Apparently 'left-wing' is now an insult, though whether it is being spun as such by this news.com.au journalist or whether the Australian government (which was Labor last I looked) really does feel embarrassed by having used 'left-wing' to describe a Labour leader, to the point of feeling the need to apologise, is something I will leave you to decide.
Clearly we are going down the absurdist path of such North Americans as regard the beautiful word 'liberal' as something to frighten children with. George Orwell, where are you when we need you?
The only person who comes out of this story not looking like an idiot is Helen Clark herself. "I thought it was a hoot and I don't propose to release the one I have on Mr Rudd."
Showing posts with label Journalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Journalism. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Guy Rundle on the US primaries trail
I'm proud to say I've been a fan of Guy Rundle's work for many years -- everything from the high-end intellectual analysis of political theory to the hysterical comedy routines for Max Gillies -- and I am really, really enjoying the excellent work he's doing for crikey.com.au as he follows the Obamas and the Clintons round the country.
Here he is this morning, in full flight, on the subject of Clinton's utterly disgraceful bottom-of-the-barrel 'plagiarism' accusations. You can see the logic of her behaviour -- attack Obama's biggest weapon: his eloquence -- but the failure of emotional intelligence here is palpable. It's hard to believe she doesn't know what this looks like; it's like being frozen with embarrassment in a restaurant as you watch a fellow-diner sashay back to her table from the ladies' loo, blissfully unaware that she's got the back of her skirt tucked up into the waist of her pantyhose. Most observers are speechless at such times, but not, I'm glad to say, Guy:
'The Obama plagiarism charges were leaked by the Clinton camp, and Hillary then came round the front to argue that it was the media who was raising the issue so how could she not comment? Etc. ...
The strategy could well rebound because, while it would be unfair to suggest that camp Obama would never do this sort of thing if on the backfoot, the mixture of cheap shots, deniability and logic chopping feels so damn Clintonesque that it can't help but suggest the worst of times, when Bill was caught with his pants down – Hah! You see what I did there! Suck on that Henderson! - arguing about what the definition of ”is” is. It's a measure of how utterly desperate, or kool-aided up, they are that they've taken what is not so much the low road as the subway. Why now on badger-ukelele primary eve (a term I just invented using Wisconsin's state mascot) rather than droppin da bomb before the Cowboy-Buckeye-Maplesyrup-Red (let's just hope that "Firewall" name sticks) primary? Presumably because there's so few delegates up for grabs, and Bama owns Hawaii's ass, bottom, no say it goddamit, owns its ass! Camp Clinton is using this one as a trial run to see how dirty they can get before there's blowback.
Still, what really scares me is how inept Obama was in batting it back. Goddamit from brushing it off – "I prefer to think of it as homage" – to dead-bat – "the words expressed the thought perfectly so I used them, you can't footnote everything in a speech" – to a straight reversal – "well it's a good thing Hillary wants to debate the issues" – to the Manchester approach "you want stabbing, you" - I'd thought of half a dozen cute replies as soon as I heard it, and I bet you had too.'
Here he is this morning, in full flight, on the subject of Clinton's utterly disgraceful bottom-of-the-barrel 'plagiarism' accusations. You can see the logic of her behaviour -- attack Obama's biggest weapon: his eloquence -- but the failure of emotional intelligence here is palpable. It's hard to believe she doesn't know what this looks like; it's like being frozen with embarrassment in a restaurant as you watch a fellow-diner sashay back to her table from the ladies' loo, blissfully unaware that she's got the back of her skirt tucked up into the waist of her pantyhose. Most observers are speechless at such times, but not, I'm glad to say, Guy:
'The Obama plagiarism charges were leaked by the Clinton camp, and Hillary then came round the front to argue that it was the media who was raising the issue so how could she not comment? Etc. ...
The strategy could well rebound because, while it would be unfair to suggest that camp Obama would never do this sort of thing if on the backfoot, the mixture of cheap shots, deniability and logic chopping feels so damn Clintonesque that it can't help but suggest the worst of times, when Bill was caught with his pants down – Hah! You see what I did there! Suck on that Henderson! - arguing about what the definition of ”is” is. It's a measure of how utterly desperate, or kool-aided up, they are that they've taken what is not so much the low road as the subway. Why now on badger-ukelele primary eve (a term I just invented using Wisconsin's state mascot) rather than droppin da bomb before the Cowboy-Buckeye-Maplesyrup-Red (let's just hope that "Firewall" name sticks) primary? Presumably because there's so few delegates up for grabs, and Bama owns Hawaii's ass, bottom, no say it goddamit, owns its ass! Camp Clinton is using this one as a trial run to see how dirty they can get before there's blowback.
Still, what really scares me is how inept Obama was in batting it back. Goddamit from brushing it off – "I prefer to think of it as homage" – to dead-bat – "the words expressed the thought perfectly so I used them, you can't footnote everything in a speech" – to a straight reversal – "well it's a good thing Hillary wants to debate the issues" – to the Manchester approach "you want stabbing, you" - I'd thought of half a dozen cute replies as soon as I heard it, and I bet you had too.'
Monday, July 09, 2007
Festival of Ideas -- 'Digital Ink: the future of journalism', concluded
... continued from here ...
So it was left to Paul Chadwick, just as I had given up hope of hearing anyone say anything that was both knowledgeable and interesting about traditional journalism and possible online futures, to restore my faith. Walkley winner, former Victorian Privacy Commissioner and recently-appointed inaugural Director of Editorial Policies at the ABC, Chadwick is obviously an extraordinary person as well as an extraordinary speaker.
His background is in law and it is very easy to imagine him in court: he is one of those lucky few with a gift of speaking on his feet in complex whole sentences full of good grammar, audible punctuation, skilful rhetoric and lyrical speech rhythms, and he appears to be composing these remarkable sentences as he delivers them, in one smooth integrated action. He also appears to be not so much a 'Glass Half Full' type as a 'Glass Overflowing With Veuve Clicquot and Here, Have Another One, Why Do You Think God Gave You Two Hands?' sort of bloke.
Like Marion Nestle the following day, except without the PowerPoint, Chadwick had thought in detail about the structure of what he wanted to say, knowing (as do all lecturers and ex-lecturers) that information can be more easily delivered, and more of it retained, if it's presented in dot points, with headings, in a logical order. This he did. It isn't possible if all you have to say is waffle, so when someone does do it you can be sure that they are actually telling you something.
His three headings, or 'angles', were (1) History, (2) A Romance, (3) Opportunity, but before he embarked on any of them he gave his answer to the question implied in the title of the session: 'Has journalism a future? Yes. It is an essential service.'
'History' turned out to be exactly that: a quick, focused, potted history of journalism that laid the foundation for what was to come. He took us through a few precursors of modern journalism as we know it -- the names he mentioned were Defoe, Paine and Hazlitt, who were, he suggested, early prototypes of bloggers -- and through the relationship between technological innovation and changes in the nature of journalism, pointing out that the practice of 'journalism' changed dramatically in the 19thC with the invention of newspapers -- 'great lumps of paper with ink on them' -- as we know them.
He then drew a direct parallel between the historical moment around the turn of the 18th/19th centuries when the combination of a rise in mass literacy with progress in mass print technology enabled the evolution of modern journalism, and the historical moment we're currently in, 200 years later. Both, he argued, were a matter of 'technology enabling growth'; contemporary computer-literacy he called 'a different, parallel literacy ... a literacy assisting journalism in its new incarnation.' The internet, he said, was 'a tool for mass disclosure' that was available to everyone.
The 'Romance' turned out to be a rather dodgy love story about a recent bit of nepotism between lovers in high places that was immediately pounced on, exposed and torn to bits by bloggers in the US. This Chadwick used as an example of the 'new transparency' provided by the blogosphere.
A disconnect has developed, he argued, between the previously reliable Fourth Estate and its previously trusting audience; while people these days expect to be lied to by the newspapers, the emergence of blogging has enabled if not ensured the rapid investigation, exposure and exhaustive analysis of most such lies. Bloggers, he said, can and do quickly raise questions about conflicts of interest (both personal and business) in the MSM, 'and if you think Media Watch is tough ...!' There is, he said, 'a new transparency now abroad in old media, imposed upon it by new media.'
He enlarged on this point later in general discussion when he was talking about contemporary journalists' loss of confidence, not only because 'the economic model has been shaken by the new technology' but also because of this new online scrutiny: what bloggers are doing, he reiterated, is analysing and exposing journalism itself -- 'doing to journalists themselves what journalists, as a privileged caste, have been doing for 200 years.' This kind of change, he said, is quite frightening to those who have been used to controlling information: 'It's really hard, to lose that power.'
Under the heading 'Opportunities', Chadwick described what he saw as another vital role for the blogosphere: the support and augmentation of news-gathering and primary content delivery, a point on which Colleen Ryan, in the general discussion, later agreed: 'Bloggers provide such a fabulous resource,' she said. 'Some bloggers have amazing expertise.'
Chadwick's example of the kind of journalistic support he could see the blogosphere providing was the sifting and analysis, done very quickly because done by so many, of news as it broke -- the release, say, of a substantial government report that the MSM was expected to respond to overnight if not sooner. A 'critical mass of bloggers', he argued, can quickly process this kind of information, 'sifting and ordering the haystack' in such a way as to make it a great deal easier for frontline journalists to find the needle. 'What we're seeing in the digital world is an augmentation of journalism, potentially to its and our benefit.'
Broadcasts and podcasts via Radio Adelaide.
In chronological order, here are the earlier posts on the Ideas Fest: June 7, July 1, July 5, July 6, July 6 again, July 7, July 8 and July 8 again.
And more to come.
So it was left to Paul Chadwick, just as I had given up hope of hearing anyone say anything that was both knowledgeable and interesting about traditional journalism and possible online futures, to restore my faith. Walkley winner, former Victorian Privacy Commissioner and recently-appointed inaugural Director of Editorial Policies at the ABC, Chadwick is obviously an extraordinary person as well as an extraordinary speaker.
His background is in law and it is very easy to imagine him in court: he is one of those lucky few with a gift of speaking on his feet in complex whole sentences full of good grammar, audible punctuation, skilful rhetoric and lyrical speech rhythms, and he appears to be composing these remarkable sentences as he delivers them, in one smooth integrated action. He also appears to be not so much a 'Glass Half Full' type as a 'Glass Overflowing With Veuve Clicquot and Here, Have Another One, Why Do You Think God Gave You Two Hands?' sort of bloke.
Like Marion Nestle the following day, except without the PowerPoint, Chadwick had thought in detail about the structure of what he wanted to say, knowing (as do all lecturers and ex-lecturers) that information can be more easily delivered, and more of it retained, if it's presented in dot points, with headings, in a logical order. This he did. It isn't possible if all you have to say is waffle, so when someone does do it you can be sure that they are actually telling you something.
His three headings, or 'angles', were (1) History, (2) A Romance, (3) Opportunity, but before he embarked on any of them he gave his answer to the question implied in the title of the session: 'Has journalism a future? Yes. It is an essential service.'
'History' turned out to be exactly that: a quick, focused, potted history of journalism that laid the foundation for what was to come. He took us through a few precursors of modern journalism as we know it -- the names he mentioned were Defoe, Paine and Hazlitt, who were, he suggested, early prototypes of bloggers -- and through the relationship between technological innovation and changes in the nature of journalism, pointing out that the practice of 'journalism' changed dramatically in the 19thC with the invention of newspapers -- 'great lumps of paper with ink on them' -- as we know them.
He then drew a direct parallel between the historical moment around the turn of the 18th/19th centuries when the combination of a rise in mass literacy with progress in mass print technology enabled the evolution of modern journalism, and the historical moment we're currently in, 200 years later. Both, he argued, were a matter of 'technology enabling growth'; contemporary computer-literacy he called 'a different, parallel literacy ... a literacy assisting journalism in its new incarnation.' The internet, he said, was 'a tool for mass disclosure' that was available to everyone.
The 'Romance' turned out to be a rather dodgy love story about a recent bit of nepotism between lovers in high places that was immediately pounced on, exposed and torn to bits by bloggers in the US. This Chadwick used as an example of the 'new transparency' provided by the blogosphere.
A disconnect has developed, he argued, between the previously reliable Fourth Estate and its previously trusting audience; while people these days expect to be lied to by the newspapers, the emergence of blogging has enabled if not ensured the rapid investigation, exposure and exhaustive analysis of most such lies. Bloggers, he said, can and do quickly raise questions about conflicts of interest (both personal and business) in the MSM, 'and if you think Media Watch is tough ...!' There is, he said, 'a new transparency now abroad in old media, imposed upon it by new media.'
He enlarged on this point later in general discussion when he was talking about contemporary journalists' loss of confidence, not only because 'the economic model has been shaken by the new technology' but also because of this new online scrutiny: what bloggers are doing, he reiterated, is analysing and exposing journalism itself -- 'doing to journalists themselves what journalists, as a privileged caste, have been doing for 200 years.' This kind of change, he said, is quite frightening to those who have been used to controlling information: 'It's really hard, to lose that power.'
Under the heading 'Opportunities', Chadwick described what he saw as another vital role for the blogosphere: the support and augmentation of news-gathering and primary content delivery, a point on which Colleen Ryan, in the general discussion, later agreed: 'Bloggers provide such a fabulous resource,' she said. 'Some bloggers have amazing expertise.'
Chadwick's example of the kind of journalistic support he could see the blogosphere providing was the sifting and analysis, done very quickly because done by so many, of news as it broke -- the release, say, of a substantial government report that the MSM was expected to respond to overnight if not sooner. A 'critical mass of bloggers', he argued, can quickly process this kind of information, 'sifting and ordering the haystack' in such a way as to make it a great deal easier for frontline journalists to find the needle. 'What we're seeing in the digital world is an augmentation of journalism, potentially to its and our benefit.'
Broadcasts and podcasts via Radio Adelaide.
In chronological order, here are the earlier posts on the Ideas Fest: June 7, July 1, July 5, July 6, July 6 again, July 7, July 8 and July 8 again.
And more to come.
Sunday, July 08, 2007
Festival of Ideas -- 'Digital Ink: the Future of Journalism', continued
Chairing this session on Friday, the editor of The Monthly, Sally Warhaft, was grace under pressure personified as what I presume was a late replacement for National Indigenous Times founding editor Chris Graham, who had been named instead of Warhaft in the program and whom I'd been looking forward to hearing. Warhaft chaired a three-person panel discussion featuring Colleen Ryan, Francis Wheen and Paul Chadwick.
(A digression: I should say before I go on that I don't subscribe myself to the notion that bloggers get to call themselves journalists simply by virtue of having a blog and writing about the things in the news -- any more than journalists get to call themselves bloggers simply by putting their columns online and opening up a comments facility, a lesson that most journos attempting to venture into the blogosphere have not yet learned.
A few bloggers are indeed much better journalists than a lot of the people you read in the papers, but most are not. Many bloggers have excellent writing skills but far fewer have the discipline, the formal training or the gifts for clarity and structure that make a good piece of journalism compelling, and that tend to come with the hard training of observation (including of things that don't interest you at all), followed by reportage to deadline, followed by standing by watching helplessly as your copy gets hacked up beyond recognition if not actually spiked.
I think the premature and extravagant claim for blogging as the 'new journalism' has muddied these waters possibly beyond clearing, as it has led to the energies of the old guard all being directed into the scornful refutations of these claims, rather than looking at the possibilities and the positives of online information delivery.
But (a) almost no bloggers have the resources financial or otherwise to take on a true investagtive role; (b) to accept finance from anywhere else is immediately to compromise the independence that most bloggers prize above rubies; and in any case (c) a blog is really no more than a vector and blogging itself a far more inchoate activity, endlessly pliable and therefore used to all sorts of different ends. I think an increasing number of us, myself certainly included, would echo the words of much-admired Adelaide blogger ThirdCat: 'Blogging isn't the new anything. It's blogging.' But all of that is, for the moment, by the way.)
The first speaker at this session was Colleen Ryan from the Financial Review, who perhaps sensibly focused on one particular aspect of the topic: the question of how journalism -- particularly investigative journalism -- would be paid for if it were to make the transition online. She argued a particular and very clear case about 'quality' journalism, by which she presumably meant the Fourth Estate ideal: that kind of of journalism, she argued, will only survive online if it uses the subscription model, unless higher-quality (and therefore, presumably, more lucrative) advertising was developed to finance it. Clearly she was also thinking wholly within the 'established mainstream media organisation goes online' model and gave no indication of what she knew or thought about the alternatives.
I'm not sure she's right about the subscription/advertising point, but I don't know enough about what kind of money some people make through online advertising to argue the point and neither, I suspect, does she. As I suppose befits a finance journalist, and it is certainly a pertinent question, Ryan's concern was exclusively with how the journalism 'product' would be paid for.
Then British journalist, editor and author Francis Wheen, biographer of Karl Marx, deputy editor of Private Eye and old-school Brit through and through, got up and opened with a bunch of cheap yuk-yuk anti-blog jokes uttered in sonorous and ultra-British baritone orotundities, a combination that got my back up right from the beginning. Yes, 'blog', 'blogging' and 'blogosphere' are indeed already inherently and self-referentially comic words and that is indeed the point of them, something we've all known for some years now. Talk to the hand.
All of which was a pity, because he did of course have a number of intriguing, knowledgeable and original things to say: 'Do newspapers have a long-term future? I suspect probably not. Which brings us to ... Does journalism have a future?' He went on to argue that the decline of news-gathering pre-dates the Internet and can rather be blamed largely on Rupert "After all, we are in the entertainment business" Murdoch and his concentration on what it is that actually sells papers. (This point was reprised yesterday by Norman Swan in the best session I've been to so far, but more of that later.) News-gathering, Wheen argued, is expensive and does not pay its way.
Sounding like a man in late middle age sighing about the cheap values of the young, which was almost as annoying as the easy sniggering about blogging that he kept getting out of the audience, he also mourned an alleged decline in the motivations of young trainee journalists and students of journalism, and told two stories to illustrate his point. Thirty years ago he asked a cadet journalist why he wanted to be in the profession and the cadet replied that he wanted to be like Woodward and Bernstein. Asking a journalism student the same question very recently, he got the reply: 'Because journalists get to meet famous people and celebrities.' If he'd asked different students on different days I'm sure he would have been able to find a shallow one 30 years ago and a dedicated one today, but that would not have suited his line of nostalgic lamentation for a lost golden age.
Sally Warhaft in her otherwise excellent post-panel questions to the speakers, in a skilfully conducted discussion, nonetheless showed no interest in the digital at all except for a few mild passing swipes in the middle of questions about something else. Her final comment -- 'People will always want something to put in their bag and take with them on the train' -- was revealing in that it suggested that she had bought the specious argument of aggro early bloggers that online content would sweep all before it and that hard copy of anything was doomed to the trash heap, which it's quite clear to me is actually unlikely to happen (thanks largely to J. K. Rowling, and no, I am not joking) until bags, trains and quite possibly people are all themselves obsolete. And, of course, there are an awful lot of people now putting their lightweight streamlined wireless laptops in their bags and taking them on the train.
(The attitudes expressed by these three people had reminded me anew of something I've fully realised only since I took up blogging: most people seem either unwilling or unable to go beyond the paradigm of the dichotomy. Maybe it's a hangover from being picked for competing teams in primary school. Whatever it is, I'm thinking of having the words 'It's not a matter of either/or' tattooed on my forehead.)
So it was left to Paul Chadwick, just as I had given up hope of hearing anyone say anything that was both knowledgeable and interesting about both traditional journalism and possible online futures, to restore my faith.
... to be continued, again ...
Broadcasts and podcasts via Radio Adelaide.
(A digression: I should say before I go on that I don't subscribe myself to the notion that bloggers get to call themselves journalists simply by virtue of having a blog and writing about the things in the news -- any more than journalists get to call themselves bloggers simply by putting their columns online and opening up a comments facility, a lesson that most journos attempting to venture into the blogosphere have not yet learned.
A few bloggers are indeed much better journalists than a lot of the people you read in the papers, but most are not. Many bloggers have excellent writing skills but far fewer have the discipline, the formal training or the gifts for clarity and structure that make a good piece of journalism compelling, and that tend to come with the hard training of observation (including of things that don't interest you at all), followed by reportage to deadline, followed by standing by watching helplessly as your copy gets hacked up beyond recognition if not actually spiked.
I think the premature and extravagant claim for blogging as the 'new journalism' has muddied these waters possibly beyond clearing, as it has led to the energies of the old guard all being directed into the scornful refutations of these claims, rather than looking at the possibilities and the positives of online information delivery.
But (a) almost no bloggers have the resources financial or otherwise to take on a true investagtive role; (b) to accept finance from anywhere else is immediately to compromise the independence that most bloggers prize above rubies; and in any case (c) a blog is really no more than a vector and blogging itself a far more inchoate activity, endlessly pliable and therefore used to all sorts of different ends. I think an increasing number of us, myself certainly included, would echo the words of much-admired Adelaide blogger ThirdCat: 'Blogging isn't the new anything. It's blogging.' But all of that is, for the moment, by the way.)
The first speaker at this session was Colleen Ryan from the Financial Review, who perhaps sensibly focused on one particular aspect of the topic: the question of how journalism -- particularly investigative journalism -- would be paid for if it were to make the transition online. She argued a particular and very clear case about 'quality' journalism, by which she presumably meant the Fourth Estate ideal: that kind of of journalism, she argued, will only survive online if it uses the subscription model, unless higher-quality (and therefore, presumably, more lucrative) advertising was developed to finance it. Clearly she was also thinking wholly within the 'established mainstream media organisation goes online' model and gave no indication of what she knew or thought about the alternatives.
I'm not sure she's right about the subscription/advertising point, but I don't know enough about what kind of money some people make through online advertising to argue the point and neither, I suspect, does she. As I suppose befits a finance journalist, and it is certainly a pertinent question, Ryan's concern was exclusively with how the journalism 'product' would be paid for.
Then British journalist, editor and author Francis Wheen, biographer of Karl Marx, deputy editor of Private Eye and old-school Brit through and through, got up and opened with a bunch of cheap yuk-yuk anti-blog jokes uttered in sonorous and ultra-British baritone orotundities, a combination that got my back up right from the beginning. Yes, 'blog', 'blogging' and 'blogosphere' are indeed already inherently and self-referentially comic words and that is indeed the point of them, something we've all known for some years now. Talk to the hand.
All of which was a pity, because he did of course have a number of intriguing, knowledgeable and original things to say: 'Do newspapers have a long-term future? I suspect probably not. Which brings us to ... Does journalism have a future?' He went on to argue that the decline of news-gathering pre-dates the Internet and can rather be blamed largely on Rupert "After all, we are in the entertainment business" Murdoch and his concentration on what it is that actually sells papers. (This point was reprised yesterday by Norman Swan in the best session I've been to so far, but more of that later.) News-gathering, Wheen argued, is expensive and does not pay its way.
Sounding like a man in late middle age sighing about the cheap values of the young, which was almost as annoying as the easy sniggering about blogging that he kept getting out of the audience, he also mourned an alleged decline in the motivations of young trainee journalists and students of journalism, and told two stories to illustrate his point. Thirty years ago he asked a cadet journalist why he wanted to be in the profession and the cadet replied that he wanted to be like Woodward and Bernstein. Asking a journalism student the same question very recently, he got the reply: 'Because journalists get to meet famous people and celebrities.' If he'd asked different students on different days I'm sure he would have been able to find a shallow one 30 years ago and a dedicated one today, but that would not have suited his line of nostalgic lamentation for a lost golden age.
Sally Warhaft in her otherwise excellent post-panel questions to the speakers, in a skilfully conducted discussion, nonetheless showed no interest in the digital at all except for a few mild passing swipes in the middle of questions about something else. Her final comment -- 'People will always want something to put in their bag and take with them on the train' -- was revealing in that it suggested that she had bought the specious argument of aggro early bloggers that online content would sweep all before it and that hard copy of anything was doomed to the trash heap, which it's quite clear to me is actually unlikely to happen (thanks largely to J. K. Rowling, and no, I am not joking) until bags, trains and quite possibly people are all themselves obsolete. And, of course, there are an awful lot of people now putting their lightweight streamlined wireless laptops in their bags and taking them on the train.
(The attitudes expressed by these three people had reminded me anew of something I've fully realised only since I took up blogging: most people seem either unwilling or unable to go beyond the paradigm of the dichotomy. Maybe it's a hangover from being picked for competing teams in primary school. Whatever it is, I'm thinking of having the words 'It's not a matter of either/or' tattooed on my forehead.)
So it was left to Paul Chadwick, just as I had given up hope of hearing anyone say anything that was both knowledgeable and interesting about both traditional journalism and possible online futures, to restore my faith.
... to be continued, again ...
Broadcasts and podcasts via Radio Adelaide.
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