News goes for The Punch

News Limited went public on Monday June 1 with its new online site The Punch.

According to editor David Penberthy (former editor of the Sydney Daily Telegraph):

The Punch is a new opinion website aimed at every Australian with a love of ideas, discussion and debate.

It’s not a fancy, la-di-dah site aimed at people with three university degrees, nor is it a site for yobbos who want to engage in mindless abuse.

It’s a place for spirited, sleeves-up, energetic, engaging commentary, written by people who enjoy writing, for people who enjoy reading.

It has a full-time team of four writers (Penberthy, Tory Maguire, Leo Shanahan and Paul Colgan), and an eclectic group of signed on occasional contributors:

Our political contributors include Mike Rann, Maxine McKew, Anthony Albanese, Joe Hockey, Mark Arbib, Nick Xenophon, Barnaby Joyce, Jason Clare, Scott Morrison, John Cobb, Jamie Briggs, George Brandis, Chris Pyne, Michael Costa, Bronwyn Bishop and Peter Dutton, as well as Mark Textor, Peter Lewis, David Gazard and Tim Gartrell.

Our sportswriters include Kate Ellis, Ben Buckley, Anthony Sharwood and Luke Foley, on business and economics we have Clive Mathieson, Steve Keen, Frank Zumbo and Cameron England, and a broad suite of writers including Catharine Lumby, Tracey Spicer, Fergus Linehan, Ed Charles, Clive Small, Matt Kirkegaard and Nedahl Stelio covering entertainment, technology, food, fashion, crime, movies, music and trends.

The Punch will also include exclusive original content from established and emerging News Limited journalists including Joe Hildebrand, Dennis Atkins, Di Butler, Alan Howe, Alex Dickerson, Tory Shepherd, as well as journos from other outlets including Leigh Sales from the ABC and Fiona Connolly from ACP.

Much of our content will be News Limited content. But it will also come from people at independent news sites, from people who aren’t in journalism but are great writers, from people at rival news organisations whose work on The Punch opens them, and us, up to new audiences. And every morning we will link through to content on sites which we own, but also on sites which we don’t own, to give you the most enjoyable reading experience.

Suggesting that Penberthy may be reading this blog, he notes:

Against this backdrop, our hope for the site is this: at a time when every tenured communications academic on the planet is sending tiny urls via twitter, linking you through to wrist-slashing stories about the apparent death of journalism, we want to demonstrate that journalism is alive and well.

Commentary on The Punch can be found online at Larvatus Prodeo, Club Troppo and Public Opinion. Not surprisingly, the blogosphere is not enthised by News's entry into their patch.

Two lines of cricicism have been most common. The first is whether you can make a site of this nature work without some commitment to quality writing, even if that means writing for "people with three university degrees". Hell, I will have five by year's end (six if you see Honours as a separate year!), and my own suspicion is that it is a lot more common than David Penberthy may be allowing for to find people who regualrly read and post to blogs having above-average levels of educational qualification (and don;t interpret that as saying they are smarter, just sayin' ...).

The second is that it is opinion, not journalism, and that most of the contributions come at no cost. All true, and it may be causing some ructions wihtin News, particularly for those who get paid to write opinion, and now face also having to write for The Punch, or perhaps having their work replaced by material sourced from The Punch. This may indeed come to pass - I first became aware of the site by reading Penberthy's piece on Australians abroad on The Australian online - but it does seem odd for bloggers to be criticising other media outlets for drawing on crowdsourced free labour as an alternative to paid professional journalism. Isn't that what many have been arguing is the future?

At any rate, the fact that News has gone for The Punch indicates above all else that the Crikey model (and that of other sites such as On Line Opinion) is getting audiences and commerical traction, and that going head-to-head with them is a sure sign that this is being acknowledged. That siad, we'll know whether this site is getting readers in a way that matters when we see regular postings from the likes of Mike Rann, Anthony Albanese, Barnaby Joyce and Chris Pyne.

The Media Business: Seeing through the Haze Surrounding Websites, Blogs and Social Media

Media economist Robert Picard provides some notes of caution about easy assumptions that blogging and Twitter are the future of media.

Seeing through the Haze Surrounding Websites, Blogs and Social Media

Communicating regularly is hard work. It takes skill; it takes a voice; it takes having something to say; it takes time. Making money from it is even harder.

The functions provided by websites, blogs, and social media clearly make it possible for people to express themselves in ways never before imagined, to share their opinions, to express their hopes and dreams, and to share the details of their lives. Media companies are watching these developments and many are rushing to provide content on any communication technology or application the public uses.

Although large numbers of people are trying the new technologies, they are reacting to them in different ways. Some find them highly useful and satisfying; some find them worthless and disappointing; some find them a worthy pastime; others find them a waste of time. What this means is that—like all technologies—they are more important to some people than to others. Consequently, managers need to be realistic in assessing their potential, the extent to which they are being used by the public, and the extent to which they provide opportunities that media companies should pursue.

Because those promoting the technologies are self interested, uptake figures are easy to come by. Finding out who has tried the technologies, but decided they were undesirable is harder. However, research is showing some interesting results in that regard. We now know that 60 percent of the people who try Twitter stop using it within a month, that only about 5% of blogs are regularly updated, that more than 200 million blogs have been abandoned, and that about 37 million web domain names are deleted every year.

Most people and organizations who try these new communication opportunities make limited use of them or give up on them altogether because of boredom or because the opportunities don't provide sufficient results. This is not to say they are not unimportant, however. A good number of individuals and companies are using them to create new abilities and opportunities to communicate with friends, colleagues, and customers and to establish new businesses and revenue streams. Doing so, however, takes commitment that most people and firms are unwilling to make.

From the business standpoint one has to be realistic when evaluating the opportunities presented. Media executives need to ask hard questions: Do all media companies need to provide content across every available platform regardless of the cost and effort? Are all types of news and information appropriately carried on all platforms? In what ways is branding and marketing for the company actually served by these engagements? How are these monetized? What are the returns on the investments? What are the risks of not engaging these technologies?

Success is not easy in this technological environment. It requires investment, effort, regular activity, and provision of content that people want. Media managers choosing to use these new technologies must be clear-headed in their decisions and pursue well-founded strategies or they will be lost in the maze of competing and alternative opportunities.

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.

Hoax muggings by black men: Republican campaign workers enter the crazy zone

This hoax by a Republican campaign worker who alleged that a black man mugged her at an ATM and carved a "B" on her face has won Larvatus Prodeo's Agincourt Award for the Longest Bow in Journalism.

An amazing story, started by on The Drudge Report. Comments from Andrew Sullivan here. One surprise is that the mugger wasn't wearing a suit with a skinny tie, but he is in Hawaii this weekend.

--

Bail was set at $50,000 Friday night for a GOP campaign worker who made up a story about being attacked by a man angered by a John McCain bumper sticker on her car.

Ashley Todd, 20, of College Station, Texas, has been charged with filing a false police report, a misdemeanor, a police report said.

Todd, who is being held at the Allegheny County Jail in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, did not enter a plea when she appeared in court Friday night. She did not post bail.

She is scheduled to appear in court again October 30, when she is expected to enter a plea.

If she posts bail, Todd must be evaluated at a behavioral clinic.

"This has wasted so much time. ... It's just a lot of wasted man hours," Assistant Police Chief Maurita Bryant said at a briefing.

Todd was a volunteer for a John McCain phone bank in Pittsburgh, the campaign said.

The woman told investigators a man approached her Wednesday night at an ATM in Pittsburgh's East End, put a blade to her neck and demanded money, said Pittsburgh police spokeswoman Diane Richard.

Police said they found "several inconsistencies" in Todd's statement and she was not seen in surveillance videos taken at the ATM. She was asked to take a polygraph test Friday morning, Richard said. The results were not made public.

Later, Todd came to the police station to help work on a composite sketch of the alleged attacker. When she arrived, Todd "told them she just wanted to tell the truth" -- that she was not robbed, and there was no attacker, Bryant said.

Todd originally told police a man "punched her in the back of the head, knocking her to the ground, and he continued to punch and kick her while threatening to teach her a lesson for being a McCain supporter," according to a police statement.

The woman also told police her attacker "called her a lot of names and stated that 'You are going to be a Barack supporter,' at which time she states he sat on her chest, pinning both her hands down with his knees, and scratched into her face a backward letter 'B' on the right side of her face using what she believed to be a very dull knife."

Bryant described Todd as "very cordial, polite, cooperating," and said the woman was surprised by all the media attention. Asked whether the false report was politically motivated, Bryant replied, "It's difficult to say."

"She is stating that she was in her vehicle driving around, and she came up with this idea," she said. "She said she has prior mental problems and doesn't know how the backward letter 'B' got on her face."

However, Todd was the only one in the vehicle, and "when she saw the 'B' she thought she must have been the one who did it," Bryant said.

"We're talking with the district attorney's office and conferring on just how we're going to handle it," she said. "It's been different stories through the night and this morning."

She said there was no indication that anyone else was involved.

Richard said the woman had described her alleged attacker as an African-American, 6 feet 4 inches tall with a medium build and short dark hair, wearing dark clothing and shiny shoes.

Before the revelation that the report was false, McCain spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker said that McCain and running mate Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin "spoke to the victim and her family after learning about the incident."

The Obama campaign also had issued a statement wishing the woman a "speedy recovery."

Are blogs elitist?

I am a chief investigator on a project team involved with the ARC Linkage project on Citizen Journalism in Australia. Our team put together the YouDecide 2007 citizen jounalism web site for the November 2007 Australian Federal election. I am currently preparing papers on this for the Creating Value: Between Commerce and Content conference to be held in Brisbane from 25-27 June 2008, and the Australia and New Zealand Communications Association conference in Wellington from 11-13 July 2008. My colleagues Axel Bruns, Barry Saunders and Jason Wilson have maintained a blog on the project called Gatewatching.

As a part of the project, we aim to have a monthly reading group to discuss relevant work in the field. One author whose work we have consdiered is Matthew Hindman from Arizona State University. Hindman is a sceptic about the democratising potential for political blogs, arguing that A-list bloggers are no less an elite than the political establishment, but are simply a different elite.

He has a book coming out soon called The Myth of Digital Democracy, but I have tracked one of his papers where the main arguments can be found.

Hindman's main arguments are:

First, just as in news traffic and in political traffic, blogs show a sharp divide between a small number of hyper-successful sites that get most of the visits, and a large number of barely-visited sites that get most of the remaining attention. Audience concentration among the most visited sites, and audience dispersion amongst the rest, is the general rule of blogging audiences. Second, the small set of bloggers who actually get read are not amateurs in any meaningful sense of the word. They are, to an extraordinary degree, elites of one form or an-
other.

and

If the Internet provides novel mechanisms of political accountability, then, it is the
elite cast of online discourse that makes this possible. Whether a sharper divide between big and small outlets is good news for other democratic values—media diversity, a broad public sphere, and equal participation in civic debates—is a more doubtful prospect.

Axel Bruns has written a critique of Hindman's argument here, and I won't try to summarise them.

I am mulling this issue in my own head as I think about my conclusions on the YouDecide 2007 project and our impact. I will post the paper for comment shortly, but any thoguht on Hindman's argument would be much appreciated.