1/ The ABC will need to get bigger, especially its budget.
2/ Julian Disney would look very nice atop a Press Council-type whopper of an oversight agency
and
3/ Fairfax should be hooked onto the public teat:
Subsidies to investigative and public interest journalism. Subsidies are commonly used to provide transparent targeted assistance to produce a specific output. For example, subsidies are currently provided to the production of Australian films. In that instance producers obtain a tax rebate equal to 40 per cent of eligible production expenditure. Although there would be problems which the Productivity Commission would have to address, a similar approach could be adopted for investigative and public service journalism. The government could establish a specific fund for the purpose and allocate an annual sum for distribution to eligible news organisations. The subsidy could be defined as a percentage of the wage bill of dedicated investigative journalism units established by publishers. It would be paid annually on the basis of eligible payroll cost in the preceding year. All publishers with a dedicated investigative unit would be eligible to receive a subsidy. The rate of subsidy would be determined by dividing the allocated amount of funding received from the government by the total eligible payroll expenditure of recipients. The rate paid is thus inversely proportional to the level of activity. In other words, the greater the gap (and thus the greater the need), the larger is the incentive for news producers to engage in investigative journalism. The subsidy could be in the form of an actual payment to publishers or in the form of a tax rebate of the same value.Oh, and universities need more money to train a better sort of journalist. Margaret Simons must be delighted.
UPDATE: In other media news, MTR went off the air this afternoon, apparently for good. You can hear its last, sad seconds here.
