When the pond dries up, it’s only the orneriest salamanders who are left crawling all over each other. Thus to The Australian, where the mass departure since the arrival of ex-Tele editor Chris Dore is having real effects. The departure of Rick Morton and Anthony Klan was a real blow to the paper’s firepower, but the loss of cartoonist Jon Kudelka is probably the point at which the publication has stopped being a real newspaper.
For decades, Murdoch and his editors have observed the ancient practice, established by Lord Beaverbrook in the ’30s, that right-wing papers have a main-page left-wing cartoonist. The role is similar to that of holy fool, who tells the king inconvenient truths no one else can. By being couched in humour, such messaging allows the readers to observe the obvious truth — that Hitler does not want peace, that climate change is real — without shattering the fantasy the rest of the paper pumps out. Fantasies — dreams, movies, etc — only work if a trace of them reminds us they aren’t real. When that goes, so does the pleasure of the fantasy. Kudelka with his funny, sceptical, smart but above all generous-hearted drawings, was essential to the paper’s mix.
But the Oz‘s problems run top to bottom. It’s not merely name reporters like Chip Le Grand who’ve left. The paper can’t hold onto relatively junior reporters who, insiders say, can’t stand the new heights of toxicity to which the paper’s culture wars have been taken. Two younger journalists — whom of course News Corp had spent time and money training — left at the time of the paper’s racist campaign against African-Australians. A couple more have gone due to the paper’s simplistic and one-dimensional coverage of trans politics.
Beneath the high-profile departures, insiders say that basic staffing positions are going unfilled, because the sort of journos News Corp wants at its broadsheet don’t want to work there, and those who do aren’t up to scratch.
There’s no capacity to pump out propaganda without some genuine news and relatively sane commentary. A paper that’s all Chris Kenny and Alan Jones is simply going the way of Sky News — a self-defeating freak show. Maybe change is on the way, but if not, will the last person to leave The Australian please turn off the dark?
Since freedom of self expression is unlimited over the Internet – journalism is regarded just another paid commentary , blogging on paper. We the mob, can make up our own minds so it leaves the news back to simple reporting which is instantly available on the Internet. By the time the print version comes out the next day, it is stale news [any news over 10 minutes old is stale ]. So what is left is for journalists to go from redundancy to redundancy until they find a home in some PR unit or Crikey or The Guardian or some political gig. What there is left to read in the daily papers are either the educated essays or rubbish tit bits to be read over coffee or waiting rooms – that is a role that newspapers in the urban climate changed paper newsworld .
I get your point but I think you’re over simplifying it. Print journalism on screen or paper still goes beyond the simple hard news headlines. Detailed court reports, timelines of political shenanigans or ordinary decision processes, everything sport, world news and much more. .
There’s still a big market for this and the more analysis and comment specialists like here have neither the space, inclination, expertise or resources.
I find the Age commentary section to be as variable in quality as here though Crikey is more broad ranging. Neither do nearly as much real expert pieces as they tend to be wordy and dry as the authors usually aren’t professional writers. They should though as it’s likely to be cheaper and better content despite the writing limitations. The letters section is much better and diverse due to its curated nature
Ahhhh sweet schadenfreude. As the Oz goes down the gurgler.
You’re too generous, Guy. The Lolstralian pretty much stopped being a real newspaper some time in 2006.
“There’s no capacity to pump out propaganda without genuine news and relatively sane commentary”. Ah, Rundle, I’m afraid that we’re talking News Corp here. We’re in the Trump age, and people, particularly those on the Right (if the findings of the Harvard Media Studies Group are accurate) are not interested in genuine news or sane commentary. Not in Sky, or Fox, or the tabloids. They want confirmation bias.They want to be told the light beams out of their arseholes with such brilliance that sunglasses are required in the toilet. They want to be told that the Greens, the unions and anyone on the left is in league with Satan. I agree with you completely that the the desertion by the remaining humans of The Oz (particularly Kudelka) is tragic, but they won’t be missed by the general readership; if anything, the hardcore readers will give a sigh of relief that the niggling contradictions in the paper are gone.
No, if it’s simply that, it becomes circular. Some sort of real stuff is required. Even FOX news has some real journos in the daytime…..
Yes nowadays there are only bedbugs aka churnalists, stenographers, typists and Typhoid Mary opinionists working for the NewsCrap organisation. May it soon all go arse up.
I have this vision of the parrot and Kenny wearing eye shades, cranking out the news on a gestetner and hopping on their pushbikes to get the copy out to the masses.
Australia’s premium bedbugs.