Page One: Inside the NYT

Fro our final lecture this year, we watched a preview screening of the documentary Page One: A Year Inside The New York Times. The documentary covered a wide range of stories and the way they are researched and presented internally, including the Wikileaks release of diplomatic press cables, the management crisis at
The Tribune Company, and more.

I found the documentary, while completely adequate as a study of the NYT's internal processes, was even more interesting as a case study of a few of the more colourful employees at the newspaper company. In particular, the Media columnist David Carr was an extremely interesting character; having overcome drug addiction in his youth to end up the journalists' journalist at (arguably) the world's most important newspaper, Carr was an interesting combination of gruff, no-nonsense conversational style and an idealistic - almost romantic - view on the way the world should be.

The documentary also had a couple of valid points on the ongoing debate into the long-term legitimacy of print journalism. An interesting point I had not considered before. Many of the sites that we get our news off for free currently are indexes or regurgitations of the NYT's (and others') paid for journalism. This introduces somewhat of a paradox to the news argument: can we only get news for free if someone else, somewhere, is paying?

Assignment: Annotated Bibliography

JOUR1111 ASSIGNMENT

Annotated Bibliography

Ewart, J. (2004). Challenging journalists' thinking about their role and journalism. Australian Journalism Review, 26(2), 99-113. Retrieved from http://search.informit.com.au.ezproxy.library.uq.edu.au/browseJournalTitle;res=APAFT;issn=0810-2686

The Journalism Education Association of Australia – a professional body – publishes the Australian Journalism Review. This article was contributed by Dr Jacqui Ewart, a Senior Lecturer at Griffith University, based on extensive research and her experience working in the media industry. In this article, Ewart discusses journalists' perceptions of themselves in relation to their function as 'information providers' versus their function as bastions of a stable, functioning and non-corrupt democracy. Changing the way that journalists think about their responsibilities, she argues, “[is the] first step in ensuring a healthier, more effectively functioning public sphere and ultimately making journalism better for practitioners and consumers alike.” In the words of one of her interviewees, she concludes that “public journalism meant journalists moved beyond simply telling the public things to interpreting information with them and helping to find solutions.” Ewart's case studies are effective in demonstrating the universality of this idea of a 'public mandate' affecting journalistic standards, including both Australian and international media sources. However, the text may have been better served by including a non-commercial media outlet as a baseline from which to examine the effects of a long-standing organisational commitment to public journalism. Overall, the article does adequately and in some detail support Ewart's claims about the perception and prosecution of public journalism.

Helbig, K. & MacDonald, A. (2011, October 28). MP demands gay couples respect heterosexual views. The Courier-Mail, p. 22.

The Courier-Mail is a News Corporation paper which aims to make a profit. As the only major player in the Brisbane metropolitan news market, it most closely reflects the views of the middle-class majority (although often utilising language and imagery to affect a working-class, egalitarian bent). Politically it stands on the right side of the political spectrum, with conservative values given primacy. The authors are both relatively young journalists who have worked inside News Corporation papers for their entire careers to date, and can be as such expected to toe the editors' line. The referenced article details the recent comments of Independent QLD MP Rob Messenger in reaction to Deputy Premier Andrew Fraser's private member's bill to legalise civil unions. Typical of the paper's coverage of politically hot topics, the story manages to position conservative values as paramount without overtly owning to them: as in this story, the majority of the story is given to the right-wing diatribe of Messenger; followed by multiple quotes from another right-wing Parliamentarian on a related issue. The Labor government is given one paraphrased sentence in reply and the final paragraph mentions hastily the fact that the MP in question has recently been censured for multiple breaches of parliamentary ethics. The article, ostensibly part of the ongoing debate around legalising same-sex marriage, gives no voice to the gay community or any gay individual or any retaliatory statement regarding Messenger's comments. It gives space only to the political elite. This story is an excellent example of how “newsroom culture and routines together play a more important part than individual journalists” (Richards, 20002) in determining how a story will be presented by media outlets who don't instil in their journalists a culture of public journalism.

(2011, October 28). Qld MP asks gays to explain 'heterophobia'. The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved from http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/qld-mp-asks-gays-to-explain-heterophobia-20111027-1mlrv.html

The Sydney Morning Herald, while it has generally earned a reputation as being a more 'liberal' newspaper than its competitors, operates as a venture of Fairfax Media and thus has the same profit motivations as the Courier-Mail. SMH's 'intellectual' broadsheet is aimed at a slightly different audience. However, as the ABC's The Hamster Wheel and Media Watch frequently point out, Australian physical papers and their online counterparts often have significantly different constitutions. No authors are attributed in this article, with AAP being stated as the source. The SMH's coverage of this story is an improvement on, but ultimately in the same class as, the Courier-Mail's. Once again, the majority of the text is taken up with Messenger's views. Again, there is no direct reply to his claims at all. And again the story finishes with a related spat – over homophobic comments made by a Liberal MP and Labor condemnation of the former – with the conservative side getting more than double the quotation. It is safe to conclude that again the commercial media has failed to publish objective and useful public journalism.

Higgins-Devine K. (Writer). (2011 October 27). Drive [Radio broadcast]. Brisbane, Australia: Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

From this outlet, the radio program Drive on 612 ABC Brisbane, we finally see Ewart's predicted benefits of journalists perceiving themselves as fulfilling a public role. ABC is obviously the country's most prolific public media outlet and the one which has a long and consistent history of serving the public need. Kelly Higgins-Devine has been the presenter of Drive for almost ten years and as such can be classed as one of Ewart's 'facilitator[s] of democracy'. The program gives a full and unabridged version of Messenger's speech at Parliament. Higgins-Devine then gives the show to Paul Martin, the executive director for a gay and lesbian community body called Healthy Communities. Martin, the only voice of dissent in the three articles, calls to account the contradictions and hypocrisies in Messenger's speech. This demonstrates the key principles of public journalism: balance and objectivity, the importance of giving voice to minority parties and views, and more specifically giving voice to the non-politically elite on issues of politics. In conclusion, we can see that Dr. Ewart's scholarly article has valid points to make about the significance of journalists' self-perceptions in providing quality public journalism.

Reference List

Bromley, M. (2005). Adjusting the focus: levels of influence and ethical decision-making in journalism. Australian Journalism Review, 27(1), 57-76. Retrieved from http://search.informit.com.au.ezproxy.library.uq.edu.au/fullText;dn=200508632;res=APAFT

Ewart, J. (2004). Challenging journalists' thinking about their role and journalism. Australian Journalism Review, 26(2), 99-113. Retrieved from http://search.informit.com.au.ezproxy.library.uq.edu.au/browseJournalTitle;res=APAFT;issn=0810-2686

Helbig, K. & MacDonald, A. (2011, October 28). MP demands gay couples respect heterosexual views. The Courier-Mail, p. 22.

Higgins-Devine K. (Writer). (2011 October 27). Drive [Radio broadcast]. Brisbane, Australia: Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Richards, I. (2002). Filling in the gaps: politics and contemporary journalism in the Australian press. Australian Journalism Review, 24(2), 9-20. Retrieved from http://search.informit.com.au.ezproxy.library.uq.edu.au/fullText;dn=200302368;res=APAFT

(2011, October 28). Qld MP asks gays to explain 'heterophobia'. The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved from http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/qld-mp-asks-gays-to-explain-heterophobia-20111027-1mlrv.html 

Week 11 Lecture: Investigative Journalism

Investigative journalism is "what someone, somewhere, wants to suppress," says Lord Northcliffe (of The Times and The Daily Mail). The purpose of investigative journalism is to give those without voice a hearing, and to hold the powerful to account. Investigative journalists take their views on society's norms and morals and find breaches, and more importantly, people or agencies or forces to blame for these breaches. They are private investigators, corruption watchdogs, and when at their best, champions of the underdog.

In contrast, a large portion of contemporary 'journalism' is a regurgitation of official lines, reporting on the symptoms of problems rather than their causes. Investigative journalism is more piecemeal, more detailed and in depth, more complex, more time-consuming, and not guaranteed to produce anything that will be a commercially successful story. However, both public and commercial media purport to continue to support investigative journalism, as it is seen by most to be in the public interest.

There are countless methods at the disposal of the modern investigative journalist in a interconnected world of communication and data. Some of these include:
- Interviews
- Observations
- Analysing Documents
- Briefings
- Leaks
- Trespass
- Theft

Finally we looked at the future of investigative journalism, including the challenges of funding in a increasingly diversified and harder to monetise environment. We also examined the possibility of social media services covering at least part of the gap that industry-sponsored investigative journalism used to fill.

Week 10 Lecture: News Values

Our work on News Values this week followed directly on from the Agenda Setting Lecture I summarized last week. If the mass media on the whole is capable of agenda setting, then what are the 'news values' that individuals and groups in the industry to use to deem what is newsworthy? Ultimately, by what factors do all the players in the media market facilitate the setting of agendas?

These factors vary outlet to outlet, culture to culture. Various academics have identified prominent or common factors, including:
- Negativity
- Proximity
- Recency
- Currency
- Continuity
- Uniqueness
- Simplicity
- Personality
- Predictability
- Exclusivity
- Size
and many others.

The lecture also encompassed what the apparent conflict between current and ideal news values means for the profession of journalism, in a media landscape increasingly driven by the (formerly passive) consumers of news, who are increasingly getting input into the news values debate.

Week 9 Lecture: Agenda Setting

This week's lecture was on Agenda Setting. Agenda Setting is a theory of mass communication which states that as people get their views of reality increasingly from forms of mass communication, and as mass communication is of necessity a filter which devotes limited time to a certain amount of topics (less so the internet and more so traditional news media i.e. papers, tv), then therefore what the mass media choose to report on is in some way related with what people view as important.

Agenda setting in the mass media is interrelated with the political forces from legislators, as well as from the public itself. It is also internecine to the media industry, with elite 'agenda-setting outlets' setting the scope of conversation for the industry as a whole. It can be forced and thus used as a propaganda tool (in the negative sense as well: that is, by concealing stories as well as determining their relevance).

The various aspects of agenda setting are as follows:
- Media Gatekeeping
- Media Advocacy
- Agenda Cutting
- Agenda Surfing
- The diffusion of News
- Portrayal of an Issue
- Media Dependence

Week 8 Lecture: Public Media

This week we dealt with the role of Public Media in the general cultural milieu. This included Australian public media outlets such as ABC and the SBS; as well as international institutions like BBC and the PBS. These state owned bodies co-operate and compete with other community bodies such as 4ZZZ and Briz 31. Community broadcasters such as the aforementioned are funded by commercial advertising in a similar model to commercial stations, but have not-for-profit charters committing to a role of a 'public' broadcaster.

We talked about public media's role in a democratic society as a protector of the democratic process (in exposing corruption, informing the voting public) as well as a vehicle for fostering the national conversation. In terms of news and current affairs, public media (especially in Australia where the great majority of media is owned by the Fairfax-News Corp. oligarchy, see last post) has a special role in the media landscape as an impartial (non-commercially motivated) reporter.

The challenges faced by public media both historically and currently are manifold; from achieving true independence from political forces, to staving off future budget cuts and remaining relevant in a world of fast-paced technological change, most significantly in the media industry. However, public media has advantages that the commercial world does not: being able to seamlessly merge into the field of online journalism without a complete rearrangement of the subscription model (that is, that they do not have one).

Assessment: Storytelling exercise

For this assessment, I present a photo-journal of my recent trip down to the NSW Far North Coast. I travelled with my band mates Thomas Schultz, Joseph Kennedy and Ben Drew.

Leaving home: the view from inside my Festiva. 

Pictured: a broken mirror and a driver hoping his car doesn't get defected.

The fog descends on the back of my sister's house in Goonellabah. 

My friend (an Austrian exchange student) feels the sea breeze at the lookout over Lighthouse Beach in Ballina. 

A smog-less sunset on the North Coast. 

Refueling, as it were.

Tom destroys a burger as if it had wronged him personally. 

The skin of our band's kick drum (more duct tape than skin, really). 

Bass guitar pedals before the show. The large one in the middle is (allegedly) made from recycled Soviet tanks.

NSW band, Swamp Rat, tears it up at the Bangalow RSL. 

 And the crowd goes wild!

Byron two-piece Wilde Child (who organised the show) pay tribute to Lizzy. 

The last band, Idylls, make some incredible noise.

Great music and scenery and no run-ins with law enforcement. All-in-all, a successful trip!

Week 7 Lecture: The Media Oligarchs

This week's lecture dealt with commercial media. We learned about the diversity (and lack thereof) in corporate ownership of commercial media and the various methods in which the state and other bodies intervene to ensure that the commercial media meets (at least some of) the social responsibilities of being a mass media organisation. Dr. Redman quoted his colleague Prof. Michael Bromley:

"In this regard, one thing stands out above all others - the view that the very nature of the commercial equates to a corruption of the social. In other words, as media become more commercial, they do so at the expense of their social function. This is seen as a zero-sum game. Profits come before quality."

We talked about the challenges that commercial media faces (eg. tabloidisation).

The Guardian is pretty much the only good one, guys.

Week 6 Lecture: The Tubes

This week's lecture was all about Journalism in the online environment (or perhaps 'arena' is a more apt term.) We looked at the development of the web through a filter that is becoming increasingly useful: the concept of 'web iterations'. With this tool, we can view the development of the web in distinct stages throughout recent history.

We are all pretty familiar with the first two iterations. Web 1.0 was the network that most of us first connected to; an 'information' web where there were producers of data (companies, etc.) and consumers of data (you and I). Web 2.0 catalogued the phenomena surrounding user-generated content. In the tradition of academics relying on puns, the buzz word for Web 2.0 is 'prod-users'. Prod-users both consume and produce media; if you have ever commented on something, or used a social network, you are a prod-user.

We also had a look at potential future iteration of the web. Web 3.0 is predicted by many to be the web of meta-tags. Meta-tags are part of the source code of a webpage, and they enable search engine spiders (among others) to assign 'meaning' (or context-specific data) to the information on a particular webpage.

This means that all of the information on the web, previously only indexed cursorily by search engines and other sites, can be utilised as a massive database of information. In Web 3.0, some say, rather than you searching the web, your computer will surf it for you, relegating the boring stuff to them and letting you receive the information you need in record time.

(This pcmag.com article by Cade Metz is an interesting look at other theories of Web 3.0 and even more advanced possible iterations.)

Finally, we talked about what current and future technologies mean for journalism in the twenty-first century. And to be honest, most of it wasn't good. There is hope for hyperlocalised journalism servies such as wotnews.com.au, though.

Week 5 Lecture

Week Five's lecture was on ethics in journalism, specifically different ethical frameworks and how they are applied over the broader fields of journalism and communication. We had Dr. John Harrison in as a guest lecturer. Deontological ethics systems are based on rules, principles and duties; compared to consequentialist ethics, which are 'outcome-oriented'.

By discussing the difference between the 'good/bad taste' spectrum and 'right/wrong ethics' spectrum, we were able to arrive at the conclusion that taste and ethics are two related but separate value entities.

Here are a couple of articles that deal with what we covered, both by Jonathon Holmes of MediaWatch fame. I think I have referenced one of them before. Holmes is talking about the possible need (or not) for a deontological code of ethics for the journalism profession (above such codes as do already exist).

Media Usage Assessment

Prepare yourself for a graph barrage:

(Click on image for full size version)

Thus details my daily media usage for the two weeks beginning Friday the 12th of August and finishing Thursday the 25th. My total media consumption time was 2,190 minutes (or thirty-six and a half hours) which makes it close enough to twenty hours a week spent consuming media. This is of course disregarding the media types I did not catalogue for convenience's sake, including billboard advertising, time spent on game networks such as XBOX Live, other visual mediums such as posters and signs, the paper they put on the tray at McDonalds, et. al.. I think this figure speaks for itself: I need to spend more time outside. Assuming my lifestyle is somewhat typical of my demographic, there are a number of interesting observations to be made of the data.

Firstly, the sheer amount of time I spent consuming media surprised me, particularly the time spent on my smartphone: last week I spent almost 10 hours on my phone (not including calls and texting). The phone itself has only been part of my daily consumption habits for about four months; but it has already taken over the large part of time I previously spent on my netbook and PC. The portability is obviously the main factor for this move. I "have a friend" who even checks the headlines on his smartphone when he stops at red lights, not a word of a lie.

Secondly, I was surprised by the amount of radio I listened to. Out of the 'old' media grouping, it was by far the most regularly utilised medium; speaking most likely to it's niche market of 'passive' media. I only listened to the radio in the car and on my phone (I debated for a while whether to include that time in the smartphone category, but kept them separate for interest's sake). And unlike a lot of my contemporaries, I don't regularly download podcasts, therefore my consumption might even be lower than the average. I think this definitely confirms Steve Austin's theory, mentioned in the last audio lecture, that radio - as the oldest electronic medium - is adapting to new communication technologies more quickly than its rivals.

Finally I would not how much my consumption of media varies from day to day. Newspaper reading is delegated to the weekend, magazine consumption is basically the day when my jmag arrives, and I listen to a lot more radio on days I have to commute. This suggests perhaps in the new communication paradigm older technologies may not get replaced, but rather the average consumer will rely on a bevy of mediums with niche functions to deal with the practicalities of the modern life.

Also, I learnt I should not be given too much free time and the ability to make graphs.

Week 4 Lecture

This week's audio lecture contained interviews with Richard Fidler and Steve Austin, both esteemed radio journalists at ABC local radio. Some random but interesting statements I found worthy of note:

"[In radio] the voice comes from inside your head." (Richard Fidler)

"Radio is thriving at the moment... effortlessly blending into new platforms." (Fidler on new technology, social media)

"Don't believe those who say human beings are rational creatures... we are emotional beings." (Steve Austin)

"Up came Dead Poet's Society, and I cried." (Steve Austin on probably the best movie ever)


A big theme of both speakers was the value of the emotional connection that radio achieves.

Week 3 Lecture

This week's lecture was about telling stories with pictures. We saw an award-winning photo by Marissa Calligeros:

And after several hours of research I learned Marissa Calligeros likes Rick Astley and probably doesn't want to go out with me sometime.

Week 2 Lecture

Rod Chester guest-lectured in week two on the subject of 'Telling Factual Stories With Text'. Rod is a feature writer at the Courier-Mail, and has been for some time. He talked to us about writing hard news using the inverted pyramid method (most important information first, least important last). He also talked about his daughter, who he most definitely did not put in a box and post to Melbourne. If you want to hear things literally typed by this superstar, you could follow him around all day.

Week 1 Lecture

The first lecture for JOUR1111 in Semester 2, 2011 was an introduction to the course. The lecture contained a number of interesting quotes, including this one from Auberon Waugh:

"Generally speaking, the best people nowadays go into journalism, the second best into business, the rubbish into politics and the shits into law."

This Post is Illegal

Go on, let's have a riot. I'll be at Queen Street Mall tomorrow with a piece of 2x4 and some nihilistic rage; I'd like you to join me in establishing a new world order.

So probably I'm not much of a demagogue, but you get the idea. I could - technically - go to jail for writing this post. And obviously I will not. What's the difference between me and these louts?

As Spiked editor Brendan O'Neill puts it, "...it is highly questionable whether [convicted inciters] Blackshaw and Sutcliffe-Keenan could be held morally responsible for their behaviour." O'Neill argues that in the UK the previous common-law iterations of incitement laws (now enshrined in the Serious Crimes Act 2007 Section 44) made a distinction between views 'circulated in the press' and encouragement uttered in the 'heat of the moment' to an audience teetering on the edge of a frenzy of violence.
Similarly, the Australian Criminal Code Act 1995 Section 2.4 Div 11 makes incitement an offence, going so far as to make incitement prosecutable "...even if committing the offence incited is impossible."

These laws are not legislative backwaters, with most the amendments made in the post-9/11 era. And in the UK at least, the public prosecutor and courts are apparently quite okay with sentencing two youths to four years in actual shiv-in-your-kidneys, ruled-by-gangs-and-rapists jail. For making a Facebook page about a riot. That nobody went to.

Whether or not we have at the moment the political will to get away with such a daring feat of inalienable-rights abusing, the fact is that we have the same laws in this country. And a few more that may worry you, if you get all antsy about your human rights. Is this sane? I could quite legally go to jail for inciting nobody to go steal something that does not exist.

What is missing from this equation is an understanding of individual culpability. If I post signs around Brisbane asking like-minded citizens to murder David Cameron with sharpened sticks, that is technically incitement. But it should not be the offence incitement. There should be an expectation that incitement is only a crime if the offender is capable of swaying a number of people in the heat of the moment to actually commit am offence. O'Neill's conclusion is quite apt:

"Both the powers-that-be and many in the radical intelligentsia see "the little people" as totally different to themselves - as incapable of processing ideas in a reasonable fashion and thus given to outbursts of newspaper-inspired hysteria. Effectively, they see everyday folk as the moral equivalent of attack dogs, who hear an order and act on it. Where we, the decent, educated people, have free will and the ability to make moral choices about how to behave, they, the ignorant horde, apparently do not."
My condolences to the Facebook warriors. You might be berks, but you certainly do not deserve what you got.

Obama's Missing Narrative

Drew Westen at the New York Times has a lot to say on the subject of Barack Hussein (link courtesy of the indefatigable @Proudreader).  It is good to see an opinion piece like this in mainstream journalism; though the NYT is hardly a tabloid.

Westen maintains one of Obama's greatest failings as a President is failing to present a simple narrative to the voters and acting upon it. After the GFC,

"...Americans needed their president to tell them a story that made sense of what they had just been through, what caused it, and how it was going to end. They needed to hear that he understood what they were feeling, that he would track down those responsible for their pain and suffering, and that he would restore order and safety."

Westen blames Obama's failure to establish a dialogue with the American people (and therefore his broader failure to re-stabilise the American economy) on a raft of possible reasons. A misinterpretation of the lofty principle of bipartisanship is one. 

Bipartisanship for bipartisanship's sake is utterly ridiculous; a compromise between two groups of morons is likely to be, well, moronic. The reason our adversarial political system values bipartisanship so highly is not because we give a shit whether or politicians get along. It's because generally when the cycle of proposition and disposition is interrupted (something you certainly don't see from either the Republicans or the LNP much nowadays) it is because the issue at hand is so important not even their desperate instinct for nay-saying can override it. The beauty of being (a least somewhat) a successful bipartisan leader is not your ability to compromise. It's the fact that they must be doing the right thing a lot - why else is everyone agreeing with them?

Of course the last paragraph is there for purely academic purposes. Who wants the respect of the current Senate? As Westen succinctly puts:

"...400 people control more of the wealth than 150 million of their fellow Americans... the average middle-class family has seen its income stagnate over the last 30 years while the richest 1 percent has seen its income rise astronomically... only one side in negotiations between workers and their bosses is allowed representation... as political scientists have shown, it is not public opinion but the opinions of the wealthy that predict the votes of the Senate."

I've only scratched the surface of the article, it really is quite compelling. Linking it again for emphasis.

Reverend Nile Invokes Godwin's Law

NSW Christian Democrat MP the Rev. Fred Nile has once again invoked Godwin's Law in the esteemed chamber today. This latest tirade of gratuitous (and rather confused) name-calling revolves around a piece of Government legislation that allows public schools to offer ethics classes as an alternative to scripture. Quoted in the ABC News article:

"[The current proposed ethics course] is a course which I believe does not teach children right from wrong but promotes the secular, humanist relativist philosophy."

Which obviously leads him straight to the conclusion that:

"I believe this is the philosophy that we saw during World War Two with the Nazis and the communists."

Is it the job of the tax-payers to pay for whichever cult wants their kids brainwashed at school (presumably because they can't be bothered to do it at home)? Should religious 'education' even be part of a rational and empirical education system? Is allowing an ethics course, which teaches kids instead to rely on their own values system instead of others', a meaningful alternative? These questions and more, Nile couldn't care less about.

It's a lot safer to hold your hands over your ears and scream naughty words, Rev. Nile. Otherwise you might have a generation of Australians with their eyes open to universal ethics systems. And you'd probably lose whatever votes you are clinging to.

 

 

Australian Literary Review: Probably Not Sexy Enough

The Group of Eight Universities is one of those honour society scams. You know, they create a group whose only function is to be prestigious, and whose prestige somehow rubs off you when you join. But you only get to join if you are prestigious in the first place, so one wonders... Well, it's a nice little scam they've got going if you ask me; if you didn't know already, UQ is one of, if not the, most prestigious universities in the prestigious university group.

The G8 (I don't know if it was the group itself that disseminated that little acronym, but considering its resemblance to the other G8 I'm going to guess yes) has cut funding for the Australian Literary Review, which it was apparently funding to the tune of about $336,000. You might be saying "How does this affect me, Leo? I am not a massive nerd." Well, it likely doesn't affect you that much, except as a symptom of the general decline of academia in the news media.

When all the words in the paper get replaced by alternating pictures of breasts and tragic victims of crime, you'll miss the Australian Literary Review and its inaccessible rhetoric. Probably.

ABC: Australia's Most Trusted News Source

This article by Jonathan Holmes (of Media Watch fame) has some interesting figures in relation to media outlet trust. The ABC is a clear winner:

"It [this report on public trust of media outlets] showed that trust in the news and opinions to be found in Australian newspapers has taken quite a dive in the past year. In March 2010, 62 per cent of the sample had some or a lot of trust. In July this year that figure had slumped to 53 per cent.  (The Daily Telegraph, with only 45 per cent expressing any trust, did notably worse than The Australian, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald).A similar decline was evident for commercial TV news and current affairs.  There was even less trust in commercial radio news, and less still for talkback radio, news websites and internet blogs.During the same period, trust in the news and opinions of one news outlet increased: the ABC's. Seventy-one per cent of the sample said they had some or a lot of trust in ABC Television news and current affairs, up from 70 per cent the year before."

Holmes goes on to argue that the lack of respect and enforcement for industry codes of conduct in commercial journalism are the main driving force behind the decline of integrity (or the public perception of integrity, anyway). If you like your Jonathan Holmes - which I assume you do, since you are at least smart enough to read - you will recognise this line of argument. 

If I were to play the devil's advocate I might posit that having two tiers of journalism, public and commercial, each with its own particular way of seeking and reporting news ensures that one covers for the shortcomings of the other. The corollary of this lofty notion, however, is that I don't see many negative consequences arising from the ABC's moral frameworks (if perhaps in the way they are interpreted). 

Industry standards though? Well, I guess New of the World has proven that playing fast and loose with journalistic ethics sometimes makes the reporters antagonists in themselves; something the industry has to really avoid if they don't all want to be replaced by bloggers one day.

A frightening prospect, really. I can just say whatever I want and I don't ever get in trouble from my editor. My editor is openoffice.org and it is a pretty cruisy boss. Look: John Howard once strangled a puppy. 83% of Coalition voters are incontinent. See? I thought I was getting in trouble for that last one, but it turns out that red squiggly line just meant I had spelt 'incontinent' wrong. 

I think you get the point.

Gittins on Net Value

Ross Gittins is my favourite economist (well, to be honest, the list of economists I know by name isn't exactly a novel). In this article he arbitrarily assigns value to the many hard-to-quantify benefits of the internet as a technology.


http://www.rossgittins.com/2011/08/net-benefits-at-50-billion-and-climbing.html

You may argue figures with him (if you are a more confident mathematician than I) but it definitely brings the Net into the arena of a major industry. Hard to believe of an entity that is still 90% grammatically incorrect cats.

Leo Campbell: Conqueror. Academic. Lover.

Facts about Leo: from Brisbane, likes live music, once ate a battery.

(Picture related; batteries make you a little crazy)

This is my blog for a journalism course at the University of QLD, JOUR1111 with the brilliant Dr. Bruce Redman (who is quite a swarthy gentleman, if I may say so!). In the interests of fair and balanced journalism, I will note here that Dr. Redman will be marking the blog at the end of this semester.