Comments on: Canberra Times the new model for The Age, SMH

By: davo

davo — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

I’ve said it before: any publisher who pays Miranda Devine for her rot is not a serious publisher.

By: Michael

Michael — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

With Rural Press at the helm the likely final result of the SMH & Age is more likely to be the Wentworth Courier-little copy, heaps of adverts and largely unread although locals in the Eastern Suburbs find it does make a handy doorstop.

By: John Ballard

John Ballard — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Having read the Canberra Times and the SMH every morning for longer than I care to remember, I feel that both are much weaker than they were a decade ago. The Times, like other Rural Press papers, emphasises the local, which in this case includes some good coverage of national politics and the excellent monthly Public Service Informant, but its reportage of the world and of state politics is minimal. As for columnists, Waterford is superb and there are occasional good analyses from the ANU, though it’s an underused resource. The website is abysmal and doesn’t include Waterford’s columns. As for the SMH. like The Age it’s become more parochial in recent years, especially in investigative reporting. With occasional major exceptions like the articles of David Marr, it breaks few national stories. Its cultural pages are excellent. Internationally it’s been good on Indonesia and recently on China, but I can’t recall much of interest on the rest of the region. There’s little on the rest of the world that isn’t readily available elsewhere, usually with greater depth. I have no liking for The Australian and its troglodyte columnists, but its national and international coverage have been better than that of Fairfax in recent years.

By: mike smith

mike smith — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

To err is Devine, to forgive, human

By: Karina

Karina — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Before Canberra, I lived in a few other capital cities, like Washington, London, and even Oslo. They had real newspapers. Given how embarrassing the Canberra Times is, it is pretty scary to think that it might become some sort of model for Australia’s remaining broadsheets. When I questioned him on this about a year ago, Waterford told me that investigative journalism is just too expensive and potentially litigenous.