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Opinion | Features
Whose views skew the news? Media chiefs ready to vote out Labor, while reporters lean left
Most journalists lean left-of-centre, says Folker Hanusch of the University of the Sunshine Coast, in a post first published on The Conversation.Most Australian journalists describe themselves as left-wing, yet amongst those who wield the real power in the country’s newsrooms, the Coalition holds a winning lead.
But while the media’s political leanings will no doubt be debated in the lead-up to September’s federal election, our study has also found other largely unscrutinised biases remain – particularly whose views disproportionately shape the news.
It's time for a new New Wave in the film world
Government funding bodies are lazy and decadent, says industry veteran Michael Thornhill but in a piece that first appeared in Encore, Ed Gibbs begs to differ.I vividly remember the time I first saw Animal Kingdom, David Michod’s breathtaking labour-of-love feature debut. The press screening was half empty, despite the film winning the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance just months earlier, in 2010. Yet its superb performances, stylistic flourishes and overall polish left me speechless. Could this really be a feature debut, an Australian one at that, I wondered, almost out loud? It seemed too good to be true.
Going cold turkey on an agency addiction
Life is sweet for freelance writer Max Kitchen, but in a feature that first appeared in Encore, he admits his struggle against returning to the agency fold.I’ve never taken heroin. But I suspect if I had, the temptation to try it again would not be too dissimilar to the lure of returning to agency life.
Can sport save Ten?
First there was the Grand Prix. Next came the reported $500m bid for cricket rights, then Ten secured the 2014 winter Olympics. So, can sport save the ailing network? In a feature that first appeared in Encore, Nic Christensen investigates.The television sports rights bidding process is a bit like a game of poker.
Check, fold or bet. Those were the options for the Ten Network last week when it had to finalise its bid for the cricket rights.
Andy Lark: good for the marketing of marketing
I can still remember the first story I wrote about Andy Lark, when it emerged that he was to be the new chief marketing officer of CommBank.
It was immediately clear that Australia was about to meet an interesting marketer, one who blogged and tweeted and thanks to his time at Dell in the US was digitally savvy. Even two years ago, that was a big deal. The fact that he also had a stint in public relations gave him an absolutely intriguing background before he even arrived.
Storming the media barricades - advice for young journalists
This week Mumbrella’s Nic Christensen, who began his career four years ago, gave the keynote address to would-be journalists at the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance’s Student Day. This is an edited version of his speech.Good afternoon, I can remember distinctly the last time I was in this room.
It was 2009 and I was sitting where you are. I’d come to this event, a friend and myself — from memory we sat up the back — and I can remember at the time wondering if I’d ever get a job as a journalist.
It was only four years ago and then as now getting a job was ultra competitive but I’m not sure there was quite as much media ‘doom and gloom’ as there is now…
Paywalls will help fund campaigning journalism
In this guest post, News Limited’s group editorial director Campbell Reid responds to the views of ninemsn’s Hal Crawford that the company’s push into metered paywalls is about data rather than dollars.Hal Crawford is both right and wrong in his article which argued that our digital subscription plans are all about the data.
Fake it 'til you make it... as a features editor
Cosmo’s Kate Leaver tells us how to bluff it in her job in a feature that first appeared in Encore.What do you do, as a features editor?
Really, play with words and ideas all day. At any one time, we’re working across three issues of the mag – getting one on its way to the printers, pooling all the words together for another, and planning the issue after that. It’s busy but it’s a pretty magnificent process.
Savage counsel - JFDI
Hi Chris,I run a medium-sized agency that is doing pretty well. As the leader, I am finding my workload just seems to go up and up. I am struggling to stay motivated and particularly to tackle the bigger and tougher challenges I have to face every day. How do I keep up the energy when there just seems so much to do? How do you do it?
Productive, successful executives are those able to consistently tackle difficult and big challenges. It’s a constant struggle for me so I know how you feel. How do the successful leaders do it?
Q&A with Brett Clegg
Brett Clegg, group director – business media, Fairfax Media, in a Q&A that first appeared in Encore, on the journo who refuses to work with him – his wife.Who is the most powerful person in Australian media and why?
Hard to go past Rupert Murdoch. He controls the single largest and most diverse portfolio and is intent on leveraging its scale (and, of course, influence). He’s an innovator and his will to win is obvious to all.
The experiential experience
Anyone can throw up a tent in a high-traffic area and harass the general public, but what does it take to pull off an effective experiential event? In a piece that first appeared in Encore, Matt Smith investigates.A television commercial can easily be muted and ignored, but try ignoring a purring, squirming cat in your arms. That was the experience awaiting passers by in Sydney’s Martin Place in October last year when Mars Petcare built Whiskas Kitten Palace.
The News Limited paywall isn't about revenue. It's about data
In this guest post, ninemsn’s editor in chief Hal Crawford argues Fairfax Media and News Limited’s new paywalls won’t draw much revenue, but will generate data. And they’re late to the data party.When I first learned that ninemsn’s major digital competitors Fairfax and News Ltd were going to introduce paywalls across their mainstream properties, I was excited.
Every obstacle thrown in the way of their audiences is an opportunity. People hate friction and anything that makes life difficult on a rival site is a chance to get them on yours.
Is this the worst time to be a journalist?
With scores of redundancies in 2012 and a mass exodus of experienced journos, is this the worst time to be a journalist? In a feature that first appeared in Encore, Nic Christensen asks the question.In June last year a tsunami of redundancies began to sweep across Australia’s media landscape. They came in a series of waves and in the 12 months that followed, an estimated 1,200 journalists departed the mainstream media.
Are you a conscious leader?
As the advertising and marketing industry struggles to address the issue of rocketing rates of staff churn in their businesses, Slingshot CEO Simon Rutherford argues that today’s ‘conscious leaders’ should be more focussed on creating ‘staff wellness’ in order to deliver high performing teams and healthy profits.
A conscious leader believes the business has a greater responsibility towards the community it operates in. To ensure sustainable long-term profits, people must come first. Awareness, trust, authenticity, transparency, 100% responsibility, connection, compassion, and love: these are the tools of the conscious leader.
Suits: less popular than pest controllers
Advertising suits have a thankless job that is currently being eroded by the changing industry says Naren Sanghrajka in a piece that first appeared in Encore.Not in my wildest, craziest nightmares would I ever have thought I’d say this. But I’m going to. Being a bean counter is far more appealing than starting as a suit in advertising. There it is. I said it. I actually said those words.
Yes, it’s incredibly depressing. But it’s true.
Fairfax cancels Guardian copy-usage agreement
Fairfax Media has ended its use of copy from The Guardian two days after the poaching of two of its most prominent political reporters for the British title’s Australian launch.
Mumbrella understands from sources inside Fairfax that the move is not retaliatory but rather because The Guardian is now viewed as a competitor.
Fairfax, whose titles include The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, has declined to comment, saying it does not discuss commercial arrangements.
Earlier this year, The Guardian confirmed it would launch an Australian operation led by the paper’s deputy editor Katharine Viner and commercially backed by entrepreneur Graeme Wood. This week it emerged that The Sydney Morning Herald’s chief political correspondent Lenore Taylor and The Age’s national affairs correspondent Katharine Murphy were leaving to take up positions with The Guardian, covering Australian politics.
The loss of the copy-usage agreement will mean that stories from The Guardian will no longer appear in print or on the websites of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
Fairfax has traditionally used Guardian News & Media copy in its international coverage as a complement to its overseas bureaus.
Nic Christensen
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Comments
13 Feb 13
9:45 am
The gloves are off. Sadly the suits at Fairfax will slowly turn the online edition of SMH and The Age into tabloid dross, so bring on the quality from The Guardian!
The more mastheads in Australia the better and hopefully we can dilute the Murdoch right wing agenda from the middle.
13 Feb 13
10:03 am
The move makes sense.
I’ll be really interested to see out how much market share The Guardian snaps up. It could go either way.
13 Feb 13
10:09 am
Good – they always ran them on the Age site at least a day late anyway, therefore misunderstanding how anyone uses the internet anywhere.
13 Feb 13
10:45 am
Can’t wait for the Guardian to hit Australia.
I honestly feel sorry for Fairfax and News having a new competitor with such pedigree.
13 Feb 13
11:02 am
That’s a lot of stories going missing.
A quick test shows 5185 on the SMH site today:
http://www.smh.com.au/execute_.....smh.com.au
Of course, there are plenty of other places to buy them. Or they could employ more journos?
13 Feb 13
11:23 am
Seems a lot, but it looks to be something like 2-5 stories a day.
And Anonymous is right, I doubt they’ll be missed much.
13 Feb 13
1:37 pm
You are joking, surely, AdGrunt?
13 Feb 13
2:16 pm
AdGrunt, agreed! Hopefully it’ll push the quality of newspapers up in this country and catapult them out of their sleepy, un-engaging current format.
Nothing like a bit of healthy competition.
13 Feb 13
2:29 pm
No, Robbo. I’m not.
13 Feb 13
2:45 pm
Who will take on Murdoch in the middle Australia market? Or is that what SMH and The Age are going to attempt to do online, by killing their broadsheet and subsequent credibility and then fight it out against the Tele / Courier Mail etc? KFC and Macca’s will love to get homepage sponsorships on those when that happens.
International, credible media brands will begin to go global. Most are already global, even if their models are not yet set up to capitalise on being global. (Does that make sense?)
The BBC site rocks and they must be raking in $’s from international ad revenues! Does anyone have any figures for the BBC in terms of the revenues?
13 Feb 13
2:56 pm
I’m with AdGrunt – a very good competitor and particularly threatening when you’re considering metered access to your sites or have a paywall already.
The fact that SMH has 5185 Guardian articles on it shows you that they consider Guardian content to be very good.
13 Feb 13
3:04 pm
Hopefully The Guardian will get some people to look at it, especially as it should add some much needed quality to the local media market. But most news web sites need some type of print edition to attract and maintain a big audience. So unless we get to see a print edition of a local Guardian, numbers on the Australian web site could be well below expectations.
13 Feb 13
3:25 pm
Does anyone know who is running their sales operation down here?
13 Feb 13
4:27 pm
The Gaurdian in Oz will fail miserably like it is doing in the UK .
If not for the Trust Fund, it would be long gone.
13 Feb 13
5:04 pm
Neon – the paper’s name is The Guardian, not Gaurdian, and it has depended for its existence on the Scott Trust for 75 years. That’s why the Scott Trust was set up. And it is not “failing miserably” in the UK – it is doing no worse than most newspapers these days. Even the almighty Murdoch’s rags are losing money hand over fist.
With news sense like yours, you really should pick another topic to comment on.
13 Feb 13
5:19 pm
So the Grauniad is coming to Australia…. Woopie!! That is SO exciting…
13 Feb 13
5:44 pm
I feel sorry for you Aussies, just when we thought we managed to contain the Guardian cancer in the UK it metastasises to the southern hemisphere. I only hope you are better at excising it than we are.
13 Feb 13
6:15 pm
Sorry to be unhelpful. But fir those who cant wait for the guardian web site to artive in australia can i suggest that you fly to london. Please. It will be good for you. And the web site is much better in england. True.
13 Feb 13
7:27 pm
@sales gun – yes, Inception Digital do…
13 Feb 13
8:14 pm
@Neon
I thought The Guardian already had 1.2m UBs a month in AU and is the fifth most read newspaper website in the world?
14 Feb 13
6:15 am
I’m sure Julian Assange will be delighted
14 Feb 13
6:44 am
So happy the Guardian is comeing to Aus! We desperately need a quality news outlet.
14 Feb 13
8:23 am
I’ve had The Guardian app on my smart Phone in Australia for 2 years. I read it free every day. George Monbiot contributed an article on Tony Abbott recently so it will be great to read more frequent contributions on Australian politics. The book and culture sections are fantastic.
14 Feb 13
8:35 am
Fairfax still have the runs on the board but their websites are ever so dreary and need to be vamped up quick smart.
Doubt the loss of The Guardian’s copy will hurt and as others point out, running it a day or 2 late was like an insult or showed an ignorance of the internet.
Fairfax could benefit by re-opening a London office but that won’t happen will it?
14 Feb 13
11:45 am
Oscar, you might be right about Fairfax needing an office in London, but it would be better if they reopened their offices in Sydney and Melbourne first.
14 Feb 13
11:53 am
Agree with News Digester, BBC is awesome. Apps are free and desktop uncluttered!!
Quality credible stuff. Be interesting to see if they are affected at all by the Guardian launching in AU….
14 Feb 13
12:26 pm
Funny how the anti Guardian comments on this thread all seem to have spelling mistakes in their sentences?
Must be Murdoch press readers
14 Feb 13
4:17 pm
It’s an interesting observation you make News Digester. Yesterday, in his entertaining blog, Bob Ellis shared an hilarious metaphor:
“Mark Rubio packed the rhetorical punch of the captain of Lindfield High and the sexual zing of David Penberthy”.
So far there has been no uproar from the few right-wing readers and trolls that he attracts. I think it may be a comprehension problem.
14 Feb 13
6:33 pm
On the bright side, if the Guardian cannibalises the proggy newspaper audience in Aus the same way al-Jazeera will deplete MSNBC and CNN’s already weak viewerships in the US, it’ll accelerate the destruction of this worthless profession.
“I think it may be a comprehension problem.”
It would help if Mr Ellis had the competence to spell Mr Rubio’s forename correctly.
18 Feb 13
3:10 pm
Can’t say that I’m happy about The Guardian coming to Australia and pilfering good Fairfax Media employers. Will Fairfax newspapers be reduced to covering local affairs in a twilight zone between Murdochian tabloid fodder and so’called progressive liberal media?
I really think The Guardian should be of and for Britain with a distinctive British voice. I would not like to see The Guardian turn into a mouthpiece for a global rootless self-congratulating “liberal” elite.
18 Feb 13
6:37 pm
Jen, The Guardian can only consider putting out a quality Australian web site because Fairfax and News Limited have stopped producing quality to concentrate on cost cutting. It is many decades since Fairfax got management right and they have destroyed most of the good will that once existed for their newspapers.
18 Feb 13
8:31 pm
@ Jen. Then should Nike only be sold in America and Volvo’s only in Sweden? If there is a gap in a market and an oversea’s brand wants to have a stab as a result, then why ever not?
Agreed with Lindsay. Murdoch tabloids are tripe and Fairfax certainly could lift it’s game. Hey ho, sometimes a new competitor makes the others lift their game – lets hope so…
21 Feb 13
10:24 am
@ Lindsay, Centre Left: I suspect The Guardian kicked out a lot of journalists and editors last year to make room in its budget for a push into the Asian news market through an Australian spear-head.
The Guardian has an American edition as well but not necessarily to provide quality news reporting in North America. Last year when the paper took Glenn Greenwald from Salon.com, it took Josh Trevino, a former speech-writer for President George W Bush, on board as well. Fortunately a Palestinian human rights activist spotted what The Guardian had done and raised a protest. The Guardian dropped Trevino after claiming that he’d not fully advised them of all his interests.
The Guardian has also consistently bashed Julian Assange in editorials and online article posts too numerous to mention.
21 Feb 13
3:11 pm
@Jen comment 33
And your point is?
10 Mar 13
8:20 pm
Bring it on! How many Newspapers did the UK have when it had the same population that we have now. We are sadly under reported.
15 Mar 13
3:03 am
Fairfax seems to have decided to go for the same elderly readers as News, probably because most of the profit is in the print editions.
Look at the commentators in “National Times”. They’re all either Liberal party people, or former Howard speech writers, or people from the IPA, BCA, CAI or other right wing lobbyists.