Posts in ‘Media’

How do you start a small business?

Tuesday, June 19th, 2012

In the early nineties one joke went “How do you start a small business?” The punchline “Give Warwick Fairfax a large one.” It was a reference by the privatisation and near destruction of the Fairfax media group by the twenty-something great-grandson of the founder. The culprits have changed, but the joke is quite similar, if […]

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Posted by Graham at 2:00 pm | Comments (1) |
Filed under: Media

Fairfax changes good for readers, not so good for community

Monday, June 18th, 2012

What Fairfax announced today was obvious 13 years ago – the traditional newspaper model has been broken for quite some time. But that doesn’t mean that the alternative model is going to fill the role of the fourth estate as well as the existing one. Not that the fourth estate has been functioning as effectively […]

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Posted by Graham at 11:36 pm | Comments Off on Fairfax changes good for readers, not so good for community |
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Freedom of speech, freedom of expression and the Bolt decision

Friday, September 30th, 2011

Those in doubt that the Andrew Bolt case is about free speech need only think about the contortions of logic necessary to dismissing the proposition that it is about free speech. On his blog, my friend Mark Bahnisch says that “free speech is not at issue here” before observing that “[f]ree speech, as the judgment […]

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Posted by Nick at 3:27 pm | Comments (10) |

New media, new world order?

Thursday, August 4th, 2011

Did you know that in the first 6 months of this year, 536 people in the US had died in tornadoes? Or that this was more than the entire previous decade? Don’t bother checking News Corp for that factoid. Rupert Murdoch has been found wanting, his imperial power over pollies now mocked amid calls for […]

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Posted by Ronda Jambe at 5:41 am | Comments (3) |

Waltzing Matilda

Sunday, May 30th, 2010

New Matilda has announced that, all other things being equal, it will close on Friday 25 June. It is always sad to see a neighbour go, even if they are a competitor, and I was saddling-up to write a short but sympathetic note.

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Posted by Graham at 7:00 am | Comments (15) |
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Second as farce: Asylum seekers and Piers Akerman

Thursday, April 1st, 2010

Piers Akerman has been testing his vast capacity for self-parody. His piece in Monday’s Telegraph on asylum seekers reads as if written on a bet or a dare. The frenzy whipped up over asylum seekers after the Tampa’s arrival was a tragedy for this country. Akerman seems determined to repeat it as farce. Akerman brands the government’s […]

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Posted by Stephen Minas at 6:15 am | Comments (14) |

OLO is here for the next day or so

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009

On Line Opinion will be publishing on this blog for the next day or so. We have a severe problem with our server which we are attending to. Ambit Gambit is on a different server and provides most of the same comment facilities available on OLO. So to honour our commitments to our authors, particularly […]

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Posted by Graham at 9:45 am | Comments Off on OLO is here for the next day or so |
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My minute’s silence

Wednesday, November 11th, 2009

This is a Rememberance Day post with a German theme. Reader Fay Helwig of Das Helwig Haus B&B has planted a beautiful field of poppies which comes into bloom just in time for Remberance Day – the Rememberance Field. The field will feature on Channel 9 between 6:30 and 7:00 tonight. Or you could always […]

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Posted by Graham at 10:49 am | Comments Off on My minute’s silence |
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Point of view

Saturday, November 7th, 2009

The Australian is generally skeptical of climate change and the ABC relatively accepting. So what would each choose to report from one set of tidal measurements? According to The Australian’s headline “Science is in on climate change sea-level rise: 1.7mm “. But the ABC’s headline reads “WA sea level rises doubling world average” and the […]

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Posted by Graham at 6:47 pm | Comments (8) |
Filed under: Media

Nothing but due process and due diligence here Lee

Friday, July 17th, 2009

Taking the combination of Lee Rhiannon’s answers and non-answers together, I think I am entitled to infer bad faith on her part. Here we have an author who has been published 13 times by us and only once rejected, yet when she has a concern of political bias, particularly with me, raises it first not […]

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Posted by Graham at 11:05 am | Comments (2) |
Filed under: Media