bronwen clune

Thought it was worth pointing out a great piece in Crikey today by Dr John Cokley from The University of Queensland  about the MEAA’s role in the Fairfax sackings.

I’ve been having similar thoughts - I’ve yet to see an MEAA event advertised that seems to have any grasp of the changes taking place in media - other than to point out that its happening.  Dr Cokley writes:

The future of journalism rests with journalists, not with the owners and managers of the processes of capital designed to deliver journalism. This is the incredibly simple distinction which MEAA officials have failed to make explicit – perhaps even to realise – in the current stoush (and in all previous ones I’ve witnessed since I paid dues from 1981-1995).

You can read the full piece here.

Argh, twice I’ve added categories with typos and I can’t seem to edit them. Does anyone know if there is a way of doing that?

Kthnxbai.

I’ve mentioned before that I’d like to start doing a bit of videocasting, but at the moment time is my limitation. That was until I was invited to be a “pre-alpha” tester for Seesmic, serial entrepreneur and man with the sexy accent Loic Le Meur’s latest start-up.

The Pulver TV show where I was interviewed by Chris Brogan also featured Loic so it was fitting that it was Chris gave me an invite to Seesmic and also a testament to the shrinking world we live in. Either that or we are all trapped in the same bubble

So what is Seesmic? I’ve heard it described as “video Twitter” and from what I’ve seen that sums up the basics pretty well and there are a lot of people using it as a video lifestream. I like that idea and it seems the users on there are really getting into it. A lot of the video conversations - you can reply to other videos - revolve round Seesmic itself. It will be interesting to see how this evolves, as more users join the community and think about creative uses for the service. I’ve said before that for me a community has really evolved when it finds new uses for services beyond the original intentions. Twitter is an example of this, it’s gone beyond just about “what people are doing”.

For me Seesmic is an easy informal way to video blog, and I intend to use it that way and try and try and show the world some of the great innovation that is going on in Perth and Australia. I’m going to make it my mission to interview as many people as possible and develop my Seesmic stream into a voice for the Australian start-up community. Yes, I could do it on YouTube, but Seesmic has the added bonus of sending it out to the social communities I’m involved in - it can post the video to YouTube, send it to Twitter and hopefully soon be able to send them to this blog.

My other motive for getting involved is I’m really interested in investigating Seesmic’s potential as a Cit J reporting tool, where Cit Js can upload video from Seesmic to norgs. Better still when they can do that directly from their mobile phones. I love this space and Seesmic really excites me.

Found this cool little tool called the Blog Readability Test. And it turns out that you need a high school education to understand my blog. Totally pointless, but fun all the same

I tried it out for a couple of friend’s blogs, and there was quite a variation, but I won’t say who was at the bottom of the class.

I knew that most people who write on PerthNorg were pretty bright, but this confirmed things:

Go Cit J’s!

This caught my eye on the weekend in The West Australian and if it’s true it is totally outrageous.

Under the headline “Fairfax hires Labor lobbyists” it read (the story does not appear to be online):

“Eastern States media group Fairfax has hired Labor strategists Hawker Britton to help in its negotiations with the State Government as part of its plans to set up a news website in Perth.

The West Australian also understands Hawker Britton has employed former premier Geoff Gallop’s chief-of-staff Sean Walsh, who ran Dr Gallop’s office for five years.

Hawker Britton’s Perth office is run by John Whitelaw, the former chief-of-staff to Police Minister John Kobelke. Former Labor MP Megan Anwyl was a director of the lobby group before leaving the position last week.

Mr Walsh could not be contacted yesterday, while Mr Whitelaw did not respond to requests for comment and Mr Anwyl refused to comment.

The West Australian revealed yesterday that the WA Government and its senior public servants were meeting senior Fairfax executives to discuss plans for their online service.

Paul Giles, acting manager of strategic communication in the Government Media Office, said in a letter to the public servants that the meeting was a chance to “discuss news format, editorial stance and media mix along with advertising opportunities, promotional activity and any other matters of interest.”

There have been rumours of Fairfax coming to Perth for some time, I blogged about it in March. So the move into the West Australian market is not so surprising, but what are they talking to the Government about? Since when do news corporations talk to the government about editorial stance?

There is no need for Fairfax to talk to the Government about launching an online news service for any legal reasons - online news remains out of the scope of media ownership laws.

The West Australian has a somewhat strained relationship with the current Labor Government - Health Minister Jim McGinty called for editor Paul Armstrong to be sacked over a health story that eventually made its way to the Press Council and which The West subsequently lost. So the doors are open for another news organisation to court favour with the Government - after all they are one of the biggest spenders of advertising dollars.

I don’t think replacing one media bias with another is a positive thing. And mainstream media wonders why we are so cynical? They make it too easy.

I’ve been asked a few times if I have a personal blog and I’ve been meaning to set one up for some time. At PerthNorg, I have a blog called Norgdom, which I’ve treated as a personal blog as well as a place to write about PerthNorg and citizen journalism.

But lately, I’ve found I have some things to say outside of that, so I have taken the plunge and set up this blog.

So while I have had the idea for some time, my call to action was Podcamp and listening to Nick Hodge and Duncan Riley talk about ‘personal branding’. And I don’t mean because I want to be seen as a “brand”, rather I want to be seen as someone who has semi-intelligent things to say.

Add to that the conversations Rich Giles, Duncan and Cameron Reilly and I had about ‘putting yourself out there’ and I had no choice but to take the plunge. I’m like a red bull to a challenge, and that’s either going to be my making or my undoing.

So this is me “stepping up”.