As it happens, I had a look today and found an excellent article on the court case against Lehmann Brothers. But in general, I find their items boringly and predictably left wing. Though everyone is entitled to a viewpoint, adopting a firm left wing view in an independent media outlet is brave in 2013. It’s the lack of objectivity that undoes a media channel of either extreme. You know what they’re going to say before you read the article.

Any story on climate change, boat people, Palestinians, Tony Abbott, Julia Gillard, the carbon tax, the NBN, the resources industry, live sheep or cattle exports or gay marriage is utterly predictable in the Global Mail. What’s the point of reading it?

Great yarn today re: TGM. I find it pompous, six weeks behind the news cycle and utterly devoid of insight. Delusions of grandeur.

Their claimed “traffic spike” in February barely broke the 150,000 visits in a month mark.. far from being substantial. The rest was downhill.

Anyway – I thought you might be interested in the follow chart – month on month traffic figures from Australia via measurement firm Experian Hitwise.

See here:

The global Mail’s fundamental problem has been that it ia a narrow preachy left wing editorial straight-jacket. I already subscribe to one of those.

My view TGM does quality long form stories with a real indy streak. And indy is what counts.

Secondly, with the threats to Fairfax ever closer, real democracy does not have the luxury of sledging TGM as a refuge for Fairfax of the 90ies. Indeed we should be so lucky. We need people who are likely to muscle up to the seriously nasty and powerful institutions, not just throw flaming cocktails that make a big noise and fizzle out.

Thirdly, people getting crunched and losing their jobs is traumatic, no doubt. One has to read down the substance of the critique due to emotion to some degree. For instance evidence of improper behaviour is far more probative than generalised gripes. A sick worker with a brain tumour - that’s tragic but is it really TGM’s role to nurse her back to a gungho (not to mention dangerous) career. I mean might be time to not go back to the middle east what?

4. Personally I think the side scroll is delightful, not for everyone but still very nice and elegant. Not every browser can read it? Come on, there only about 3 browsers that count.

5. I don’t put all my chickens in crikey, or new matilda, not by a long shot.

6. Graeme Wood is great with his public philanthropy. Never met the dude.

It’s ironic that Graeme Wood condones the treatment of Jess Hill post brain surgery when he was so close to Nick Olle’s father Andrew … who died of a brain tumour.

For a brand-new media publication, they seem completely ignorant of the work that’s been going on in data journalism. Furthermore, their editorial team doesn’t appear to know much about economics - this piece of innumerate rubbish about HSR is exemplary.

It’s a shame that so much money has been blown, and personal trauma has been inflicted on many of its staff, to so little effect.

I almost never go to a site on the off-chance that I might find something interesting. If I susbscribe, I expect to be notified that there is something new that is worth my attention.

One thing I noticed after the change of editorship, was that I began getting more frequent e-mails. Which I took as an indication that something had been broken and has been fixed.

I hoped for more. I still do, although that is fading.