March, 2009

Cream: n. part of milk with high fat content.

Dangerous loonies in command of democratic majorities. An occasional series

An anonymous tip just sent to Crikey: From an informed source: D.D. McNicoll sacked yesterday from The Australian.  Told to leave the building immediately not even given time to clear out his desk. Today is his 60th birthday.  Redundancy at News Ltd capped at 1 year.  McNicoll has been there 35 years.  They did not [...]

Parting: n. leave taking, departure; dividing line of combed hair.

Not much has happened over the past few days to inspire confidence in the future — or for that matter present — of Australian newspaper journalism. First off we had Fairfax director and major shareholder John B. Fairfax musing enigmatically at the Melbourne Press Club awards last Friday night. Quality journalism, according to this steward [...]

Padlock: n. detachable lock hanging by pivoted hook on object fastened.

Meet “Breeny” editor of the Sunday Telegraph. We now learn that he has considerable doubts about the authenticity of the “Hanson” photos, although the “real story” now is who were they? Yeah Breeny, that’s the real story. As for the orginal splash of “Pauline”, well “we needed to put more rigours through it”. Maybe so. [...]

Taking Africa by storm is Pope Benedict. As The Times online reports: The Pope courted further controversy on his first trip to Africa today by declaring that condoms were not a solution to the Aids epidemic – but were instead part of the problem. In his first public comments on condom use, the pontiff told [...]

We’ve learned quite a bit about what you can get away with in the mainstream Australian media in the past few days. Let’s just recap: 24 hours after News Limited chief John Hartigan commandeers space in The Australian to continue his campaign that media self-regulation trumps privacy legislation, the main News Limited papers pass the [...]