March, 2009

Jay Rosen is quite simply the most exciting thinker on journalism and the future. Those of us who were at the first Future of Journalism seminar in Sydney last year will remember his wonderful metaphor about media futures, in which he compared journalists to people forced to journey to a new land. Not all the [...]

ABC Managing Director Mark Scott has appointed his two new members of senior management from inside the organisation. Kate Dundas is the new Director of Radio, replacing Sue Howard, whose departure was one of the first news stories I covered on this blog. Dundas’s appointment is no surprise. She has been acting in the post [...]

Just in case anyone is interested, here is some info about a gig I am doing soon, with Eric Beecher and George Megalogenis, to promote the book Best Australian Political Writing 2009. Given the aforementioned lunch with my publisher, this may be the only outing I get in the next three months. Why am I [...]

Can this be true? Actors’ Equity claims that Fairfax is asking actors to perform for free. Here’s the memo that went out to members. Dear Equity Members We have become aware that Fairfax media is seeking to engage actors to perform in reconstructions of major crime events over the past century for their websites including [...]

A few of you may have noticed that I have been blogging a bit less frequently over the last week. There is a reason. I had lunch with my publisher. Yes, publishers’ lunches still exist, and this was a nice one, too, until… She lowered the bar on my deadline. She made me so sick [...]

Duncan Riley,  “writer, developer, speaker and blogging evangelist” is looking for two to three bloggers for his site, The Inquisitr. The Australian-based Riley was one of the founders of the B5media blog network, which I worked for very briefly. Anyway, he is offering to pay these bloggers – the depressingly low figure of $1.50 per [...]

The content makers are usually very good at spruiking their own virtues and I don’t usually assist them, but sometimes one really does have to give a bouquet among the brickbats. This one is for the staff at The Age, and in particular the investigative team and the editors who allow it to continue to [...]

The current issue of Media Week contains an interview by Rachel Bolton with News Limited’s Campbell Reid, in which he says a little more about the mystery plan to restructure News Limited’s features. Naturally, he emphasises that it is all about good journalism, while acknowledging that there may also be redundancies. As for exactly what [...]

I was frying other fish for most of today, so am only just catching up with the Right to Know conference. The Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance was live-blogging the event here, if you want a lively, if  partial,  means of catching up. (The blogger concerned was annoyed that News Limited CEO John Hartigan failed [...]

Now that the editor of the Sunday Telegraph, Neil Breen, has apologised for running the so-called Pauline Hanson photographs, is that the end of the matter? In particular, will the Australian Press Council decide that it need no longer consider the complaint on privacy grounds made by myself and Crikey editor Jonathan Green? I hope [...]