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…
Links for 12 September 2008 through 14 September 2008
Stilgherrian’s links for 12 September 2008 through 14 September 2008, arranged thanks to a raspberry muffin:
- Beecher v Devine: The threat to public trust journalism | Crikey: Crikey publisher Eric Beecher’s response to Frank Devine’s attack. Today’s class exercise: compare and contrast the two styles of argument, with particular reference to the “straw man” argument and other logical fallacies.
- Keep Beecher from the hack lagoon | The Australian: Estimable columnist Frank Devine attacks Crikey publisher Eric Beecher. Today’s class exercise: identify and describe all of the logical fallacies and rhetorical techniques he uses.
- The Future Of Journalism | TPN :: GDay World: One take on yesterday’s Future of Journalism conference in Brisbane. Here Cameron Reilly makes the point that the industry is changing mnot because of a technological revolution but an economic revolution.
- 2008 NSW Local Council Elections | ABC: Full raw results for the NSW local government elections held yesterday. Enough votes counted so far to indicate trends, but thanks to
proportional representationpreferential voting most councils’ results won’t be known officially or a week or two. - Semi Automatic Ground Environment | Wikipedia: Wikipedia’s artice on SAGE, the first computer-assisted nuclear defence system.
- On Guard! The Story of SAGE | Internet Archive: A lovely 15-minute promotional film about SAGE, the Semi Automatic Ground Environment, the first computer-assisted nuclear defence system. Be astounded by the technological breakthrough of the Visual Display Unit!
“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.
The Digital Economy: just for big business?
[This article was first published in Crikey on Wednesday, based on Senator Conroy’s keynote speech to the Digital Economy Forum. See below for updates.]
“The Rudd Government is focused on creating a platform for economic growth and is committed to leading and growing our digital economy,” generalised Senator Stephen Conroy as he opened the Digital Economy Forum in Melbourne [on Wednesday morning].
His keynote speech regurgitated budget promises, generously sprinkled with doubleplusgood words about “encouraging” figures and “driving innovation”.
Uh oh. A “Digital Economy Forum”? Already I’m seeing blokes in suits jostling for room at the trough of government largesse. So who’s at this all-day talkfest? Aha! The CEO of Fairfax Digital; reps from Cisco, Google and Intel; a past president of the Australian Computer Society, the CEO of the Australian Internet Industry Association (which overwhelmingly represents big players); the Research Director for Ovum (presumably representing their big clients)… all the usual suspects.
But if the government is truly committed to supporting innovation and economic growth, where’s the involvement from small business?
Continue reading “The Digital Economy: just for big business?”