The Guardian’s Australian editor-in-chief Katharine Viner did what many media commentators fail to do, last week, and disentangled the crisis facing print newspapers from the state of journalism. Too often…
Giant iPads: the only way to make Shepard Smith’s tan look subtle.
Fox News
In the autumn of 1997, a group assembled from across the BBC and beyond gathered to take part in a seminal moment of broadcasting history: the launch of the BBC’s first 24-hour news channel. The 24-hour…
Rachel Buchanan’s Stop Press is the latest addition to the growing list of publications about the death of newspapers and the transition to digital journalism.
AAP/Dean Lewins
Rachel Buchanan’s new book Stop Press: The Last Days of Newspapers is part of what independent publishing house Scribe calls the “Media Chronicles”: A series of first-person accounts about the dramatic…
Fairfax Media has confirmed 25 staff from its business media unit will be made redundant as Fairfax moves toward further integrating its metropolitan mastheads.
AAP/Dean Lewins
Yesterday’s announcement of another 45 jobs to go at Australia’s second largest newspaper proprietor Fairfax Media is yet another marker in the decline of Australia’s print media news sector. In an email…
At least they’re not bigging up the Nazis again …
Akshat Rathi
The Daily Mail’s now infamous essay described Ed Miliband’s father, Ralph, the socialist academic who died in 1994, as “the man who hated Britain”. That, normally, would have been that. It’s hardly news…
Thanks, we don’t want to know what you have to say.
lewishamdreamer
Popular Science has announced that it will be closing online comments on its news stories. Uncivil commenters have an overly negative effect on readers, it claims, with a small number of negative commenters…
If a comet was heading for earth, would you just go about your life?
Mark Mathosian
Breaking news: scientists have discovered a comet that will collide with Earth in 30 years. Its impact will be devastating, killing millions, flooding coastal cities and disrupting civilisation as we know…
Whenever more than two journalists gather together to discuss the future of their business, the dialogue is usually depressing. This prevailing pessimism must change: we need a new conversation about what’s…
There’s no easily defined line between ‘fact’ and ‘non-fact’, so how do journalists make judgements about factual accuracy?
Image from shutterstock.com
A posse of fact-checkers has been riding the boundary of the federal election. Not happy with the standard of honesty in political discourse, the ABC, this website and PolitiFact.com.au, a localised version…
The leaks made by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden have sparked a debate in America on whether journalists can also be ‘activists’.
EPA/The Guardian
Why shouldn’t you, Mr Greenwald, be charged with a crime? The question was directed at Glenn Greenwald, the American journalist who broke the story of NSA surveillance using material provided by on-the-lam…
There’s more information than ever before today but less journalists to cover it. Can institutional corruption still be brought to light?
Ahmad Hashim
Charles Lewis, American University School of Communication
More then ever, we are awash in information. With the advent of the internet, search engines and now more than two billion people wired users globally, information “has become the modern era’s defining…
While young women are rising through Australian media ranks, the old glass ceiling remains.
Woman reporter image from www.shutterstock.com
Women now outnumber men in the Australian media, but they are typically younger, earn less and have less powerful positions than male colleagues. A new national survey shows women now make up 55.5% of…
While reporters’ political biases are always hotly debated, other biases remain - including too few voices from diverse backgrounds.
AAP/Alan Porritt
Most Australian journalists describe themselves as left-wing, yet amongst those who wield the real power in the country’s newsrooms, the Coalition holds a winning lead. But while the media’s political…
Fairfax journalist Paddy Manning was sacked after writing an opinion piece critical of company strategy for Crikey.
AAP/Julian Smith
Sacked Fairfax business writer Paddy Manning appears to have set out on a suicide mission when he wrote for Crikey this week about problems with the plans to merge the BusinessDay sections of The Sydney…
Has Julian Assange’s whistleblower website WikiLeaks set a ‘new normal’ for investigative journalism in the mainstream press?
EPA/STR
If you are a crooked corporate mogul, property tycoon or prominent politician, chances are you are sweating a little bit this week. Sure, your millions of secret tax-evading dollars are - for the moment…
Fairfax’s Richard Baker and Nick McKenzie are two of the five journalists currently involved in legal disputes for not revealing their sources.
Image supplied by MEAA
The protection of confidential sources is an ethical and legal minefield for journalists in Australia, despite the introduction over the past two years of so-called journalists’ privilege in several jurisdictions…
Traditional newsrooms have shrunk but new players have emerged, the report said.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/noodlepie
Widespread cost cutting in newsrooms has led to less investigative journalism, more weather and traffic reports and greater opportunities for lobbyists to get their message into the media, a US report…
The Age has gone tabloid, but missed an opportunity to be brave.
AAP/Julian Smith
The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald today managed the long-anticipated shrink to a tabloid format without any major loss of dignity. No shrill DIRTY ROTTEN CHEATS headlines or the like (100 drug probes…
Will reading habits change with paper size?
AAP/Fairfax Media
After 159 and 172 years respectively, the broadsheet tradition has ended for the weekday editions of The Age and Sydney Morning Herald (SMH). Today, both these Fairfax Media mastheads became tabloid-sized…
Sports journalists don’t always have the resources to break major crime stories.
AAP/Joe Castro
The cheating scandal that has ostensibly bewildered those in command of Australia’s elite sports could end up being the biggest story involving sport in history. Yet sport journalists, like the officials…