Crikey

Business on the slide at Herald Sun. Chaos continues to reign at the Herald Sun’s beleaguered business section after popular editor Mathew Charles pulled the pin late last week. Charles’ departure has added to dismay among remaining staff, already reeling after economics and resources reporter Rachel Hewitt resigned a few weeks ago. Amusingly, the duo are both heading to the Victorian Employers’ Chamber of Commerce and Industry as policy and publications wonks.

Insiders say banking scribe and Simon Pristel favourite Peter Taylor has been earmarked for the top job, but that he’ll have an enormous task ahead of him to restore prestige following the retirements of storied editor Malcolm Schmidtke and 40-year veteran Geoff “ease-up” Easdown over the past year. Crikey counts ten reporters who have left the once-dominant section with Charles, Hewitt, Schmidtke and Easdown joining Isabelle Oderberg, George Lekakis, Fleur Leyden, Ben Butler, Nicole Lindsay and Antonia Magee on the departure list.

Only five reporters remain in the department — personal finance editor Karina Barrymore, small business scribe Claire Heaney, part-timer Olga Galacho, Felicity Williams and Jeff Whaley toiling alongside columnists Terry McCrann and John Beveridge. However, only Williams and Whaley write regularly for the daily business news section. — Andrew Crook

No help for Age journos. Flailing journos inside The Age are again on the back foot after the company’s acting chief financial officer David Skelton ruled that help desk and production support staff will go the way of the dodo. The cherished desk, a valuable resource for Age staff seeking IT support, will now be run out of Sydney, with its outgoing Melbourne manager apparently flitting over to the paper’s commercial wing.

The reforms were one of Skelton’s first brainwaves in his new gig and word is that he’ll soon be visiting Sydney to wield the axe in other areas. “Perhaps the help desk will eventually go to Pagemasters too,” said one well-connected Fairfax wag this morning — a thinly veiled reference to CEO Greg Hywood’s recent decision to sack the vast majority of the company’s metropolitan subeditors. —  Andrew Crook

Left vs right advertising. The “ideological battleground” seems like an odd tagline for a supposedly impartial newspaper, but that’s the latest ad campaign from The Australian …

Focused on a particular key issue or story being covered by the paper, the ads can even be tailored on a daily or weekly basis, depending on the news cycle. They’ll run on TV, digital and standard outdoor billboards, radio, online and in‐paper.

Hunting down Monckton’s knockers. Lord Christopher Monckton is famous for creating an unsolvable puzzle that was solved in eight months and cost him a million quid. Should we institute some similar award — a Godwin special perhaps — for lamest comeback to Monckton’s comparison of Ross Garnaut to Nazis, with swastika and all? Age cartoonist John Spooner was a start, his effort on Saturday featuring a fat greenie woman, overalls and all, muttering about tattoing anyone who agreed with Monckton — a reference to Richard Glover’s remark that climate change denialists should be tattoed on their arm. A silly remark, but tattoing is not exclusive to the Nazis.

The Bolter has been casting around, but can’t find much except Malcolm Fraser, several decades Liberal Party member, comparing Howard’s 2001-02 anti-sedition laws to Hitler’s crackdown on dissent in 1933. No, the prize must go to our old friends at Cut and Paste, put together by Nick Cater’s desperate elves, who noted Mike Carlton’s remark:

“Monckton dazzles them with lots of sciencey stuff delivered in the fruity tones of a hereditary peer, haw haw.”

Carlton’s representation of Monckton’s posh braying was thus taken to be a reference to Lord Haw Haw, the Nazi collaborator-broadcaster William Joyce. Of course it was. Bravo, well played.The Godwin special is yours. We await Monckton’s next tour which, if not paid for by the miners, will be subsidised by the environmental movement — Guy Rundle

Twitter for newsrooms. Today Twitter launched a guide for newsrooms, promising to help the elders of the “pilcrow” generation as well as young journos from the hashtag generation. (Pilcrow is the paragraph symbol. We Googled it.). The guide does offer a great explanation of Twitter, from the different ways to use search to the best ways to brand your Twitter account and the type of things you should tweet about — Twitter seems to like a mixture of the professional and the personal. Definitely worth passing on to older journos who don’t quite “get” Twitter.

The Department of Corrections. Just weeks after The Age tore strips off the Herald Sun for “plagiarising” its exclusive Sir Ken Jones phone tapping yarn, it wrongly tried to claim a scoop by The Weekly Times as its own. News Limited’s The Weekly Times must have kicked up quite a fuss …

Front page of the day. The cover of the latest Newsweek wins the award for the most tacky photo-shopping of the year:

One particular article, written by editor and Diana doyen Tina Brown, is absolutely vomit-worthy. It celebrates the 50th birthday of Princess Diana by examining what her life would be like now if she hadn’t died. Here are a few of the most ghastly lines for your voyeuristic reading pleasure:

“There is no doubt she would have kept her chin taut with strategic Botox shots and her bare arms buff from the gym. Remarriage? At least two, I suspect, on both sides of the Atlantic …”

“I suspect she would have retained a weakness for men in uniform, and a yen for dashing Muslim men. (A two-year fling with a Pakistani general, rumored to have links to the ISI, would have been a particular headache to the Foreign Office and the State Department) …”

“The rising public adoration of Kate would have afforded Diana some tricky moments. Pleased, yes. But, like Frances Shand Kydd — who, days before Diana’s wedding, suddenly burst out, ‘I have good long legs, like my daughter’ — Diana would have had to adjust to a broadening of the limelight …”

“In the world disasters of the last few years — 9/11, the tsunamis, the Pakistan earthquake, Hurricane Katrina — you know Diana would have been first at the scene in a hard hat with a camera crew (and, by now, 10 million followers on Twitter) …”

Alan Jones for president

“Sydney broadcaster Alan Jones is to make his off-off-Broadway musical theatre debut playing Franklin Roosevelt in Annie. And he’ll be keeping his day job hosting a four-hour talk radio show. From January, the septuagenarian will perform eight times a week as the wheelchair-bound former US president alongside Anthony Warlow, Nancye Hayes and Todd McKenney.” —  The Australian

ACP cuts staff

“ACP Magazines has become the latest media company to trim staff numbers amid weak market conditions for the publishing sector. It is understood ACP — which is owned by Nine Entertainment — has cut a handful of staff in the lead up to end of the 2010-11 financial year.” —  The Australian

Leaked: the journos getting rich off WikiLeaks

“At latest count, at least four studios are working on at least five movies about the WikiLeaks story. And with Assange somewhat out of pocket while on house arrest, plenty of option deals are going to journalists who are covering the secretive organization.” — Atlantic Wire

New Zealand journo imprisoned

“A Kiwi journalist languishing in a Middle Eastern jail was investigating a people smuggling ring at the time of his arrest. Glen Johnson, 28, is in jail in the Lahj province of Yemen, where President Ali Abdullah Saleh is fighting an uprising that has left hundreds of people dead and thousands homeless.” —  NZ Herald

Phone hacking suspect released on bail

“A 34-year old female journalist has been released on bail after she was arrested by Scotland Yard on suspicion of illegally accessing voicemail messages. Press Association royal reporter Laura Elston was arrested when she attended an appointment at a central London police station at around 3pm.” —  The Guardian