Hard News: Trust. Us.
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You don't think writers like Jane Clifton mightn't constantly be on the lookout for interesting new gigs that might allow them to work beyond the parameters of what they're currently doing?
Or that a hypothetical Crikey-like site might not benefit from recruiting a few high-profile eyeball-capturing names at the outset?
Actually, now that you mention it, I do.
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Like the Huffington Post, except, y'know, properly paid.
Thanks Jolisa, very interesting article. I always assumed the likes of Shearer and Maher were treating HuffPo like a nice, easy avenue of vanity publishing, jotting down opinion pieces without the stress of a deadline and with the certainty of being published and read. And it bears noting that they both make in the area of 20 million plus a year, I would imagine (pretty sure in the case of the former), so if you offered to pay for their posts they might laugh at you unless you came up with a pretty indecent figure.
I'm more concerned with the posters on the site who don't otherwise make a princely living, especially since they're the ones providing the real substance. If they in fact don't get paid (the article is not terribly clear on that, it would appear so even though the only contributors mentioned are the celebs), then it's a concern but surely if they do in fact get compensated in terms of visibility, and with the visibility come offers of paid work, HuffPo will have to start paying them to retain them. I'm pretty sure the frontpage bloggers on DKos and MyDD get paid.
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If you want an example of what's wrong with our monopoly newspapers, look at this article today in the Dom Post, headlined:
Riot cops quell fighting in inner-city mallThe first para is:
Riot police had to control fights among a crowd of almost 200 people as they tried to arrest a suspected thief wielding nunchaku in Wellington's Manners Mall.
Sounds like large scale rioting eh? I saw this and thought "OMG, what happened last night". Then I saw it was at 4:30pm, when I was at my desk, less than 100m from the carnage. I did notice three police cars around that time - they stopped by the mall for five minutes or so with their lights on before driving off.
What actually looks like happened was that one of our local community care cases, when rumbled for shoplifting, decided to take on store staff kung fu style. When the cops arrived to deal, the crowd of kids that hang out there gathered round to watch the fun (apparently yelling "Taser, Taser"). I'm guessing there was a bit of the usual playground fighting amongst the punks (they do this all the time, as kids tend to).
But our quality local paper pumps it up into the Brixton Riots. Mind you, I'm impressed that they know the correct plural of "nunchak".
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Mind you, I'm impressed that they know the correct plural of "nunchak".
You know, that was the part that really impressed me about that story as well.
Didn't take the rest of it seriously: had a mental picture of Hong Kong Phooey and that was about it.
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If the 4th Estate/5th Column really are making up shit (or over-inflating it), wouldn't there be grounds for a Press Council complaint?
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I too would love to contribute to an endeavour such as this.
However, I think the results would need access to the mainstream media's audience. We already have high quality, well researched and well written journalism available on the internet (such as PA) and it doesn't cost me a bean.
The issue (as I see it) is how to take this higher level of journalism to those who aren't motivated to seek it out.
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But would it? Be content, I mean?
that's the issue. i'd want to think carefully about what i was to research and put up.
which wouldn't make me a 'core' writer...
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We already have high quality, well researched and well written journalism available on the internet (such as PA) and it doesn't cost me a bean.
PA is marvellous, but much of what it publishes is commentary, not original reporting. Apart from PA there's Poneke (who definitely does write original albeit parochial stories), No Right Turn, The Fundy Post... who else is there?
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Oh yeah, from Ian Bettereidge via Danny O'Brien, on journalism vs mere blogging: "Journalism is when you pick up the phone."
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Sorry that I haven't been involved in this discussion for the last few days. I've been up to my neck in work and a baby with a cold. Exhausted to the point of just falling straight asleep whenever I sit down.
To answer Stephen's question, I would envisage a 'PA Weekly' as being the arm of PA that predominantly does original journalism rather than commentary. This would involve dedicated 'subject columns' and a weekly in-depth 'feature article' (see more on this below) that would be ideal for the likes of Che to contribute to -- as long as it doesn't conflict with his paid employment, of course.
To save time, I'm just going to quote from one of my blathering emails...
Subject: Re: Ideas for future of PA
Date: Sun, 20 Jul 2008 22:30:58 +1200
From: David Haywood
To: Public Address WritersHi all,
... [DELETED SECTION]...
I've actually got a couple of ideas that I'd like to put on the table now (I've already discussed these with Jolisa, Keith, and Big Che).
1. A 'PUBLIC ADDRESS WEEKLY' ONLINE MAGAZINE
The idea is to draw together talented people from across the NZ blogosphere to produce a daily roll-out of specialist columns that build into a weekly online (and later, a print-on-demand) magazine.
The columnists would consist of existing PA writers, as well as talented bloggers such as Stephen Judd, Idiot Savant, Don Christie, Moira Goldie, Paul Litterick, Robyn Gallagher, Craig Ranapia, Kracklite, Bart Janssen, Steven Price, etc.
Each columnist would commit to one column per fortnight to be self-posted on a given day. For example, odd-numbered weeks might be:
Monday: Politics (Idiot Savant), Cinema (Moira Goldie)
Tuesday: Music (Graham Reid), Economy (Stephen Judd)
Wednesday: Books (Jolisa Gracewood), Sport (Hadyn Green)
Thursday: Science (Bart Janssen), Religion (Paul Litterick)
Friday: Editorial (Russell Brown), Feature article (various), Humour (Damian Christie).
Even-numbered weeks would then consist of roughly the same column subjects, but with different columnists. For example:
Monday: Politics (Craig Ranapia), Cinema (David Haywood)
Tuesday: Music (Chris Bell), Architecture (Kracklite).
...
Friday: Editorial (Russell Brown), Feature article (various), Humour (Emma Hart).
etc, etc...
From the daily reader's perspective, there would be two new posts to read on every weekday, and an expectation of a given topic on any given day. For the occasional (approx. weekly) reader there would be a week's worth of quality journalism on each visit.
The weekly in-depth feature article would be generated from two sources (a) solicited from academics, and (b) the contributing columnists each writing one feature article per year.
The online magazine set-up could be easily implemented with a clone of the existing PA Supermodel structure. Discussions from the various articles could feed into the existing PA fora, in parallel with the blogs from PA 'Classic'. The magazine would also be available as a downloadable PDF (properly typeset) compiled at the end of each week -- I can easily write software to do this in Latex and Python [NOTE 24AUG07: this has now been done], and obviously this opens up the future possibility for a paid print-on-demand version (for people who like to read on the dunny).
The motivating factors for the columnists to produce their fortnightly column and annual feature would be:
(a) Increased exposure for their own blogs.
(b) Profit-sharing based on advertising, readers' donations, and sponsorship.The hope would be that the 'Public Address Magazine' site would become THE site for quality independent NZ journalism, and would pull many more readers into Public Address. It would obviously be targetted as a higher quality alternative to the 'NZ Listener' -- possible slogan: "Like 'The Listener', but free, and not crap". [NOTE 24AUG07: this is a joke]
There is also the possibility of doing this in conjunction with Scoop (i.e. as a 'Public Address-Scoop Weekly).
Obviously someone would be needed to do some wrangling in terms of organizing the feature articles and PDF generation, and I'm happy to put my name forward for that (unpaid) job.
2. [DELETED SECTION]...
I'm a bit hamstring in further discussions on this topic because I really think it could only work it it were leveraged off PA (as a third arm to the blogs and system features). And it's really up to Russell to make the final decision as to where he wants PA to head, and then for the rest of the PAers to put our shoulders to the grindstone and help him do it.
Of course, the other PAers might not want to be involved. A couple of the PA writers have expressed some interest, but there's been an exhausted-sounding silence from most of the other PAers -- which, when you think about it, is totally fair enough. One PAer has definitely indicated that he doesn't think it's a good idea and wouldn't want to be involved (which, of course, is totally fair enough too, given what he's already got on his plate!)
For the moment that's where things stand.
The slightly interesting news is that Secret PA Plan 2 has been approved by Russell, and I'm working full-time to make that happen at the moment. It's a much more modest proposal, but it may help to (slightly) improve things for the PA writers...
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Monday: Cinema (David Haywood)
possible slogan: "Like 'The Listener', but free, and not crap". [NOTE 24AUG07: this is a joke]
Tell you what: it might as well not be a joke. As we've been routinely discussing in these parts, columnists at the Listener have been dropping like flies, and never a word of thanks or explanation even for long serving ones, like Russell, Romanos, and lately Philip Matthews. Now I'm sure some of these people were pushed, others moved on by their own choice. As a reader who's not privy to the backstage, I can only hope none of them were sent to a nice farm upstate, if you catch my drift.
Back to the subject of Philip Matthews, who's been replaced by two staff writers, Barnett and Nippert, who are doing an absolutely marvellous job of proving that not just anybody can write film reviews, and it in fact helps to, how shall I put it, know the first thing about films. Which they don't appear to, or if they do it's just not transpiring from their work. It's by no means just factually that the pair is deficient, but Nippert excelled this week by calling Bernardo Bertolucci a French director. Without wanting to sound too parochial, BB is no minor arthouse European bozo. He's a major arthouse European bozo.
If you listened closely, you could just hear the sound of another Listener subscription being cancelled.
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In Nippert's defence, he is a very good feature writer. Given the recent staff losses, this may be a simple case of overwork. Or it may be a case of some dumb fuck sub-editor changing 'Italian' to 'French'. This sort of sub-editor gaffe has happened to me and then been published under my name (I'm still recovering from it).
We didn't actually cancel, but alas, we couldn't bring ourselves to renew our Listener subscription this year (the end of Wide Area News was the last straw for us). Quite a sad feeling -- I've subscribed every year since I was a teenager...
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. . . Nippert excelled this week by calling Bernardo Bertolucci a French director.
Thanks for reminding me why I no longer read the bloody thing. Once upon a time Peter Wells reviewed films for the Listener. A real filmmaker who always produced challenging and thoughtful pieces, and was far too involved and passionate to care about maintaining any kind of cool factor. Which, IMHO, made him a seriously cool reviewer. Totally incompatible with the present don't-frighten-the-chooks editorial approach.
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This sort of sub-editor gaffe has happened to me and then been published under my name (I'm still recovering from it).
The very first column I wrote was "Edited" to make it mean exactly the opposite of my intention. It was a satirical piece about privatisation, I was against, and that, it appeared, was against editorial policy, so they changed it to read the way they wanted.
I think I must have scared the crap out of the editor, I burst into his office screaming like a banshee and demanded they either print what I wrote or I was outa there. They didn't change a word from then on, they just canned my column about a year later. -
That's very flattering David, but in reality my ability to write about economics is based on nothing more that some amateur reading, an obsession with the housing bubble, and extensive undergraduate bullshit experience.
(Did anyone read Bernard Hickey today? I would probably just write that column over and over and over again).
**REPLY**: Economics or banjo, obviously; whichever you felt more comfortable with... -- DH
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In Nippert's defence, he is a very good feature writer.
I never said he wasn't, but he's no film reviewer. He just can't put the films in any sort of context. So long as you're planning to compete, that's an area where things are made easier for you (although strictly speaking you'd be comparing yourself to Helen Wong I guess, and that's a whole different thing. Still.)
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I am unsure about leveraging the success of PA as the way forward for a new independent journalism outlet.
As has already been pointed out, part of PA's role is that of media commentator and would that not be compromised if it gets directly in the game?
I am also not sure how that would expand the audience. The key issue in my mind is not sourcing or paying for the material (there has already been a good commitment to that on this thread), but how that material is taken to the masses.
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I don't have time to boil down all of this right now, but I see a fund to finance journalism projects as completely different from the idea of a new publication, and more do-able.
The fund lets you make a much more compelling case as the honest broker. I think there are people who could be approached for assistance on a clear public-good basis who wouldn't see a reason to support a publication.
Also, commentary will survive regardless. What we're missing in New Zealand is resourcing for investigative reporting and heavily researched feature writing.
I'm going to think some more about this.
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I do think a stand-alone trust is a great idea -- no doubt about that. And a more do-able solution, in many ways.
But with a non-publishing trust, I just wish there was a way so that it wouldn't end up subsidizing Fairfax and APN for what they should be doing anyway. But maybe that's just a live fish you'd have to swallow...
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What we're missing in New Zealand is resourcing for investigative reporting and heavily researched feature writing.
Agreed. I also think we're missing decent venues for really full-on cultural critique and commentary, where top-notch critics can go to town in more than 600-words-or-less, and are compensated properly for their expertise and insight. (Think the books/culture pages in the New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Guardian, the London Review of Books, the NY Review of Books, and others -- it's not just intellectual window-dressing, it's real content).
But that's just me...
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But that's just me...
It's me too, to be honest. Review and editorial writing is my crack.
But, dispassionately, it's the really big jobs where there's a deficit, and where the public good can most amply be served.
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The copyright question is interesting. On one hand, you'd want to fairly let copyright rest with the author. On the other hand, you'd see virtue in funding content that could be freely distributed with attribution.
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Related to this (particularly re. Crikey) check out the move afoot at Possum Pollytics. It's encouraging to see his response to MSM's whining about bloggers is "bring it on!"
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What we're missing in New Zealand is resourcing for investigative reporting and heavily researched feature writing.
ah, i get it now.
i had thought that part of the objective was to see the publication of this great writing. to prevent these stories from being ignored by the infotainment msm that is.
especially after keith had so much trouble getting his sri lankan stories out last year.
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Canned my herald subscription yesterday. Been meaning to do that for a while.
What I need is a daily fix of good reporting, and I need it public transport friendly.
Suggestion: electronic distribution, cellwise in the wee hours when the networks must be quiet, to be read on a mobile e-book type device.
I could read the news on the way to work and a good piece of sci-fi on the way home.
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