How To Get Published in The Age

EARLIER THIS YEAR, the energetic warmist John Cook left the rear door ajar at his Skeptical Science, allowing the uninvited to slip through and peruse a wealth of archived and formerly private correspondence between the site’s proprietor and the more ardent and intimate catastropharians who wring their hankies at his select invitation. Links to several now-dead .zip files were posted on the web, and several kind readers passed along all those notes and letters to the Billabong, where they provoked quite a few chuckles but no posts. At the time it seemed other than the act of a gentleman to read another’s mail and talk about it, so the archive’s many illustrative opportunities to cite fevered minds in action went untapped.

That is still the attitude at the Billabong, although this column by Jo Chandler and Ian Munro in today’s Phage has prompted a bit of a re-think. As you might expect, and as we will see repeatedly over the weeks to come, it is all about the hallowed Fairfax manifesto of editorial independence and how vital it is to the quality journalism people like Chandler and Munro produce.  There is one little section, though, that justifies hiking the hem just a bit on Cook’s archive. It is Article Three of the Age and Sunday charter (apparently the Silly and other papers have their own) and re-produced at the foot of the Chandler-Munro article. Here it is:

3. The board of directors acknowledges the responsibility of journalists, artists and photographers to report and comment on the affairs of the city, state, nation and the world fairly and accurately and regardless of any commercial, personal or political interests including those of any shareholder, manager, editor or staff member.

What brings this to mind is Cook’s archived note to a fellow warmist -- a note in which he explains how, when the Phage wandered off the reservation and allowed Bob Carter to decry warmism on the paper’s opinion page, he succeeded in having  a rebuttal published in the same space and on the very next day. There is no link to what follows, but take a Bunyip’s word that everything below is as it is in the original. Cook wrote:

“What I have learned so far is to build relationships. I got the Age piece because I knew Jo Chandler at The Age. She was the one who advocated for me to the opinion editor that I should respond to the Carter article. So schmoozing is something we all have to work at. Try to build the relationships with local journalists and editors. How? Beats me but if you figure it out, let us all know!”

So, just to recap, Article Three of The Phage’s Mingy Carta avows that journalists will eschew influencing editorial content “regardless of any commercial, personal or political interests.” Yet Chandler, who is a warmist to her boot heels and just happened to have a newly released alarmist tome in the shops, used her influence to make sure her mate Cook was given the final word. And just for good measure, Chandler administered a follow-up wallop to Carter a couple of days later. All of that would seem to be at odds with each of Article Three’s stipulations against reporters advancing their personal, political and commercial interests.

But there is more than that, and it behoves Mrs Rinehart’s incoming editors to think about, for example, the apparent ease with which eager reporters can be schmoozed, to use Cook’s term, by activists pushing agendas that those journalists find congenial.  If the Age had a few resident sceptics for balance, people who might also have leaned on the opinion editor, it might not matter so much. But one gathers that they and their potential advocacy have been driven off in much the same way that a favoured propagandist was ushered in.

It also helps to explain why The Age has shed so many readers and so much credibility.  According to Chandler, who chairs the House Independence Committee, the charter is vital – vital, apparently, for suppressing dissent from the views prevailing two floors above the corner of Collins and Spencer streets.

It will be interesting to see how Mrs Rinehart sets about changing all that.

UPDATE: Go a'googling for Carter's Age article and look at the headline that shows up in the search results: "Climate change denialist Bob Carter -- The Age". As this headline is not the one on the story, would it be a fair guess to assume it has been tagged like this score google links?

   

Two For The Road

MRS RINEHART has moved mountains of dirt in her mining career, so sweeping the sludge from Fairfax newsrooms will be a piece of cake -- especially as some who should top any necks-for-the-axe list appear eager to execute their own swan dives into the soon-to-be proprietor's gully trap. Showing the way is Ross Gittins, who has said:

“The independence of Fairfax is the most valuable commercial asset and could be easily lost if no sufficient respect was paid to protect the freedom of journalists as reporters to report without fear or favour, and as commentators to call it as they see it. I’m not particularly keen on the idea of anybody telling me what I’m allowed to say about the mining industry."

Asked what would happen if no guarantee was forthcoming, Gittins replied: “I would have to reconsider my position.”

 There is one of those 1900 jobs that won't need to be cut by fiat. And here, possibly, is another: Silly Readers Editrix Judy Prisk admits to a flutter in her matronly breast at being reminded of a newspaper in America whose staff voted to put it out of business rather than be saved by Rupert Murdoch.

The story that so moved Ms Prisk is here and should be a source of comfort to all sensible Australians. It is not just our own precious luvvies who exist in that special little world where, the more people decline to buy their journalism, the louder grow their assertions of its magnificence.

Gittins and Prisk should make a nice matched pair as they clean out their desks. Some months ago, Gittins was caught cold borrowing the vast bulk of his column with, at best, oblique attribution. Having been called to account, his exoneration was then justified by Prisk.

They will look just the perfect pair marching out the door in lockstep.

The Age of Opportunity

THERE is much to like about Keith Dunstan, despite several grave deficiencies of character. Those who lived in Melbourne during the Seventies, when the city still had large, wide, multi-lane roadways, may recall the many columns he penned for the Sun News Pictorial about the joy to be experienced upon a bicycle and how nice it would be if the Queen of the Yarra were to be carved up by bike paths. His wish came to pass and while he is probably too old these days to pump the pedals, his heirs now oblige motorists to observe their Lycra’d bottoms on roads reduced to perpetual one-lane traffic jams. Moreover, as cyclists are slow and prone to falls, their presence on our roads has been one of the many thin excuses for covering the landscape thickly with the revenue cameras that are said to secure their safety. Dunstan also displayed an open disdain for the footy, Melbourne’s great game and, unless someone in Jolimont cures cancer, quite likely to remain the Southern City’s greatest contribution to the sum of human achievement.

 Keith Dunstan massages the prostate.

That said,  Dunstan retains the power to make the gentle, salient point , which he has done this morning with a lament that so many people are announcing the apparent passing of newspapers. He maintains the Age will survive, also the hope at the Billabong, where one of the interesting things about Dunstan’s column is that it does not appear in his old paper, now called the Herald Sun.

Some years ago, for reasons best known to itself, the Herald Sun decided its future was in celebrity gossip, sport and pictures of adorable animals and babies.  Dumbing down the paper appears to have been a conscious and quite deliberate policy, as that is the only thing to explain why even the formerly robust finance section is worth reading only for Terry McCrann. So Dunstan has migrated his occasional pieces to the Age, where the dominant inanity is, for the moment, of a different variety.

But still, it should give hope to those who believe a city of 4 million people deserves at least one, semi-decent newspaper. The Herald Sun underwent a transformation – for the worse, but that is beside the point – and so can the Age, perhaps for the better, with Mrs Rinehart at the helm. Indeed, a board not half so infected with Roger Corbett’s fatalism might even see Melbourne as an opportunity. As a commenter at Mumbrella observed, the city still buys 600,000 papers every day. Even allowing that a reformed Age will not attract too many young and thoroughly wired readers, it does not require too much optimism to see it taking away 100,000 sales from the Herald Sun on the strength of a more convenient format and improved content, especially the latter.

It would seem that, at this stage, all Fairfax’s announced plans for transforming itself are moot. Within weeks, Mrs Rinehart will be in control and, one way or another, in a position to determine how the corporate and editorial re-sculpting is implemented.  With any luck she will be aided by a spate of aggrieved resignations, as embarrassments like Ross “I’m no plagiarist” Gittins and David Marr decamp to academia and the solace of Mark Scott’s comfy lap. Without wishing to tell her how to run a business, the very first thing she should do is speed up the Age’s move to tabloid format. The current management has announced that the Great Shrinking will not take place until March next year, which demonstrates, if further proof be needed, that imbecility is the prime qualification for a seat on the current Fairfax board. How many businesses not only alert competitors to their next strategic moves but also grant them nine months’ grace to prepare countermeasures?

Of course, if the current crew of hacks regurgitating Earth Hour press releases remains intact, it won’t matter what size the Age comes in. To paraphrase Gough Whitlam, it’s what it puts in its guts that’s stuffed it. So, new editors, a new shape and an old-fashioned return to covering the city where its erstwhile readers reside.

Why, Gina could have a winner!

FOOTNOTE: On page 26 of Wednesday’s Herald Sun the following caption appeared beneath a picture of some sheep. “Theft: Sheep, similar to those that were stolen.”

Herald Sun editors apparently believe their readers need to be told what sheep look like. If that doesn’t encourage Mrs Rinehart to start a newspaper war and have a red-hot go, nothing can.      

No Pleasing Steve Gibbons MP

UP BENDIGO way, Federal Labor MP Steve Gibbons is very upset about Fairfax falling into Mrs Rinehart’s hands – if a valueless property being lifted from the brink of ruin can be described as “falling”. Gibbons would like a bit more law and regulation to keep the Phage and Silly on the right track, as he sees it, and proposes to bring such an initiative to the floor of the House. With Wayne Swan and sundry others all leaping to the defence of the media company that has been so very kind to them, the argument for government control and sanctions is being couched in terms of the need to preserve “quality journalism”.

Well the thing worth noting about Gibbons is that he is no particular ally of Fairfax as it exists at the moment, he just doesn't like free speech. Indeed, a year ago, he was getting stuck into the Fairfax-owned Bendigo Advertiser for “appalling journalism”, its crime having been to report a CFA officer’s opinion that BER-funded renovations to a local school had increased the fire risk.

When people like Gibbons talk about protecting journalism, what they actually mean is protecting themselves from scrutiny and rebuke -- any and all scrutiny and rebuke. The Fairfax crisis just gives them a chance to come across all pious while doing so.

Editorial Excellence

MARIEKE HARDY, that little blossom in Mark Scott's lapel, has directed the scalpel of her humour at Mrs Rinehart, who we are told will soon be filling Fairfax newspapers with material like this:

But please, don't take your science from a woman whose name was in part inspired by an anguished mouse. Yes, it is BS, as even Media Watch was obliged to reveal. Mrs Rinehart has yet to take control of Fairfax, but it seems editorial standards are already lifting.

Rock Me, Baby

A FEW hours ago, the cat stood up, marched to the centre of the room, put back its ears and stared in a very concerned fashion at something beside the footstool no one else could see. About 30 seconds later, the Billabong sloshed about, the roof rattled and the nice new fence banged loudly and several times against the cotoneaster.. The sensible thing seemed to be another sip, followed by some vigorous shaking on the sofa, which failed to reproduce the rumbling groundswell and established that it had indeed been an earthquake rather than a mini-stroke.

This was both good news and somewhat disappointing. Years ago, laid up and very crook indeed, a kind friend dropped off a parcel of books, one of them Aztec by Gary Jennings. It is the sort of book you can just manage when dinner hasn't stayed down for weeks and there is only enough wit left to wish someone kind would come along and change your sheets -- a ripping yarn, in other words, but educational as well.One learns, for example, that the conqistadores made short work of so many unpronouncable cities because their inhabitants could go no more than a few pages without a root. Earthquakes, according to Jennings, have an aphrodisial quality, which always seemed one Gaia's decencies and quite enough to justify a bit of fallen masonry here and there.

Well Melbourne has just had a 5.3 earthquake, which was very large and very noticeable, and it is now just as clear that Jennings was making stuff up. The science is settled: Unless Bunyip physiolology differs markedly from that of the ancient Aztecs, it can now be stated that earthquakes do nothing to inspire a desire to make the earth move for anyone else.

The cat cut a couple of agitated circles on the rug, licked its face and then went back to sleep at the hearth. Apparently it doesn't work for cats either..

Rip Van Bunyip

YAWN, stretch, scratch the few odd things .... a fellow nods off for a little nap and, golly gosh, there is no telling what will be there when consciousness begins to knit again the sleeve of care. Take Blogger, for example, which has introduced a new back-end format that, upon brief inspection, seems more complicated than needs be. The first little cross of the new day.

And Fairfax, what of Fairfax? It was there, wobbly and canted but still standing when the Professor pulled up the doona in late April and curled into a comfy foetal ball. Now it seems Mrs Rinehart is about to take charge and aren't those luvvies just so miffed about it! Little Andrew Jaspan has come down from the tower -- a high chair to anyone else -- and is casting bolts all about the place. If only Fairfax had heeded the Mancunian Candidate's wisdom, all would be copasetic, or so he says. This, mind you, from the editor who took his Earth Hour riding instructions directly from a PR outfit and was deemed so lacking in gravitas his own staff expressed a lack of confidence in his leadership.

See, Mrs Rinehart already is spreading the balm of amity. All the luvvies are bonza mates again and fuming in chorus about the threat to democracy posed by the icky sort of person seldom invited to Yarraville dinner parties, where the smart hostess knows better than to strike for a rough balance between the sexes. With marriage equality on everyone's lips just lately, an all-male mixed gathering must no longer be seen as an oxymoron.

But please, no gloating (well not much, anyway) about Fairfax. Rather, make the effort to understand the Other, as they say. There they were, all on the last leg of the long march. The universities had fallen and the schools producing a fresh generation of children warned off from critical thinking. In Spring Street we still have a premier who has made no effort to root out the political operatives who pose as public servants and continue to shape policy according to their green-left will. And in the media, well paradise was just a teeny push away. Finko and Ricketty laid the groundwork and all the smarties were poised for the final assault on Rupert and his hate media.

And just then, like Lochinvar out of the West, Mrs Rinehart arrives with $84 million and not the slightest desire to make the guest list for David Marr's next soggy-biscuit soiree.

They've lost it, seen it slip from mung-beaned fingers, and it must be terribly galling.

So don't laugh too loud, as the sound of mirth will only tip them off. The ABC and SBS are next, with a little help from PM Abbott, and it would be better to knock down the gates before the inhabitants know we are coming.