Stilgherrian » jonathan este

“Trouble at t’paper”

Stilgherrian — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 00:12:48 +0000

[I wrote this essay "on spec" for Crikey a fortnight ago, just when the Fairfax journalists were going on strike. It wasn't published: Crikey had commissioned other yarns about this story, and some bloke called Obama had just given a speech. I'll publish it now because it informs an essay I'm writing today and it needs to be online first.]

Australia’s Fairfax media empire is sacking 550 staff, including 120-odd editorial staff, and the journalists went on strike. Well, off you go, petals. You can stamp your feet and turn blue in the face too, for all I care — because a strike is just plain wrong.

The MEAA’s Chris Warren reckoned the anger behind the strike was driven by not just the jobs cuts, “but the clear view that there’s no strategy behind the job cuts.” Agreed. As Crikey reported, Fairfax’s message to staff didn’t articulate any kind of vision, and didn’t even mention journalism.

But journalists haven’t exactly provided vision either.

Humans are inquisitive, social critters. We’re hard-wired to seek out an understanding of the world around us, to find out what others are up to and slot it into a coherent narrative. Society has always provided mechanisms to meet that demand.

At one end of the spectrum there’s the folk craft we call “gossip”. Granny bubbles over the dinner table about little Sally’s wonderful performance at the kindergarten concert, sharing the joy of her delight and reinforcing the narrative that we’re a good family and Sally’s doing well. There’s Brian at the pub, seventh beer in hand, asking if we’ve heard the news, “Davo’s banging that new bird Sharon in accounts”, reinforcing the narratives that David is a bit of a larrikin and that I use outmoded sexist stereotypes.

Up the other end we’ve got big institutions like the Church, Science and the Fourth Estate of The Media constructing narratives which they call, respectively, Belief, Knowledge and News. All of them, when feeling threatened, start referring to their narratives as “The Truth”.

Between them, the folk practitioners and the professionals (and everyone in between) manufacture enough news to fill our recommended daily intake. Yes, manufacture. A TV newsroom, for example, makes 15 minutes of news each evening to fill the gap between fanfare and sports desk, choosing from the myriad of events those which best support the narrative they wish to construct.

Back in the Industrial Age, only the big end of town was visible, with its cathedrals and newsagents. Everything else happened in small groups, and was ephemeral. Once Brian had made his drunken announcement, we laughed and smirked and, later, exchanged knowing winks, but it wasn’t written down anywhere.

But now, Quelle horreur!, the means of (media) production are literally in the hands of the peasants. Even Brian’s shaky mobile phone video of Sally’s Gimme more is on YouTube for Granny to show us — not just over dinner but also to relatives across the globe. And to complete strangers, too, who wear either a happy smile at the innocence of a playful child, or a creepy leer because they reckon they can just see Sally’s knickers when she bows at the end.

(Brian’s phone also came in handy re Davo and Sharon, but I digress…)

Journalists’ union thug Jonathan Este is right. He responded to my polemic against “old media” journos by reminding us that “whingeing, old son, is the past, the present and the future of journalism… It’’s what we do. Journalists love whingeing and we’re pretty damn good at it.”

Yes, you are. But what else can you do?

By an odd coincidence, as well as the Fairfax sackings, Tuesday also brought Sydney’s first Media in the Pub night. Subject: The new shape of media careers. I bought Jonathan that beer I owed him and we both watched as the usual complaints about “citizen journalists” soon emerged — that “anyone with a computer” could now “just write stuff”.

Yes, that’s precisely the point, and why I reckon going on strike is precisely the wrong thing to do.

A strike reveals that you only see your craft as doing a particular kind of cog-in-the-machine job in a particular kind of media factory, manufacturing a particular style of media widget which your colleagues in the factory reproduce, distribute and sell. Well, those factories are in decline as people explore the wider range of narratives on offer, including those constructed by their family, friends and random strangers.

Journalism is, above all, storytelling. Journalists even call each other’s best efforts “good yarns”. The human passion for hearing good yarns isn’t going away, it’s just that factory-based employee-journalists are facing increased competition for everyone’s limited attention. New kinds media factory are emerging too, requiring different skill sets.

Journalists should be fearful for their jobs. But as I told Media in the Pub, I don’t think your current employer will show you how to become gainfully employed in the new media factories.

I also suspect the most dynamic media factories won’t emerge from the old. After all, you can’t turn a steamship into an Airbus A380, you have to start from scratch. Maybe the 5% of Fairfax’s professional journalists facing the sack should see this as an opportunity, not a threat. Maybe the other 95% could join them and create something new and wonderful.

But no. What happened is a strike. A fight for the ever-shrinking supply of deckchairs on a sinking ship. 1500 people joined a Facebook group to “save journalism”. Once more the craft is confused with the factory where it was practised.

The euphemism for “going on strike” is “taking industrial action”. Dear Journalists, how about taking some post-industrial action? Or are you saying you’re not up for it?

5 Random Semi-Related Posts

Anna Warwick: liar, or just unethical?

Stilgherrian — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 01:45:31 +0000

Given the recent rants about journalism and journalistic standards [mine and Jonathan Este's], Anna Warwick’s current blog entry at news.com.au is particularly apropos.

In her post Lost my designer sunnies, Ms Warwick (pictured) relates how she acted when she had to pay $14 for a glass of wine at an up-market city bar.

“I’m a journalist, I can’t afford this!” I said, hoping they might become afraid of bad publicity and offer me a freebie. Obviously I wasn’t at all scary. Joe ushered me out as soon as we’d finished our round.

As commenter Nikky of Sydney pointed out:

And they wonder why journalists in traditional media think blogging isn’t journalism… Saying that you’re a “journalist” and hoping to get a freebie at a bar is just disgraceful. Check the code of ethics, Anna. If you can’t afford a $14 glass of wine, then you might need to drink where all the other journos drink on their own dime, or invite yourself shamelessly along to a publicity event, instead of trying to pressure poor bar staff into giving you free hospitality.

Now there are only two alternatives here. Either Ms Warwick is a journalist — and her butterfly-infested personal website mentions roles such as “managing editor” — so using that status to scam a freebie is unethical. Or she’s not a journalist, which means she was lying.

Actually, there’s a third possibility: that the incident never actually happened. But that puts us back at “liar”.

What also intrigues me are the two commenters who responded the Nikki, telling her to “lighten up” and “take a chill pill”. In my opinion, there’s no such thing as “a little bit corrupt”, same as you can’t be “a little bit pregnant”.

[Thanks for the tip, @Mediamum!]

5 Random Semi-Related Posts

Bloggers: the biggest whingers since journalists

Stilgherrian — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 03:09:00 +0000

I’m well pleased that my rant for Crikey about journalists elicited a witty response from Jonathan Este, the journos’ “union thug”. He’s kindly allowed me to republish it in full below. My comments afterwards.

He’d also like me to draw your attention to the MEAA’s own project, The Future of Journalism, done in conjunction with The Walkley Foundation.

Bloggers: the biggest whingers since journalists

Jonathan Este writes:

Your blogging correspondent, Stilgherrian, seemed like such a nice bloke at the Future of Media Summit in Sydney on Tuesday. On the way from the venue to the pub afterwards we shared a few yarns and war stories and I bought him a beer.

He could have been a real journalist.

But his piece in yesterday’s Crikey [local copy] betrayed his outsider status in his very first par:

What is the future of journalism? To judge by the discussion at this week’s Future of Media Summit… it’s endless bl–dy whingeing.

Whingeing, old son, is the past, the present and the future of journalism, as you’d know if you’d spent much time in the newsroom. It’s what we do. Journalists love whingeing and we’re pretty damn good at it.

But to judge by the wrangling during the Future of Journalism panel, on which I sat alongside Jane Shultze of The Australian, APN’s Hugh Martin and Professor Stephen Quinn of Curtin University, bloggers are certainly catching journalists up when it comes to the culture of complaint.

Their complaint appears to be this: “Journalists don’t take us seriously enough. They won’t let us play in their sand pit.”

Much debate raged about how to define journalism and journalists. Shultze copped a barracking for insisting that, as far as she was concerned, being a journalist had involved getting to know a beat (in her case, media business) extremely thoroughly, building a list of contacts around that beat and using it to break stories in the newspaper and — lately — online.

(With the greatest respect to a former colleague, I take exception with this, as it appears limited to reporters. To me a journalist is engaged in any or all aspects of journalism, there is just as much of the craft — yes, craft — of journalism in finessing a story for publication and the other roles involved in the production of a newspaper or bulletin as there is in reporting, but that’s another issue.)

Shultze’s definition was greeted by a howl of protest from the bloggers’ brigade: What do you think bloggers do? We break stories as well! What we do is just as valid as what you do, etc, etc.

And they are absolutely right. The best in the blogosphere are right up there with the best journalists, while there can be no doubt that some journalists practise the craft with more talent and diligence than others (you know who you are).

One of my favourite media stories this week is the Pounds 30 million purchase of ContentNext, the tech blog group, by Guardian News & Media. I’m a big fan of GNM and their online strategy as it is optimistic and aggressive. They are forging ahead into new markets in the belief that “reach will equal revenue” down the track.

And ContentNext has a high net worth readership in India of which the Grauniad wants a piece. GNM is not falling into the trap some other media organisations are in of circling their wagons, putting their fingers in their ears, singing “la-la-la” and hoping it’ll all go away if they cut staff savagely enough.

Perhaps Rafat Ali, the brain behind ContentNext, is technically a blogger, but what he and his people are engaged in is high-quality journalism. It is finding things out and keeping their market informed. So, can bloggers do journalism? Absolutely.

Stilgherrian reminds us of our faults and, yes: you do read barely altered press releases, there are sloppy errors and bias has been known to creep in, from time to time. One of the most recent comments you read about falling newspaper readership is: “If they gave us something worth reading, we’d buy their newspapers.”

So, less people are buying newspapers and more people are reading blogs and getting their news through informal social networks. As long as they still want the news, then there will be work for those of us whose job it is to find things out, whether it be by old-fashioned door-knocking, by monitoring Twitter feeds or by crowd sourcing. And we all get to share in the wonderful new online tools being developed.

So, yes, Stilgherrian, you can play in our sandpit. And we’ll be duly impressed when you come up with something better than the castles in the air you built yesterday.

Jonathan Este is the director of communications with the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance. His views are not necessarily those of the Alliance.

Stilgherrian’s Reaction

I think this is a superb response. But Jonathan, I think you’re slightly wrong about the nature of the bloggers’ complaint.

The complaint is, I believe, that bloggers are sick of being lumped together as an undifferentiated mass of amateur irrelevance while (some) journalists spout about the superiority of their craft — when both crafts cover the full spectrum from excellence to shite.

Jane Schultze was the worst offender on the panel in this regard — but she didn’t help things with her overly-narrow definition of journalism.

The bloggers feel, I believe, that if journalists don’t know about this spectrum then they’re only showing their ignorance, and that it’s a bit precious to gloss over the obvious failings of many members of their own profession.

Maybe the very term “blog” is the problem, because we’re using it for both the tool and the role. The tools for blogging did indeed emerge to serve the keepers of diaries full of trivia, but were soon co-opted by news organisations and others for more serious purposes.

To lump all users of blogging tools together as “bloggers” is like lumping journalists with historians, novelists and scientists and calling them “typists”.

Other Reactions

Duncan Riley, editor of The Inquisitr, emailed me:

What delicious irony from Jonathan Este in his contribution to the bloggers vs journalism debate (Crikey June 17), when as a journalist he has failed to use the correct name of the blog network acquired by the Guardian last week three times in as many paragraphs. The company acquired was ContentNext, not FirstContent, and its main blog is paidContent (they publish no title by the name of FirstContent). Bonus points to Jonathan on the acquisition price, which was $30m US not 30m pounds.

Would it be churlish for me to also mention that, um, Jonathan, we met on Tuesday, not Wednesday? Ah, fact-checking…