Crikey

Former subs set to fight The Age for back pay: This email from the MEAA, entitled “Att: Age subs” is currently doing the rounds:

The Alliance has briefed our law firm, Maurice Blackburn, to commence proceedings in the Federal Magistrates’ Court against The Age for compensation for unpaid overtime for features subs. The claim can only be for the previous six years (from the date of lodgement with the court). We will lodge with the court once we have a complete list of affected members.

For over ten years, features’ subs were rostered from 9am till 6pm, five days’ per week and directed to take a half-hour lunch break each day. The various collective agreements in place over this time specify, “Where an employee is permitted a break of one hour off duty for a meal, the Company shall be entitled to deduct one hour from the total time worked…If the break permitted is less than one hour, no time shall be deducted…” (Clause 36.14 in the current agreement.)

However, the company deducted half an hour from each employee’s daily hours worked. Our legal advice is that this is in breach of the agreement and that each employee was entitled to be paid for 8 hours each day, which means that the company may need to pay each of the affected employees’ overtime of 2 hours per week.

The email urges all “members who worked on the Age features subs’ desk for all or part of the past six years need to contact the Alliance urgently if they wish to be part of the case.” According to the Alliance, the practice ceased when the company “combined the features and general subs’ desks in December last year. It is our understanding that all subs are now rostered for 7 hours 26 minutes each day.” — Sophie Black

Robbie Buck put out to pasture. Triple J breakfast broadcaster and “youth spokesperson” Robbie Buck has announced his departure from the station to take a gig at old people’s network ABC 702 Sydney. Described in his send-off by ABC director of radio Kate Dundas as “one of the smartest, funniest and nicest people in broadcasting today” (a view endorsed by several radio industry insiders this morning) Buck has come under mounting pressure over his age, which according to his unofficial MySpace profile is at least 34, but possibly closer to 40. In January, Buck will now move to evenings on 702, which is syndicated across NSW and the ACT, and whose audience consists almost entirely of gnarled baby boomers and television refuseniks. While a breakfast replacement to serve alongside Marieke Hardy and Lindsay McDougall is yet to be revealed, several commentors on Triple J’s Facebook page were calling this morning for the immediate reinstatement of McDougall’s Frenzal Rhomb bandmate and former co-host Jay Whalley.  — Andrew Crook

Fairfax joins the supermarket queues In the internal Age staff profiles of February 2005, Gabriella Coslovich expresses her “fear about journalism is that it is increasingly becoming about lifestyle, celebrity and pap”:

Senior feature & arts writer

While you’re likely to find copies of The New Yorker, Harper’s magazine and of course The Age on Gabriella Coslovich’s desk, the likes of Who and New Idea rarely find a home there. Although she loves to sneak a look at glossy, celebrity magazines in supermarket queues, the thought that newspaper journalism is heading in the same direction disturbs her. “My fear about journalism is that it is increasingly becoming about lifestyle, celebrity and pap,” says Coslovich, a senior feature and arts writer for The Age.

In The Age of September 23,  Gabriella Coslovich writes, again, on the opinion pages no less, about the cult of Cate Blanchett. And who can forget Gabriella’s piece in March last year on Nigella Lawson, which ended with the disturbing word imagery: “So Lawson, with personal trainer in tow, might just be able to have her slut-red raspberries in chardonnay jelly (served with double cream)  — and smother herself in them too.”

I offer this, mindful of the ongoing debate about the alleged seriousness of the Fairfax mastheads. I look forward to 5000 words describing Gabriella’s penetrating search for the best cappucino in Melbourne. — Crikey reader David Long

Woodward taps a leak in yet another administration: Bob Woodward’s Monday-morning exclusive on a 66-page report from Gen. Stanley McChrystal to President Barack Obama about Afghanistan policy was a rite of passage for the new administration: the first major national security leak and a sure sign that the celebrated Washington Post reporter has penetrated yet another administration. — Politico

Optus accidently spills new Pay TV channel details online. Subscription Television provider Optus have mistakenly revealed a number of the new channels that will commence on the service as well as on Foxtel and Austar later this year, before the expected media launch later this month. — MediaSpy

Celebrate punctuation day! It is time to celebrate the commonplace comma, the overexcitable exclamation point and, yes, even the lowly period. Jeff Rubin, 59, a former copy editor determined to rid the world of dangling participles, successfully bid for Sept. 24 to be listed as a holiday in Chase’s Calendar of Events in 2004. Since then, he and his wife have cooked a meatloaf shaped like a question mark, performed in classrooms and dedicated a web site to good grammar (nationalpunctuationday.com). — Chicago Tribune

Dust storm of advertising. Yesterday’s Sydney red dust storm brought out a crop of tactical print ads this morning.  —  mUmBRELLA

The genius behind Single Ladies: Many have forgotten the real reason West interrupted Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech to begin with: to champion Beyoncé’s Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It) music video. Or, in Kanye’s words, “Yo Taylor, I’m really happy for you and I’mma let you finish, but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time.” All eye-rolling at West’s juvenilia aside, the Single Ladies video — with its Bob Fosse inspiration and sassy hip thrusts — is an iconic piece of work. When the single, black and white shot of Beyoncé (as her alter-ego Sasha Fierce) swiveling, dipping, and brandishing a single golden glove hit the internet on October 13, 2008, it became nothing less than a dance phenomenon (a feat perhaps only matched by Los Del Rio’s Macarena in the late ’90s). — The Daily Beast

UK proposes broadband tax The government is pressing ahead with plans to introduce its controversial £6 a year broadband tax before the election, despite potential opposition from the Conservatives. Stephen Timms, the treasury minister in charge of implementing the Digital Britain plan, said today that a 50p a month levy on all UK phone lines will be contained in this year’s finance bill. — The Guardian