2008: Highlights and Lowlights

Everyone is doing one of these, so I thought I would contribute my list of the highs and lows of 2008.

Highlights of 2008


1. Barack Obama's US presidential election victory

After the campaign, the actual Presidency is bound to disappoint. It would have been pleasing to see Francis the Talking Mule take over as a Democratic Party president after eight years of the Bush administration, but Obama's campaign brought so many things together so seamlessly. Tapping into the 'Netroots' movement, the use of social media, a formidable bottom-up fundraising machine, and a campaign that actually offered hope rather than cynicism. Even the most hardened Obama sceptic would find it hard not to be moved by the victory speech in Grant Park, Chicago. I'm predicting a big win for Obama in 2012 as the two factors that could have worked against him in 2008 - race and inexperience - have been surpassed, and he meets a Republican Party at the end of the 40-year Nixon-Reagan Revolution and in its long, dark night of the soul.

2. The Rudd Government's apology to the Stolen Generations

At last, an Australian Prime Minister does the right thing about a historic wrong. Its hard to believe we spent a decade arguing over the importance of this.


3. The Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony

OK, so the Torch Relays were controversial, and China's human rights record is pretty iffy. But the world wasn't looking at Beijing in 2008 to understand the National People's Congress or discern the inner workings of the SARFT. They wanted a spectacle, and got it. Opening with 2008 drummers with traditional instruments, this was the gold standard of Olympic opening ceremonies. And aside from the dodgy yachting venue at Qingdao and the ongoing pollution problems, the Games themselves went pretty smoothly

4. Matthew Mitcham's diving gold medal

An unexpected gold medal win for Australia, and Matthew Mitcham thanked his boyfriend, his parents, and his coach, in that order. Quite a change from the traumas faced by gay athletes such as the US diver Greg Louganis in the 80s, and the sort of signal of change that may have more impact in the longer term on human rights in China than battles over the Olympic torch relay.

5. Radiohead "In Rainbows"

This came out on the Net in 2007, but the CD was an 08 release (just!). At a time when the album as format may be on its death bed (see Guns 'n' Roses "Chinese Democracy" lowlight #8 below), Radiohead released a beautifully seamless album that synthesises their mid 90s feel for a catchy hook with their late 90s/early 00s avant-gardism into a mix that is the more impressive the more you listen to it. The worthy successor to "OK Computer", which may have been the album of the 1990s.

6. Julia Gillard

A polarising choice perhaps, but one that has to be made. After admirably keeping her cool on Channel Nine when Labor won in November 07, she is the best Parliamentary performer on the Labor side since Paul Keating, and is particularly good when she tears into the myths of Costellology. She has always looked comfortable in the big chair whenever Kevin 007 has jetted off again to advise the Bolivian Government on medium-term monetary policy targeting.

7. Nate Silver's 'Five-Thirty-Eight' US election blog

Transferring a knowledge of baseball statistics to election prediction in the fantastically complicated US electoral college system, Nate Silver's blog had three great innovations that lifted it above the pack: (1) a real understanding of statistical probability (e.g. if John McCain didn;t win Pennsylvania, he had a 3 in 10,000 chance of victory); (2) gauging the momentum of each campaign by photographing which offices still had the lights on in swing districts at 7pm (McCain's didn't; Obama's did); and (3) profiling the voting propensities of each state through indicators such as the ratio of Wal-Marts to Starbucks (high in Kansas, low in Oregon).

8. Manly thumping the Melbourne Storm 54-0 in the NRL Grand Final

More controversial than Julia Gillard at #6, this was an amazing vindication of a side that was nearly down and out after the Super League fiasco (remember the Northern Eagles!). One for my late father, who wore the slings and arrows of being a Manly fan with pride all his life, even if it probably annoyed the Rees NSW Labor government (see lowlight #5 below).

9. Season Six of The Sopranos

OK, this happened in 2007, but due to the unbelieveably crappy programming of Channel Nine (very lucky not to make the Lowlights Top 10 themselves, although I haven't seen Richard Wilkins NYE party show yet), I saw it in 2008. Serial televsiion as a medium for epic storytelling. James Gandolfini as Shakespearean hero-villain in a polyester shirt. Can talk therapy cure a sociopath? I think not.

10. Shane Warne: The Musical

I say this not having seen the show, but it seems a great resolution through live theatre of one of the great socio-cultural divides of Australian society. Every summer, Australia would divide in two. There were those who demanded harsh retribution for Shane's every personal misdemeanor as they objected in principle to his oafish occupation of the Australian public sphere, and wanted the national conversation to turn back to Radio National, Writers' Festivals or constitutional reform. And then there were those who revelled in Shane's outre displays of public bad behaviour, as he stood in for a number of other things the RN/Writers' Festival crowd disliked - SUVs, plasma TVs, alcopops, text messaging and, more generally, sports people being taken as barometers of the national psyche. Anyway, after Shane's gone, Ricky Ponting thinks that captaining a cricket team is like being CEO of a corporation, and look where we are now.

Lowlights of 2008

1. The Global Financial Crisis (GFC)

The GFC bundles a bunch of lowlights together, from the Bush Administration's handling of it in the US, the tanking of super funds (meaning that jobs in universities will remain hard to get for at least another five years), Iceland going bankrupt - and perhaps California next - and perhaps one million unemployed in Australia in 2009. One positive has been the return in a big way of Keynesian economics, which tends to work with the grain of parties of the left.

2. Telstra's no-show for the National Broadband Network bid

The idea that you get the money anyway even if you don't do the paperwork is not the experience of people who deal with Centrelink, Medicare or the Australian Research Council, and the idea that Telstra could just poo-pooh the whole notion of competitive bidding for a multi-billion contract for delivery of a service of vital national importance was indicative of just how adrift and insular the company has become under Trujillo and McGaughie. The probability that all of this will go through the courts in 2009 - which will involve a lot more time and paperwork than submitting a bid proposal for NBN would have done - is staggering, and inadvertently points to the merits of separating the network and retail functions of Telstra.

3. Robert Mugabe's presidency in Zimbabwe

A truly appalling situation, that deserves a particular dishonourable mention for former South African President Thabo Mbeki, who could have put a stop to this madness in May, and who has blemished the idea of anti-colonial solidarity forever by providing cover for this deranged tyrant.

4. The Federal Opposition

Being in Opposition after eleven years in government can;t be a great situation, but the Federal Liberal-National parties made extraordinarily heavy weather of it over 2008, making the Rudd government look considerably better than it actually is. At one point it looked like the balme could be pinned on Brendan "Emo Man" Nelson, as he would get ever more worked up and overwrought in public about the fate of truck drivers, Bundy & Coke drinkers, "ute men" (thanks Glenn Milne), and people who owned ten-year-old Toyota Taragos. But the period since Malcolm Turnbull came in has been just as ragged, despite the fact that he is a more obvious looking Opposition leader than Brendan Nelson was, with the various attempts to mug Treasury secretary Ken Henry in public and Nationals' leader Warren Truss describing the Federal government' economic stimulus package as "bulldust" being indicative of the quality of the contribution coming from the Opposition front bench. As someone who periodically finds myself listening to the Senate in the car, I can say that it is worse live than it comes across as through the media.

5. The NSW state Labor government

Cross-city tunnel, electricity privatisation saga, State Labor Conference, Iemma and Costa resigning, Reba Meagher leaving her driver at the car as she went home with an ex-Channel 7 journo, Matt Brown's 'pants-off' tenure as Police Minister ... the fun never stops, and may not stop for another 2 1/2 years. Nathan Rees and Eric Roozendahl proved to the financial markets how tough they were to eb with the budget by abolishing free school bus passes, and then proved they are listening to the electorate by backing down on the policy a month later (yeah, the electorate were going to celebrate the end of free bus travel for school kids). The Premier State: dazed and confused.

6. Corey Worthington

If you are going to do something stupid in Australia, do it in January. You can get condemned for it not just by A Current Affair, but by the Victorian Premier, the Police Commissioner, and the Police Minister. I'm surprised that Kevin didn't chime in.

7. Sports stars in rehab

I do genuinely appreciate the decisions made by Ben Cousins, Wayne Carey, Andrew Johns etc. to face up (eventually, after getting caught out) to personal drink and drug demons, but they have generated a cottage industry around them as well as a book publishing phenomenon that suggests they have taken over from the ever popular "Rock stars in rehab" genre.

8. Guns 'n' Roses "Chinese Democracy"

Fifteen years in the making. Out with Slash, in with Buckethead. Straight to the remainder bins. Sorry Axl, its Welcome to the Wal-Mart Stacking Shelves (or perhaps the kitchen at KFC).

9. Britain's display at the Beijing Olympics Closing Ceremony

Red London double decker bus offloads Jimmy Page, who plays "Whole Lotta Love". I'm surprised he didn't stop off for a carton of milk and a pack of ciggies on the way.

10. Mandatory Internet filtering

Symbolic policy and pointless pandering to the Christian lobby by the Rudd government at its worst. Will hopefully be the first policy to fall over in 2009. Special dishonourable mention to Professor Clive Hamilton, who co-edited a book in 2007 titled "Silencing Dissent", and seems to spend much of his public life trying to silence dissent with him. As The Who said in 1970: Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. We won't get fooled again.

And a fabulous 2009 to all of you.

At the Myer post-Xmas sales

Here I am at the Brisbane post-Xmas sales. Photo c/o The Courier-Mail, I am on the upper escalator, behind the woman with the red bag who is on the phone.

Boxing Day sales were up about 6 per cent on last ear, suggesting that if there is a recession, most Australians are not paying much attention to it yet.

Apparently the biggest queues were for an 81 cm plasma TV at Big W in Chermside going for $697, suggesting that the Green anti-consumerist message may also be taking a while to filter through.

FWIW, I didn't end up buying anything at Myer. I instead came home with two Nautica shirts, a Tommy Hilfiger shirt and Tommy Hilfiger chinos. A pair of Ben Sherman black striped pants were not purchased due to crappy fly button. All up about $300.

Did I get bargains? Probably not. Did I need these? Maybe. Was it fun being in the rush. Definitely - unless you needed to use the fitting rooms.

Valuing Australian copyright industries

A report released last month by PricewaterhouseCoopers for the Australian Copyright Council, titled Making the Intangible Tangible, the Economic Contribution of Australia’s Copyright Industries, found that Australia’s copyright industries in 2007:

• employed more than 837,000 people (8 percent of the nation’s workforce) – up 21 percent since 1996;
• generated $97.7 billion in economic activity (10.3 percent of GDP) – up 66 percent since 1996; and
• accounted for $6.8 billion in exports (4.1 percent of all exports) – up 6.3 percent since 1996.

According to Ms Libby Baulch, Executive Officer, Australian Copyright Council, copyright was vital for innovative businesses looking to develop new products for the Australian market and for export and that “research has shown that intangible assets, such as intellectual property, represent an increasingly significant proportion of most companies’ value ... The facts are that copyright industries have increased their share of GDP and employment over the past decade while other industries such as agriculture, forestry and fishing have gone backwards.”

These figures would place the copyright industries in Australia slightly below the United States in terms of overall economic contribution (10.3% of GDP as compared to 11.1%).

For more read here.

Anxiety about the Internet

Anxiety about the future of mainstream news media in the mainstream news media appears to be growing. Here is Melik Kaylan worrying out loud in Forbes magazine, and lamenting the good old days of gatekeeping and normative media:

The Internet Is Bad For The Truth
Melik Kaylan

The Internet's evisceration of the music business points to yet another kind of meltdown on the horizon, one that may reach a crisis in the Obama years: the meltdown of Big Media purveyors in newsprint, television, books and movies. We confront a bewildering sea change in mass communications, and nobody seems to have clue where we're headed.

In the music biz, easy download capability through computers meant that consumers preferred not to go out and buy CDs. They shared the music for free via the Internet. Now that they can download for a dollar a song from iTunes--a clear revenue stream has appeared but a little too late. Everything else has changed.

Soon after consumption became too easy to monitor properly, supply followed suit; anybody could create music and push it on the Web, thereby bypassing the music industry gatekeepers. Result: There was a Babel of options to choose from and--the already famous excepted--no way of knowing whom to choose because the new process destroyed the old one by which talent gradually evolved toward fame and recognition.

The gatekeepers had served the vital function of filtering, marketing and branding talent. By creating celebrity, they'd helped focus the attention of mass audiences toward shared tastes, shared cultural experiences and, ultimately, shared values (however dubious).

Many iconoclasts objected to the old system, and have been delighted with the changes. They talk of "democratization" and "proliferation of choice" and "pluralism."

This is especially true in the area of news media. Ann Coulter, for example, was recently asked in a public forum what she thought of the financial difficulties besetting mainstream newspapers. She was delighted that the monopolies had finally fragmented and new voices like hers could be heard.

In principle, she is right--but then she achieved fame just before the floodgates opened. She had Fox News on her side and a still-healthy book-industry distribution and marketing system, albeit one that largely found her views distasteful. When the monopolies fade, so will the role (and fame) of anti-monopolists like the leggy and feisty Ms. Coulter. (I have written about her before.)

Where are we headed? Here's a clue: Whenever I returned from reporting in Iraq, I was always asked by people at dinners and cocktails--informed citizens all--"What's it really like over there?" Ye Gods, I thought, you live in the most media-intensive environment, with so many sources, how can you still be asking?

At first I thought they didn't trust the media monopolies or the political slant in every report they read ranging from blogs to newspapers. But I've come to sense a profounder cause at work: the fragmentation of the very process by which we form opinion, or taste, or ultimately a sense of the truth.

I grew up in the U.K. at a time when the television offered two state channels and one commercial channel. It meant that mandarins with high taste determined the level of culture to be nightly consumed by the citizenry. It also meant that the country as a whole experienced culture, even counterculture, in unison.

Not a bad time to grow up--from high-minded documentaries like the 7-Up series to entertainment from the Beatles to Monty Python to Spitting Image, the system produced terrific results. Sure, one had to filter out the snoozy-left default ideology of BBC apparatchiks, but most people were intelligent enough to do so, and partly because the BBC didn't talk down to them. After all, the country elected Margaret Thatcher.

Never in doubt, though, was the nature of truth, what it looked and felt like. It was a whole and compact thing with a glue of certainty at the core, enough to act upon, and it grew out of shared reality, common experience. I am not talking about opinions here, political or otherwise, but the sense that it was possible to know what actually happened, to digest the knowledge and believe you knew the truth.

I speak here of the Western world. That sense of the truth was precisely what the Iron Curtain countries lacked, because they disallowed any and all alternative voices.

But there is a point at which multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, trans-national, infinite and contradictory sources of information simply confuse and bewilder the individual and fragment the perceptual consensus. Since no one has the time to wade through all the sources, one arrives at the same relationship to the truth as the Soviet citizen: knowing the truth is too much hard work--if it is even knowable in the end.

To take Iraq again--what your news source chose to report--what it chose to see, even--depended often on its political bias. Anti-war bias? Lots of car bombs to report. Pro-intervention? Lots of turning points in the long struggle. But with a zillion blogs and sources, even by local Iraqis, each with its particular political nuance, how could you know what was the "balanced" version, indeed what was the reality. So much for infinite pluralism in the media.

Recently, I went down to Miami Beach to report for the Wall Street Journal on the annual Miami Art Basel extravaganza. Watching the mega-moneyed collectors at the main art fair, I was fascinated to see that they were all watching each other. In a field where a bunch of cigarette stubs in a medicine cabinet by Damien Hirst can be worth $1 million, nobody knew what was good or bad art, indeed what art was.

Here is the reductio ad absurdum of endless "inclusivity" or "inclusiveness"--it ultimately destroys the category that contains it. Endless truths destroy the notion of truth. If anything can be art, you have no idea what defines art, and you start watching other people to get clues.

The Internet, by its nature, destroys that shaping experience by which countries or cultures live a "moment" together. It's not a normative medium as the BBC was in my youth. It simply feeds the consumer's pre-formed tastes, it doesn't form them. If you know what you want, the Internet is a great tool. But how do you develop your tastes, or political biases or moral code--the criteria that help you to choose--in the first place? My bet is, in the coming decades, it won't be through the media anymore.

More on California fiscal crisis

From the Financial Times:

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec 19 - California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a fiscal emergency on Friday to call lawmakers into another special session to tackle the state’s weakening finances, and separately ordered state officials to prepare to furlough and lay off employees to cut costs.

His two actions mark a dramatic escalation in the budget battle waged in recent weeks in Sacramento, the capital of the most populous US state and world’s eighth-largest economy, as its revenues fall harder and faster than expected.

California’s state government now faces a $40 billion budget shortfall over its current and next fiscal years and is on track to run out of cash in February.

California’s Democrat-led legislature concluded its prior special session on Thursday by approving an $18 billion budget package, but Schwarzenegger, a Republican, said he would veto it because he wants lawmakers to both address the state’s budget gap and ease regulations to speed construction projects to help stimulate the state’s economy.

Assembly Speaker Karen Bass said the Democrats’ package would have provided for $3 billion in revenues for transportation projects, accelerated $3 billion in bonds for transportation projects and made it easier for hospital construction and expansion projects to move forward.

The dispute over which approach would better boost California’s ailing economy, underscored by its 8.4 per cent unemployment rate last month, comes on the heels of a decision on Wednesday by the state’s Pooled Money Investment Board to halt $3.8 billion in loans for public works.

The state government needs funds from the Pooled Money Investment Board to pay for vital services. The board’s action affects almost 2,000 projects, including highways, schools, levees, housing and parks.

The legislature now has 45 days to pass and send a bill or bills addressing the state budget to Schwarzenegger.

In the meantime, the state’s Department of Personnel Administration will under Schwarzenegger’s executive order adopt a plan that would go into effect in February to furlough state employees and supervisors for two days per month.

The order also calls for state agencies and departments to initiate layoffs and other ”program efficiency measures” to post savings of up to 10 per cent in the state’s general fund.

”Every California family and business has been forced to cut back during these difficult economic times and state government cannot be exempt from similar belt tightening,” a statement from Schwarzenegger office said.

Assembly Majority Leader Alberto Torrico and two other top Democratic lawmakers issued a statement that said Schwarzenegger’s order ”adds insult to injury for the state’s economy” and chided him for failing to win over either Democrats or Republican lawmakers to his budget plan.

”The governor has shown he can’t negotiate with Republicans, he doesn’t negotiate with Democrats, and now he’s refusing to negotiate with employees,” their statement said.

”It’s the same lack of leadership that has kept him from coming up with a single vote for any budget solution. And now that lack of leadership has resulted in his making a scapegoat of employees who are not the source of the problem.”

News and Information as Digital Media comes of age

The Berkman Centre for Internet and Society at Harvard University has published a series of papers, blogs, discussions, videos etc. around the theme of Media Re:Public: News and Information as Digital Media Comes of Age.

There are papers on international news, new media literacy, public broadcasting, digital media and democracy, mainstream news and the networked public sphere, as well as a series of case studies on the site. The underlying premises of Media Re:Public are:

• Public participation in the media, enabled by the Internet, is a burgeoning and evolving phenomenon that has both positive and negative effects.
• Dramatic changes in the traditional news media are occurring in parallel to the rise in participation, primarily due to the disruption of their business models by new distribution systems.
• Simple dichotomies—new vs. old, mainstream media vs. blogosphere—do not accurately describe the current environment, with its complex interdependencies among media entities with different structures and motivations. The distinctions between professional and amateur are blurring, and the definitions of commercial, public, and community media are shifting.

From the Overview paper, authored by Persephone Miel and Robert Faris, some key points are:

1. Under pressure from falling revenues and the disruption of their business model, traditional media outlets are reducing and shifting the scope of their original reporting.
2. Web-native media entities are not addressing all of the crucial reporting gaps left by traditional media. Current structures and mechanisms do not provide sufficient incentives for them to do so.
3. In the changing media environment, news consumers risk relying on news sources that are neither credible nor comprehensive.
4. Participation in the online media space is not evenly distributed; some populations and ideas remain underrepresented.
5. There are elements of critically important journalism that have not yet found reliable sustainability models in the online media environment.
6. Efforts to understand and address these issues are limited by a lack of solid empirical evidence, and must rely instead on incomplete information, anecdotes, and intuition.

For more read here.

Crikey and LP on the ABC and SBS Submission

Margaret Simons has picked up on the 'Social Innovation' submission I posted yesterday at her Content Makers blog at Crikey.

One submission to the review has been made public by its authors, and makes interesting reading. It is co-authored by Queensland University academics Axel Bruns, Stuart Cunningham, Terry Flew and Jason Wilson, (shortly to be at the University of Wollongong). Cunningham, in particular, has a modicum of influence as part of the Austraian Research Council funded Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation*.

You can read their submission here, key points are summarised here and there is a discussion about it public broadcasting going on here . You are encouraged to get involved.

But here is a key point the authors make, which has relevance for the idea of a restructure of the ABC based on content and target audience, rather than delivery platform. The authors say:

In the 21st century digital media environment, where all media outlets are multi-platform and digitised in their modes of content production and delivery, it is better to understand the ABC and SBS as public service media organizations, rather than public service broadcasters. This emphasises how it is the services provided, rather than the delivery platforms, that are at the core of rationales for public support of the ABC and SBS.

Now there are those within the ABC that are relishing the suggestion of a return to a management structure based around content. Some within the organisation think that a lot of problems can be dated back to former managing director David Hill’s moves in the other direction - removing executive power bases that were based on content, rather than around radio, television and so forth.

All this debate is, in the long and the short run, a lot more important than the stuff about individuals - Sue Howard and all that.

There has also been an ongoing discussion at Larvatus Prodeo, initiated by Mark Bahnisch:

The points made in Terry’s post might be enough to riff off, but I’d be interested in any case in opening a discussion on where public broadcasting should go. I think we’re at an interesting crossroads where some of the unintended consequences of the Howard government’s funding cuts to ABC and SBS can now be leveraged into something more interesting - particularly in light of some innovation overseas (especially in Britain). I have a feeling that in the less “big picture” areas of federal government responsibility some more interesting developments are likely to occur under the Rudd government than in the headline stuff. And public broadcasting is one arena that can potentially attract a lot of citizen input ... So, as they say, let it rip!

I'll aim to synthesise some of the main points over the weekend, and perhaps try to get something into the mainstream press in what is definitely a slow news time of year.

Social Innovation, User-Created Content and the Future of Public Service Media: Submission to the ABC and SBS Review

Perhaps fittingly, my last required task of 2008 was for the Rudd Government. More precisely, it was preparing a submission for the Review of National Broadcasting being undertaken by the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy.

The submission was co-authored by my colleagues Stuart Cunningham and Axel Bruns from QUT, and Jason Wilson, to commence at the University of Wollongong in 2009. It will appear on the DBCDE web site shortly, but it can be accessed here for those interested.

Key points of the submission were:

1. The question of how national public broadcasters respond to changes in the media environment arising from digitisation, convergence and changing societal needs and expectations can be best understood as a question of social innovation;

2. In the 21st century digital media environment, where all media outlets are multi-platform and digitised in their modes of content production and delivery, it is better to understand the ABC and SBS as public service media organizations, rather than public service broadcasters. This emphasises how it is the services provided, rather than the delivery platforms, that are at the core of rationales for public support of the ABC and SBS;

3. There is considerable scope for both ABC and SBS to enhance and renew their Charter obligation as and social innovation remit through public service media through user-created content strategies, particularly in their provision of online services;

4. For the ABC, UCC strategies can make a considerable contribution to its provision of Australian content in news and current affairs, localism and diversity of news and information, particularly through the development of hyper-local content that exploits its network of broadcast media outlets throughout Australia and its unique presence in non-metropolitan Australia;

5. For the SBS, UCC presents new opportunities to harness its unique relationship to Australia’s diverse ethnic, language and cultural communities and its central role in the provision of international news and information, by enabling it to diversify its sources of news and other informational content material by reaching beyond the international news agencies to draw upon material sourced from ‘pro-am’ contributors around the world, and accessed locally through the Internet;

6. The ABC and SBS have the potential to be content innovators in the provision of news and information in ways that utilise UCC strategies, and to play a key role in growing international debates about the future of journalism and news media in an environment where media consumers are participants and content co-creators and not simply passive recipients of news and information. As public service media organizations, they are uniquely placed to enable new UCC opportunities in the online media space while also managing such content sourcing strategies with their policy, legal and Charter obligations, as well as questions of the accuracy and relevance of information, quality and credibility of news content and sources, and identity as highly respected news brands.

Still watching California

The issue of whether the US state of California will go the way of Iceland is still on the agenda.

THE state of California, one of the top 10 largest economies in the world, will run out of money by February, causing "financial Armageddon", according to dire new budget projections.

As of yesterday, the state's debts were mounting at a rate of $US1.7 million ($2.54 million) per hour.

The de facto insolvency of the US's most populous state - home to such economic engines as Silicon Valley, the Central Valley agricultural region, Hollywood, Napa Valley, the Long Beach ports, and the defence research and production facilities of Los Angeles, San Diego, and the Mojave Desert - would represent a new scale of catastrophe in a year that has seen financial markets and economies across the world implode.

Bill Lockyer, the Treasurer of California, has given warning that $US5 billion of public works projects, including road and school construction, will have to be cancelled because the state's lenders are worried about an impending Iceland-style bankruptcy. California - which has a GDP of $US1.7 trillion - already has the worst credit rating of any of the US's 50 states.

"Without a budget solution, state financing of infrastructure projects will stop. It's as simple, and dire, as that," Mr Lockyer said this week.

For California's Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the crisis represents a humiliating final act to his second term. Mr Schwarzenegger, 61, came to power in 2003 because of an almost identical financial calamity, which resulted in his Democratic predecessor, Gray Davis, being "recalled" from office.

At the time Mr Schwarzenegger promised an end to California's tax-and-spend policies and runaway expenses, yet over the past four years of his administration the state's budget has grown by 40 per cent to $US144.5 billion. Thanks to the housing crash, recession and credit crunch, the state can no longer afford this with tax collection.

As the crisis continues and California's credit rating deteriorates, the cost to the state of borrowing keeps rising - a process that could ultimately cause the same kind of deadly spiral that this week tipped the Chicago-based publisher of the Los Angeles Times into bankruptcy.

Mr Schwarzenegger is proposing the same kind of emergency tax rises that in 2003 turned Mr Davis into a pariah. He has suggested a 1.5 per cent increase in sales tax - the equivalent of Britain's VAT - and a tripling of the car tax. When Mr Schwarzenegger first ran for office, he did so on a promise to a revoke a similar car tax increase proposed by his predecessor.

So far, however, Republicans in California's legislature have refused to go along with the proposals and Democrats have refused to cut government programmes, hence the stalemate.

Mr Schwarzenegger has declared a "fiscal emergency" to keep California's legislature in session until a solution can be found.

"When you have a crisis the most important thing is to make a decision," said a clearly frustrated Mr Schwarzenegger at a hastily called press conference on Wednesday. There, he presented an electronic display showing how much the deficit is growing in real time: $US470 per second, $US1.7 million per hour, and $US40 million per day.

He put it outside his office in Sacramento in an attempt to get the state's legislators to reach some kind of agreement. "The worst thing is not to make a decision," he said. "The most costly thing we can do is not to take any action."

California's biggest problem is the precipitous decline in tax revenues over the past year. The state's property taxes - the equivalent of Britain's council taxes - are based on the value of a house when it was first bought, and can then rise by no more than 2 per cent a year. This means that by far the most tax revenues come from new property sales, and these have all but dried up.

Adding to the problem is the fact that many homeowners who bought during the bubble years are now successfully appealing against their property taxes, using evidence that the value of their home is less than it was when they purchased it.

Tax revenues have also been hit by the global recession.

More media trouble: Tribune and Fairfax

This item from Tuesday's Wall Street Journal via The Australian:

TRIBUNE Company has filed for bankruptcy protection, in a sign of worsening trouble for the newspaper industry.

In recent days, as Chicago-based Tribune continued talks with lenders to restructure its debt, the newspaper-and-television concern hired investment bank Lazard as its financial adviser and law firm Sidley Austin to advise the company on a possible trip through Chapter 11 bankruptcy, people familiar with the matter say.

Tribune owns eight major daily newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and Baltimore Sun, plus a string of local TV stations.

A Tribune spokesman said the company doesn't comment on rumours or speculation. A spokeswoman for Lazard didn't respond to requests for comment. Representatives of Sidley Austin couldn't be reached for comment.

Tribune's latest actions underscore the deepening distress enveloping Tribune and other newspaper publishers. Their businesses are being battered by dwindling advertising sales, and many are carrying debt loads that are unmanageable in current market conditions. Industry insiders expect some papers will need to fold in coming months or seek protection from creditors to reorganise.

Tribune has been on wobbly footing since last December, when real-estate mogul Samuel Zell led a debt-backed deal to take the company private. Tribune has stayed ahead of its $US12 billion ($18 billion) in borrowings with the help of asset sales. Now, however, shrinking profits are tightening the noose.

The company's cash flow may not be enough to cover nearly $US1 billion in interest payments due this year, and Tribune owes a $US512 million debt payment in June.

One of Tribune's most pressing concerns: The company is likely to be in violation of debt terms that limit borrowings at the end of the year to nine times its adjusted profits. The ratio stood at 8.3 at the end of the second quarter, before Tribune reported an 83 per cent decline in operating profit for the three months ended September 28.

Violations of such debt covenants have become commonplace for newspaper companies as their profits have ebbed. Lenders so far have been willing to give the companies a pass in exchange for higher interest rates and other concessions, but Tribune has little wiggle room. Terms of the company's debt already are so loose and its financial standing so unsteady that a covenant waiver may not help.

Tribune's hiring of Lazard, meanwhile, brings it a firm experienced in debt restructuring, and one that has become a go-to adviser for newspaper companies in financial distress.

Even as its financial performance worsens, Tribune has some options. A sale of its Chicago Cubs baseball team is under way, and Tribune owns valuable stakes in businesses including the cable-TV channel Food Network.

Tribune already has auctioned off pieces of the company, including the Long Island, New York., daily Newsday to raise cash. Now, frozen credit markets have depressed sale prices.

Selling off more newspapers may not be a viable alternative because buyers are scarce and Tribune may be better off holding onto the profits from its papers.

And cost cutting is most likely afoot at Fairfax under new CEO Brian McCarthy:

SPECULATION is growing that likely new Fairfax Media chief executive Brian McCarthy could restructure senior management.

It is likely he will elevate more former key Rural Press executives to top positions in the Fairfax group.

It is understood Mr McCarthy will be formally anointed as CEO of Fairfax at a 9.30am board meeting in Sydney today.

The meeting comes after broking firm Goldman Sachs JBWere revealed last night that Fairfax's weekly page count across its main metropolitan newspapers, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Australian Financial Review, fell by about 5 per cent. This was led by a 20 per cent fall in classified ad pages across all mastheads.

Today's board meeting will also discuss how it plans to pay down $2.5 billion in debt. It will examine immediate options that include cutting dividends, selling off assets and more cost cuts. Mr McCarthy's former role as CEO of the leanly run Rural Press, taken over by Fairfax last year, is seen as the perfect training for Fairfax's necessary belt-tightening.

Fairfax is moving on from its expansionary phase of recent years -- which saw it clock up debt by making a number of takeovers -- to one of getting the best out of existing assets.

Speculation has centred on the possible elevation to more senior roles of a raft of former colleagues of Mr McCarthy at the regional newspaper group, all schooled in what has been dubbed the Rural Press "School of Cost Management".

As one media analyst at a broking firm put it yesterday: "Some of the Rural Press team have effectively been the shadow cabinet since the merger with Fairfax. But following the landslide election win of Brian McCarthy as Prime Minister of Fairfax, they are now likely to move to the front bench."

Those possibly in line for elevation under such a policy could include: Brian Cassell, currently Fairfax's group finance general manager; Allen Williams, head of community newspapers for the Hunter and Illawarra regions; and Allan Browne, CEO of regional publishing, southern and western.

Mr Cassell is particularly in touch with the McCarthy approach, having been his trusted finance lieutenant as general manager, accounting and finance, for Rural Press, a company famed for its lean approach.

Mr Cassell's current finance role at Fairfax sees him as No2 to the company's current CFO, Sankar Narayan. Mr Narayan was appointed in April 2004, under the former Fairfax regime of Fred Hilmer. Like Mr Hilmer, he had a management consulting background.

Mr Narayan is broadly viewed by analysts as a "strategic" CFO who was appropriate for the company's expansion of recent years. However, as one media boss put it yesterday, Mr Narayan is not regarded "as an operational CEO".

Alternatively, informed sources say, while Mr Cassell is viewed as a "numbers guy, not a strategic CFO", this could be an appropriate choice for the company in the finance area as it moves to a belt-tightening phase under Mr McCarthy.

Already, Mr McCarthy -- who for 20 months has been Fairfax's head of Australian operations -- has had another former Rural Press executive as a key right-hand man, with Lloyd Whish-Wilson CEO of Fairfax's NSW and ACT metropolitan publishing.

There have been suggestions of a restructure of roles at the top of Fairfax under a McCarthy regime. Mr McCarthy may look to restructure national and metropolitan newspapers to break down silos within the business.

One more radical scenario could see a return of Fairfax to a single national management structure, as opposed to the state-based silos now in place.

Late yesterday, it was revealed Fairfax's departed CEO, David Kirk, completed his term still owning a total of 1.97 million of the company's shares.

John Quiggan on US netroots (and why no Australian equivalent)

Very interesting post by John Quiggan on the rise of the 'netroots' movement of online liberal Democratic activists in the US, and why there is no Australian equivalent. I should say that I think he is wrong to say that the antipathy to bloggers from mainstream journalists is less in the US than in Australia.

Political blogging came into its own after September 11. In the past few years it has experienced phenomenal growth, including in Australia. John Quiggin tracks its rise. Artwork by Michelle Verghis. With elections approaching in both Australia and the United States, the role of blogs and bloggers is attracting increasing attention. Writing in The New Republic recently, Jonathan Chait described the netroots (the online community of liberal Democratic Party activists) as “the most important mass movement in US politics”.

He compared its significance with the conservative Republican movement that originated with the 1964 Goldwater campaign, and has dominated US politics since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. Chait is highly critical of what he sees as the party-line sensibility and excessive vitriol of the netroots, but he is in no doubt they are well on the way to displacing the old centrist establishment, based on such groups as the Democratic Leadership Council, and on pundits such as David Broder, routinely described as the dean of the Washington press corps. This development is striking in a couple of respects.

First, the whole phenomenon of political blogging is barely five years old. The central focus of the netroots, the Daily Kos blog, was established in 2002, and was receiving only a few thousand visits each day in 2003. This year, it is receiving 600,000 visits a day, a figure comparable with the circulation of the Boston Globe or San Francisco Chronicle. Over the same period, the total number of blogs has gone from thousands to tens of millions. Equally striking has been the shift in the predominant political orientation of blogs.

Political blogging first emerged in the wake of the September 11 terror attacks, and the dominant figures were strongly pro-war, with political orientations that ranged from libertarian to conservative Republican. Prominent figures included Glenn Reynolds, whose Instapundit blog remains at the core of the right-wing blogosphere, and Australian Tim Blair. As late as 2003, conservative bloggers held a lead of two or three to one over progressive bloggers in terms of audience, number of blogs and so on. The conservative blogosphere extended a period of internet dominance that began with sites such as the Drudge Report, Free Republic and NewsMax.

The first big shift in this pattern came with Howard Dean’s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004, which was heavily backed by internet activists, and gave rise to the term “netroots”. Although Dean burnt out early in the race, his supporters remained active, and a pattern for the future had been set. By 2005, the political balance in the blogosphere had been reversed. Progressive blogs such as Daily Kos, Talking Points Memo and Think Progress now receive more traffic and, increasingly, more media attention than their conservative rivals. Moreover, the progressive blogosphere has been far more successful in mobilising new activists than its right-wing counterpart, though, of course, this reflected the much greater organisational strength of the Right at the time the blogosphere emerged.

Having bowed to pressure from the Right to correct perceived liberal bias, the centrist media establishment found itself increasingly attacked from the Left for seeking balance, in preference to factual accuracy, on issues such as the Iraq war, global warming and economic policy. On all these issues, the netroots claimed, the positions of the Bush administration were factually wrong, and the media was obliged to state this explicitly, rather than adopting the “he said, she said” style traditionally seen in the American media as the hallmark of objectivity.

How does the Australian scene compare? Adjusting for the smaller scale, there has been the same explosive growth, from a handful of blogs in 2002 to hundreds today. And the shift to the Left has been, if anything, even more marked. Although right-wing blogs dominated the scene early on, only a handful of note remain, while there are dozens of prominent left-wing and centre-left blogs. Individual blogs have largely been displaced by group efforts such as Larvatus Prodeo (leftwing), Club Troppo (centre-left) and Catallaxy Files (broadly libertarian).

On the other hand, there has been nothing comparable with the development of the netroots in the United States. Although most political bloggers make their general sympathies clear, few appear to be active members of political parties (an obvious exception is Senator Andrew Bartlett) and fewer still use their blogs for political organising or election campaigning. There are several reasons for this outcome. First, unlike the US system, where activists organising on the internet can easily become involved in Democratic party primaries and where election campaigns are heavily focused on the merits of individual candidates, the Australian system offers only limited opportunities for this kind of activity.

In Australia, participation in preselections is normally limited to party members, either in local branches or as elected delegates. Campaigning for preselections is a matter of old-fashioned canvassing, recruitment (or branch-stacking) and factional deals, none of which are readily adapted to the internet. At general elections, votes are largely determined by the appeal of parties and their leaders, rather than individual candidates. Second, whereas partisanship has increased substantially in the US over the past couple of decades, it has generally declined in Australia.

Although some issues, such as the treatment of refugees, have aroused real passion among people, the general temperature of debate is much lower. The most vitriolic political debates in the Australian blogosphere tend to be those surrounding George Bush and the Iraq war, where Australian bloggers are part of the broader international debate (Australia’s own military involvement being seen by both sides as largely tokenistic).

Finally, the antagonism between bloggers and the mainstream media, as a whole, is far less marked in Australia than in the US. Right-wing bloggers attack the ABC for its soft-liberal bias, while left-wing and environmentalist bloggers denounce The Australian for its treatment of global warming and the Iraq war, but these are just extensions of disputes taking place within the mainstream media.

Australian bloggers have been highly successful in gaining access to the mainstream media, and particularly its opinion columns. Tim Blair (an established journalist before he was a blogger) is now the opinion editor for The Daily Telegraph, while The Australian Financial Review regularly publishes economist bloggers including Joshua Gans and Andrew Leigh.

Conversely, with a few notable exceptions, Australian mainstream media outlets showed much less of the hostility to blogs initially evident in the US and have now embraced the medium with gusto. News Limited has its own blogocracy site, run by pioneering Australian blogger Tim Dunlop, and most opinion columnists (including some of those who were initially very dismissive of the whole phenomenon) now have their own blogs.

This is taken from the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance's "The Future of Journalism" site, and was originally published in The Walkley Magazine. Perhaps the claim that there has been enthusiasm for adopting online open publishing models in Australia may be a complement to the Australia journalism community who receive this work.

Its now safe to go back onto a university campus

After receiving a grand total of 69 submissions, the Senate Committee established to investigate allegations of left-wing bias on Australia's university campuses found the claims were not substantiated. Established in the dying days of a Liberal-National party majority in the Senate, the Committee split along party lines.

What started as a campaign by the Young Liberals against left wing bias as ended with no recommendations, with the committee dismissing the evidence as anecdotal and unrepresentative.

But both Labor and Coalition senators expressed some concern over teaching quality.
In particular, the government members said the increasing numbers of casual and part-time tutors made it difficult to mentor inexperienced staff, and that the allegations of bias presented to it were more a function of poor quality teaching.

"There is evidence that in some very few cases an academic bias may be accentuated through poor teaching, and this should concern departmental heads and faculty deans," the report said.

...

Labor senator and committee chair Gavin Marshall mocked the Young Liberals submission that "outed" some left wing academics as having an "undergraduate tone" and said the committee had felt like it was being asked to play a part in a "university revue."

"In view of the relatively tiny numbers of submissions received from the hundreds of thousands of students who are said to be affected, there can be no basis for arguing that universities are under the control of the Left and that this is reflected in course content and teaching style," he said.

According to the Australian Liberal Student Federation, the small number of submissions reflects the fact that students are intimidated by the bias to the point where they are afraid to send a submission to a Senate Inquiry.

But the Young Liberals hit back. "What the government has failed to realise is that the very problem of academic bias stifles the will of students to protest about unprofessional conduct," said Byron Hodkinson, president of the Australian Liberal Students Federation said.

As Officer Barbrady would say on South Park, "Everybody move along now, there's nothing to see here."

When is it wrong to take photos?

Graham Young raises some interesting issues on his Ambit Gambit site about Labor MP James Bidgood taking pictures of a man threatening to set himself on fire outside Parliament House on Thursday. While Bidgood has been condemned by all sides for taking the photo and then selling them to The Daily Telegraph (the $1,000 went to a Multiple Sclerosis charity), Young argue that citizen journalism has been about citizens capturing events that the mainstream news media hadn't got to - the aftermath of the July 7, 2005 bombings on the London transport system are the most famous example.

Bidgood is an unlikely cause to champion. His recently announced beliefs that economic recession is somehow God's revenge may identify him as a religious nutter. And there is also the issue that he is an MP, not an ordinary citizen, and that perhaps he should not have ought to profit from the photos. But Young's point about whether it is the role of parliament to set rules about how others use the Internet and other media and to determine what are the universal codes of ethics is an interesting one. Indeed, the nature of ethical dilemmas alway relates to those who some would consider 'nutters' - if everyone was sensible and reasonable as defined by, say, Clive Hamilton, there would be little need to discus the relationship between ethics and rights.

Labor MP James Bidgood is in trouble for taking a photograph and selling it to a newspaper chain in return for a donation of $1,000 to a charity of his choosing. Perhaps I have a tin ear, but what has he done wrong? Or is this an extension of the principles that have led to the Net Nanny State?

Was the taking of the photo what is said to be wrong? Or was it selling (what he calls "passing") the photos to Newscorp for a donation.

If you read his statement to parliament, it is hard to tell. Here are his words:

Mr BIDGOOD (Dawson) (7.00 pm)—Mr Speaker, on indulgence: this afternoon at an event I took photographs of a serious incident. I later passed those photographs to a news organisation in return for a donation to charity connected to disabilities. My actions were highly insensitive and inappropriate. I am tonight writing a letter of apology to the family involved. I deeply regret my actions and I apologise once again for any offence that I have caused.

How can taking the photos be a crime?

The promise of the 'net, and the premise on which OLO is founded is that making the news, and analysing it, is not, and should not be, the preserve of professional journalists, many of whom have no expert understanding of the areas on which they report, and operate to commercial criteria which are frequently antithetical to good reportage.

For more read here.

Clock still ticking in California

The world's sixth largest economy is still in danger of fiscal insolvency. The ramifications of California going the way of Iceland are pretty dire to contemplate.

With time and money running out for California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a fiscal emergency Monday and called legislators into a new special session that won't end until they agree on a way to trim the state's $11.2 billion budget deficit.

"Without immediate action, our state is headed for a fiscal disaster" in which California could run out of money to pay its bills by late February, the governor said in a news conference in Los Angeles.

He compared the growing deficit, which could reach $28 billion by 2010, to an avalanche gaining momentum, and he slammed the Legislature, Democrats and Republicans, for not coming up with solutions during a special session that ended Nov. 25.

"Unfortunately for California, the legislators did not seem to appreciate the severity of our crisis," Schwarzenegger said. "In an emergency like this, we have to take quick action to avoid even worse problems, even if they include decisions we don't like."

For more read here.

Media jobs crisis

The downturn in media industries is really starting to bite in the U.K.

LONDON, Nov 28 (Reuters) - British media companies could cut tens of thousands more jobs in the coming years as the economic downturn hits an industry already ravaged by the Internet revolution.

British newspaper groups and broadcasters have announced a host of cuts in recent weeks as the downturn in advertising caused by wider economic problems eats into revenues.

But analysts believe this is just the latest wave from the troubled industry, and that worse is to come. They expect stabilisation in the advertising industry by 2010 and not a proper recovery until the London Olympic Games in 2012.

Claire Enders, founder of independent consultancy group Enders Analysis, told Reuters she expected about half of all UK media jobs to go by 2013 under current economic conditions.

"We calculated the total jobs in the media in the UK at about 400,000, that includes newspapers, radio, TV, production companies, advertising and so on, at the end of 2007.

"Between the beginning of 2008 and 2013 we're expecting half of those jobs to go. The big employers are the regional press, magazines, local advertising sales. Real numbers are in print."

For more read here. There is also wholesale belt-tightening in the US entertainment industries.

Interestingly, it is predicted that it is those services rely most upon subscriptions (such as BSkyB) that will fare best, and those most reliant on advertising (free-to-air broadcasters such as ITV) will do worst.

Obama campaign and social media

Information from the Politics Online site about how the Barack Obama presidential campaign made use of social media to build its victorious momentum:

The Washington Post reports that in his 21 months of campaigning, Obama raised half a billion online. Equally impressive is Obama's online popularity within social networking sites.

Here is a breakdown of Obama's online operations stats:

• 3 million donors made a total of 6.5 million donations online adding up to more than $500 million.
• Of those 6.5 million donations, 6 million were in increments of $100 or less.
• Obama's e-mail list contains upwards of 13 million addresses.
• In total, more than 1 billion e-mails landed in inboxes....To put this in perspective, John Kerry's '04 campaign collected 3 million email addresses and Howard Dean had roughly 600,000 email addresses on his list.
• A million people signed up for Obama's text- messaging program.
• 2 million profiles were created on Obama's social network, MyBarackObama.com in addition to the 5 million supporters in other social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace.

Copyright industry working with AFP against Internet Cafe

One of the interesting things about this story is the fact that the Australian Federal Police acted against this Sydney Internet cafe for copyright infringement after "an investigation by the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) and Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI)." Who is the law here is an interesting question.

Australian Internet cafe pleads guilty to copyright infringement

Late last year, on the 18th of December 2007, the Interville Technology Internet cafe at 391 Pitt St Sydney was raided by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) following a long term investigation by the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) and Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI). AFACT (Word doc link) and MIPI says their investigations “confirmed that the café was charging hourly fees for customers to view infringing movies and music and selling storage devices with capacities of up to 60GBs (capable of storing over 40 movies and hundreds of music files) which customers were using to copy infringing music, movies and TV shows.” It now transpires that on the 25th of November, 2008, at the Downing Centre Local Court, Sydney, Interville Technology Pty Ltd pleaded guilty to 40 charges of copyright infringement. Magistrate McIntosh decided to impose a strong fine totalling $82,000 on the company plus court costs and ordered that the computer terminals and servers seized during the raid were to be forfeited. There were 60 computers and three servers in the cafe with a combined 8 terabytes of storage holding “hundreds of thousands of infringing movie, TV and music titles. Seized movie titles included titles not yet released in Australian cinemas including “American Gangster”, “National Treasure Book of Secrets” while numerous music tracks from over 150 well-known artists such as 50 Cent, Alicia Keys and Justin Timberlake.” Neil Gane, the AFACT Director of Operations said at the conclusion of the case that: “The conviction and sentencing marks the successful conclusion of excellent work by the Australian Federal Police. “It is satisfying to see sentences handed down which properly reflect the damage operations like this do to rights owners and the 50,000 Australians working in the film and TV industries. The sentences will send a clear message to all Internet café owners engaged in commercial scale copyright infringement – you will be caught and you risk severe penalties,” continued Gane. Sabiene Heindl, the General Manager MIPI said: “This is a fantastic result for a significant case in the fight against music piracy. For the first time, an Internet café has been targeted and justly reprimanded for its blatant facilitation of widespread copyright infringement for commercial gain.” AFACT is now taking an Australian ISP, iiNet, to court for allegedly not acting on AFACT evidence that iiNet users are engaged in piracy, with iiNet promising to vigorously defend itself in the courts. The MD of Australia’s largest ISP, Justin Milne of Telstra BigPond, has shared his views on ISPs and piracy following AFACT’s action.

Conroy's Conundrum

In the various analyses of the first year of the Rudd Labor government, a common observation was that it has been relatively free of accidents, cries and scandals, as compared with the first year of the Hawke and Howard governments. That may be about to change very quickly with the tendering process for the National Broadband Network.

TELSTRA has set a challenge for the Rudd Government, refusing to put in a detailed bid for the $10billion plus national broadband network unless it gets a range of guarantees, including that there be no further split of its operations.

But as the Government has refused to give any such guarantees ahead of tenders closing for the project yesterday, the telecommunications giant is effectively asking the Government to force tough regulations on it or give in to its demands.

A range of other bidders, led by Singtel Optus, have lodged bids for either national or state-based networks as part of a competitive process started in April. Optus said a new entity called Optus Networks Investments, backed by the Terria consortium of Telstra's rivals, had lodged a bid for the national network, alongside Acacia Australia and Axia NetMedia.

The Government has promised to commit $4.7billion -- its biggest single election commitment after tax cuts -- as a subsidy to get top-grade broadband services to regional and rural areas.

In a continuation of its anti-regulation stance, Telstra lodged a "non-compliant" bid in the form of a 12-page letter to Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, from its chairman Donald McGauchie. Optus Networks Investments' proposal is said to run close to 1000 pages.

"We need a clear statement on separation or we can't bid, it is an uneconomic proposition if we don't get that," Mr McGauchie told The Australian.

Several issues are set in play by Telstra's desultory response to the NBN tender process, and its demands being palced on the Rudd government as a condition for being involved. The NBN is difficult to deliver without Telstra, and the Government would have established a very powerful corporate enemy. Moreover, Opposition communications spokesman Senator Nick Minchin is one of the wiliest players, and will use this opportunity to maximise damage on the government.

On the other hand, to accept Telstra's demands now leaves the Minister, Senator Stephen Conroy, open to the charge that he is a puppet of Telstra, as well as the possibility of legal action by the Optus-led consortium, who have put forward a proper bid document of 1,000 pages, as compared to the 12-page letter from Telstra.

Clearly what the Rudd government were seeking was a clean and transparent process for awarding the NBN tender. What they now have is a clear-cut political power play, of the sort that have more commonly characterised Australian media policy, during both the Hawke-Keating years and the Howard years. The issues are accentuated precisely by the dual public/private ownership status of Telstra, and its role as both the core infrastructure provider and a competing service provider.

What looms is a protracted and difficult dispute, where it will be hard for the Government to get an early win. It marks a moment where the preference for administrative solutions has come hard up against the "friends and enemies" approach to media polciy that has more commonly prevailed in Australian history.

Big Film and TV interests pursue iiNet for copyright infringement

This from Kim Wetherall's LawFont blog:

The Case Against iiNet

As I noted yesterday, a legal action has been launched by some 34 applicants from the television and movie industry against Australian ISP iiNet, alleging that iiNet has authorised copyright infringement by failing to take (adequate) steps to prevent sharing and downloading of films and TV shows via protocols like BitTorrent. A kind little birdie has sent me a copy of the Statement of Claim, so I have a bit more info. It makes for some interesting reading.

There are a number of interesting questions at the heart of this potential case:

1. What, exactly, are ISPs required to do when they become aware that users are potentially infringing copyright? Do they have to terminate people alleged by the movie industry to be ‘repeat infringers’?
2. How much responsibility will Australian courts put on intermediaries for ‘doing something’ about copyright infringement? So far, Australian courts have been pretty ready to impose liability on people they thought were ‘profiting from copyright wrongdoing’ - Kazaa with its P2P network, or Cooper with his ‘mp3sforfree’ website and his ISP host. What about others whose nefarious or infringing purpose is not so obvious? What, in other words, of more ‘ordinary’ service providers?
3. When the legislation requires that ISPs, in order to ‘gain absolution’ or immunity from damages, should ‘adopt and reasonably implement a policy that provides for termination, in appropriate circumstances, of the accounts of repeat infringers’ - what does that really mean? Is it sufficient to terminate only those found liable for infringement? Is the court allowed to determine whether the policy is real or sufficient?

Politically, there are some equally interesting questions. Will the Internet industry respond to the lawsuit by looking for a settlement deal that goes some way towards creating the kind of ‘notice and terminate’ system that copyright owners have been pressing for? Will the government’s past approach of protecting ISPs from liability in order to further the digital economy hold? Or, has the tide turned: are we now in a climate where the courts, like the government, decide to hold ISPs to a higher standard, just as the government is trying to get ISPs to engage more actively in filtering adult content? And is this all just an attempt to promote a certain filter that purports to filter both porn and copyright infringement…?

Further analysis of the case at Larvatus Prodeo and Nic Suzor's blog.

1.5 billion Internet users

It is now estimated that worldwide there are 1.5 billion Internet users, accounting for 22.43% of the world's population.

http://www.50x15.com/en%2Dus/

It is also estimated that there are 4 billion mobile phone users worldwide.

User-generated Content and SBS

User-Generated Content and SBS

User-Generated Content and SBS

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: sbs ugc)

Presentation given by Georgie McClean, Heidi Lenffer and I on user-generated content strategies and issues for the Special Broadcasting Service. It is based on the research undertaken by Heidi Lenffer as part of an MA (Research) at QUT.

Paper presented to Centre for Media and Communications Law annual conference, "Media, Communications and Public Speech", University of Melbourne, 20-21 November, 2008.

SlideShare Link

Big living Brandis

Who said being Minister for the Arts and Sport wasn't fun?

SENATOR George Brandis spent an average of $8000 of taxpayers' money a week on travel and entertainment in the last six months of 2007, figures show.

The Brisbane-based Liberal senator ran up a travel bill of more than $230,000 between July and December last year while he was arts and sports minister in the former coalition government, the Seven Network reported.

His spending almost matched former prime minister John Howard and then opposition leader Kevin Rudd, who spent $290,000 each while campaigning across Australia for the 2007 election.

Senator Brandis spent $72,000 on domestic airfares, $22,000 on accommodation and travel, $26,000 on Commcar costs and $62,000 on a seven-day trip to the US and Canada.

In a statement to Seven, Senator Brandis said his overseas trip was approved by the prime minister and was within ministerial and departmental guidelines.

One issue Malcolm Turnbull has to deal with is having a Shadow Cabinet who too often resemble slightly aging student politicians. Brandis' hijinks in what is a pretty junior ministry suggest teh problem set in during the late stages of the Howard years.

I have a Wikipedia entry

While Googling for any new information about myself on the Internet (in case I want to work for Barack Obama - see earlier post), I came across my own Wikipedia entry.

As I have no idea how it got there, I am quite chuffed, although I wonder if it is an accurate statement of my body of work:

Terry Flew is an associate Professor of Media and Communication in the Creative Industries faculty at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia. He has authored the books Games: Technology, Industry, Culture (2005) and Understanding Global Media (2007). He is primarily known for these publications, which centre on a new participatory culture that has risen in the media sphere. This book provides an overview of global media production and circulation using the perspectives of politics, political economy, media and cultural studies, and creative industries. Terry Flew also explores how the industries and their audiences function on an international scale.

Now for the next question: do I edit my own entry?

Take down those stupid Facebook photos if you want to work for Barack Obama

From Personal Democracy Forum:

Uh-oh. The day has finally arrived, when future White House employees must ask themselves, "Is that Facebook wall post still up where I ______?" "Did X tag me in that photo on Flickr, or will people not recognize me?" The possibilities are endless, and frankly, absurd.

But, as the New York Times reported this morning, the incoming Obama Administration is asking applicants such questions as "if you have ever sent an electronic communication, including but limited to an email, text message or instant message, that could suggest a conflict of interest or be a possible source of embarrassment to you, your family, or the President-Elect if it were made public," and "please provide the URL address of any websites that feature you in either a personal or professional capacity (e.g., Facebook, My Space [sic], etc.)."

For more read here.

Bad news from China?

If you needed confirmation that China is not 'uncoupled' from the US economy, as it was once optimistically put, and that there will be knock-on effects from the US economy to China's economy to Australia, this piece by Don Lee from the LA Times would be of interest:

Shaoxing, China -- First, Tao Shoulong burned his company's financial books. He then sold his private golf club memberships and disposed of his Mercedes S-600 sedan.

And then he was gone.

And just like that, China's biggest textile dye operation -- with four factories, a campus the size of 31 football fields, 4,000 workers and debts of at least $200 million -- was history.

"We're pretty much dead now," said Mao Youming, one of 300 suppliers stiffed last month by Tao's company, Jianglong Group. Lighting a cigarette in a coffee shop here, the 38-year-old spoke calmly about the bleak future of his industrial gas business. Tao owed him $850,000, Mao said, about 60% of his annual revenue. "We cannot pay our workers' salaries. We are about to be bankrupt too."

Government statistics show that 67,000 factories of various sizes were shuttered in China in the first half of the year, said Cao Jianhai, an industrial economics researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. By year's end, he said, more than 100,000 plants will have closed.

As more factories in China shut down, stories of bosses running away have become familiar, multiplying the damage of China's worst manufacturing decline in at least a decade.

Even before the global financial crisis, factory owners in China were straining under soaring labor and raw-material costs, an appreciating Chinese currency and tougher legal, tax and environmental requirements. When the credit crunch took hold -- prompting Western businesses to slash orders for Chinese goods and bankers to curtail loans to factories -- many operations were pushed over the edge.

China's engine slows

China's industrial decline is a main factor in the sharp economic slowdown of late. The nation's gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of 9% in the third quarter, the lowest in five years and worse than what analysts had forecast. China's GDP expanded 11.9% last year. Now, economists worry that the one big remaining engine of global growth is rapidly losing steam.

For more read here.

Who did Iggy Pop vote for in the U.S. election?

"I've been waiting for someone who could communicate the joys of liberty as compared to the joys of equality", Iggy Pop in Zigzag magazine, on why he supported Ronald Reagan, quoted in Joe Ambrose, Gimme Danger: The Life and Times of Iggy Pop, Omnibus Books, 2004, p. 199.

James Osterhaus (Iggy Pop) may not be history's most unlikely Republican supporter. He gets stiff competition from Eldridge Cleaver, co-founder of the Black Panthers, exiled from the U.S. in Algeria and Cuba during the 1970s, and Republican convert from the late 1970s to his death in 1998.

But its a reminder of not only how powerful the Republican brand of conservatism was in the US, and how far its fallen now, to think that Ronald Reagan's political tent was big enough for both Iggy Pop and Eldridge Clever to get inside it.

A link sent to me by The Running Mule made it clear how Barack Obama's win last Tuesday marks the end point of a 40-year conservative dynasty that began with Nixon, peaked with Reagan, and ended with Bush the Second and the crazy gang of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove, "Heck of a job Browny" (who was that guy who managed the Hurricane Katrina events?), and Henry "The Gravedigger" Paulsen. Interestingly, John McCain was always the enemy to these guys, but when he put forward Sarah Palin as his Vice-Presidential nominee and started going on and on about socialism, Bill Ayres, Joe the Plumber, Obama the Hollywood Celebrity, the Democratic threesome etc. etc. the gig was up.

The Running Mule provides a link to P.J. O'Rourke in The Weekly Standard. Well worth a look, although I feel that, like the Repubs, O'Rourke's humour ain't quite what it used to be back in the day. His line on why Iggy Pop and Eldridge Cleaver were attracted to Reagan-era conservatism is, however, a good one:

Conservatives generally tend to be funnier in their private lives because of the hypocrisy factor. I am of course a big fan of hypocrisy, because hypocrites at least know the difference between right and wrong--at any rate, know enough to lie about what they're doing. Liberals are not nearly as hypocritical as conservatives, because they don't know the difference between right and wrong. In public policy liberals are always much more hilarious. Liberals are always proposing perfectly insane ideas, laws that will make everybody happy, laws that will make everything right, make us live forever, and all be rich. Conservatives are never that stupid.

For O'Rourke's piece "We Blew It", read here.

Late news: apparently P. J. O'Rourke has cancer. It is the end of an era.

End of the Road to Surfdom

Today was the last post for Tim Dunlop and The Road to Surfdom. One of the original Australian political bloggers, who ran the Blogocracy site on news.com.au for two years, I have provided his final post on the site below. Also check out Mark Bahnisch's commentary on Larvatus Prodeo, and his thoughts on the future of online independent media.

It was two years ago today that I (more or less) stopped writing on this blog and took up the gig with News Ltd doing Blogocracy. As most of you would know, I quit that work a few weeks ago so I could work on some other stuff. That other stuff is going very well, and it makes me realise that, at least for the time being, I don’t have the time or wherewithal to keep this joint going. With Ken moving on as well — despite the input from the other terrific writers who help out here — I’ve decided to put Surfdom into hiatus. This is not to say that I won’t come back to blogging in some form at some point in the future, but for now, Surfdom is closed.

As difficult as this decision is, there is nonetheless something apt about the timing. The blog began life not long after I moved to the US at the end of 2001. It got up and running in the strange twilight period between the events of September 11 and the disastrous decision by the Bush Administration to launch a war in Iraq in March 2003. With the election of Barack Obama to the Presidency that period has come to something of a natural and symbolic end and thus, for me at least, some of the central motivations for this sort of writing has dissipated. This blog, and others like it, have seen off the end of the Howard Government and the Bush Administration and on that score I couldn’t be happier.

This is not to say that there isn’t now a role for the sort of work blogs do, only that I, personally, am not in position to take on that sort of commitment at the moment. In fact, the need, especially in Australia, for wise independent voices to discuss and dissect the great issues of the day is as great as it has ever been and so that’s what I want to go out with: a plea for people to support — genuinely support — independent media in this country.

The fact is, Australia’s mainstream media is moribund. Although there are great journalists and other contributors out there, the institution itself is stuck in a hopeless, self-serving, tenured cul-de-sac and is failing in its job to properly inform, discuss, debate and entertain. Not to mention, reinvent itself. The form is dominated by a handful of insiders who have grown so content with their own lot that they are immune to sensible criticism and lack the self-awareness to reassess what it is they are doing. They are supported in this self-satisfied loop by a political class that is happy to exploit the status quo, feeding them leaks and other tidbits to keep the whole charade ticking over in such a way that nothing really changes.

The narratives, the memes, the discussions of our political and social life are set in concrete and endlessly recycle. We have learned to accept the daily, largely manufactured, controversies of political and social discussion in lieu of genuine examination. The same voices — and there are only about 20 of them — continue to define what is important or useful or worthy of discussion and the few organs of the mainstream media keep churning them out. Their lack seriousness is only matched by their lack of courage.

To say that a fully-functioning independent media is the answer is glib. It is not that easy. And yet, there it is. The idea is not for such independent groups to replace the mainstream media but merely to get them to lift their game, to lead by example.

The situation as it currently stands is not completely hopeless. For all their failings, there are some new voices out there trying to make a difference. Some of them are thinktanks, some of them of grassroots organisations, some of them are blogs or other forms of online media. None of them has really “broken through” in the way that is necessary to make a real difference, but they are a start.

At the end of the day, though, they will only succeed if, firstly, they can organise themselves and offer a genuinely professional product and, secondly, if we-the-people properly support them. That means not just reading them and cheering them on but, by and large, financing them. And I don’t mean a few bucks in a tip jar once a year: I mean serious ongoing financial support. For as long as I have been blogging I’ve been hearing people tell me how wonderful blogs and other new media are and how much they enjoy and appreciate them. But I have very rarely seen those fine words and sentiments backed up with hard cash. It is about time it was.

I don’t mean you should toss a whole lot of cash at some guy with a blog. But at some point, enough of you are going to have to take a bit of a risk and invest a decent sum in this or that site so that they can genuinely operate as independent media. And the online media itself is going to have to get organised to the point where they can offer a product that is going to attract that sort of contribution, as well as money from other sources, advertising, or whatever.

Until this happens, stop whinging about the mainstream media. Spare me the heartfelt cries of how much you love this blog or that blog and just accept the fact that if you really want a functioning independent media you are going to have to pay for it. It’s that friggin simple.

As I say, Surfdom is now officially closed. We’ll go into archive mode as soon as Jon-the-tech-guy can organise it. It has been an absolute pleasure running this place for the past seven-odd years and it is hard to walk away. Thanks a million to all those who have read and contributed comments over that time.

Please don’t read the above the plea as some sort ingratitude for the fabulous support given to me personally here at Surfdom and over at Blogocracy. It isn’t. I luvs yers all. I just want to see the blogosphere and independent online media develop into something more than it is, to move into a new and more vibrant phase. To offer some genuine competition to the ingrown toenail that is the mainstream media.

The criticisms above are directed at myself as much as they are at anyone else. I just really felt, as I closed this place down and ponder what will happen next, that someone had to give us all a bit of stern talking to, to maybe encourage people to think about what needs to be done and what we can do. Citizenship matters and it is too important than to leave in the hands of the cynical gatekeepers who currently decide what is important in this democracy of ours.