The Age sends the interns. Melbourne’s court reporters have been noticing some fresh faces representing Fairfax in recent days. It appears the publisher has turned to its unpaid interns to cover Melbourne’s courts.
Few things are as labour-intensive to cover as court cases. They go for days, there are complex guidelines around reporting that take experience to understand well, and if you want to quote in full what anyone is saying, you need decent shorthand to keep up.
For that reason, digital outlets don’t tend to cover the courts (Crikey very rarely does). It’s still very largely left to the major newspapers to keep an eye on the legal system. But at The Age’s shrinking newsroom (which has lost experienced court reporters like Mark Russell of late), the publisher has started sending the interns.
Reporters at other media organisations tell Crikey they’ve seen Age interns covering cases several times, sometimes reporting quite competently in pieces that end up in the paper. But at least one intern, we understand, was recently sent to cover a child pornography conviction (an article on that July 22 case has yet to published). These kind of stories are rough for even experienced reporters to cover, leaving other court reporters fearful the interns were being exploited.
Other outlets often send their interns to court — but always in the shadow of an experienced reporter.
Crikey yesterday approached The Age’s editor-in-chief and editor for comment. — Myriam Robin
Who wears the pants? Pauline Hanson has said that if the media won’t play nice, she won’t play with them.
In a sign of where the power really lies in the Hanson-media relationship, she’s turned to her Facebook page to tell supporters of her recent meeting with Malcolm Turnbull. Most Australian media outlets promptly reported and linked to the contents of the video. The Sydney Morning Herald even ran the video on its Facebook page, giving it greater reach — after slapping a Fairfax watermark on it (perhaps justified by the captioning of what Hanson was saying). News Corp also ran the video online, but without the watermark.
The video was covered in all the News Corp tabloids, in Fairfax’s metro papers, on the Daily Mail, The Guardian, and plenty of other places we cared to look. Which shows Hanson doesn’t need to talk to the media or even subject herself to a press conference (which would require a back-and-forth with journalists) to get blanket coverage.
Today’s Isentia index shows Hanson was the third most-mentioned politician in the Australian media this week, and the most popular on social media and talkback radio. — Myriam Robin
Video of the day. Stephen Colbert (the ‘t’ is definitely silent) crashes the Democratic Convention …
Front page of the day. Michelle Obama steals the show with a knockout convention speech.
God bless Stephen Colbert and all those nylons that died for his hairpiece.
Magnificent work at getting on that podium.