Thoughts on renewing my Crikey nominations

I’ve just paid $240 to renew my Crikey subscription for another two years. My current one doesn’t expire till early 2011 but I fell victim to their end of financial year marketing campaign which saw the wonderful First Dog on the Moon cross the dreaded church and state divide to spruik for business. Plus, with New Matilda going out of business this week there is now a nasty breeze from the hole in the Australian independent media space and I thought it was time to insulate against it.

I’ve been subscribing to Crikey now for four years or so and while they have a mixed record, I enjoy their daily digest of news served up in my favourite online tool: email. I keep hearing Gen Ys and beyond can’t tolerate email but as an asynchronous long or short form communication mechanism, it remains the best of its class - even if it has been in widespread use now for almost 20 years. It hardly makes Crikey “new media” but it certainly still keeps them independent and mildly profitable, unlike New Matilda which fell into the gap between subscription and free content.

In their email, Crikey deliver 20 or so stories in a package every lunchtime. I’m usually busy around that time and will often skim through most of the stories. But I will always take the time to read some of the articles. I like Bernard Keane’s post-public servant acerbic take on politics (even if he wears his Labor voting on his sleeve). I also enjoy Guy Rundle’s manic mutterings and then there is the incomparable First Dog on the Moon, Andrew Marlton. Marlton is quickly establishing himself as the cult Australian cartoonist of his generation borrowing liberally from other great cartoonists such as Michael Leunig and Jon Kudelka allied to his own native off the wall wit. His arrogant, foul-mouthed version of Jasper, Kevin Rudd’s Cat (who seems more suited to being Paul Keating’s pet) is well on the way to becoming one of the all-time great Australian fictional characters.

I also like Crikey’s well informed media coverage from Margaret Simons and the occasional tech rant from Stilgherrian. It has also collected a varied and lively collection of blogs under its banner. Oddly enough, the one thing I I don’t care too much for is Crikey's rumour and gossip. This is the section for which it initially became famous, and how the publication is still described by bigger media when they want to pour scorn on it.

Its skirting along the edge of defamation cost Crikey’s original owner Stephen Mayne his product but perhaps that was a good thing for the Australian mediasphere. It meant the more comercially-savvy Eric Beecher came in to take it over. Beecher has the same impassioned belief in the power of a free press that Mayne had. But he also has business smarts. His appointment of Amanda Gome as Private Media CEO shows the publication is heading in a new direction. Gome has a journalism background but she is also a publisher and a professor of business at Melbourne’s RMIT.

That new direction may have interesting ramifications for Crikey staff. Jason Whittaker took on the role of Crikey’s new deputy editor after Sophie Black was promoted to editor when Jonathan Green left to take over the ABC's The Drum. Whittaker is on the public record (prior to his Crikey days, admittedly) as a passionate defender of the traditional separation of journalism and advertising - the “church and state” of media.

If their most recent advertising campaign is anything to go by, Gome and Beecher are no longer so sure such a strategy is effective. In no other industry would a refusal of two key branches to work together be tolerated - even if there is a great possibility of conflict of interest. Crikey is a business and it must perform like a business. Its democratic function, as New Matilda has just found out, is just a sidebar. The main game is making enough money to survive and then thrive. This requires everyone in the organisation working to the same objective. The fun part will be watching how Crikey evolves to meet that objective. I look forward to following the journey for the next two years.

Pandora’s Boxers: Crikey's "serious questions" about women

“The sight of women talking together has always made men uneasy, nowadays it means rank subversion," Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch, 1971.

On the whole, I like Crikey and its editor Jonathan Green. Green runs one of the few lively and independent voices in big Australian media and I enjoy their skewering of Australian political and media sacred cows. However, I did not think much of the “serious question” Green asked on Twitter last week. Why, he pondered, don't women subscribe to the online newsletter? Crikey has about 15,000 annual subscribers who pay $100 or thereabouts for a news and current affairs email five day a week. 70 percent of these are male, says Green. According to Green the “unbalance was weird.”

There were five reasons I didn’t think much of his question.

Firstly I am disposed to be cynical and say this is a disguised advertising ploy. Green may want to get people talking, but it wouldn’t hurt to lift his readership by 5,000 people. Secondly there is an assumption that the ratio of male to female readers is somehow an important matter that requires fixing and not merely a reflection of individual taste. Thirdly, if Crikey’s content is geared toward males, then they can solve it themselves. Half of their newsroom are female, as deputy editor Sophie Black reminds us. Though Black wanted “more talk on this”, perhaps they would be better served with more action. Fourthly the question ignores the cost of Crikey and the time investment required to read it. It is a great publication but also a luxury that requires discretionary wealth and time to take up the subscription.

But the fifth and biggest reason I didn’t like it was that Green was doing the “annual airing” of the whole tiresome battle of the sexes argument without a clear agenda as to where it might lead. What then did Green want to see as an outcome if it wasn’t simply about getting more readers for Crikey? Did he not know that many women would use this as an opportunity to remind Green that equality of the sexes remains a distant dream in 21st century Australia. As “a journalist since before you were born”, there are issues Jonathan Green might have been able to foresee.

But there were many who did take Green’s question seriously, including Crikey’s own Scott Steel aka Possum. The writer of Pollytics was inclined to do soul searching about the gender mix of his own readership. He said the ratio of male to female comments on Pollytics and fellow Crikey pseph blog Poll Bludger ranged “between about 4 to 1 on a good day, through to 10 to 1 depending on the topic.” He also bemoaned the “lack of big female political bloggers” and would eventually run into heavy traffic when he damned Hoyden About Town with the faint praise that they “touch[ed] on politics occasionally”.

And then the argument spun off in all sorts of directions. Lisa Gunders took the question head on. Assuming an acceptance of Steel’s premise (which she did not necessarily share), she mentioned two factors. Women wrote about different forms of politics which wend “under the radar”, she said. But the biggest reason was a lack of time. “Women are still carrying the major load in terms of housework and the relational work required to keep a household running these days,” she wrote. “Much of this work isn’t recognised and is so piecemeal that it chews up hours without you having anything to show for it.”

Sarah Stokely noted the women bloggers were there but could not be seen. She linked to Geek Feminist’s question “where are all the men bloggers?” which effectively skewered this particular blindness. Larvatus Prodeo also used the metaphor of sight and the male gaze. Anna Winter’s post there suggested that women were creating alternative niches in the public sphere away from the sexism, the "shrill and angry tone”, and the dismissal of women’s experience they find in the “hard politics blogs”. Winter said that if men were noticing the absence of women wherever they go, then “perhaps the more relevant question is why they are avoiding you”.

Hoyden About Town also weighed in about invisibility. Viv (Tigtog) and Lauredhel’s blog is one of the heavyweight feminist Australian blogs and its comment ratio is closer to 70 to 30 percent in favour of women. But unlike Crikey, it seems to be happy enough with the split, and does not indulge in any hand wringing about changing it. Lauredhel posted five of the comments (three men, two woman) from the Pollytics thread which its readers ripped into. Softestbullet wrote that Jason Wilson’s “Big-p Political” comment means “about dudes.” Lauredhel pointed out that woman also post about gardening, and food, and parenting, and life. “For me,” she wrote, this was “part of that is a deliberate political strategy.”

FuckPoliteness, as the name of the blog suggests, was not inclined to give much truck to Crikey’s arguments. While the big P penis people discussed big P political issues, said the blog's author, women were “just discussing media, law, rape, issues with the medical profession, disability politics, invisibility, breastfeeding discrimination, conduct of politicians, live blogging elections, internet censorship, race politics, divisions in feminism, transphobia, homophobia, talk back radio, life/work/study/family/friends/leisure balances, and about a million other things.” She said that the public sphere that existed in the comment sections of blogs such as Larvatus Prodeo was a race to the bottom where women faced aggression and smug superiority.

That blogger may want to fuck politeness but she does want a place where she could discuss these issues in “open and respectful ways”. But males are everywhere and do not always behave well – despite the best efforts of Crikey, Pollytics, Jason Wilson or Larvatus Prodeo. In a snark-infested internet, perhaps an open and respectful public sphere can only be found in a forum moderated by women. As Lady Psyche in Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta Princess Ida reminds us:
Man will swear and man will storm-
Man is not at all good form-
Is of no kind of use-
Man's a donkey - Man's a goose-
Man is coarse and Man is plain-
Man is more or less insane-
Man's a ribald - Man's a rake,
Man is Nature's sole mistake!

Brisbane Writers Festival – The Crikey Guide to the Election

The subject of the 12:40 slot this afternoon on the sunny terrace of the Queensland State Library was the “Crikey Guide to the 2007 Election”. Crikey is a successful daily email (and website) with 15,000 subscribers. The session was chaired by lawyer and Crikey commentator Greg Barns and featured Crikey’s chief political correspondent Christian Kerr and another occasional Crikey commentator Mungo MacCallum.

Barns introduced the session by noting how boring this election was. He asked wasn’t a political contest supposed to be about ideas? Barns harked back to the 1993 election when Liberal leader John Hewson released his Fightback package; a prescription of tough, economically "dry" measures, including a radical overhaul of Medicare and Industrial Relations. Barns described it as possibly the most comprehensive package ever devised by a western political leader. Opposed to Hewson was Paul Keating who stood for a demonstrable set of values. It was a genuine contest of ideas.

That election stands in stark contract to the paucity of debate in 2007. While the Liberals hounded Mohamed Haneef out of the country, the shadow minister for Immigration stayed silent for three weeks. It was typical of the fact that Labor would not stick its head out on any issue it thought the government might wedge it on. In an absence of policy debate, there was very little difference between the parties.

Barns said this was an extraordinary situation and not very helpful in a democracy. As for the election itself, Barns (who lives in Tasmania) saw the two Liberal Tasmanian seats of Bass and Braddon as crucial. If they fall to Labor, they will win the election. This is why the pulp mill debate has been so important. Labor, as usual, have kept quiet on the issue, while the high profile Geoffrey Cousins led push to make it a federal election is likely to backfire; Australians don’t like being told by celebrities what to do.

Christian Kerr spoke next. His was a rambling speech of political interludes, calculated as he said “to lower the tone of the proceedings”. Kerr began by saying that until 1955 the marginal Tasmanian seat of Braddon was known as Darwin for some strange reason. (The actual reason was that Charles Darwin's famous ship the Beagle dropped anchor on the north-west coast to replenish supplies of fresh water during its voyage to the Southern Ocean). In 1985 a man wearing a chicken suit walked into the federal parliament and sat on the government front bench before being removed.

Kerr then did a cook’s tour of assorted political characters starting with the current “firebrand” Liberal member for Indi Sophie Mirabella who was appointed chair of the Australian parliament's Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters despite failing to disclose her own interests including that of Big Tobacco. Then there was early Prime Minister Alfred Deakin who reported anonymously for the London Morning Post while still in office. Kerr also found time to discuss William Jack who was a NSW sitting member for 17 years in which he only made five speeches. There was also Billy Hughes who was a member of four political parties (Labour, Nationals, UAP and Liberal) as well as an independent during his time in parliament. Kerr’s final point of obscurity was that John Howard’s childhood home is now a KFC.

Mungo MacCallum was the final speaker. He said Labor’s problem is the same one it has always had: while the polls favour them, no-one can be sure if the swing is general or particular. Will Labor gain ground in some areas and not do so well in others. Labor needs to win 16 seats to win Government. And Peter Beattie hasn’t made it any easier for them. Labor were on track to win up to eight seats in Queensland before the council amalgamation debate reared its head. Now they are looking at winning possibly five. MacCallum believed Labor would pick up Bass and Braddon in Tasmania and win three or four more in South Australia. They won’t lose any in the West and may pick up another one each in Victoria and NT. That still leaves them short and dependent on what MacCallum called “the imponderabilities of NSW”.

MacCallum said Rudd is right – the election will be close. The problem will be sustaining momentum to the end. But, he said, if the swing is really on, it’s on. If we see the kind of national swing we saw in 1972 and 1996, Labor will “breeze in”, he said. But if the swing is partial, it will be very tight. MacCallum said his own feeling was that the Coalition is in an awful state at the moment and unlikely to pull out of it. Howard will leave it to the last conceivable date to call the election but the Coalition are “sufficiently stuffed” for Labor to win, he said.

Walkley Talkie

“Nothing gets journalists going like a story about journalists”. So writes Margaret Simons in today’s edition of Crikey. Simons was describing the aftermath of last night’s Australian journalism awards night’s biggest sensation, the onstage stoush between Crikey’s founder Stephen Mayne and the News Ltd journalist Glenn Milne. Mayne was presenting an award at the ceremony in Melbourne when a clearly drunken Milne rushed up onto the stage and pushed him off the platform.

The incident was captured on the SBS TV coverage of the night. Milne accused Mayne of being a disgrace to journalism and making things up. He was quickly restrained by the stage manager but broke free again to continue the tirade. Mayne fled the stage a second time as the irate Milne made his case. He was eventually overpowered by security and escorted off the premises. When Mayne finally had the stage to himself, he made an announcement “on behalf of Rupert Murdoch” describing Milne as “the former Sunday Telegraph political correspondent”.

There has been no love lost between Milne and Mayne since Mayne criticised Milne’s reporting of NSW politician John Brogden’s suicide attempt in 2005. Milne hinted that Brogden had called Helena Carr, wife of the former Labor Premier Bob Carr a "mail-order bride", and also sexually harassed two female journalists at a function a month earlier. Mayne argued the public interest was "not particularly strong", and not powerful enough to warrant reporting Brogden's off-the-record remarks.

Nevertheless Mayne’s prediction about the sacking of Milne is unlikely to come true. Crikey’s Jane Nethercote asked Sunday Telegraph editor Neil Breen if Milne’s employment might be threatened as a result. Absolutely not, said Breen. However he "will not be patted on the back for what he did last night". Instead, he will be "disciplined internally.” Milne himself apologised today saying “I lamentably mixed alcohol and migraine medication with shocking consequences”. These “shocking consequences” dominated the rest of the proceedings. It totally overshadowed the rest of the awards including the most coveted prize, the Gold Walkley. That award was won by the Four Corners team of Liz Jackson, Peter Cronau and Lin Buckfield for their investigative report on the arming of a civilian militia in East Timor.

This was the most important of 34 awards across all media categories including new Walkleys for sport reporting and sport feature writing. The veteran Canberra press gallery leader, Michelle Grattan won the Walkley for journalism leadership. She is the political editor for The Age newspaper and is also a political commentator on ABC Radio National. She was praised by journalists and politicians alike for the accuracy of her journalism although Labor leader Kim Beazley also called her a “serial pest”.

This is the 51th anniversary of the award ceremony. The Walkleys were established in 1956, with five categories, by Ampol Petroleum founder Sir William Gaston Walkley. The New Zealand born Walkley appreciated the media's support for his oil exploration efforts. Walkley was a dreamer who envisaged an Australian continent holding 150 million people, especially if the government built highways for settlement and defence, and diverted coastal rivers inland. He became interested in soccer when he realised that so many people from overseas were making their homes in Australia. He was instrumental in Australia joining FIFA in 1963 and he was anointed president of the Oceania region two years later.

Walkley quickly understood the value of publicity. He courted the media and flew journalists around the nation to business and sporting occasions. He great goodwill and confidences with the media. In 1956 he endowed awards that recognised emerging talent in the Australian media. After he died, the awards were bequeathed to the Australian Journalists' Association which is now part of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA). Each October the finalists are named and the awards are presented a month later. The full list of this year’s award winners can be found here.