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CRIKEY, credible? People do go on. I've been editing Crikey for nigh on three years now, a challenging climax to a life in journalism that began with a weekly copy boy shift on the Sporting Globe in 1972 and has taken in The Canberra Times, Juke, The Herald, the Sunday Herald, 15 years at The Age, blah blah ...

People won't let it go. How credible is Crikey, they ask? It's online isn't it? Is that real journalism? And this is what I say: that after working through a media epoch that has reduced the majority of Australian newspapers to journalistic zombies -- some selling, some not, but all driven either by ideology, populism or commercial desperation -- the stuff we do at Crikey is a return to something simple, wholesome and traditional.

Coming here was a breath of fresh and journalistically earnest air after years at papers whose editors put senior management meetings before editorial conferences, papers whose physical composition was determined by revenue streams rather than reader interest, papers whose editorial costs and necessities were most often seen as the one significant impediment to an otherwise cracking business model.

Crikey is as close as I've been in decades to a journalistic product that pursues and presents the story in simple, unambiguous terms. We aren't chasing copy to fill some advertising niche, we're not chasing hits with celebrity driven infotainment. All Crikey does, and very simply is chase and distribute good yarns. Some worthy. Some serious. Some breaking. Some just good fun.

There's a bit more to it of course: we're independently owned and so not prey to the often stultifying dictates of corporate discipline, taste and conviction.

We report, we check, we legal ... Crikey even pays its contributors. We're curious, wonkishly absorbed in the issues of public life, but tuned to popular culture. There's no overlay of complex imperatives. If we think something is worthy of a readership we'll give it a run.

But the interesting thing is that Crikey manages to observe a conservative emphasis on the story and a significant agenda while simultaneously developing a journalistic business model that is both small-s successful and revolutionary.

While all the talk in big media is on how to value online content, and whether that might somehow build into some sort of subscription model, Crikey is about the only non-finance news site in the world that actually does it.

If the emerging future of journalism is a deft online product that produces its own premium reported content at a price, supports an engaged interactive community and aggregates a thoughtfully curated rolling guide to everything else at the click of a mouse, then that -- humbly, credibly -- is Crikey.

Jonathan Green, Editor of Crikey

The Australian, June 08 2009