SMH writer Philipson goes out in a blaze of glory
Graeme Philipson, author of the Next column in the Sydney Morning Herald’s IT section, certainly managed to go out in a blaze of glory yesterday. In a a valedictory piece headed “Farewell from a freedom fighter”, he told readers:
“I have been writing about the IT industry for more than a quarter of a century, and doing this column for more than ten years. But this is my last column,. This section closes this week, a victim of changing times. IT journalism is moving to the Internet.”
Or is it? A small clarification appears on page 2 of the SMH this morning:
“Yesterday’s column should have said the Herald’s IT section, Next, will continue to run in the business pages each Tuesday.”
If anyone is interested go here to read the whole article which has been scanned in from the print version of yesterday’s SMH: http://imgur.com/1B2DT.jpg
Cheers,
Rowan
Confusing? Yes. But this was also a bit of a Philipson ‘dummy spit’.
What happened is that the NEXT technology section which has appeared each Tuesday in the business section of The SMH and The Age has for several years been produced out of Melbourne by The Age but run in both newspapers.
Last month The Age decided they no longer wanted to run or pay for NEXT. But The SMH decided to keep it going. NEXT will continue but run out of and paid for by Sydney and appearing only in SMH business section. SMH then told Philipson his column would no longer be required due to changes in the section.
Philipson was not happy to lose this prime paying gig and personal punditry pulpit so he penned that self-agrandizing and somewhat misleading editorial.