A friend drew my attention to this interview on the 7.30 Report with Nick Davies, the author of Flat Earth News. Most of the interview is taken up with the question of how you produce good quality journalism when corporatism has taken over the news room (what he calls churnlism) and the constant deadlines of […]

According to The Australian Fairfax is about to cull 30% of its journalists so as to keep its newspaper empire financial. The article suggests that they will do this by cutting back on news, which is bad news. It is also bad business. Journals like On Line Opinion prove that you can produce news on […]

Clive Hamilton and I had a vigorous exchange of views in On Line Opinion. We’re drawing the line on OLO at that. But we have been receiving some pieces that deserve consideration. This piece by Marko Beljac is worth publishing, and we’re giving it air here. There may be others, from all points of view. […]

I’ve just walked back to the office from Central Station after standing on a train for 15 minutes and deciding it was more likely that I would arrive at Brunswick Street Station than it would. During the 15 minutes that I was on the train waiting for it to leave all that the railway staff […]

How do you get away with this? If ADMA isn’t interested, surely the ACCC should be. I’ve just seen a BlueScope steel ad on TV trumpeting their greenhouse credentials because steel can replace trees in building, so you’re saving the planet by using steel. No mention of the huge amounts of fossil fuel that are […]

Fairfax Digital Media has launched a new online newspaper in Brisbane, the Brisbane Times – that’s the sort of exciting name that you get when you poach most of your staff from the Queensland Times. In fact, that’s not all they’re poaching – do a Google search on “Queensland Times” and you’ll find the only […]

On Line Opinion publishes a lot of material that is nonsense- respectable, but nonsense. That’s our function. We’re a Socratic space. Our role is not to tell you what to think but to provide space where advocates of different views can attempt to persuade you for themselves. It’s not always a comfortable task, and not […]

Everyone seems to be talking about that “turkey slap” (what a wonderfully evocative term, and I must be getting old because I’d never heard it before) but no-one seems to be getting the point. There’s nothing really to be scandalised about, it’s just a case of convergence. Unless of course you think that pornographers don’t […]

One of the themes in the federal government’s appointment of directors to the ABC board which has been missed by commentators is the appointment of hoteliers to the position. The ABC has not one, but two hoteliers on its board. As Gallagher’s entry on the ABC website says: “Mr Gallagher was formerly a Director of […]

Guy Rundle, writing in Crikey, makes a case that blogging will go the same way as CB radios. As with CBs, what thrilled people with blogs was “the ecstasy of communication”, the pure fact of being out there in the wide cyberworld – in other words, the form rather than the content. What stales the […]