It’s International Talk Like a Pirate Day. See what I said last year, I still think the same. Now get on with your lives, you bloody sheep. Unless you want to comment, which you can do on the original post.
Episode 27 tonight!
It’s Thursday, so we need nominations for “Cnut of the Week” for tonight’s edition of Stilgherrian Live (9.30pm Sydney time).
It’s the same rules as usual. We’re after people who’ve been in the news this week, futilely trying to hold back the tide of digital change.
Somehow I don’t think we’ll be short of nominees this week. Who do you nominate, and why?
Intense fortnight
It’s being a fairly intense fortnight, last week and this, so not much time for lengthy posts here. My Twitter stream has material every day, though.
Leena, I love your new hairdo!
As you perhaps already know, I reckon that Leena Jangjanya (ลีนา จังจรรจา) is the most beautiful, most sexy woman in all of Thailand. I’m therefore thrilled to discover that she has a new hairdo and is running for Governor of Bangkok.
That Leena runs her own cosmetics business as well as being a prominent labour rights lawyer should hold her in good stead. But, my Beautiful Leena, you need to update your website and destroy last year’s posters.
Sunday Thoughts about Journalism
“Oh no, here we go again!” I can hear you say. “Stilgherrian’s kicking off about ‘the awful journalists’ again.”
No. This is just me pondering five stories about journalism this week. Grab yourself a cuppa and follow the links before tackling my discussion, because this’ll be a long, meandering essay — one in which I’m exploring my thoughts rather than reaching any conclusions. Yet.
- Veteran columnist Frank Devine used the pages of The Australian to attack Crikey publisher Eric Beecher in Keep Beecher from the hack lagoon (yes, every newspaper headline must be a pun, or the sub-editors are whipped), and Beecher responded in Beecher v Devine: The threat to public trust journalism.
- Another veteran journalist Mark Day (interestingly, also in The Australian) regurgitated a variation of the standard journalism versus blogging debate in Blogs can’t match probing reports. Stephen Collins’ excellent response is The Hamster Wheel.
- I was taken to task for my “unbalanced” commentary on Senator Stephen Conroy’s keynote speech at the Digital Economy Forum. Read the comments.
- The Rocky Mountain News was taken to task for (mis-)using Twitter to report a child’s funeral.
- The MEAA held The Future of Journalism conference in Brisbane yesterday, and from first reports the usual journalists vs bloggers “debate” emerged.
OK, back? Cool. Here we go…
“Trouble at t’paper”
[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.