Next year, the UFC — the world’s largest Mixed Martial Arts promotion — is coming to Australia. Prepare yourselves for an onslaught of fist waving and moral indignation from the mainstream media, says Ruth Brown.
October, 2009
The evolution of women: slowly getting shorter and fatter
Shorter, heavier women tend to bear more children than tall, skinny ones. Therefore, thanks to the laws of evolution, women of the future are expected to continue the smaller, fatter bodies of their mothers. Great.
shocking 
A third of people killed in CIA drone strikes are civilians
A shocking new report has found that a third of the victims of CIA’s Taliban-targeting drone strikes in Pakistan are civilians — and those are just the ones the media knows about.
US lawyer sues Airbus (and everyone else) over Air France disaster
A US lawyer is suing everyone who made anything that was part of the Air France Airbus flight that crashed into the mid Atlantic in June, reports Ben Sandilands.
Film review: Astro Boy: new-fangled retro fun
Astro Boy defies the unbelievably low standards set by the cinematic forays of his retro toon colleagues in this new-fangled big screen reboot, says Luke Buckmaster.
Slacks, expresso and making love: words men should avoid
Esquire have released their list of the most overused and offensive words of 2009. The biggest culprits? Baby talk and sleazy speech. So no “tummy” and definitely no “panties”.
A blueprint for rebuilding journalism
Former Washington Post editor Leonard Downie Jr and Michael Schudson have written an incredibly comprehensive report on how they believe the American journalism industry can be reconstructed. It’s 17 pages, but worth your time.
Kurtz: Report uncovers green shoots for the media
Schudson and Downie’s recommendations may never get off the ground, says Howard Kurtz, but their report has revealed that, amid the media doom and gloom, exciting new grass-roots ventures are sprouting up, which offer some hope for the industry’s future.
Downie and Schudson condensed
Mac Slocum condenses the six main recommendations of Downie and Schudson’s report into a more digestible summary.
Jarvis: A dangerous proposal for socialised journalism
Jeff Jarvis responds to Schudson and Downie’s plan for the reconstruction of the American media: it’s flawed to start from the assumption that the media is dying with newspapers.
Corbett’s Fairfax still a leaky boat, says analyst
The latest Fairfax skipper, Roger Corbett, is going have to row mighty hard and with a “titanic” weight on his shoulders, writes Roger Montgomery.
E-paper: the real “Kindle Killer”
Everyone (and by “everyone”, we mean “geeks and the media”) is fixated on what the Next Big Thing in e-readers will be. But what if e-readers aren’t the Next Big Thing at all? Check out e-paper, which allows hi-res, full-colour imagery.
Vox Pop of the Week: Nature lovers in the NT News
The Liberal leadership? Asylum seekers? CPRS? What on earth could be the topic du jour for the nation’s Territorians?
Ad Age‘s A-list Media Awards
Advertising Age has announced its A-List Award winners for 2009, with Women’s Health named Magazine of the Year, The Atlantic’s James Bennet named editor of the year, and a few other hat-tips to media innovation this year.
Dial-a-success: iPhones push Apple profits up 46%
Does it seem like everywhere you look there are iPhones? Well, Apple have sold 7.6 million of them in the last quarter, helping raise profits by a whopping 46%. The US are still in a recession, right?
Crikey Says: Does journalism still need a separation of church and state?
News.com.au editor David Higgins believes the commercial-editorial division is a “luxury” the media can no longer afford. Oh dear.
Letter from...: Aceh: the only Jew in the village
This Indonesian province takes its Islam very seriously. The provincial parliament of Aceh recently passed a criminal bylaw that supported the death penalty, stoning and flogging for homosexual acts and adultery.
Asylum seekers: territorial security versus electoral suicide
Kevin Rudd repeatedly denounces traffickers as “the vilest form of people on the planet” but says nothing whatsoever about those governing Sri Lanka — almost as if it’s morally worse to smuggle victims away from atrocities than it is to perpetrate them in the first place.
No more nights out for British mortgage owners
Fancying a smoke, a drink or three, or a night at the cinema could all rule you out of getting a mortgage under tough new proposed rules in Britain from the country’s financial regulator, the FSA.
Nerve-sparing surgery for prostate cancer in trouble
The prostate cancer debate has taken yet another interesting turn. Just weeks after all Australian men over 40 were urged to get screened, a new major study has thrown another spanner in the works of screening advocates, writes Simon Chapman.
Wall St insider trading: 10 more could be charged
American financial markets have been stunned by the continuing news flow from the newest insider trading charges on Wall St involving billionaire hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam, with reports this morning that another 10 could be charged.
Political snippets: Libs need to stop playing by the Government’s rules
Richard Farmer reckons the Libs should start talking hospitals and health, public servants and politicians can learn from Graham Richardson, and India might commit to reduce its greenhouse emissions.
You don’t have to be a roads scholar to work out congestion
Urban road transport is a vast public policy failure by governments that costs us billions of dollars a year, but it will go on being tolerated, chiefly because voters won’t accept the solution.
