A certain slack-jawed wonderment ran around the room at yesterday’s Media140 conference in Sydney, when a senior News Ltd journalist rose to spruik the vested corporate interests of her employer…
Future of media
The highlights and lowlights of Media140
Margaret Simons wraps up the recent social-media-types-get-together-to-tweet-about-talking-about-Twitter Media140 conference in Sydney. Where is social media headed in Australia? Can it save journalism, or will it just kill it faster?
The ABC plans for world domination
Yesterday, ABC chief Mark Scott announced the broadcaster’s plans to become a global media force. Is the ABC pitching to become a propaganda arm of the Australian Government? asks Karl Quinn; and is that really something taxpayers should be funding?
Caroline Overington drops some hints on Rupert’s paywall plans (and tangles with Annabel Crabb)
Margaret Simons reports live from the Media140 conference in Sydney, where journalist Caroline Overington pissed off News Ltd by talking about its paywall plans, had a crack at the ABC, and clashed with Annabel Crabb.
The ABC needs a Pacific Solution
Mark Scott is pitching for a dramatic expansion in the ABC’s international presence, but Australia just isn’t enough of a cultural heavyweight to compete with America or the UK. Why not focus on the Pacific region, where we actually have some cultural credibility?
Mark Scott on merging media professionals and their audience
The ABC will be experimenting with new methods of producing journalism through “pro-am” collaborations between media professionals and the audience, the ABC managing director Mark Scott said at the Media140 conference in Sydney this morning, writes Margaret Simons.
The ABC gets social and local
Margaret Simons reports live from the Media140 conference, where ABC chief Mark Scott has made some announcements about Auntie’s future: a digital media project in local communities, ABC “widgets” for social media pages, and staff guidelines for using social media.
iTunes for print? Selling the story instead of the magazine
Online aggregator Maggwire.com is planning “to do for magazines what iTunes did for music”, by selling “premium” magazine articles for a few bucks online. It may save the companies, but could it kill off the printed versions in the process?
Why e-Readers are not the future of magazines
The Kindle and its ilk may be taking the newspaper and book worlds by storm, but they’re not going to revolutionise the way we read magazines anytime soon: the screens, formatting and lack of interactivity just aren’t up to the task.
When a city loses its newspaper
When a newspaper goes bust — as they’re increasingly want to do these days — it isn’t just the writers and readers who are affected: government becomes less accountable and society becomes stupider.
How to save business media: more sex and cow farts
Business magazines are going bust and Stanley Bing knows why: they’re full of boring rich farts. Time for less “what old guys are thinking” and more “what young people are doing”.
Imagining life behind the pay-wall
The year is 2012 and the news is no longer free: Michael Wolff is in prison, Fox has renamed itself The Glenn Beck Channel, a NYT sub costs $7000-per-year, and a cultural divide has formed between the news-haves and news-have-nots…
What will the web look like in 5 years? Chinese
Google CEO Eric Schmidt predicts what the Web will look like five years from now: Chinese-language sites will dominate, social media will continue its epic rise, and will all come in real time via super-fast broadband.
The upside to the newspaper downturn
The plummeting circulation figures of US newspapers isn’t all bad news: the environment, journalistic standards and the internet may all reap the benefits. The Atlantic Wire rounds up the media pundits who still view the news-stand as half-full.
Future of the ABC: less broadcaster, more webmaster
The shift in the ABC’s Arts programming from TV and radio to the web heralds a much larger metamorphosis for the broadcaster, in which the web is its primary form and other mediums just exist to feed it content, writes Karl Quinn.
newspaper death watch 
Newspapers enter their death spiral
The circulation figures for the top 25 newspapers in the US have just been released, and they’re horrifying, says Megan McArdle. This isn’t just the end of the newspaper as we know it — it’s the end of the newspaper full stop.
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.
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.
Why a Tory victory is just what Rupert wants
If the Conservative Party gain power in the UK, they will “rip up” the BBC’s royal charter, deregulating the TV industry to improve the market for commercial operators, according to the party’s shadow culture secretary.
An Alvin and the Chipmunks led revival
Rupert Murdoch at his annual News Corporation meeting looks to an Alvin and the Chipmunks sequel to provide News Corporation with a Happy Christmas.
Mark Scott’s fall of Rome fallacy
ABC chief Mark Scott’s comparison of the ongoing media revolution and the fall of the Roman Empire hardly fills one with confidence, says Trevor Cook: after the “fall” came the Dark Ages.
Rupert the Sun King’s moral posture takes on a slouch
Over the weekend, Rupert Murdoch used some nasty language at the so-called World Media Summit in Beijing to slag off the likes of Google and Yahoo, describing them as content “kleptomaniacs” because they aggregate News Corporation’s content.
2010: year of the e-reader
The world’s media pundits are predicting a huge Christmas boom in sales of e-readers — spurred by the release of the new Kindle. Will 2010 become known as the year the book died?
Tech kings overthrow the media mogul empire
The media empire is dead. Tech moguls like Apple’s Steve Jobs of Apple and Google’s Sergey Brin and Larry Page now control the distribution of news, and the era of old-school moguls like Ted Turner and Rupert Murdoch has come to an end.
Le Monde cuts the crap: buy our paper or we can’t survive
In what is surely a landmark in journalism, international paper Le Monde Diplomatique has made a direct and blunt appeal to its readers: buy our paper more regularly or take out a subscription, or we’ll go broke.
