Australia’s refugee problem has attracted global attention. This from the New York Times.
John Hartigan’s Punchy attack on new media
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News Ltd CEO John Hartigan has used a National Press Club address this afternoon to launch a savage attack on online media while threatening to close News Ltd’s Press Gallery offices and focus less on “the politics of politics” and more on “hyper-local news” such as shopping and traffic information. Hartigan also used the address — read at times haltingly from a teleprompter and broadcast on the advertising-free ABC — to extensively promote News Ltd’s recent changes and boast of how well it had covered the Victorian bushfires earlier this year. He also claimed that the company’s newspapers would prosper while mastheads in the UK and the US collapsed in the face of the challenge of new media. The News Ltd boss warned that political coverage needed to change because readers had lost interest in it, as evidenced by opinion polling following the fake email affair, and caused a stir amongst his own staff - many of whom were present for the address - when he said he had a longstanding desire to close News Ltd’s large Press Gallery facilities and move political journalists into offices elsewhere in Canberra. He also wanted greater turnover of its political journalists. Hartigan attacked sites such as Crikey which, he claimed, have little original content and offer only commentary on mainstream media publications, before going on to spruik News Ltd’s new comment website, The Punch. He also several times endorsed the views of web entrepreneur and blogging critic Andrew Keen who has called online journalism “digital narcissism” that “poisons debate”, lowers its users and fails to maintain a proper traditional distinction between journalists and readers. Hartigan also echoed the attacks of more senior News Ltd figures on content aggregators like Google, warning the company was actively looking for ways of disseminating its content as widely as possible without aggregators coming between the company and audiences. He also flagged greater moves toward subscription content, arguing online readers generated only one-tenth of the advertising revenue of hard copy readers, and noting the Wall Street Journal had successfully moved to a subscription model. Pressed on whether publications had acted ethically in publishing the forged utegate email as real, Hartigan claimed Julia Gillard, who today attacked News Ltd publications, was merely reacting to the company’s campaign against educational stimulus spending and that the company’s papers had behaved appropriately, although they had early deadlines and had acted to correct inaccuracies. |
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33 Comments
I thought this was a classic line from the speech:
“Blogs and a large number of comment sites specialise in political extremism and personal vilification.”
I don’t even know where to start with that. Bolt? Devine? Akerman?
Well, in fairness Evan, Miranda Devine is a Fairfax purveyor of political extremism and personal vilification rather than one in the employ of News. Still it’s a point well made - we hardly need to resort to blogs for this kind of thing.
Hartigan has delivered all of this without any sense of irony, which may be the most bewildering aspect of the entire speech.
“Immediately following the speech, Hartigan destroyed a mechanical loom”.
“Immediately following the speech, Hartigan destroyed a mechanical loom”.
I suppose that the shorthand version of the speech in which he threatened to pull News out of the press gallery and decried internet news services would be “Less Rudd, more Ludd”.
I was in the audience when Hartigan gave a very similar speech at the Andrew Olle Lecture in 2007 . It was a load of self serving bs about how News Ltd was taking the lead in the new digital media publishing environment and how they would soon be offering a great new media package for its online readers - namely, they would be featuring blogs by their lead writers.
We’ve seen what’s become of News Ltd since - and the “blogs” by luminaries such as Shanahan and Albrechtsen et al have proved to be little more than the same old op eds repurposed with the dubious ability to leave comments. I’m reminded of the editorial tizzy the Oz threw when Shanahan’s pumping of Newspoll in the Lib’s favour in the lead up to the 07 election [“2% swing to Libs is the begining of the fightback!”] resulted in a bitchy, testy editorial from the Oz reminding the blog commenters that it was they who had the expertise and the commenters were just scum.
As News Ltd sacks staff and continues to operate their website like a walled garden [no links, no nothing] these typically dunderheaded comments from Hartigan are just more of the same.
Hartigan is simply lashing out at those who compete with News for market-share, the most adaptive of whom happen to operate out of new media vehicles. This brand of dross typifies News’ reaction to the spheres of industry it cannot buy-out or shadow - labels of extremism and vilification are to be ignored as nonsensical ramblings, designed specifically to discredit competitors and soften the market for Punch’s entry.
I say let Hartigan et al. attempt to gut News’ presence in the gallery whilst simultaeneously initiating a subscription model for The Australian and it’s tabloid satelites. If anything, it will allow us to witness News committing suicide in real-time - and that should get the bloggers going…
I’m quite happy for News Limited to go subscription only online - the less accessible their online articles, the more likely it is that no one will bother reading them anymore.
Well said, Sasha!
News Ltd has been dross for ages. The standard of the Australian in particular has dropped appallingly until it has just become a biased, sensationalised broadsheet version of his tabloid rags. I read the Guardian and the Independent (UK papers) online for real news and independent reporting.
A penis stuck in a pasta sauce jar might be news for John Hartigan but it’s not for us. Nor are breasts spilling out of teeny bikinis, street brawls over water bottles, drunk and drugged NRL stars wandering the streets or sordid lifestyles of the rich, poor and famous. It’s everyday life for the average Aussie and we’re bored with it but it’s a revelation for Mr Hartigan who all these years on decides: “fewer papers are being sold and in my view it’s because many of them are largely boring and irrelevant to their readership”. We’re making headway, Hartigan! Then out of touch as ever he drops a clanger while giving News Limited publications praise for their coverage of the Vic fires: “who can forget the images of the fireman sharing his water bottle with the Sam the Koala, perhaps the iconic image of the tragedy”. Er, the prize-winning shot was taken by CFA fireman Mark Pardew with his mobile phone and not an intrepid Herald-Sun cameraman on weekend overtime. Today’s address to the National Press Club was delivered by Mr Hartigan with a tongue firmly planted in his cheek. Yes?
I can’t wait for the Daily Telegraph to go subscription. That should kill off the dirty beast once and for all.
Twould seem to be a rerun of the Bourbons, “forgotten nothing, learned nothing”.
The Wall Street Journal subscription model, which Rupert Murdoch endorses, is for the news items to disappear behind a paywall and for the opinion articles to remain fully accessible. So those people hoping that Piers, Andrew, Christopher and Janet will have a diminished profile are going to be disappointed.
Hartigan sounds like an over-weight waffler. Going by the elegant content of the Herald Sun. Tits, bums, mums and dums, and bubs (shudder, shudder, shiver,) I’d say he should be the last person advocating any type of news content. Add someone like the poisonously crude Andrew Bolt and he’s flying in the face of reality.
The reality is that people are becoming more and more educated and SH readers are diminishing. WTF would they want to subscribe (pay for) some tripe they’re getting for $1.10c a copy? And once on-line a whole new world opens up for them. Also there is so much reality(?) on those nauseating shows on TV. Let’s switch off.
When the “Press” finally and fully fails to valiantly inform the public with unbiased truth, substituting for it subterfuge in order to lead the dumbed-down public into paths of thought having no basis in reality and that could serve to induce the otherwise sincere populace to be supportive of social and political stances and actions that are designed to advance the constitutionally-treasonous, subversive, evil agenda of the cancerous, monolithic and ruthless, even murderous, military/industrial complex, then the time has arrived to SOUNDLY indite the ‘mainstream media’ and to haul out the political and operative criminals into the Light and hold them to genuine justice.
I hereby declare my refusal to be spoon-fed my political thinking. I hereby re-claim my inalienable, fundamental RIGHT to free speech and to a genuinely free press. I hereby profess my confidence that Alex Jones, prisonplanet.com, and infowars.com are HONESTLY devoted to spreading the TRUTH and exposing the LIES. I encourage each and every one to be vigilant. Truth truly is the greatest enemy of the State, and Alex Jones will not relent in proclaiming the Truth.
“He also several times endorsed the views of web entrepreneur and blogging critic Andrew Keen who has called online journalism “digital narcissism” that “poisons debate”, lowers its users and fails to maintain a proper traditional distinction between journalists and readers.”
Harto is pulling a fast one. The problem he/News Ltd have is that in a classic news media model they no longer control the means of production and distribution. The so called proper distinction between journalist and reader is based on the fact that producing and distributing news on a big scale was very expensive. No longer. One tweet, in fact, will do.
Clay Shirky’s book Here Comes Everybody has a tremendous discussion on some of the points raised by Harto and Spews Ltd.
can’t wait for the Terror’ to merge with mX, then I can finally stop saying “I wouldn’t read that rag if they were giving it away”
Some of us old lesbians (and probably a few blokes as well) quite appreciate the “breasts spilling out of tiny bikinis” , but you can keep the rest of the News Limited output (how true that corporate name!)
I watched a bit of the Hartigan speech on TV. He looked like one of those poor parents of kidnap victims you see making media appeals for their return, when everyone, including the parent, knows the victim is already dead.
No news is good news, don’t you think?
Harto’s speech was so lacking in perception it sounded like one of Dennis Shanahan’s famous pre-election Newspoll columns on how 2 and 2 really added up to John Howard. He praises the Huffington Post but fails to note that it is 90 per cent aggregation with a few columns on the side. Indeed Pembo ( I love all the O men at News Ltd) copied it for Punch. If Punch isn’t a news aggregation site ripping off the work of all and sundry then what is it. And they don’t pay their columnists so you get dunderheads like Bronny Bishop bloviating at length proving again that if you pay peanuts you get monkeys. He wonders about political coverage without wondering whether it was the total twisting of reality during the 2007 campaign that had people wondering about the quality of journalism at News Ltd especially its “quality” flagship The Australian. His bleats about good news sounded like the old dears at the Anglican Church womens’ guild “oh dear if only they covered the good news the world would be so nice.” Except we suspect Harto’s idea of good news is, as one other said somewhere else, stories about blokes with their dicks caught in vacuum cleaners.
The disturbing thing is that the hatred of the blogoshpere, well that part of it not under the News Ltd umbrella, seems to be part of a corporate mantra. At first we may have thought it existed only in the foetid brain of Chris Mitchell and his butt monkey Christian Kerr. But now it seems to be official policy.
What Harto misses is the reason that Mumbles, Possum, Poll Bludger et al have a following is that they can read things like opinion polls and draw real conclusions unlike News Ltd which seems incapable of understanding its own polls. Then there is its vendetta journalism. Robert Manne is a favorite target but today The Oz did a reverse vendetta with pike by ripping off his cover story from the Monthly and making it the main feature. Good get Cameron.
Also today in the Oz we have day two of the union scare campaign harking back to 1981 for fuck’s sake!!! It is based on the myth The Oz is pushing that pattern bargaining is allowed under the new laws. It isn’t but hey why let that stop us?
We have the hysterical anti-green anti-global warming stance of the Australian which one would have thought is read by people who can makeup their own minds. They and the vast majority of Australians know the Oz is talking crap on this and a whole lot of issues They see it on the front page and then they get screamed at by the Albrechtsens, Sheridans (today’s, another fantasy piece) and any other loony they can get to write for them. Michael Costa on economics and governance?
Everyone knows he was hopeless as a treasurer and now we are expected to receive his pearls of wisdom as though they are holy writ. I could go on. The reason we read Crikey and the rest of the the blogosphere is we don’t like having our intelligence insulted by Chris Mitchell’s merry band of delusional lunatics.
And Crikey, how about making a note of every story the Oz runs (unattributed of course) which it read about first on Crikey. I think I see about four or five a week.
Finally, As Harto got his Walkley award for journalistic leadership he announced there would be no swingeing cuts at News Ltd, he would hold the line blah blah blah. At the time he spoke he was throwing journos out of the lifeboat and he hasn’t stopped since.
The Internet presented problems for newspapers but they could have been tackled. The fact that newspapers are failing has nothing to do with new journalism it is all to do with bad management and dinosaurs like Harto who thinks by making a few “bold” speeches to a bunch of sycophants at the Press Club will show he has the answers.
If Harto and his pronouncements are the answer we are asking the wrong question.
Someone somewhere is going to have to create content for the web v2.0. It is one of the things I like less about the new Crikey website - it is becoming a poor fascimile of ‘The Huffington Post’. Regarding News Corporation, Murdoch when he bought the Herald and Weekly times relaunched ‘The Melbourne Herald’ and created ‘The Sunday Herald’. They were the equivalent of newspaper p-rn. Utilising the best writers from the News Corp stable worldwide. Alas not enough people bought them and everything got merged to tabloid cr-p.
Sure most Blogs are poorly written and edited. But at least they do what newspaper’s dont’ do anymore and that’s reflect the opinion of the masses, one blog at a time. News Corporations glory days are behind it. I also agree that paying for News Corp content will make Bolt, Akerman, Albrechtsen (sic?) less accessable and that has to be a good thing.
Sounds like time to DUMP Limited News shares, if you already haven’t. Personally i would never have bought any, and Crikey must be doing something right to have the old warhorse bagging you. Bye Bye rupert.
Regardless, he was right about “Crikey which, he claimed, have little original content and offer only commentary on mainstream media publications,”
Reading Crikey is the closest I get to NW unless I visit my Gran…
oh yeah, and surely by Crikey commenting on a speech by a “mainstream media publication” they are in fact doing exactly what is claimed, ie only commenting on other media?
Irony for lunch anyone?
Irony would be better than the shit sandwich you are serving up at every meal time, Joel.
Well fuck you to David, thanks for that..
This is Crikey different opinions NOT allowed
wanker
That was ironic.
PS @David, how come I comment about Crikey and the subject of the article and you comment about me?
shame
Because, Joel, you write so much absurd, aggressive rubbish.
Durutticolumn: “The disturbing thing is that hatred of the blogosphere:…”. You go on to mention it being if not under the News Ltd umbrella, has become a corporate mantra-if I have understood you correctly.
I merely wish to add to your point re the people whom I observed as being filled with hatred about the blogosphere, and being hysterically anti-Tweeting, tend to be the none-too bright older persons who use, with apparent difficulty, their computer for spread sheets and Ebay buying and selling. The ones I’ve met have the old fashioned working class hatred of every thing they can’t understand. Yet they would never go and take a few classes to learn how to do it.
Damn I clicked the cursor before I’d finished….
Joel BI: A lot of people who write to Crikey go to a lot of trouble to write reasoned and articulate comments. What on earth do they think when they see an enormous elephant with its legs on backwards blundering around, telling people to get fucked and behaving in a manner that Neanderthal man would have been embarrassed by.
I’ve heard you whinge because someone elses’ comment got printed before yours. How juvenile is that? You resent David Sanderson for having a go at you, when all you do is display the multiple chips on your shoulder by hating Crikey and anyone who agrees with them.
I suspect the avatar you chose is the absolute mirror-image of yourself. Namely
a hick with homespun beliefs and an intense dislike of articulate people.
Old media can be so bloody infuriating with their backwards way of thinking. They were simply too late to embrace it and that is why we have businesses like Google taking over and becoming the corporate giants they are today.
Hartigan should take note of the fact that the United States government asked Twitter to put their updates on hold so they could monitor the “citizen” reports out of Iran recently. I don’t think any of the tabloids and other publications News Limited publish have ever been that popular that the US government monitor them during international crisis.