AGW and support for an ETS, with a big majority for “not waiting on the world”. So that’s establishing the news agenda through polling to feed the current “media narrative” - centring on the Liberal leadership and Peter Costello lovin’ in particular. And selectivity in emphasis. Then we get selectivity in reporting. The numbers in Newspoll, as Possum points out, don’t show that the voters the Liberals need to persuade are particularly persuadable by a putative Costello return:

The Coalition needs ALP voters to shift to the Coalition, yet ALP voters have a breakdown of 15% more likely and 20% less likely. If Costello became leader, he might not lose voteshare, but neither does he look like he would gain much based on these results.

But Dennis Shanahan doesn’t mention that.

Let’s go back a bit and remember, as Mark pointed out in his review, that the extracts from Inside Kevin07 that kicked the Costello talk off were themselves highly selective - one bit of research done before Rudd became leader and highlighted while the other internal polling and focus group research showing Costello for PM being about as appealling as a piece of wet lettuce was studiously ignored. And let’s not forget either that the “Costello the Saviour” narrative basically depends on the publication date of a book! Leadership calculation by publishing schedule! Melbourne University Press and book distributors hold the nation’s future in their hand!

Then, the big showdown Bolta talked up on the Coalition’s emissions trading scheme stance comes - and Nelson gets rolled.

Meanwhile, the Labor government has basically done away with mandatory detention.

I would venture to suggest that is rather more important than all this other confected nonsense.

Continue reading ‘Reality and unreality in the pundits’ world’

Oh noes! Teh kidz can’t use pencils!

Published
by
Kim
4 months, 1 week ago
in Books, Writers & Writing, Education, Media, Politics and Sociology
. 44 Comments

There’s a great rebuttal to the latest “intertubes r destroyin ejumacation” narrative - the meme of “the death of handwriting” - by Tim Watts at Tree of Knowledge. Poor old Kevin Donnelly must be upset that he’s been scooped on this one by the dreaded Fairfax press. Perhaps Dr Donnelly was composing his ruminations in copperplate on parchment and so got trumped by someone who knew how to use a keyboard?

The state of political blogging II

Published
by
Mark
4 months, 1 week ago
in Culture, Federal Elections, Media, Politics, Polls, Sociology and The Web
. 2 Comments

Last year I shared some thoughts on the state of political blogging in Australia. Trevor Cook has just examined the claim that the blogging phenomenon is “losing impetus”. I’m not sure that’s so, and coincidentally, I’ve just sent off a write up of the talk I gave at the Public Right to Know Conference at UTS last year, for a special issue of the Pacific Journalism Review being co-ordinated by the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism. You can read it here [link to pdf].

Continue reading ‘The state of political blogging II’

Inside Kevin07

Published
by
Mark
4 months, 1 week ago
in Books, Writers & Writing, Elections, Federal Elections, Media, Politics and Polls
. 36 Comments

Hunter S. Thompson, who’s repeatedly if repetitiously quoted in Christine Jackman’s Inside Kevin07: The People. The Plan. The Prize., would be turning in his grave.

I’m unable to think of any good reasons for parting with $34.95 for Jackman’s book, which is touted as the ultimate insider account of the Labor Party’s campaign strategy in the lead up to last year’s federal election. As noted previously at this blog, any juicy tidbits have already been extracted in the News Limited papers, and the non-story of Peter Costello’s alleged popularity is still rumbling meaninglessly on as I write. (Incidentally, the fact that quite a bit of research mentioned in the book showing Costello as electoral poison wasn’t selected for “news” stories tells a bit of a tale in itself.)

The book’s importance - insofar as it has any - lies in what is in effect an auto-critique of the standard of political journalism in contemporary Australia, in what its publication says about the strategies of university presses and particularly MUP, and in whether it actually adds fuel to the fire of the “hollowmen” narrative of colourless political apparatchiks it tries to counter. Let’s take those in reverse order.

Continue reading ‘Inside Kevin07′

The compulsory (if belated) Joss Whedon’s “Dr Horrible” post

Published
by
Kim
4 months, 1 week ago
in Books, Writers & Writing, Culture, Feminism, Film, TV, Video etc and Media
. 12 Comments

This post is so belated that spoiler warnings are hardly an issue (I suspect) so I don’t think I need to give any, though I don’t warrant all the links are spoiler free.

So the saga began with the anticipation… fueled by the unfortunate non-viewability-ness of the Joss Whedon intertubes serial in Australia. You have to give the guy big props for the cleverness of this model - something not entirely new to the Whedonverse though a bit of an extrapolation. I figure the uneven success rate Whedon’s had with getting projects up and keeping them on air has actually stimulated a lot of creativity - for instance the Buffy Season Eight continuation by comic. If anything’s a great example of the “intercreativity” of fans and various pros in constructing a fictional ‘verse across all sorts of platforms, it’s all things Whedon. So I guess the expectations for Doctor Horrible were pretty high. I thought it was kinda… well, meh. Diehard Whedon fans loved it. Others turned a more critical eye on the Doctor’s adventures.

Bring back Firefly I reckon!

Continue reading ‘The compulsory (if belated) Joss Whedon’s “Dr Horrible” post’

Zimbabwe II

Published
by
Kim
4 months, 2 weeks ago
in Culture, Developing world and International
. 3 Comments

John Quiggin welcomes the agreement to commence power-sharing talks in Zimbabwe, though there’s obviously still some scepticism about. Crikey has a very useful links page to comments from Zimbabwean blogs.

Time to go II

Published
by
Kim
4 months, 2 weeks ago
in Books, Writers & Writing, Culture, Ethics, Media, Politics and Sociology
. 22 Comments

Eye on Big Brother reflects on the end of Big Brother. As always, he trains an astute eye on the broader cultural significance of the show - and of its demise.

Micro fiction competition!

Published
by
Kim
4 months, 2 weeks ago
in Books, Writers & Writing, Developing world, Donation challenge, Health, International and Poverty
. 61 Comments

It’s been ages since we’ve done a competition. I’ll donate $300 for the best entry in a microfiction comp to Medecins Sans Frontieres. The idea is to write a story in 300 words or less. Must be prose. No haikus! The theme is “The Postmodern Pirate Queen”. In your story, you must include the phrases “peg leg” and “time streams”. Steampunk is a suggested but not compulsory genre. That’s all!

Suggestions on judging and criteria solicited. And matching donations encouraged! You have til midnight on Saturday.


Portrait of the Queen by *Pirate-Queen on deviantART

Homosexuality not actually work of the devil, report finds

Published
by
Mark
4 months, 2 weeks ago
in Authoritarianism, Books, Writers & Writing, Ethics, Europe, Feminism, International, Lesbian and Gay, Media, Politics, Religion, Sexuality, Sociology and Women
. 9 Comments

It was a very easy contrast to make for the media - while World Youth Day 2008 has been acclaimed as a success by the Catholic Church in Australia, Anglicans were tearing themselves to pieces, with the decennial Lambeth Conference reduced to a farce. A large number of quasi-schismatic conservative bishops boycotted, having earlier set up a quasi-church outside the Anglican Communion’s traditional structures at GAFCON in Jerusalem.

What’s all the fuss about? Teh gay.

Continue reading ‘Homosexuality not actually work of the devil, report finds’

The Great Pretender

Published
by
Mark
4 months, 2 weeks ago
in Books, Writers & Writing, Elections, Federal Elections, History, Howardia, Media and Polls
. 12 Comments

There were numerous examples of the “exciting excerpt from new book on politics” thing around in the weekend papers, a phenomenon noted earlier here with regard to Peter Van Onselen and Phillip Senior’s Howard’s End. The Courier-Mail ran some underwhelming excerpts from that tome - the thrust of which appeared to be that Kevin Rudd sometimes reacted badly to some of the bombs lobbed at him last year (as in the Burke “affair”). That doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t know at the time, and it’s probably unfair to judge the book as a whole on the basis of these excerpts. The marketing ploy seems to be to run a bit of copy which can be spun into something contemporary - another brick in the wall of the prevailing “media narrative”.

We also saw some similarly underwhelming excerpts in The Australian from Christine Jackman’s Inside Kevin07, which were then spun into news stories. Or rather, the bit about ALP polling on Peter Costello was. No one seemed to find it particularly stunning a revelation that ALP wonks were playing around with butchers paper when workshopping campaign themes.

The Costello story, of course, has played into current speculation about the Liberal leadership, and a campaign by certain commentators to tout his leadership credentials. But it actually highlights something very problematic both about the interpretation of polling by the media and the political class and these sorts of “first draft of history” journalistic books. Continue reading ‘The Great Pretender’

World Youth Day: The dark side of the force?

Published
by
Kim
4 months, 3 weeks ago
in Australiana, Culture, Film, TV, Video etc, Levity, Masculinity, NSW Government, Photography and Sydney
. 33 Comments

Elliott Bledsoe reminds us not to take men wearing robes all that seriously. Make sure you look at this photo very carefully indeed.

Note: If you don’t like what you see - tough - it’s now legal to be annoyed.

Continue reading ‘World Youth Day: The dark side of the force?’