Gillard biography not lost to shelves. Sam Maiden’s yarn in News Limited’s Sunday tabloids revealing Chris Wallace had decided to dump her unauthorised Allen & Unwin Julia Gillard biography didn’t mention some excerpts may one day see the light — just not on the nation’s bookshelves. Wallace is completing a PhD on the “politics of political biography” at the Australian National University’s Centre of Biography and Crikey understands that one chapter will still focus on the PM.

ANU PhDs of course, when they’re published, automatically appear in the campus library. But the wait for Gillard tragics could be a long one. Wallace told Crikey by email this morning: “It will be two years before the thesis is written, bound, marked and, if successful, deposited in the ANU library. It’s the academy. Could take even longer than that!”

Wallace’s bio shot to prominence in October 2009 after Penguin publisher Ben Ball slammed Monthly editor Ben Naparstek for running a review — by Wallace — of Jacqueline Kent’s rival tome, The Making of Julia Gillard. At the time, Wallace sledged Kent’s book as “curiously flat”, “thin” and a “friendly political quickie”, telling Crikey nine months later that she would like to “go beyond that to something deeper”. We await the final result with interest. — Andrew Crook

Melbourne Press Club stoush. Controversy continues to swirl in Melbourne media circles following Crikey’s story revealing the Herald & Weekly Times pressured the Melbourne Press Club to avoid Bruce Guthrie’s book Man Bites Murdoch. The MPC’s AGM will be held at 12:30pm on Wednesday at Minter Ellison’s offices on level 23 of the Rialto and there is speculation the nominees for President and Vice President  — The Age‘s senior editor Mark Baker and HWT corporate communications manager Genevieve Brammall — might be challenged by an angry rank and file.

When contacted by Crikey last week, Brammall described Guthrie as “deluded” and admitted she had phoned other MPC committee members between meetings to nix a planned book launch. After our story ran on Friday, respected Sunday Age editor Gay Alcorn took to Twitter to register her disgust, writing that the MPC’s response went “against every principle of journalism”. — Andrew Crook

Virginia doesn’t quite pull the trigger. We’re big fans of crack journo Virginia Trioli here at Crikey, but gee you wouldn’t have wanted her job for quids yesterday. It was “best behaviour time” at Aunty’s Southbank studios, when the former Drive-turned-News Breakfast inquisitor had to interview her boss, managing director Mark Scott, about his appearance on the Queen’s Birthday 2011 Honours List.

You can view the footage below, but judging by the smiles shared between Trigger and Scott the six minute back-and-forth wasn’t quite up there with her Walkley Award-winning stoush with former defence minister Peter Reith. Of all the questions asked, Crikey‘s favourite was this curve ball: “Your media achievements are well known … but let’s talk about your community work.”

As colleague Michael Rowland put it: “That was OK, I think your job’s safe”. On the evidence provided, we’d have to agree with you, Michael.

A Macfarlane by any other name… On the new Age iPad app it seems the new outsourced sub-hub-kids don’t know the difference between the two Ian Macfarlanes…

— Crikey reader Tristan McMichael

Free TV calls for cheaper fees and less restrictions

“The shopping list of requests to the government, also includes an end to limits on when programs can be shown which were created to protect children, loosening the obligation to provide programming for kids because the ABC is already doing it, reducing the regulation of advertising and a reexamination of the current obligations to meet a quota of Australian-made content on the mainstream channel.” — mUmBRELLA

Murdoch sends US lawyers to investigate phone hacking

“Rupert Murdoch has sent a team of external American lawyers to Britain to investigate the extent of phone hacking at the News of the World. The Independent understands that the four independent investigative attorneys were dispatched to London to supervise the trawl through all evidence held by the company to establish who knew what and when.” — The Independent

BBC World Service safe: chairman

“The new chairman of the BBC Trust, Lord Patten, has committed the organisation to an international and apparently multicultural future, in the face of government-imposed funding cuts. He stressed the importance of the World Service and described the corporation’s Arabic, Somali and Hindi networks as lying “at the core of what the BBC is doing”.  — The Guardian

US networks in chequebook journalism controversy

“ABC and NBC, embroiled in a fight for viewers in the mornings, are increasingly in the news for their willingness to pay thousands of dollars to gain exclusive access to news subjects. The practice was especially visible last week when ABC News ran an exclusive interview with Meagan Broussard, one of the women who was sent lewd photos by Anthony Weiner, after the network paid her about $15,000 for photos.” — The New York Times

Not a gay girl in Damascus, a confession

“I am the sole author of this blog and have always been so. Any and all posts on the blog are by me.  Before I say anything else, I want to apologize to anyone I may have hurt or harmed in any way. I never meant to hurt anyone. I am really truly sorry and I feel awful about this.” —  Tom MacMaster

Correction: The original version of media briefs contained an item entitled ‘ABC taking care of Business’ (item   14/6). In it, Glenn Dyer stated that Denise Eriksen is responsible for all news and current affairs on ABCTV and Radio. That is not true. The Director of News, Kate Torney, takes that responsibility.

Crikey has also been informed that the story in The Australian that Dyer refers to is also incorrect. Crikey has been informed by the ABC that they currently considering their business programming generally to ensure it meets the needs of the contemporary audience.  This move is certainly not a reaction to the ratings for any one of their business programmes. It is also a plan which has been in the making before Eriksen  joined the ABC.  Absolutely no decisions  have been made.  Absolutely no programme is being singled out.

Crikey also accepts that to infer that Eriksen’s management skills are “lightweight” is not fairly representative of her seven years of experience in senior management in both public broadcasters and a long, successful career as an Executive Producer in Australia and internationally.