IN THE PAPERS: Filters, the off switch and speaking antidisestablishmentarianistically
The Sydney Morning Herald
It’s not been a good week for digital minister Stephen Conroy. First Mumbrella revealed that he’d had his Twitter identity stolen, now a report prepared for the Rudd government has been leaked that shows dramatic flaws in his “clean feed” plan to filter the Internet.
Meanwhile Peter Fray, who was tipped as one of the two finalists to be editor of the SMH has indeed taken the top job. In something slightly less than a stirring clarion call, he told staff:
“SMH is doing reasonably well and can do better”
It’s always a sign that a story is fraught with legal danger when sub editors resort to a headline listing the people involved, and it’s certainly the case in the curious tale of “The broadcaster, the Labor MP and the off switch”. The paper describes shenanigans in Woolongong involving a presenter being stopped by police from doing his show on Vox FM.
A Queensland-based spammer has admitted sending out billions of unsolicited emails, says the paper, which reports that he’s been fined nearly $100,000.
And a letter-writer to the SMH, today managed to crowbar in the longest word in the dictionary (Mumbrella expects to be contradicted on this). Murray Smythe of Laguna begins his note:
“Antidisestablishmentarianistically speaking, you can’t beat a good schism…”
The Daily Telegraph
While the first newsagent that Mumbrella visited this morning only had the Fairfax papers on sale and insisted that News Ltd wasn’t publishing until after Christmas, that wasn’t actually the case. The newsagent would probably be wise to send an SMS to his distributor. According to the Tele, Telstra reckons its customers will be sending 46m such messages on Christmas Day.
The Andrew O’Keefe row coninues to rumble on with columnist Tracey Spicer coming to his defence over the video of his boozy antics. Writing in the Tele, the former newsreader admits:
“At the Logies, we take bets on which new soapie star will be the first to be rushed to hospital after taking too many drugs in the toilets.”
(Update: Media Mook has an excellent take on the Tracey Spicer column here.)
The Australian
The Long Tail doesn’t work for the music industry, claims an economist. Doing research for a royalty collection society, more than 10m of 13m tracks available to legally download had failed to find a single buyer. Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson’s Long Tail theory is that the internet would drive revenue to niche products and web sites.
The Oz also has its own take on the SMH’s new appointment, describing Peter Fray as a “staff favourite”.
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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Andrew O'Keefe
clean feed
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Peter Fray
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Stephen Conroy
Sydney Morning Herald
Telstra
Tracey Spicer
