Eddie has not, nor will he ever, eat a "shit sandwich": Nine lawyers

It looks like the Nine lawyers have jumped on the fire Mark Llewellyn's affidavit started and come down hard on poor old Crikey. I received an email from Crikey at about 7.30 tonight telling me to enjoy tonight's World Cup match, and telling me that the NSW Supreme Court has... oh just read the following:

"The Supreme Court of NSW has ordered that until further order there be no publication or dissemination of any part of the contents of the affidavit of Mark Llewellyn sworn and filed on 23 June 2006 or any document referring to or recording the substance or effect of any part of affidavit."

So, until further notice, please do not disseminate the "shit sandwich" material that was posted earlier tonight. Eddie, John Alexander and Jamie Packer will be livid.

Murdoch chimes in - again

He's a 74 year old American who proudly calls Manhattan, New York City, his home, and he exercises arguably more control over Australia's media than any other individual - Australian, American or otherwise. Sounds crazy? Well, not if you're Rupert Murdoch. As jaded Aussie media consumers and scrutineers, who have watched as our robust press - a collective of internationally regarded papers, tv and radio stations - shrivelled to a single behemoth, with a few smaller companies clawing at its heals, our media landscape has become a depressing sight that we can't take our eyes off. That behemoth, of course, is News Limited, and the smaller contenders are Fairfax, PBL, Aus Stereo, Rural Press and a few more struggling others. Well, Murdoch just can't keep his greedy mits off our political and out of our media pie.

"Tear up everything, and make it an open go for everybody, otherwise leave it alone", is Murdoch's latest foray into Australia's long-time political debate over changes to cross media laws. According to Murdoch, who has just been named, by The Bulletin no less, the most influential Australian of all time, it's time to leave it to the consumers and the media companies to thrash out who owns what news outlet and who produces what news. I would have more confidence in the concept of a free and open media market if it came from anyone but Murdoch - a man who may have exceptional business skills, but doesn't have a pretension towards the concept of the Fourth Estate. For Murdoch, journalism is a never-ending ATM, and he's thus found out the best way to generate the most cash is to give the people what they want, which isn't journalism, it's entertainment. And he's done so ever since he inherited his father's Adelaide paper, the Adelaide News. It's been a slippery downhill slope ever since.

Eddie, Nine and PBL forced to chomp down on a "shit sandwich"

Well, after the right royal bollocking I gave Crikey and its publisher Eric Beecher the other week, the daily email has today come good and produced a cracker of a story - all without using a single below-the-belt punchline, quip or verbal attack, which is nice to see. See, it can be done fellas.

For those of you following the on-going battle between the fledgling Nine Network and its main rival, a resurgent Channel Seven, you probably had a good laugh when Seven announced it had poached Nine's former News and Current Affairs Director, Mark Llewellyn, from right under Eddie McGuire's nose. No sooner had McGuire told Llewellyn that he'd decided to give Llewellyn's position to Bulletin editor-in-chief Garry Linnell, cut his salary by half, and thrown him out of his office, did Llewellyn announce he was jumping ship and moving to Seven, courtesy of his old mate, and former Nine News Chief Peter Meakin, who had moved to head of News at Seven. Follow? Good.

Now, Nine and its parent company PBL were understandably annoyed that Llewellyn had reacted in such a hot-headed way, and so sought to block the move - or, at the very least to make it a costly one for Llewlleyn - by saying they'll fight Llewellyn's defection through the courts. But, only a day or so after Nine launched its legal action the station decided to back down and let Llewellyn go his own way. Why, all of a sudden did Nine change its mind? Well if you believe Nine, then "it was a decision between fighting a lengthy and costly battle or getting on with running a TV station", and Nine wanted to get on with making quality television. But you don't need to be a media analyst, a pundit or a Nine or Seven Exec to realise the real reason is a little more complicated - and interesting. Which brings us to today's cracking Crikey scoop: extracts from Llewellyn's affidavit, which would become public documents and which would present Fairfax, and all the other Packer bashers, with a tantalising look inside the Nine Network, McGuire's management style and PBL's corporate macho culture. Take a gander at this, which comes from today's Crikey.




Eddie McGuire may still be as green as a freshly harvested cucumber when it comes to running one of the nation's most trusted news sources (yes, I'm sorry, but it's sadly true), but Llewellyn's affidavit - assuming it's true, which, judging by Nine's reaction looks like the case - doesn't paint a flattering picture of McGuire, who has the daunting task of turning around Big Kerry's beloved network. Instead, McGuire comes off looking like he's still on set with Sam, Trev and the rest of the goofy Footy Show gang: a blokley sycophant to the very end, McGuire's never short of a compliment, just so long as it softens the hard blow around the corner. It may be just the way Kerry would have run the station, but McGuire's not Kerry - no-one is, which is why Nine, and to some extent PBL, are in such dire straights.

Poor Eddie: he's bitten off more than he can chew, and should probably get used to the taste of Nine's unique brand of contract negotiation.

Who wants to be a pundit?

I have long been of the opinion that most of the views and vitriol spewed forth by the blogosphere - that irascible collective of wannabe hacks, makeshift op-ed writers and lonely souls, of which I am proudly a part - too often lean towards self-importance, where facts and grammar come a distant second to volume and humour. And I'm pleased to discover that I'm not the only one who would like to see the growing number of techno-utopians popping up around the net take a small, but well needed reality check. The New Republic dedicated a large chunk of its last edition to the resurgent influence of blogs and the idea of the instant pundit, and it's none too pretty. The most stinging criticism made by Christine Rosen in her TNR piece (which you'll have to download in pdf form, because there is no direct link to the article - or you could even buy a hard copy of the magazine) is that of "intellectual dishonesty" on the part of the blogosphere, which is probably better described as intellectual laziness. According to Rosen, a reflective discussion based around facts, rather than the type of knee jerk reaction blogging has built its reputation and popularity around, is largely what's missing from the blogosphere. The mainstream media's (MSM, because acronyms are always so useful and clear-cut) biggest weapon in its ongoing fight for credibility is this sort of detail and analysis. Blogging is, most of the time, an ill-considered reaction - one based on timeliness rather than considered judgement and an accurate assessment of the facts.

In effect, the blogosphere has become a crude form of the echno-humanism that Reynolds celebrates - technology now permits thoughts to be constantly published in more-or-less real time,as if the blog were an extension of the brain. And, even if the blogosphere could foster a more reflective discussion,it hugely privileges the instant response and the explosive rant on the issue of the moment. This may be valuable in certain circumstances. Blogging has undeniably made it much easier for people to share opinions and information and to find like-minded souls.Patches of good writing exist out there, as well as impeccable argumentation. But it’s nothing more than old-fashioned techno-utopianism to assume that the blogosphere could adequately supersede the old media order or to believe that traditional institutions can be so easily and casually jettisoned.

The most interesting debate being thrashed out in media circles these days is over the question of whether the old media - newspapers, traditional radio and television news - will be crushed under the weight of this citizen journalism, or blogging. Almost everyone, including media company CEOs and their respective boards, have declared that it's only a matter of time before this new age of journalism becomes the mainstream; an age where photos of a terrorist attack can be published almost instantaneously, and where people can have their two cents online before they even know what they've written. But would you expect anything else from the business arm of the media industry? Blogging is cheap - it uses the internet, as opposed to the outside world, as the basis for almost all its research - and it's not hamstrung by printing schedules or deadlines. Soon, it'll only be the journalists and a few ageing commentators who'll be willing to howl in disarray at the declining quality of the mainstream press. Did someone say fact-checker? A what...?

Anyone reading this (and I don't think anyone actually does) please consider this: being an instant pundit, with an opinion on everything and everyone, may stroke the ego, but it's not doing a God damn thing for the art, or the future of journalism.

NB: Please, I am aware of the concept of irony, and although this piece may be dripping in the stuff, it should not be taken as journalism, or even seriously. It's a blog, for God's sake. I'm writing this for my amusement and my own enjoyment, and for no other reason.

Ten gets told to put its pants back on - or else

It's time to dust off the cardigan, reach for the walking stick and hobble, like the old man I am, towards the pulpit for a little bit of a spray. The Weekend Aus is reporting Channel 10 has decided to haul the 'tidied-up' version of "Big Brother - Adults Only" off the air for good, after some of the more conservative members of the federal Liberal and National Parties complained directly to the Prime Minister about the show's steamy content. But why, after about five seasons of the raunchy and downright ridiculous "Big Brother - Adults Only" - which drew criticism from its very first show - has Ten pulled the plug now? Well, sorry to disappoint, but Ten Chairman Nick Falloon hasn't had a crisis of conscience. Instead, it appears the network is a little more receptive to political complaints when they want something - especially when that something involves wiping out the current cross media laws, which, at the moment, forbid the sale of Ten to any of the country's major media operators.

During the week, Nationals' Senator Barnaby Joyce, along with a bunch of other members of the Coalition, roasted poor old Falloon and Ten Chief Executive Grant Blackley over the show, before taking their grievances to Cabinet, and then to the PM himself. For a young Senator, in his first term, Joyce has unparalleled access to the strings of power in Canberra, and when it somes to something as crude as tit and bum, the Queensland Senator would have reveled in the chance to kick BB-AA off the air for good. The Prime Minister had no choice but to lend an ear, and act, which is exactly what he did.

Now Joyce probably doesn't have the audacity or the stupidity to directly threaten Falloon and the Ten Mafia himself, but on issues of censorship, taste and family values, Joyce and the PM are two hankeys cut from the same cloth. So whether the final threat came from Joyce himself (unlikely), Communications Minister Helen Coonan (most likely), or the PM (possible), I don't think we should be in any doubt where the pressure came from to begin with. Just remember that the PM has signaled he wants to abort, or at the very least drastically reduce, the Senate's power to act as a true house of review with his decision to slice back the number of Senate Committees to 10, and he'd most definitely need the support of the rogue Queensland Senator when it goes before parliament in a couple of months.

Oh, where's the high-horse-flogging outrage promised from my curmudgeon alter ego at the beginning of this post you say? Well here's my two cents: "Big Brother - adults Only" was a deplorable excuse for a television show, which symbolised everything wrong with this tantalised generation of voyeurs. (What guy in his right mind would even think of getting his rocks off using the armpit of a female friend while she was in the process of flapping around, doing the same to another bloke with the other armpit? And who would want to hear about it?) It was a show that could only be tolerated with the aid of a six pack of beer (at least), a couple of shots of absinthe and a bible. I'm grateful it's off, and the housemates' pants are back on; and I'm even more grateful the executive arm of our government has taken over the labourious task of censoring what we watch, see, hear, and read. Bring on the media reforms I say.

The latest, greatest music thingy to date

Yes, I'm affraid those ubiquitous white earphones no longer attract the cult status they once did. I, for one, am not surprised - especially when you consider the number of grueling research hours and big-business dollars competitors have plunged into marketing other styles and colours of earphones; not to mention the machines they find themselves attached to.

For those uninitiated, here's how the white earphones work: the earbuds (also white, although any colour will actually do) are inserted into the ears (one in each ear) of a person, donkey, monkey, or anything else with large enough ears, while the other end is inserted into a white rectangular object, the front of which contains a circular dial thingy, a few round buttons and a colour lcd screen. This rectangular object plays music - your music. This rectangular object, with its minimalist design, is small enough to fit in the top pocket of any standard business shirt, or even in the smallest purse, so you rarely see the natty little unit when you're walking around the city, catching a tram or even bushwalking - you just see the headphones, and they're everywhere.

Now, suppose you were a large, possibly global corporation that wanted to knock the market leader off, or, at least the very least, make a modest cut into its market share. Who would you target? The kids, of course: those trend-setting teenagers, and those twenty-somethings, both with money to burn, and who are always looking to stay ahead to the pack, not to mention those miscreant marketers.

So you could start with a website, promoted on the internet, on one of those sites where the said cool kids hang out and try and stay ahead of their musical peers by reading up on bands who use construction work equipment as instruments, or something like that. This website would be a bleak looking black and red flash site, maybe with an address something like www.iDont.com (notice the small i, this is very important), which would imprint the impression of a world and its population decaying from conformity; a reminder of Stalinist Russia, or maybe of Orwell's dystopian universe in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Cutting through this moodily drawn oppression, an alternative presents itself. "RESIST CONFORMITY" the website would shout to all visitors - because who in their right mind wants to follow the path of poor old Winston Smith? Not me, and not you, right?

"Calling all free thinkers, contrarians and malcontents," its manifesto would begin. "The time has come to rise up against the iTatorship. To resist the monotony of white earnbuds and reject the oppressive forces of cultural conformity." It would hit the market leader where it was most visible: the white earphones. A black and white stenciled sheep with those notorious white headphones, hanging down around its neck like a noose, would be the website's - no, the movement's - mascot, and its public face. A variation of Mr Sheep could appear in a delightfully subtle comic strip, Flocking Hell, which could look something like this:


Now, anyone trawling through the site for the first time could be forgiven for thinking this bitter satire was the work of some disgruntled tech-head, disappointed that those white headphones he once loved are now everywhere. They would be wrong. Because, it's not just a movement, it's a revolution; a revolution that comes in the form of a new product - something called the Sansa e200.

It's a rectangular BLACK fusion of plastic and metal, with a large circular dial thingy, four rectangular buttons AROUND, NOT BELOW, the turning dial thing, and a large LCD colour screen. It features not 40GB or 60GB storage space, but a choice between 2GB, 4GB or 6GB, and it does not include a lowercase i in its title. But more important, is it includes BLACK, not white headphones.

Windschuttle joins the ABC board

So historian Keith Windschuttle has wedged himself onto the "non-partisan" ABC board, in what must be one of the most overtly political appointments this government has made during its 10 years in office. Windschuttle joins The Australian's Janet Albrechtsen on the ABC board, and there's little doubt the Prime Minister is looking forward to two of Australia's most divisive conservatives scheming and colluding on ways to wrestle control of the ABC away from the bunch of commies in power at the moment. So, just to re-cap: we have Janet Albrechtsen and Keith Windschuttle on the board of our national broadcaster; former Fairfax numbers man Mark Scott as its new Managing Director; and the decision to take away the staff appointed board appointment.

And with all the Windschuttle outrage flying around over the last few days, The Weekend Australian's taken it upon itself to republish one of Windshuttle's old Quadrant essays, where he laments the sudden popularity of universities teaching a fusion of journalism and media studies; media studies, according to Windschuttle, being the complete "antithesis" of what good journalism should be. And just to make sure Windschuttle was still attached to this view, written in Quadrant back in 1998, The Aus decided to go to Windschuttle:

"I haven't changed my views at all. There are some real ex-journalists teaching but they are swamped by those teaching cultural studies nonsense."

He may have a point, but, like so many prominent conservatives appointed to federal arts bodies and cultural councils by this government, Windschuttle's appointment, his views on universities, journalism and the stolen generation are an overt attempt to win over the culture wars before Howard departs for good.

Gen X, Gen Y and Gen zzzzzzzzz... at The Age

As if we weren't sick enough of hearing about which consonant has been given to which generation this week, The Age today wants to bludgeon it into our heads. Yes, it's time to lay Generation Y on the table (again) and give it the once-over, as poor old reporter Bridie Smith tries to make this cobwebby story interesting. Sadly poor old Smithy fails quickly, when we realise Smith's young girl isn't in fact being followed by some deranged voyeur, but instead advertisers. The level of interest falls bellow zero to bloggable. Here's his tantalizing opening:

She doesn't know it, but the young girl on her way to the tram stop is being chased. Walking at a fair pace and wearing skinny-legged jeans with a loose-fitting cardigan over a colourful T-shirt, she has a mop-style haircut that gives a clue to her carefree state.

Her oversized sunnies have thick plastic frames. A mid-length silver necklace with a collection of charms swings as she strides out. She is puffed. But no one takes any notice, because no one can see her pursuers - the corporate world. Brands for alcohol, shoes, clothes, mobile phones - even cars. They all want her loyalty, her money.

zzzzzzz... oh, you're still reading hey? I'd better give you the lead, followed by a few requisite comments from the trendwatchers, advertisers and marketers. Add a few puns and quips to show The Age understands the notoriously fickle Gen Y (again), and the story writes itself. It's that easy.

Australia's young adults aged 16 to 30 have never been so attractive to multinational corporations and smaller companies, because they have never had so much money.

Most young adults don't move out of home until the age of 26, meaning a significant slab of what they earn becomes disposable income. Ka-ching. This is what the big brands are after.

In Australia, generation Ys - those born between 1978 and 1994 - number about 4.5 million. They make up 24 per cent of the population and yet they have more than half the discretionary spending power. Add the older generation Xers into the mix, and there lies a sizable market to be snared.

It could be the narcissistic Generation Y loves to read about itself, or maybe they just have the attention span of a gnat, but The Age writes this exact piece a few times a year - and no-one seems to notice.

Old-fashioned subterfuge at Crikey

Like a preacher behind a pulpit, Eric Beecher, Crikey.com.au's publisher and editor-in-chief, has once again come out from behind his internet veil to rage against declining standards of journalism in Australia after a rash of staff cuts by Channel Nine and Fairfax. According to Beecher, writing in Crikey a few days ago, "these are the dog days for Australian journalism", with Australia's most senior and experienced journalists either taking voluntary redundancies or being given a forceful boot by their long-time employers. And yes, there can be very few journalist - and Beecher does consider himself a journalist, rather than a publisher, or businessman - who would disagree with his conclusion, because it's no secret, nor is it news that Australia's Fourth Estate is a little unfit at the moment.

But while Beecher - an old-school print journo who's only just now realised the internet's potential - has written off newspaper journalism and now spends his days railing against his old employer Fairfax and Helen Coonan's proposed media changes, he's probably not being completely honest with his readers when he complains about the slipping quality of Australian journalism. Because, as Mr Beecher is no doubt aware, the more the quality of reportage slips, the more those pining for the good old days, where journalists downed a couple of bottles over a long lunch, and smoked themselves into emphysema, are going to turn to Crikey to get the "story behind the story". And how disappointed they'll be when they realise what they've been reading is nothing more than mutton dressed up as lamb: a swag of pseudo-commentators dressed up, given a notepad and a pen and called journalists.

And so we have Beecher: one hand playing the fist-in-the-air media activist, waxing and waning about diversity and quality, while the other hand's happily scooping up disaffected SMH and Age readers and pulling them into the Crikey fold. It'd be plausible, if not smart business, if Crikey's actual news output, as opposed to its commentary, which makes up about 90% of the daily email, was up to broadsheet standard - but it's not, and Beecher doesn't have the resources or reporting infrastructure in place to make it so. So next time you read, see or hear the worn-out Beecher argument that cost-cutting and heavy-handed government intervention is killing Australian journalism, just remember he's probably quite happy to see it all fall to pieces, just so long as he's there to pick up the mess.

Gladwell journalism

In the nascent writing genre that blends life-style journalism, science, and anthropology, The New Yorker's Malcolm Gladwell is in a league of his own. In fact Gladwell (pictured above, at shiny desk, presumably in his New York City high rise apartment) is probably solely responsible for it. One of The New Yorker's most popular staff writers, people jumped on Gladwell after the release of his first book, "The Tipping Point", where he examined social phenomenon and behaviors, and how they change, adapt or die without a moment's notice. If "The Tipping Point" was to be found on coffee tables of the literati all the way from London to New York, Gladwell's next book, "Blink", about how mindless, split-second decisions often provide more fruitful outcomes than if you'd spent months making the same decision, made sure almost anyone who'd walked into a bookshop in the last 18 months had heard, or at least seen the new era of Gladwell journalism.

I've read neither "Blink" nor "The Tipping Point", but I have been following Gladwell's New Yorker writings for the past year or so, and I can't get past an obvious contradiction his writing throws up. Now maybe the answer lies in "Blink", or something else of his I haven't been bothered to read (I know it's bad journalism, but just remember this IS a blog people), but Gladwell seems torn between a naturally fastidious type of journalism - a type of writing that's no doubt encouraged by the New Yorker's strict fact-checking regime, and need to provide measured analysis on any issue printed in the magazine - and the unconscious decision making that forms the backbone of "Blink". His most recent piece published in the New Yorker was a review of the sport's science book "The Wages of Wins", which Gladwell praises for its thoroughly mathematical approach to deciding how valuable any given NBA basketball player actually was during a game or season. What the authors, and implicitly Gladwell, came up with was a formula that took into more than just the standard figures commentators and judges use (shots taken/shots hit, rebounds, steals etc) to help rule or rank a team's most valuable players. Looking at the different rankings the formula turns up compared to the official rookie rankings of any given year, Gladwell concludes, "basketball's decision-makers, it seems, are simply irrational".

It's a case of quantified, carefully thought out research, which incorporates often overlooked and arbitrary factors that have been extrapolated to the nth degree, dunking all over the irrational decisions of some of the game's experts, who have used intuition and "Blink"-like decision making to come up with player rankings that Gladwell agrees is simply hogwash. It was the same sort of carefully attended details and rational thinking that made his piece from earlier in the year, which looked at the best way to protect the community from dangerous dogs, so fresh and engaging. If I was guessing on the title of Gladwell's next book, it would probably be something along the lines of "Don't Blink: How research invariably leads to more intelligent conclusions". Gladwell may find impulse purchases of "Don't Blink" down compared with "Blink", but that's to be expected.