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November 15, 2008
Have we reached the point yet when the news itself is less significant than the identity of the organisation or journalist telling us about it? One of those confused signifier/signified postmodern excesses where the sign is an entity unto itself, self-signifying? Signifying nothing, as the saying goes?
It's possible to know that the West Australian is easily the worst newspaper in the country without ever having read it, and that it's as unashamedly partisan as Fox News. You can be familiar with the reputation of its apparently worst celebrity polemicist Paul Murray without having read a word he's written. Having migrated online the paper is also accumulating brand power through a questionable comments policy. Rolan Stein calls the result toxic crap, which is being polite about it.
Mark Bahnisch describes the Daily Telegraph's subtle promptings for the NSW Labor Government to sacrifice itself for the greater good:
The Sydney Daily Telegraph, a newspaper which likes to see itself as some sort of courageous voice of the people, has been losing readers hand over fist, and more recently, an editor. The paper is also running a campaign for the NSW government to sack itself. It’s impossible to read any article in the online version on state politics without intrusive links in the middle of the story directing readers to its petition, and a plethora of other anti-Rees widgets, rants and commentary.
Is it a newspaper or some kind of uber citizen? The will of the paper is the big story of the day. Could they be more self-referential? Would it have been more appropriate for the editor to publish a letter to himself?
This is the game the Australian has been playing with the "Rudd's Bush G20 comment" story.
In a kind of tail-whip with front-flip logic, celebrity columnist Dennis "We understand the G20 story because we own it" Shanahan cleverly blames the whole thing on Media Watch. Apparently, if Jonathan Holmes wasn't on Christmas break everything would have been sorted by now, and everyone would understand that the alleged G20 slip was more important than whether Chris Mitchell was the source. Kind of like how a two point movement in the polls last year was more significant than whether it was Dennis saying so in the Australian. He didn't convince anybody then and it's unlikely he's convincing anyone now. Why might that be?
Christopher Pearson is another celebrity columnist cum living brand who wishes to share his opinion of fellow brand name Fran Kelly, and his doubts about her ability to fully capture the magnificence of brand Howard in the much anticipated ABC series The Howard Years.
My initial reaction is that the choice of Kelly to do the lion's share of the interviewing and the narration doesn't augur well.
He would say that, wouldn't he? Brand Pearson has a thing about brand ABC that's as familiar as Vegemite, McDonald's and Nikes. It's like Julie Andrews pointing out that she likes singing in the hills. Can we reasonably expect that in the not too far distant future KevinPM will be echoing Obama's Fox comments, "Even the Australian agrees with me on [whatever]"
In his Boyer Lecture on the future of news media, Rupert Murdoch tells us:
readers want what they've always wanted: a source they can trust. That has always been the role of great newspapers in the past. And that role will make newspapers great in the future.
No arguments there. Readers do appear to want a source they can trust. It would be nice though, if we were being asked to trust what we're being told, rather than this reassuring but pointless trust we now have that yesterday's talking head will still be there tomorrow saying exactly what they said last week. Right there you have your problem with associating a generalised version of trust with great newspapers.
In short, we are moving from news papers to news brands.
Less of the news, more of the brands, apparently.
The [Wall St] Journal has the advantage of having a very loyal readership -- a brand known for quality -- and editors who take the readers and their interests seriously. This helps explain why the Journal continues to defy industry trends.
So why can't we have one of those? Why are we stuck with brands as reputable and trustworthy as funnel webs, journalists more interested in themselves and one another than anything else, editors who can't tell the difference between themselves God, and newspapers that really should be on a register of lobbyists, since it's not possible for a media organisation to be a member of a political party?
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The points you raise are interesting. I hope someone asks Fairfax for a comment so I can evaluate their merit.