Crikey’s Eric Beecher: ABC should not have launched The Drum
Crikey boss Eric Beecher has accused the ABC of straying outside its charter remit by launching online comment site The Drum.
Beecher first made his comments to The Australian, telling the paper the ABC had put its tanks on Crikey’s lawn.
Beecher told Mumbrella that although the launch of The Drum had not had an impact on Crikey’s traffic or advertising revenue, he had still been surprised by the ABC’s move.
He said: “That they would decide to enter this space in such an aggressive way surprises and puzzles me. It’s a space that is already extremely well served. It’s hardly a core activity on the ABC’s part.”
Among those currently offering online commentry are News Ltd’s The Punch, Fairfax’s National Times and On Line Opinion. Political website New Matilda closed in June, six months after The ABC launched The Drum, headed by Crikey’s former editor Jonathan Green.
According to Nielsen Market Intelligence, during September, Crikey averaged 18,075 daily unique browsers. The Punch had 14,767 and On Line Opinion 2,020. The ABC is not covered by Nielsen Market Intelligence.
Beecher said the ABC appeared to be “targeting Crikey”, including approaching its existing contributors. He said: “We are one of the very few independently operating outlets in Australia built on journalism.”
Asked what he would do in ABC boss Mark Scott’s place, Beecher said: “If I was Mark Scott I would not do it, for tactical and diplomatic reasons. It builds the feeling that the staff of the national broadcaster have biased views, as we all do of course.”
Bruce Belsham, editor-in-chief of abc.net.au told the Australian that Beecher’s comments were “fairly self-serving”.
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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“Wah Wah Wah, our business model of recycling news content from newspapers and adding ‘commentary’ is threatened by a tax payer funded ABC”
*yawn*
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Also see Margaret Simons’ response to the article in today’s Crikey, which includes a brief comment on it from Eric Beecher: http://goo.gl/xlrE (paywalled, sadly)
By the way, your (incredibly understandable given muscle memory) typo in the title will forever live on in the URL of this article. Don’t go breaking links, now! 😉
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In Beecher’s last quote, he’s demanding that the ABC cease being biased because that’s the exclusive domain of Crikey.
Well played, that man. He argued his point into pudding!
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Hi Leslie,
I may not have done Eric full justice in the way I quoted him there – he was making the point that as the national broadcaster, its journalists are supposed to be unbiased, but of course everybody have their personal views. But if you’re the ABC it may not be a strategically good idea to remind the world of that.
(Jeff: D’oh!)
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
No surprise that The Australian is pushing this whole ‘ABC should stay in its sandbox’ routine, of course. They’ve slammed the development of regional web site hubs as a threat to ‘local’ regional media, slammed ABC News 24 and trumpeting Sky for all they’re worth, slavishly reporting on UK moves to wind back the Beeb’s scope in similar ‘non-core’ broadcasting… anything which helps push Murdoch’s barrow against a stronger public sector and the ABC intruding into ‘their’ space.
The phrase “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” springs to mind… I think that any media organisation wanting some free high-profile publicity should come up with a yarn that the ABC is pushing into ‘their’ space and bingo, you’ll get a run in The Australian!
Given that Aunty is set to launch their technology web site later this month I’m surprised that none of the existing tech sections of the newspapers, let alone magazines and other online plays, are lining up to complain “the ABC shouldn’t be wasting resources to write about laptops and iPhones and iPads”, that’s our business etc etc whinge whinge.
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I’s say it is sour grapes that the ABC snaffled the talented Mr Green
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Just on that ABC Tech and Games website – I’m the editor btw – we are positioning it differently. On the one hand we’ll be aggregating all existing ABC tech and games content – at present it’s a nightmare to find.
We’re also positioning the site as a second site to everyone else’s meaning that all of Australia’s journos, industry experts and publishers (I’ve asked most and they’ve virtually all said yes) will be able to have a platform on it for when they want to address a different audience.
We will also be publishing our own content. This won’t be the day to day sort of stories that appear in other commercial media – that’s already well served. We will however be looking at tech and games that affects society and giving out comment, analysis and advice. I guess the main thing is that we won’t be in a race to publish first (that’s the commercial competitor’s prerogative) – we can afford to take a longer, more considered opinion.
Of course there will be complaints. Haterz gonna hate.
We launch next week.
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The existence of The Drum makes perfect sense to me – as it is an effective and interesting way to utilise existing and in place (human) resources. Our ABC is a vast network, and this another channel for ‘content’ that can be produced from that network.
Besides, we readers and users of opinion websites will need somewhere to turn when Crikey is bought out by a bigger commercial media conglomerate.
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ABC Drum doesn’t make sense when our taxes are supposed to be funding unbiased content.
The opinion sites are more than covered already (Punch for the right, National Times for centre, Crikey leftofcentre and LavatesProdeo far left) + every man and his dog has a blog now. Why does ABC need to risk it’s integrity with freelance writers, and editors stretched thin?
Lastly, The Drum gives voice to complete cr-p like Tom Switzer from the loony right and Marieke Hardy from the offensive left. This could be better spent on local drama or investigative journalism.
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Crikey! I can’t believe you even gave space to Mr Beecher’s sour grapes.
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Is truly unbiased content even possible? I’d much rather have something like The Drum, where at least you can throw up both sides, than the sterile kind of coverage that would come from properly unbiased reporting.
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