Tag: crikey

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WTF? National Broadband Network as FTTP!

Crikey logo

Yes, the story of the day is the astounding news that Australia’s new National Broadband Network will be 100Mbit/second Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) — and government-owned!

I’m part of Crikey‘s massive coverage, which kicks off with an editorial, Bernard Keane’s Huge, historic and nationalised: broadband goes ballistic and Fibre To The Node becomes Fibre To The Nerd.

My contributions are A massive and much-needed catch-up and Crikey Clarifier: National Broadband Network.

My friend and colleague Mark Pesce also has 100 million bits per second: you call that fast? And there’s plenty more — some of which is behind the paywall.

As Bernard Keane says, “It will take days — perhaps weeks or months — to work through all the possibilities of this, technically, commercially and politically.”

It’s also a massive face-saver for the minister, Senator Stephen Conroy. Instead of being sacked for screwing up the original tendering process, he’s being given command of the biggest infrastructure project in Australia’s history. Just why does he get this lifeline, I wonder?

This is a massive shift in Australia’s communications policy. Stay tuned.

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The future of “quality” journalism

Crikey logo

Amazing! A bunch of media people gathered at the ABC’s Sydney headquarters last week to discuss the future of journalism, and not one of them whinged about those awful bloggers. Hurrah! Unlike July 2008, when journos were still looking for someone to blame, the debate has finally moved on.

That’s how my piece for Crikey today begins. It’s an overview of the ABC forum I was at the other day.

Quotes from Crikey publisher Eric Beecher, Alan Kohler, News Limited’s Campbell Reid, UTS journalism lecturer Wendy Bacon and former leader of the Libery Party, John Hewson.

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The nightmare of John Howard finally subsides

Screenshot of the Tags page, showing censorship as the new biggest tagFourteen months ago, just after the Rudd government came to power, one name dominated this website’s tag cloud. Out of 944 posts, 91 were tagged “john howard”. Finally, that’s changed.

Howard is still there, of course, in third place with 102 posts out of 1540 being so tagged, including this one. But the new leader is “censorship” with 118 and “crikey” with 106. “tv” is in equal third place with 102 — but that’s because my Stilgherrian Live posts are always tagged that. “stephen conroy” is in fifth place with 91.

As the image shows, the main post categories are Internet and Politics. I’m not at all unhappy with that.

All excellent food for thought as I ponder how I’ll continue to shape my return to doing media work full time…

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Crikey Conversations episode 1 with Mark Pesce and me

Screenshot from Crikey Conversations with Mark Pesce and Stilgherrian

The first episode of Crikey‘s new video series Crikey Conversations is now online, with me interviewing inventor and futurist Mark Pesce.

The series, sponsored by Microsoft, features various folks talking about the world of 2020 — which is only 11 years away. Gosh.

While some of Mark and my regular viewers and readers may well be sick of the material we discuss by now — hey, it’s what we do! — it’s aimed at a non-geek audience. So if you do pass it on to someone, I’d love some feedback.

As you can also see, Microsoft must’ve paid Crikey the extra fee for me to put pants on before the shoot.

I’m not sure whether there’s a credit in the video, but I’d personally like to thank Advanced BusinessLink (Australia) for the use of their boardroom and its spectacular view, and Adam Bateson for making the connection.

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Quality Journalism: How to pay for it? Does it matter?

Photograph of Geraldine Dougue

ABC Radio National’s Saturday Extra is holding a forum this evening: Quality Journalism: How to pay for it? Does it matter? And I’ll be there.

Host Geraldine Dougue (pictured) will be joined by Eric Beecher (Publisher Crikey and Business Spectator), Wendy Bacon (Centre for Independent Journalism, UTS), Alan Kohler (Publisher, Business Spectator and Eureka Report), John Hewson (Liberal Party Federal Leader, 1990-1994) and Campbell Reid (Group Editorial Director, News Ltd).

I’m reporting on it for tomorrow’s Crikey email, and of course it’ll be broadcast on Saturday Extra on Saturday morning 11 April.

If you want a preview, follow my Twitter stream from 6pm this evening Sydney time.

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Conroy’s continued lies and gaffes

Composite photograph of Stephen Conroy and Maxwell Smart

Of all the moments of frustration in last night’s SBS program Insight — and there were many — the most revealing was from host Jenny Brockie. After almost an hour debating Internet “filtering”, Brockie said, “I’m still unclear about whether it works or whether it doesn’t work, as a system.”

Thus begins my article in Crikey today — though it’s behind the paywall. If you’re not yet a subscriber (and why not?) you can get yourself a 21-day free trial. [Update: Things are only behind the Crikey paywall for 14 days, Click away!]

My key theme is that the reason no-one can agree on whether “the filter” will “work” is that no-one has defined exactly what it’s supposed to do — least of all the Minister, Senator Stephen Conroy.

“I have only ever identified [the material to be blocked as] Refused Classification in terms of child porn, bestiality, rape, incest sites, those sorts of things,” Conroy said last night. “For adults who want to be able to watch the other sort of material, we’re not proposing to do that. We’ve never proposed to do that.”

Except that, as the article details, the story has changed over time.

OK, this morning’s post about Senator Conroy being sacked was a little April Fools’ Day jokette. But with the continuing controversy over Internet censorship, the delayed National Broadband Network (though that finally gets an announcement of something or other this week), and yesterday’s gaffe about iiNet spying on its customers, could it soon be true?