News won’t ruin their Nine pals: Over at News Limited, online editors appear to be lacking some ticker when it comes to exposing their close friends at Channel Nine. On Wednesday afternoon, just hours after Crikey revealed the now notorious fake ACA hoon story, Perth Now, the Daily Telegraph, the Herald Sun and The Australian all posted a follow-up under the headline “A Current Affair hoon crusade ‘a fake'”.
An hour later, they were gone. Could News have been leaned on by Nine heavies anxious at a looming wave of bad online PR? News.com.au editor David Higgins told Crikey he was not responsible for individual sites’ content and couldn’t comment. Strangely, the Courier Mail and the News-owned Carsguide stories appear to have survived the cull. — Andrew Crook
We have the answer but do we know the question? With the rest of the media dutifully following up Crikey’s tip yesterday that Central Coast academic and former state election candidate Deborah O’Neill would be taking on Belinda Neal for preselection in Robertson, Daily Telegraph readers were already laying the groundwork for an internal revolt. Or were they? Check out the following series of screen grabs from yesterday’s Tele story which included a yes/no poll asking the question “Should Belinda Neal stand?” Problem being, that hours later the question had mysteriously changed to the somewhat different “Should Belinda Neal stand down?”.
Late this morning votes were running at 4499 yeses to 1096 noes. But in which direction, nobody knows. — Andrew Crook
Win a holiday (oh, and a million dollars). It appears the Australian Financial Review has gone very cold on its “win a million dollars” promotion following Crikey’s story that exposed the real odds of walking away with the cash. For those who missed it, the Fin splashed last week with a promotion promising new or renewing subscribers the chance to become a “millionaire”. But the fine print revealed that the winner, in addition to being drawn out of a hat, also had to negotiate a secret room containing 100 envelopes — only one of which contained the moulah. The other 99 contained a much-less-alluring Maldives Holiday. The odds of grabbing the $1 million assuming 1000 subscribers take up the offer? 100,000:1. Guess which scenario the Fin decided to focus on this week?
The Oz: small picture on News Corp 2Q Yesterday The Oz crowed that the 2nd financial quarter showed the news biz to be a lucrative feather in News Corp’s cap. In the story, entitled ‘The News is good for papers’ profits’ , The Oz reported: “… the WSJ recorded a 5% rise in advertising revenue for its print edition and 17% growth for its digital network.”
However, even the WSJ concedes that there may be a knee-jerk reaction in the US ad market: “Publishing executives attribute the recent influx of ad money in part to marketers hurrying to spend the remainder of their annual ad budgets after doling out those funds sparingly earlier in the year amid fears of an economic collapse.”
Although the Oz does acknowledge that News Corp’s British ad revenues are “flat”, it fails to mention that its “circulation revenues declined 5%”, as outlined in the December 31 News Corp report. And while the Oz’s citation of News’s “30 per cent growth in earnings before interest and tax” seems impressive, it is somewhat diminished by, as MediaMemo paraphrasing Rupe puts it, “a $2B debt repayment due next year, so pile isn’t as big as it looks.” — Crikey intern Tristan Price
Who is editing Street Talk in today’s AFR?
— Anonymous Crikey reader
There’s an “Only in the NT News” moment every day. Today’s doesn’t involve a croc or a UFO though. The paper recently started a new feature called The Fixer, which takes various authorities to task, naming and shaming them, over things that need fixing. They’ve had a great success rate since launching it. Last week they got a lift — that had been broken for three years in a housing commission block — fixed the day after they named and shamed the department and person responsible.
Yesterday, the editor has put his own name, phone number and private email in the paper, naming and shaming himself over the fact that readers have complained that the paper’s TV Guide is out of date. Can you imagine any other editor in the country making all their private contacts available to Joe Public? Not bloody likely.
This is the same bloke who wrote his own court report when he got done for DUI last year. Just another reason to love the NT News. — Anonymous Crikey reader
YouTube not the way of the future for Sky. Sky News Australia has dropped its two-year experiment with uploading key content to YouTube in favour of carrying video on its own site, which is shortly to be unveiled. — mUmBRELLA
‘Demon Sheep’ the new political currency “Chuck DeVore is looking to get as much mileage as possible out of fellow GOP Senate candidate Carly Fiorina’s bizarre “demon sheep” ad, the one that accuses Tom Campbell of being a FCINO. He’s set up www.demonsheep.org in the name of the “Society for the Eradication of Demon Sheep From Our Political Discourse,” where he vows his campaign will “forever be a demon-sheep-free zone” — though that didn’t stop him from posting an equally bizarre demon sheep “poster” on the site.” — newser
Xinjiang’s iSolation “Following the ethnic unrest in Xinjiang in July 2009, internet access in the province has been severely restricted — far more than in other parts of China. The situation is gradually improving, but an American blogger living in the area says many sites are still strictly censored.” — BBC
Google best browser, a win for surfers “I like to think of myself as the Dick Cheney of the Browser Wars — an unyielding proponent of greater and greater hostilities between the developers working on Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, and Opera. As all these programmers compete with one another to make faster, more stable, and more intuitive browsers, we Web surfers keep winning.” — Slate
FB Doppelganger week: HuffPo has published a very po-faced interview with the “creator” of Facebook’s Doppelganger week. What? There’s a creator?:
ALEX: Bob, let’s jump right in– what is “Doppelganger Week”?
BOB: It’s the week when everyone on Facebook replaces their profile photo with a celebrity that looks like them.
ALEX: So fun. And you came up with this?
BOB: Yeah. It all started when the guys at work started teasing me that I look like Tom Selleck. They’re like, “Hey, Tom Selleck, what are you doing?” Or, “Yo, Tom Selleck, we’re talking to you.”
ALEX: Pretty on the nose, huh?
BOB: I.T. is a notoriously ruthless department.
Gee Bob, comedy genius, there. As one Facebook commentor put it:
“INSERT NAME HERE finds that ‘doppelganger week’ is gathering in pathos as it reveals itself to actually be ‘What I would look like if I was significantly better looking’ week.
RE: Belinda Neal. I’m no real supporter of Belinda, but I find the attitude to her sexist and infuriating. There’s no question that John Della Bosca is being challenged for his position in the parliament, either for the next election or when his term expires? Wasn’t he with Belinda at said outing? Doesn’t Kevin Rudd swear and lose his cool? Has anyone suggested that he seek anger management, or perhaps should be challenged at a pre-selection prior to the next election?
The men who wrote or read this; none of them lose their cool, swear or behave/d badly on occasion/s? I’m not condoning her behaviour or how they both allegedly tried to cover it up, but having one set of standards and values for women, while men can behave how they wish is just appalling? Abbott uses rough language, such as ‘shit happens’ and it’s (global warming) ‘crap’; refers to women as ‘girls’ etc, and it’s accepted as OK behaviour!
I hope Belinda wins the ballot just to show those who uphold double standards how unjust they are. Gee, it’s a grind, trying to get rid of this sexist rubbish!
Go to http://celebritydoppelganger.blogspot.com/ To which celeb you look like.
This is by far the best and fastest generator I’ve come accross. <3
And she is performing well in the House, which is backed up by the number of Dorothy Dix questions she is given to ask, Albie must like her. A man with more than a little say in party matters.