PunchyC

Vali The Fox: A film on Vali Myers

2011-05-28T23:33:00.001-07:00

I have been busy the last few months capturing many more hours of my footage taken so far for the documentary 'Vali The Fox: A film on Vali Myers' which is my current major project...although it will remain 'current' for several more months as it grows into a much larger idea than first envisioned (the story with most of my films).I have also traveled to New York to conduct some further research and explore Vali's creative hub at The Chelsea Hotel where she spent many years, over time, in transit from her much loved valley in Positano, Italy. I have also been busy continuing to meet the endless number of fascinating people that enjoyed moments in time with Vali throughout the world.

This is a trailer for the upcoming documentary 'Vali The Fox: A Film on Vali Myers'. Leonard Leong and I filmed much of this documentary over many months of late 2010 and I am currently working on editing a 15 min version for festivals and funding opportunities. I will be developing a 3 part TV series and a feature length project out of my research and provisional footage.

Vali Myers was an exceptional person who has inspired me greatly. Her way of life, her exquisite artwork, her friendships, her time in Paris and New York dancing and drawing, her 40 years in the valley of Positano, Italy with her lover and her wild animals and her last years spent in her beloved studio in the Nicholas Building, Melbourne are all fascinating times in the love and life of Vali. Check out my website for further information on the final short version and its travels.

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Promotional Video_Open Studios event, Nicholas Buiding Melbourne

2011-05-28T04:08:00.001-07:00

Ok so I'm back, after a bit of a hiatus the last few months. The good news is, I have hundreds of blogs to get back in to writing with, as I have been busy shooting and editing my latest films, travelling to NYC, eating at several culinary treasures in Australia and o.s. and of course, occupying my mind daily with political, social and socio-economic debates....

First up, this is a promo I just finished editing for the annual Open Studios event in the Nicholas Building, Melbourne. I produced this promo while I was filming in this amazing buiding last year during my shoots for my 'Vali The Fox' documentary (currently in post-production). It is a captivating building which comes to life once a year when the artists open up their doors and let the public view their work spaces, fantastic work, which is full of individuality, creativity and loads of talent. So for more details about this years event check out this website and my blog which explains a bit more about the event! I also filmed a little doco on the importance of Art during these shoots and I will also post that and several other videos I've been working on soon!

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More beautiful food #lovemelbourne

2010-11-17T21:48:00.001-08:00

A wagyu pie accompanied by a swirling mash and sensational pea puree washed down with a Spanish vino at the Heidi Gallery, Melbourne. Eating this scrumptious food in the Australian bush surrounds while filming my documentary makes for a hard days work. #art #lovemelbourne #ilovemyjob

Clare Peterson
Punchy Productions

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#lovemelbourne #goodfood #needapayingjob

2010-10-19T17:07:00.001-07:00

In love with the little french style cafe under my office...beautiful food, coffee & juices and so very cheap! Almost makes renting an office while earning no income worthwhile! At least it's in my beloved Nicholas Building. #lovemelbourne #goodfood #needapayingjob

Clare Peterson
Punchy Productions

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Webisodes: the new production and distribution opportunities opening up

2010-10-18T00:44:00.001-07:00

Web Therapy

This is a pretty funny set of webisodes and it offers a great reflection on opportunities that are now available for film or TV producers who want to produce work and distribute it at a low cost. There is also some serious money available from cable networks in the US, who are willing to pay for these unique, short and entertaining productions. a thought for the future months, once I finish uni...

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Nicholas Building_Open Studios event #lovemelbourne #doco

2010-09-21T03:57:00.001-07:00

Here are a few photos from my shoot at the Open House exhibition -an annual event in the Nicholas building where people open up their studios and display their art to the flock of people that trek up and down the stairs in this iconic Melbourne building. The atmosphere was electric and the art displayed was all entirely original and fantastically made - all by hand here in Melbourne in their Nicholas building studios. There was also a 'new world' in one of the studios, where you needed a visa to get in... The people (both artists and eager visitors) made it a really interesting and energising night - even if we were lugging our camera gear up and down the old staircases and close-the-door-yourself rusty lifts to see who we could interview next! It's a great building, with a great vibe and anyone interested in art, jewellery, books or any aspect of being alive- should really check out this next year. It was great to see a building full of artists and dreamers who had not been extradicted out of the city to produce their work in secret and 'more affordable' places that rich folk dont want to live in...yet.

Have a look at this blog for info - and this is also where our promo video will be posted to soon.

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Waterhaven...

2010-09-16T18:14:00.001-07:00

well I kind of think this says it all for current housing developments in the outskirts of Melbourne or anywhere for that matter. This one is called "waterhaven" when planning departments and developers are allowing the installation of a fake lake in the middle of the highway to be the incentive for people to move here and isolate themselves further in their new 'community'. Any notion of building a sustainable development here or anywhere is a distant option for the money hungry corporate developers and government planning authorities - who care little about the potential residents, stuck in the middle of nowhere, driving in their cars for everything, and less about the environment (namely once viable farmland) which they are destroying.

'Waterhaven' #video #environment #housingshortages #publicpolicy #Madden ...more farmland being sucked up by housing shortages and unsustainable developments

2010-09-16T18:01:00.001-07:00

This a little video of my observations of the construction of 'Waterhaven' along the highway between Melbourne and Geelong...it speaks for itself really. It says something on the current housing developments in the outskirts of Melbourne or anywhere for that matter, where planning departments and developers are allowing the installation of a fake lake in the middle of the highway to be the incentive for people to move here and isolate themselves further in their new 'community'. Any notion of building a sustainable development here or anywhere is a distant option for the money hungry corporate developers and government planning authorities - who care little about the potential residents, stuck in the middle of nowhere, driving in their cars for everything, and less about the environment which they are destroying. The 'water', a fake lake, is being formed by digging a giant trench in once prominent farmland on the outskirts of Melbourne and the 'haven' I'm assuming will be created in the surrounds of this trench and pseduo bridge which an array of families will no doubt move into, as it constitutes the only option they have in obtaining affordable accommodation. Yet its fake atmosphere and damaged environment is probably not something they would choose to be involved if other accommodation could be provided in sustainable and urban environments. It seems that when you drive through these spaces which are presented as pseudo 'places' you may think that people want to live in these cloned villages with identical brick houses, no backyards and cheap fittings made to look like an upmarket version of a fantastic furniture catalogue; yet it makes you think, where would people live if they had the option to have a different looking house, a backyard or dare I say it, even incorporate the existing farmland into their own backyard and allow them the opportunity to generate their own power and grow their own produce, rather than spend their limited disposable income at the single supermarket chain that charges them to import their banannas from asia or beyond. Is this where and how the next generation of home owners want to live?

This is a topic I will write more on and discuss more broadly at a later date, in the meantime, enjoy watching your farmland being sucked up by a multi-national developer and be replaced with roads to drive your 3 cars on and a far less expensive and less detailed copy of a film set from The Truman Show.

Just some thoughts people, where do you want to live?

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"Waterhaven" in the middle of the highway

2010-09-16T17:56:00.001-07:00

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New studio space... Now need a job! #i'mserious

2010-09-09T18:04:00.001-07:00

So I just secured a new studio in the loveable old Nicholas Building...so who has some officey, studioy, writerly jobs for me to do??? No really, the rent is due Monday...

Clare Peterson
Punchy Productions

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Step back to the 80's with the pleasure of drinks from the millenium...#lovemelbourne #bars

2010-09-09T17:10:00.001-07:00

After our delectable dining at Hardware Lane, we stopped by Robot Bar for a quick drink and a reminder of life in the 80's...

We sipped on frothy and chilled Espresso Martini's while we played Galaga on the big old brown box game machine (official name unknown...however I am sure my disappointed boyfriend will comment with it). We played, yelled, consoled while we fondly remembered our childhoods. The only regrettable incident from the evening was that when I finally managed to win a game, post serious RSI to my right thumb and possible, no definite disturbance to the other more relaxed patrons, I entered my name on the list of winners as 'AAA'...not sure if that means I had started my own association of AA or perhaps needed to, but none the less it was a sign it was time to cease drinking cocktails and journey home. It is a quirky, neo-Tokyo bar found at the end of another of the funky lanes found in Melbourne. If anime was/is your thing, you can gaze at your childhood heros pinned up on the walls or you can place your $1 in the game machine for the reward of 3 lives - if only life was this simple. So when you feel the need to step away from your busy world consumed with worries of jobs, relationships, politics, money and tomorrows pop down to Robot Bar and remember the joy of being a child and only worrying about who wins the next game...

Sent by PunchyP

#lovemelbourne more

2010-09-09T16:20:00.001-07:00

> Dining in Hardware Lane is much more fun than working here ever was...wish it paid the same. Actually no, wish it paid more. Hmmm, there's food for thought..

Photo: Swordfish Skewers from Campari House, Hardware Lane Melbourne, which were tender, tasty and drizzled with lime juice and basil pesto. We also had crispy, salt encrusted prawns with a divine chilli aioli and a subtle and refreshing bottle of wine from Italy 'Crabilis, Verementino, I fiori, Pala - Sardegna 2007'...followed by the Capricosa pizza with chunky ham hock and hot salami. All while listening to the live musicians playing in the lane, a truly special part of Melbourne.
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#MSO #LoveMelbourne

2010-09-08T23:36:00.001-07:00

#MSO #lovemelbourne Last night I had the pleasure of hearing the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra at Town Hall...and it was free! It was the launch of the 2011 season, which looks like a fantastic line up with lots of free community events too. Beautiful way to end a busy and looong day in the edit suite.

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Paul Keating...at least he said it! The current contenders wouldn't even try. #auswaits #PM #PaulKeating #racism #indigenous affairs #Australia

2010-08-25T22:03:00.001-07:00

Well Keating may be losing it over who wrote his famous speech from 1992, but at least he had the courage, dignity and compassion to say it, all those years ago. And yet, now in 2010 the country is struggling to find an eligible Prime Minister that can stand up in front of the country and speak with honesty and intelligence. To think that a Prime Minister stood up proudly in front of the country 18 years ago and uttered the below words without questioning his popularity or how he would be perceived by the racists in the country, sadly shocks me now; in contrast to the backwards steps Australia took during the following 12 years of little Johnny and recently with both 'major'/minor parties campaigning with slogans of "we'll stop the boats" and no mentioning of ending the NT Intervention...

The correlation between what Paul Keating said way back then and what should still be an issue for potential political leaders to be discussing cannot be avoided.

It begins, I think, with the act of recognition. Recognition that it was we who did the dispossessing. We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life. We brought the disasters. The alcohol. We committed the murders. We took the children from their mothers. We practised discrimination and exclusion.

It was our ignorance and our prejudice. And our failure to imagine these things being done to us. With some noble exceptions, we failed to make the most basic human response and enter into their hearts and minds. We failed to ask - how would I feel if this were done to me?

As a consequence, we failed to see that what we were doing degraded all of us.

If we needed a reminder of this, we received it this year. The Report of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody showed with devastating clarity that the past lives on in inequality, racism and injustice in the prejudice and ignorance of non-Aboriginal Australians, and in the demoralisation and desperation, the fractured identity, of so many Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. http://australianpolitics.com/executive/keating/92-12-10redfern-speech.shtml

And in relation to the racist political campaigns broadcast by both Gillard and Abbott in connection to their slogans "we'll stop the boats", one can also refer back to Paul Keatings words and his acknowledgment of Australia's multicultural past and the history of playing our part in helping a small number of the world's refugees.

We non-Aboriginal Australians should perhaps remind ourselves that Australia once reached out for us. Didn't Australia provide opportunity and care for the dispossessed Irish? The poor of Britain? The refugees from war and famine and persecution in the countries of Europe and Asia? Isn't it reasonable to say that if we can build a prosperous and remarkably harmonious multicultural society in Australia, surely we can find just solutions to the problems which beset the first Australians - the people to whom the most injustice has been done. http://australianpolitics.com/executive/keating/92-12-10redfern-speech.shtml

When reviewing this speech (and ignoring Paul Keating's current rants on ownership of the writing) it really is incredibly shocking to see how our once progressive, compassionate and intelligent leader uttered these words and how much since it, Australia has regressed to its racist, fearful and parnoid past. The only politician that speaks with such pride, intelligence and compassion now is the new Greens MP Adam Bandt and all I can hope is that his presence in the HoR now can mean a shift back to Australia's promising future.

As Paul Keating said,

I think what we need to do is open our hearts a bit.

All of us. http://australianpolitics.com/executive/keating/92-12-10redfern-speech.shtml

Now that's not too hard is it Australia? You made your stance in the recent election and increased your votes for the Greens, which means they can now play a larger role in implementing progressive policy into the Australian Parliament, which clearly resulted from them being the only party that actually presented policy and contributed to intelligent debate prior to the election. The added advantage of this movement and the lack of any difference between the two minor leaders creating a hung parliament, also means for the first time that the fakeness, deceit and manipulation that occured in the campaign will be closely scrutinised by the independents before Australia is given the result...so isn't it time to help promote the start of another new era in politics and society? To start a call to action, that demands a strong leader, one who can stand up in front of the nation and say what they think, without questioning if it is popular, without editing themselves to see if it will get votes, but a leader that simply sees the racisim, the deceit, the regression of Australia and decides to make it stop! As Paul Keating said, "the past lives on in inequality, racism and injustice in the prejudice and ignorance of non-Aboriginal Australians" so let's start a future for Australia that does not include any of those traits.

Paul Keating's famous speech from 1992 can be read here and listened to here. Let's hope there are more speeches like this to come in the future of Australia...

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PunchyP's election coverage...the major parties left us hanging on election day 2010. Why? #Corangamite #ausvotes #politics #greens

2010-08-21T19:06:00.001-07:00

I went out into the Corangamite electorate to examine what was happening in this marginal seat on Election Day 2010. In sum, there was much confusion, little motivation or enthusiasm and some people did not know who to vote for before and after they had visited the polling booths! The election night was as dull as the one and only debate and any resulting hung parliament is clearly a consequence of having such an insincere, rushed and pseudo election campaign by both major parties. So watch for yourselves the thoughts of one marginal seat here in Corangamite. What's to come? A serious suck job by both party leaders and hopefully some sincere self reflection into what went wrong and why Australians did not buy their fakeness and fear campaigns. At the end of the day, it is a time to celebrate with the first Greens seat in the lower house and the beginning of a parliament that is truly reflective of what the people want from their leaders and their government - diversity, compassion and intelligent debate!

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Election Day, Australia 2010

2010-08-21T18:32:00.001-07:00

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Out in the Corangamite Electorate, VIctoria exploring what people are thinking and doing on election day 2010. The confusion, inaction and disappointment seems to have now lead to a hung parliment so perhaps this can give some insight into what lead Australia into a state of indecision. The lack of any real campaign could be the key point as many were still undecided walking into and leaving the polling booths...where to now.

PunchyP's election coverage...I give up - ideas for next time #ausvotes #politics #JayRosen

2010-08-16T22:33:00.001-07:00

Jay Rosen's latest blog covers the idea of having a 'Citizens Agenda in Campaign Coverage' and something that could take the frustration of never having questions answered substantially on our only hope #qanda (Q&A, ABC). Have a read and see what you think yourselves, I feel it is something we should work towards for the next election (with whatever happens on Saturday, it will certainly be time for a change by then and having an intelligent and meaningful campaign could lead to having intelligent, compassionate and informed political contenders?) Let's hope.

As Jay suggests, community consultation to decide on what the campaign's focus is a very good start and a voting system of whether the questions posed to the potential leaders were actually answered would be fantastic. This would also avoid the current situation where racist and defamatory political slogans such as "we'll stop the boats" become a focus for voters and politicians alike. And not many people seem to notice that this contradicts our international and humanitarian obligations to the UN Treaty we signed in 1973, yet it is broadcast across TV ads, no journalists have raised its seriousness (in relation to racism and our UN agreements) and yet the politicians themselves choose these random non-issues to create fear in our society and distract from the fact they have no real policies in the nation’s interests or credibility to even be running. Perhaps we can get it started for 3 years time and plan for a better future in politics, media and society in 2013!

Also this essay by Jay which discusses 'Journalism as Civic Leadership' should be considered an essential part of journalism and could be the way of the future in resolving Australia's current media meltdown.

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Ah fond memories of a happier time#ausvotes

2010-08-16T05:40:00.001-07:00

Clare Peterson
Punchy Productions

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Shame Australia Shame #refugees #racism #ausvotes #australian politics #spillard #abbutt

2010-08-15T01:22:00.001-07:00

Sue Bolton speaking at the Rally for Refugees, Friday 13 August 2010. Check out my previous blogs for more information.

Sue is explaining the shameful history of Australia's treatment of refugees. Need I say more? I think not. Watch the video and ask yourself if it is ok if Australia's racist policies are continually sustained or is it finally time to change, find some humanitarian policies and well if they doesn't grab you, maybe we should in the very least not ignore international laws and just abide by our legal obligations with the UNHCR Treaty which we signed in 1973.

And watch below for footage of the rally itself, that was uplifting, energising and thankfully marched in by a very large and diverse crowd on Melbourne's streets. I just hope that one day, this rally will seem unnecessary and bizarre, as there will be no racist politicians continuing Australia's shameful past and refugees will be treated with the dignity, respect and compassion that they deserve. Read previous blogs for further comments, links and videos from the rally.

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Taking a 'break' but I will be back...

2010-08-14T23:28:00.001-07:00

Well the pressures of new and final university assignments, concerns with the current election campaigns by our major parties and film shoots for my documentary are preventing me from focusing on any further journalism research at this stage. I am going to a talk with Jay Rosen on Tuesday 17 August and will endeavour to make a little post about that, however, I will get back to my journalism site after the above tasks are finished. Check out my favorite links on my blog, which have very informative and current information on all things media!

Hope you enjoyed the research report and if you feel the need to read my daily rantings about the above issues, feel free at http://punchyp.posterous.com/

See you soon.

Clare

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Speech by a #refugee at the Rally for #refugees in Melbourne on Friday 13 2010 #ausvotes #greens #socialists

2010-08-14T20:25:00.001-07:00

The second speaker at the rally was Gary Anan, a Tamil Refugee who escaped persecution and arrived in Australia in 1996, where he was sent to a detention centre.

He spoke of his false arrests, suffering and pain as a Tamil in Sri Lanka and how he finally escaped to Australia after much abuse and fear for his life. He spoke of his pain in the detention centre in Australia as a 17 year old refugee (and his experience now as a counselor for refugees) and he highlighted the fact (already obvious to me but apparently confusing for the LCD's who continue to mention some form of a queue that is supposed to be lined up in) that refugees do not have a choice, they do not have any other options and that they are escaping persecution and threats of violence.They are running from, not running to.

He also mentioned an experience he had on a tram one day, when a woman came up to him and said,

"If all the migrants left we would have some space"

which he replied "yeah maybe we should all leave and let the aborigines have their land back."

Gary ended his speech with ‘open your hearts, that is all we’re asking.’

Now that’s not that hard is it? Is it Australia? Make a stance against the derogatory terms being publicly broadcast by the major party contenders Spillard and Abbutt. Refugees are not “boat people”, the only real use of the term should be how former Prime Minister Bob Hawke recently used it, “we’re all boat people, that’s how we found the place.” And on the front cover of the Big Issue magazine this week, there was a photo of surf life savers in a boat with the title "boat people, Australia would not be the same without them!" These are the only appropriate uses of the phrase 'boat people', any association with this phase and asylum seekers is immoral, inhumane, illegal, racist and unacceptable.

Refugees are people, they are fellow humans, they are mothers, fathers, children, they had homes that they loved and lost due to war, persecution and violence, they have friends and loved ones that they miss, they have no belongings, no tangible assets, all they have is their strength, their hearts and their torturous memories of where they have come from and what they have been through to get to a land and beg for help, some of them have spent their entire lives in refugee camps and prisons, with no clean water, no food, no clothing, they left everything to merely try and survive and make it through one more day without being killed or dying of disease. Come on Australia, open your hearts and at least form your political decisions on facts, our proven racist past and not on propaganda, lies and campaigns that focus on causing fear and hysteria in our society.

To see some photos and information from this rally check out melbourne protests blog

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PunchyP's election coverage...why would #ausvotes choose the #greens? Compassion for #refugees and intelligent #debates

2010-08-14T05:59:00.001-07:00

Adam Bandt opens his address at the Rally for Refugees on Friday 13 August 2010 with the point that "despite what you see on the television and despite what people may want you to think, there is a very strong undercurrent in Australia and especially here in Melbourne, that says 'we are going to stand up for compassion and we are going to stand against racisim'". Adam Bandt states that the creation of hysteria and the political ads by both Spillard and Abbutt which contain images of boats highlights the disturbing arguments they are both presenting. The deceitful correlations between population, immigration and refugees - "which are entirely separate issues" needs to stop. Adam made the important point that what Spillard should be stating to the LCD Australian public in regards to the very small numbers of refugees that are arriving in Australia (it would take 20 years to even fill the Melbourne Cricket Ground) is "I understand that you feel anxious but there is no need to be." Instead she and Abbutt continue to spread fear and paranoia through our society and fail to draw attention to our international obligations (in signing the UNHCR 1967 Protocol) and humanitarian obligations to help fellow humans who are seeking assylum from persecution and homelessness from war, famine and torture.

UNHCR 1967 Protocol is a legally binding treaty and a milestone in international refugee law. The majority of member states in the UN have accepted responsibility in providing protection for persons obliged to flee their country because of persecution. Australia ratified the 1951 UN Refugee Convention on 22 January 1954, and the 1967 protocol on 13 Dec 1973.

And in a country so large, we only host 0.013% of the world's refugees. Adam's speech was truly relieving to finally hear and can be heard in my attached video. This is why Australia should give The Greens to make a difference in parliment and show political leaders that people do care about the treatment of refugees and the indigenous communities that we (the only actual 'boat people') stole their land from and now have spread our racism and hatred across. As Bob Hawke recently said, 'we're all boat people, that's how we found the place' and this is the only appropriate use of this phrase. Refugees are not "boat people", they have names, they have mothers, children, fathers, they had homes that they lost, that they miss, that they loved, that were taken from them or destroyed, they have friends and loved ones that they miss, they have horrible memories from their torturous past and devastating stories to tell about their time in Australia since they somehow survived long enough to make it here, through no other way possible, with no other options, with all the risks involved, it was their only hope to live. Please open your hearts Australia and all over the world and help these fellow humans that only want to be able to live and work somewhere safe, where their lives are not at risk every second of every day.

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Adam Bandt, The Greens contender, Melbourne 2010

2010-08-14T05:49:00.001-07:00

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This was Adam Bandt's speech at the Rally for Refugees on Friday 13 2010 in Melbourne. It has some very poignant and persuasive points that need to be addressed with the major party contenders at next week's election. The propaganda, fear campaigns and racism that are expressed by both Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott is unacceptable and this speech can explain why! If you would like to read more about the mistreatment of refugees or on other matters, go to: http://punchyp.posterous.com/

PunchyP's Election Coverage...What #ausvotes really think...Rally for #Refugees Melbourne. #racism #politics #greens #socialists #spillard #abbutt

2010-08-14T04:07:00.001-07:00

It was Friday 13th and it was a dark day for Australia. When people need to organise a rally to send a message that racism is not acceptable and that the current political campaigns which are focused on fear campaigns, lies and the promotion of racial wars are unacceptable it is a sad day. And this was evident to many intelligent and diverse people who reside in the stolen land which is Australia.

The Rally for Refugees which started at the State Library in Melbourne was organised by the Socialist Alliance and The Greens to make a powerful statement prior to Australia voting next weekend. I was excited and refreshed after seeing so many people turn up and make a stance against the long history of racism and abuse that this country's potential leaders are continuing to promote in Australia and elsewhere. As you can see in my previous blog I feel very disturbed and saddened by the continuation of political campaigns (as seen with johnny for 12 years) based on lies, manipulation and racist propaganda. I was excited to finally hear a politican (the Melbourne Greens candidate, Adam Bandt) say aloud and in public on Swanston Street in the CBD that the deliberate and deceitful propaganda that the major parties are promoting needs to be addressed and argued against.

Watch the videos (will be posted in separate blogs) and hear the powerful words yourself and hopefully be temporarily relieved by the fact that there are people (many people) that are willing to "stand up for compassion and stand against racisim" (Adam Bandt) now and always in Australia. With a week to go in the 2010 election, its unlikely one of our two abhorrent major party contenders will reverse their fear campaigns and racist policies but with a few more Greens holding seats and Socialist Alliance senators we will make a difference and one day, not too far way, I hope, a Prime Minister of Australia will speak with honesty and dignity, as Adam Bandt, had the intelligence, compassion and motivation to speak, on this black Friday 13th in Melbourne.

*And I apologise for the quality - as I filmed on my iPhone, at least the message remains a powerful and poignant one!

Download now or watch on posterous

The_intro.mov (33687 KB)

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PunchyP's election coverage...new polls show #racism and #ignorance are winner campaign traits, but why? #ausvotes #abbutt #spillard

2010-08-08T19:01:00.001-07:00

Well the Liberal Ads are on the air spouting the words "we'll stop the boats" and the latest polls are out today proving this and Labor's equally racist approach to the campaign is working well. When I spoke to someone from the Socialist Alliance last week, he asked me 'why do you think racism is part of the election campaign?' I considered a number of factors in my response. Firstly it is obvious that Australia has a bland history of racism from the arrival of the english deplorers (who arrived on boats) and instigated a long, painful history of brutally killing the indigenous natives of this country. This of course culminated in the fascist approach of immigrant politicians (who arrived on boat) who created the White Australia Policy in 1901, which was activated until 1973. Interestingly, the wikipedia entry on this policy only mentions it as a ban on non-white immigration, however it was also the policy and practice that led to the abhorrent treatment of the indigenous Australians, which saw indigenous children being stolen from their parents and the intentional breeding of indigenous mothers with white immigrant fathers (or mostly raping of indigenous mothers), which afterwards the children were then stolen again and given to white families or institutions, in attempts to wipe out the indigenous race. A sensational film that addresses these actions is Tracey Moffat's 'Night Cries: A Rural Tragedy', 1990 and a review of this which mentions Australia's "shameful policy" can be read here. Robert Manne wrote a fantastic essay on this tragic past (and present) of Australia and Tim Richardson comments on Robert's essay and the recurrent issue of Australia's treatment of refugee's below:

I was deeply moved and shocked by this essay. Until I read it, I had little knowledge or understanding of the actions of Australian governments that separated children from mothers for several generations. The way normal people became little cogs in this horrible machine is almost terrifying. Revelations about the mistreatment of British children sent to Australia, often under the lie that their parents were dead, show how easily governments can hide cruelty from us, or perhaps only when we don't look hard enough. At around the same time these policies were happening, Australia was denying entries to Jews trying to escape an increasingly uncomfortable Europe. This is why we in Australia should challenge the treatment of boat-bound assylum seekers. Do we want our treatment of these people to be a story to shock our children in years to come? This shows the relevance of this essay ten years after it was first published.

Need I mention the 12 years of little johnny's racism to finish this historical tale? If you cannot remember or were trying to forget, take a quick peek as it is critical that Australia comes to terms with its racist and brutal past and starts to find the light of a non-racist future. It is obvious that there is a long history of racism in Australia and more frightening than this horrid past is that in 2010 Australia is still trying the racist card to win elections and to develop policies on how to 'stop the boats' of refugees who are escaping their worn-torn countries (mostly the ones the original white boat people keep bombing). If our treatment of jewish refugees surrounding the fascist regimes in Europe is not lesson enough, need I remind Abbutt and Spillard that they too are living in this country because their families arrived via boats (whether they were criminals, 10 pound poms or from any of the other select countries that Australia thought had worthy immigrants that would work 60 hour weeks for minimum wage and pay taxes) the point remains the same. Why is it that Australians, in general, only accept the people that arrived on boats before themselves and not afterwards. Afterall some of the most prominent hero's of our past all arrived on boat; the first and foremost Captain Crook, the paraded Jessica Watson and the renowned boat Australia II for its famous victory in the 1983 America's Cup.

And most importantly, refugees are not immigrants. There is a very large difference. And need I remind the racists yet again that the terms currently being blown around in the political dryer such as "boat people" are derogatory and unacceptable in today's vernacular. These people are assylum seekers, which Spillard and Abbutt if you are not sure what that exactly is, particularly when you started writing your ill-prepared policies in an all-nighter cram session with your clearly ignorant political advisors, the definition of this term is:

Any person who owing to a well founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his/her nationality and is unable, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself/herself of the protection of that country.

Hence, the plight of refugees is not connected in any way to the 'queues' of immigrants who would like to come to this country because they like the weather or the thousands of visitors who arrive freely on planes each year and decide not to leave because the beach at Bondi is cool or anyone else who has the money, leisure and freedom to arrive in this country (by plane or any other means) for holiday or post finding a suitable queue to join. As Julia Gillard's family once did and Abbutt's equally Anglo-Saxon journey here. The point that needs to be highlighted here is that these people, the assylum seekers are escaping persecution, mostly from the countries that our country keeps facilitating wars in.

As it is pointed out below, these fellow humans are running from persecution and torture, not running to Australia because they have decided they want to live here and want to take 'our' jobs and land and money.

Refugees often have little idea about where they are going. They are running away, not running to. Those who come to Australia often have scant understanding about our country and the nature of society here. They have had no opportunity to prepare themselves physically or psychologically for their new life in Australia.

A significant proportion of refugees have experienced severe trauma. Many have been tortured. Arrivals to Australia have included survivors of the Balkan internment centres and "rape camps" and prisoners of war from the Gulf War.

Many refugees have also spent years (for some up to 15 years) in refugee camps that provide limited protection. For some refugees, particularly children, the refugee camp environment is the only one they have ever known. Refugee who do not live in camps are often in urban areas where they face serious threats such as arbitrary arrest and detention and severe discrimination. Educational opportunities for refugees are often very limited and schooling is frequently interrupted.

The scenario broadcast by political leaders in 2010 of these people arriving on boats who had other choices and whom are 'jumping the queue' to get here is completely ignorant and racist. As you can see from the definition above, one of the requirements to be classified as a refugee is that they are outside their country, thus there is no queue anywhere for them to line up in, they are escaping regimes that our ever-so reliable imperialists George Duh Bush and his fellow groupies Johnny and Blair labelled as the "axis of evil" way back then in 2002 when they were desperately finding excuses to bomb some countries, displace millions of people they will later turn away and label 'terrorists' and steal their oil. So how can their following leaders, who have continued this 'war on terror' say that these asylum seekers are not escaping the terror and evil that is the cause of these wars to begin with? In addition, more refugees actually arrive via plane each year, as seen in Claire Harvey's article below, so what are the political contenders planning on doing about that...

A total of 4768 "plane people" - more than 96 per cent of applicants for refugee status - arrived by aircraft in 2008 on legitimate tourist, business and other visas compared with 161 who arrived by boat during the same period, the Sunday Telegraph reports. And plane people are much less likely than boat people to be genuine refugees, with only about 40-60 per cent granted protection visas, compared with 85-90 per cent of boat people who are found to be genuine refugees.

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/national/asylum-seekers-arrive-by-plane-not-boat/story-e6frfkvr-1225790981775#ixzz0w4NJ8zxw

Thus, I have pointed out Australia's past and current obsession with racism as the first reason political campaigns are still being centred around 'stopping the boats' and spreading fear throughout society, I think the second reason is centred around why these sort of campaigns seem to work. The latest polls today are showing a primary vote lead by the Liberal party and their racist, sexist and homophobic leader Abbutt.

GhostWhoVotes tweets that Newspoll gives Labor a morale-boosting 52-48 two-party lead from primary votes of 38 per cent for Labor, 42 per cent for the Coalition and 13 per cent for the Greens. Julia Gillard is up a point on both approval and disapproval, to 42 per cent and 40 per cent, while Tony Abbott has gone backwards: approval down three to 41 per cent, disapproval up three to 41-49. Preferred prime minister is essentially unchanged, Gillard and Abbott both down one to 49 per cent and 34 per cent. http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/2010/08/08/newspoll-52-48-to-labor-3/

And despite spillard slowly having just hidden her racist edge evident in the one and only debate, she is still preferred PM (just) and has been slowly loosing popularity since moving to more important and valid campaign issues, such as Education. I am interested to know why these leaders choose these racist paths in campaigns or end up dropping them? Is it that they are essentially racist and cannot even see that what they are saying is ill-conceived and inhumane or is it that racism is a proven winner in election campaigns. It pulled little johnny through in 2001 when he created the children overboard scandal to win votes from the fellow racist Australians who don't want different people coming to their country, especially if they are cruel to their children (which was of course false) and more importantly if they try and arrive on boat, after they did. It is pretty clear that the double standards that exist in our society in relation to arriving via boat and the abuse of children (which the asylum seekers were not even doing) is outrageous. Going by our history, it would have made more sense if we did allow the asylum seekers who were allegedly throwing their children overboard into our country and not making it an excuse to send them back. As seen with political partners such as the Catholic Church and government organisations, abuse of children has long been acceptable in our country, so I'm even more sure the scandal created by johnny in 2001 had nothing to do with the safety of children and far more to do with racism in general. Although I am sure Australia's history of white people from England abusing indigenous children and adults was more acceptable to the general public than any false allegations of Middle Eastern parents throwing their children off a sinking vessel; the abuse of indigenous australians was simply because the white immigrants did not want people with different color skin to remain in the country that was theirs wasn't it? What about our long history of the Catholic Church sexually abusing children or Catholic and Anglican nuns physically abusing children in homes and schools, yet they are still applauded by Abbutt and are no doubt large financial partners in his hideous political campaign. However worse than the desperate and tyrannical leaders who create these fear campaigns and fictional excuses to stir racism throughout our society are the people who believe it and too contribute to the promotion of this behaviour.

When is a person going to have the courage and determination to stand for election as a humane and intelligent leader, who can stand up and say this incessant racism has to stop and has to stop right now. To say proudly and confidently to the Australian public that these people, the refugees who are fleeing persecution and torture need our help and then have the patience and strength to create policies that will play our part in fulfilling our obligations to the UNHCR and better still, make Australia a country to be proud of, a country that cares for people, all types of people and that shares the universal obligation to ourselves, as humans, to help and love all the other humans in the world and to share this enormous and diverse stolen land of ours with all the people that are homeless, tortured and brutalised for simply not being born in the "lucky" country of Australia.

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#MIFF reviews: China’s Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province, USA, 2009, Documentary

2010-08-02T15:40:00.001-07:00

Chinas Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province, USA, 2009, China’s Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province, USA, 2009, Documentary

I watched this film, as part of the Doco shorts selection at MIFF (Melbourne International Film Festival) on 31 July 2010. It was an incredibly moving and emotive call for action, if only action at this stage could return the children lost to corruption, prejudice and bureaucratic inaction. As the synopsis explains: "For those grieving for the 70,000 who died in the Sichuan Province’s 2008 earthquake, justice is just one more thing they’ll have to live without." http://www.melbournefilmfestival.com.au/films/view?film_id=90221

Directors Jon Alpert and Matt O’Neill work for DCTV, which is a community Television centre in New York. The film captured the sorrow and pain caused by the Sichuan Province earthquake that occurred on May 12 2008. However, more painful than this natural disaster was the corruption and inaction of the government that led to the deaths of 10 000 children that were killed when their badly built school rooms collapsed and who were then left under the rubble in the aftermath. For days afterwards they were trapped and slowly dying while no government rescue operations were instigated by the local government organizations. The corruption, cover-ups and the painful obsession by the government to be more concerned about their international reputation than that of the parents who lost their only children was at times difficult to watch. I was astounded by the difference in what occurred in China and what may occur in my own country if the similar disaster was to unfold. I thought of Stuart Diver and his burying in rubble in Thredbo in a landslide in 1997 and how for days rescue teams carefully searched for survivors, which after 67 hours Stuart was found and brought to safety. Then I listened to the father who told of his primary school age only daughter (due to China’s one child policy) phoning him from the rubble and begging him to come and rescue her and to call the fire brigade. She was not rescued, as there were no operations conducted by the government at all. I began to consider that as the victims involved were villages and farmers they were treated as not deserving the same respects and rights, the wealthy classes in the city might receive. After the earthquake, the government told them to take care of the situation themselves. One mother explained how she dug her child out at 3 am in the morning and she tried to carry her deceased daughter home on the back of their motorbike, until it broke down, leading them to carrying her home on foot. They buried her in their own land. I could not help but be disgusted with this treatment and the resulting conclusion that no follow up investigation or final report was ever given to the parents, despite them marching for hours to protest and beg for an investigation to occur, which on camera the officials agreed to.

Hence the documentary was covering a very controversial and political issue that I was not aware of and that disheartened me greatly. The state corruption that led to the buildings being built to such a low standard was devastating enough, but to see how the government then offered the parents an extra $8000 for their loss, if they agreed to not bring China into disrepute was horrifying. I could not help but wonder how the farmers and villages all over the world are given less human rights than people who live in the city and this concerned me greatly. Where did this prejudice and ill treatment stem from? Where do the government officials and wealthy citizens in the large cities all over their world think their own rice and other farming produce comes from? Why would these people deserve any less than anyone else in their country? And if the government (as seen in the documentary) was so concerned with how their international counterparts would perceive them, why did they not take the appropriate action after this dreadful incident and show the world that they do care about their people, in particular their children and in the very least have an appropriate investigation into the cause and resulting inaction of this ‘unnatural disaster’ in the Sichuan Province.

The documentary was filmed on the go in the early aftermath of this disaster and I would love to know how the American filmmakers even had permission to film, which I will follow up on. The cinematography was fitting with the cinema verite style it was shot in and it goes to show you that the story alone can be more powerful than any carefully designed set. The long close ups of the mourning parents was very emotive. The opening scene, before the title of the film or any detailed description of the subject matter, was an emotionally charged beginning. The young child who had somehow survived in one of the school buildings that had collapsed and killed all of her friends visited the site with her parents. She cried and wished her friends good luck in their journey.

I left the cinema with a mixture of emotions. I was disturbed with what I had witnessed, I was grateful for cinema and its power of being able to spread these stories and make people aware of the pain and suffering people all of the world go through in our very different lives; and I left bewildered and concerned that there was nothing I could do to ensure something like this does not happen again. Except of course to continue to make films myself and somehow contribute to at least making people aware of people’s actions and perhaps one of these days the people responsible will start to worry more about their people, than their reputation that only stems from their ill treatment of their people to begin with.

You can buy a copy of this film here.

PunchyP's election coverage...the #debate or lack there of

2010-08-01T16:51:00.001-07:00

Sorry delayed reaction...was waiting for something interesting to be discussed but has not happened so far.

Had nothing to say about #debate from last Sunday and still don't really. Found it utterly boring on both sides
and if it wasn't for the #greens I would be lost for who to vote for. It was full of deceitful games, side-stepping and racial slurs. There
was no mention of traditional debate topics or critical election campaign issues such as Education, Health or god forbid the
Environment (which apparently the corporate honcho's still have free reign of.)

Both of their persona's (#abbutt and #spillard) are unappealing to me and it's a sad day when you choose a PM from the list of who you despise slightly less.

The day after the debate, I did however have a concerning discussion with some gen Why's? when I suggested we do our horror animation on political leaders in our present and past, however they responded with "I don't know anything about politics, have no opinion on it and wouldn't have anything to say"... which 3 weeks out of a Federal Election obviously left me a little bewildered. I was marching in anti-war rallies in first year uni and knew every economic policy of current and past political leaders in Australia through high school economics (and due to my teen crush on Keating and my economics teacher who lived next door to Keating's brother - however the point remains the same!)

Thus, I'm a bit concerned that there will be more donkey votes and racism induced voting in the next election to really justify any pre-election discussions from me at this point. I might instead pack my bags for Spain and leave the Gen Y's or as I say the Gen WTF's and the racists to their own demise in Australia. It's a scary time in politics and society in general at the moment. I hope some intelligent and humanitarian #debates can occur soon prior to #ausvotes

Need I remind you of the horror of the PM these people chose only a few short years ago? If so, please remind yourselves http://raws.adc.rmit.edu.au/~s3087922/portfolio/

Clare Peterson
Punchy Productions

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Why we all should blog and create an online presence

2010-07-28T18:58:00.001-07:00

From my good friend Maria, I found this video on why we should all reflect, engage and of course blog!

MAKE MEDIA MATTER from MAKEMEDIAMATTER.COM on Vimeo.

Posted via email from Journalism

Greenberg, 2010, Dir. Noah Baumbach, Film Review

2010-07-28T18:17:00.001-07:00

In my first attempt to see a film at the Nova, Carlton every Monday (during my university commitments and conveniently on their $6 movie day), I had the pleasure of viewing Greenberg, 2010, Dir. Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale). It was written by Noah Baumbach (screenplay) and Jennifer Jason Leigh (story) who plays a small but poignant part in the film, as Roger's ex-girlfriend who has moved on with her life. This writing partnership resulted in what I consider a very funny, entertaining and strangely heartwarming comedy. In an observation that was quite scary, poor old Roger Greenberg (Ben Stiller) reminded me of an exaggerated version of myself in certain stages of my life; in his cynical, narcissistic, post nervous breakdown persona he offers a comedic reflection of a has-been musician who is getting older and questioning his past decisions and his place in the world right now. The buy line is "he's got a lot on his mind" and this is certainly reflected in his incessant need to write complaint letters to every organisation his encounters on a daily basis (a similar passion of mine, if only I had time!) My favorite line from the movie was on Roger's 41st birthday, when he sat with his only remaining friend and was reflecting on his much younger 'like' interest and the moments of youth that they both admit have passed them by. His friend, Ivan Schrank (Rhys Ifans) who plays a fellow ex-rocker, now running an IT business and married to what Roger insanely describes as a "racist", comments that "youth is wasted on the young", which Roger replies in his nonchalent depressive tone stemming from a true cynic, "I'd go further, I'd go, life is wasted on people."

Greenberg follows the story of Roger who has just arrived back in his hometown, Los Angeles, to housesit his wealthy and professional brother who seems to care more about his dog then of Roger and his recent admission to a mental hospital. Along comes the brother's assistant, Florence (Greta Gerwig) who takes care of Roger's needs in more ways than one. Despite, at least Roger's best efforts (if not spontaneously aggressive yet amusing attempts) to distance himself from falling for Florence, the couple in the very least bond over their shared notions of feeling lost and searching for their place in the world. There are consistent laughs found in the film, from punchy observational humor of Roger and his narcissistic reflections of others; to the once best-friends relationship of Roger and Ivan; the brother's phone calls to check up on Roger and the strange couple that arrive at the backyard pool every other day.

I left the cinema feeling satisfied with watching an intelligent, comedic effort, added with the new offering of Ben Stiller playing a dramatic role and not a characiature. It's philosophical edge, without being a heavy drama, offers a delightful film to enjoy with others or in ones own time grabbed between other commitments. Go and see it, I ensure you, if you have any reflective enquiries on your own past, like watching obsessive cynics write hysterical complaint letters or enjoy the notion of people finding love in unexpected places, you will sit through certainly without yawning or checking the time and even come out with a smile on your face!

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PunchyP's election coverage...the history

2010-07-21T06:06:00.001-07:00

says it all really. money money money whereever he can get it and take it back out of actual needs i.e. education and public health (which he took $1 billion out of while he was 'health' minister for little johnny. If people can ignore these facts http://abbottfacts.com.au/video/tony-abbott-hooked-donations-tobacco-companies then they really do deserve this person as their leader...and if they do, I will remember fondly the small 2.5 years I had with a labor leader while I live in Spain post August 21 2010. All I ask, is that some real thought is taken by the voters. Look at the facts and form your decision on real facts and not mere campaign lies that anyone can tell. After all Abbutt did state that

<blockquote>Second, as we are being blunt, the fact is that Tony and the people who put him in his job do not want to do anything about climate change. They do not believe in human caused global warming. As Tony observed on one occasion <span style="font-weight: bold;">"climate change is crap" </span>or if you consider his mentor, Senator Minchin, the world is not warming, its cooling and the climate change issue is part of a vast left wing conspiracy to deindustrialise the world. http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/abbotts-climate-change-policy-is-bullshit-20091207-kdmb.html</blockquote>

<span style="font-weight: bold;">and for all those incessant users of the words "backflips" and "flip flops" in response to Labor's attempts with the ETS - the real history is this:</span>

<blockquote>Third, there is a major issue of integrity at stake here and Liberals should reflect very deeply on it. We have an Opposition whose current leadership dismisses the Howard Government's ETS policy as being just a political ploy. We have an Opposition Leader who has in the space of a few months held every possible position on the issue, each one contradicting the position he expressed earlier. And finally we have an Opposition which negotiated amendments to the Rudd Government's ETS, then reached agreement on those amendments and then, a week later, reneged on the agreement. http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/abbotts-climate-change-policy-is-bu...</blockquote>

and if you think this is mere ALP spin...these comments were actually made by a fellow campaigning Liberal, mr banker Malcolm Turncash.
But if you insist on hearing it from the horse's mouth (literally), Abbott admits himself that he is introducing Climate Change into the election because "it's a vote changer" not due to any overwhelming concern for the environmental problems that he thinks "is crap"...but remember you cannot take anything Abbutt says as 'gospel' as he again states himself "don't believe all I say." I don't think it's the 'all' that we need to worry about, its the can we believe any of what he says that is the real concern right now.

More to come on PunchyP's election coverage - and yes I will be sharing my views on spillard's policies and behaviour also, which you can see has not pleased me since her bullying act to Kev, powered by the right-winged factions in the ALP so stay tuned for who I will be voting for and why...

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#rudd #spill a moving, respectful & intelligent speech

2010-06-23T21:15:00.001-07:00

Thanks Rudd for everything you did, everything you tried to do and everything you dreamed was possible for our country. This is not the way a man like this should go out. It's disrespectful and unnecessary. What may have gone wrong is her fault as much as his. I'm proud of you Rudd.

Clare Peterson
Punchy Productions

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A sad sad day #spillard

2010-06-23T18:23:00.001-07:00

What should be a great victory with having a female PM but instead is a sad sad day for the ALP and Australia. Kevin 07 saved this country from the destruction of little Johnny and set the road to move forward as a socially committed humane country that will not be bullied by right winged racist facists...and yet this is what has happened today. The corporate racist pigs have won yet again. Good news is the mining shares are up since the change and the war victims from all the countries we have helped bomb are too scared to ask us for help and try and escape their torture in our rapidly sinking society. And the bottom line is that even the liberals wouldn't do this to their abhorrent leader little Johnny would have been discarded of well before his final senile months and his resulting loss in 07. And the fact that even them wouldn't do this, unfortunately says a lot. Kevin 07 saved this country and did his best to try and START the process of repairing inept policy decisions from the reign of terror of howard. The right facists in the ALP blocked the ETS and have since pressured Rudd on his socialist stance on the refugees and his justified and vital mining tax. And he invited spillard into her leadership role and made her who she now is. Which is, by the way, the leadership team who TOGETHER made the policy decisions which have caused such controversy. But instead the corporate right win again and going into the next election we can now choose the unstable, backstabbing right (once the Left) or the Lycra wearing sexist, moronic right. That's it, I'm outta here and cannot sit by and watch a further destruction of our country. I stand by Rudd for at least he saved us from Johnny and today he chose to try and save the party from destroying itself further rather than save himself...and that is what a responsible and committed leader would do. I want a female PM who is voted in by the people of Australia and not by right corporate factions in the ALP. It's a sad sad day for the ALP and for a leader that had every substantial policy that could have made the changes the public wanted, blocked by the right factions. I voted for the leader I wanted to lead this country into change we needed and unlike the other people in our disposable society I was committed to stand by him and let him start the long term challenge of repairing this country BUT at the end of the day the miners who sell our earth for billions paid to themselves and the right factions have bullied us into a new PM today and it's this process that makes today a sad day. And an even sadder day when slimy Abbutt uses it to take the next election purely because the LCD's won't stand for a leader being chosen FOR them and not by them. Hasta Illeugo de Espana Clare Peterson

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RESEARCH PROJECT: TIPS AND TRICKS

2010-06-16T08:04:00.001-07:00

TIPS AND TRICKS for becoming a prominent journalist

Below is a list of our interviewees for this research project. You can also read the full Interview Summaries and Case Studies on the following people and their modes of journalism in the INTERVIEW SUMMARIES chapter.

David Hastie, journalist, Herald Sun

Jay Savage, reporter, Nine MSN

Jesse Hogan, sports reporter, The Age

Rafael Epstein, investigative reporter, The Age

Louise Connor, Vic branch secretary, Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance

Stephen Carey, news director, Seven News

Colin McKinnon, editor, training and development, The Age

Robin Jacklin, former deputy news editor, ABC

Jason Whittaker, Deputy Editor, Crikey

Catherine Deveny, Ex Age columnist / freelance writer

Belinda Hawkins, Producer, Australian Story, ABC http://www.abc.net.au/austory/aboutus.htm

Steven Quinn, Assoc. Prof. Journalism , Deakin Uni

Robert Carey, journalism lecturer, Monash University

Edward Li, ex South China Morning Post (HK)

Billy Clarke, Offkey Productions (HK)

The tips and tricks that these industry heads and prominent journalists gave us have been compiled under the following headings:

GETTING STARTED

HOW TO WRITE

WHAT TO WRITE ABOUT

HOW TO GET A JOB

SKILLS NEEDED

WHAT TO EXPECT

INTRODUCTION

All interviewees agreed that the journalism industry is becoming very tough and competitive. More and more people are starting blogs each day, so you need to now do much more than this! if you want your blog and other social media sites to stand out you’ll need top stories and interesting content as well as following the additional steps that need to be taken, which I have explained in detail in the Social Media chapter.

Creating an online presence will help with your portfolio. This will enable your networking possibilities and show you have a hunger to write which is important when applying for a job. It will also showcase how well you can keep your fans entertained by the amount of followers you have is evidence your work has quality which adds bonus points when applying for a job. It is very important to not give up and keep working at your goal. Be prepared to take criticism and be positive about it. The Herald Sun emphasized the fact that even though you may get turned down numerous times, it is important to stay confident

Your folio as well as your blog is part of the recipe for becoming a journalist. Working on a folio shows dedication and initiative. It is evidence to your employer of what you have to offer, are capable of and what you are prepared to do. Everyone interviewed emphasized the same number one message, which was get your work published anywhere that you can.

When you go for an interview, these companies expect you to know some background about them as a sign of respect and also to show initiative. You can impress them and show them how keen you are for the job by talking about different writers styles and how you can understand the way they write and adapt if you need to. It helps to have an understanding of the target audience. The company will expect you to be able to do a good job about any story thrown in your direction, whether or not it is in your field, and you can’t be fussy in this business. Being able to adapt is one of the most important qualities you will need, as you will be expected to fill in at different areas within the company.

Be confident if you know your right and don’t be afraid to make your voice heard. It helps to pester a few bosses in order to get your way as this can show determination and motivation, however don’t come off as arrogant or a stalker!

Getting known and meeting people is a key task in gaining employment and finding stories. It is essential that people who want to be journalists create as many contacts as they possibly can and never loose them. You never know whom you will need to call up for a job, an interview, a lead or a contact suggestion. This includes networking, attending events and joining the MEAA http://www.alliance.org.au/

Make sure you work is good, clear, valid and punctual. Is it backed with the correct facts? And are there enough of them? These are questions journalists should constantly be asking themselves. It also helps to have your own particular style and genre and writing on subjects that you are passionate about will always make for your best writing.

A few interviewees mentioned that keeping their rejection letters was a good idea as they could read back on them and laugh later on when they were employed and successful. It also shows how well you’ve done and can keep you motivated, which was quite an interesting tip.

So read through the tips in their separate categories and start your journalism career now!

GETTING STARTED

The main point is to write every day. Getting published is far easier with the array of social media sites that writers can self publish on now but you also need to try and get your work published in university papers, newsletters, community newspapers, independent media (and mainstream if you have a breaking story), TV (free-to-air, community and cable), online publications, literary magazines and journals.

And GETTING CONTACTS IS A CRITICAL STEP - it really is ‘who you know.’ However, leading industry heads highlighted the difference between being determined and being a stalker - so use your journalistic instincts to judge reactions and know when to back off!

Start a blog and write on it regularly!

Have original ideas and pitch them to publications

Dig up you own story - small or large and write it

Get your work published anywhere you can - it all counts

Be Passionate - if you don’t want to be a writer - get out!

Be proactive and get noticed (build an online presence)

Network, attend events, join the Alliance -Be active in journalism community

Build up contacts and never loose them

Get to know key names and show commitment

Speak to lots of people, even if it leads to nothing

List journalists you like and work out why/how they are successful. If you like their style, practice writing it

Read the news every day

HOW TO WRITE

The key point is to create good, clear, crisp copy in a unique voice and write what you know - it will always be your best writing!

Write well, there’s no excuse for a bad copy (copy successful styles and writers you like)

Choose a specific area to specialize in (write what you know / interested in = best writing)

Must back up all stories with facts – prove your point!

Always question validity of your story, is it true enough to publish?

Must source relevant and breaking stories which will interest your target audience “breaking stories are gold in the newsroom”

Think outside the square and write something different. Find a small interesting story (friend of a friend, story you hear, something you witness)

Subscribe to press releases

WHAT TO WRITE ABOUT

I spoke to Catherine Deveny post her sacking from the Age and she stated the following in advice for what to write about…

“Well don’t write about Bindi, Rove, Anzac day, atheism, corporate white collar maggots or the logies….”

“No do. Write from your heart, the truth is a rare delicacy, people want to hear the truth, edit it later if you need to get it published but never edit yourself when you’re writing”

“Do stuff for love, do stuff for money, don't do anything for neither”

“To get good work, do good work!”

And we also gathered the following more general tips for topics to write about

Find small, controversial or opinion stories, things that happen around you, talk to someone who knows someone - choose your style and write accordingly

Confessions are a part of human nature, People like talking

Go to the pub and find a story, talk to people and hear their stories

Get on the ground, go to the press gallery and get known

And most importantly, be proud of your work!

HOW TO GET A JOB

Don’t worry where you start, small regional places are the best places to start. All of the major editors said this is now an essential step before they will hire you. With budget cuts, they want someone else to train you before they poach you from them. Also, don’t bluff your way through if you are a novice – admit what you don’t know – people appreciate honesty and determination to succeed is more valuable than a ‘know it all’

Get a work placement/work experience -work hard & pitch your ideas

Show you’re interested in all aspects and any jobs

Don’t worry where you start, small regional places are the best

Don’t bluff your way through if a novice – admit what you don’t know

Go to local papers in the Leader Group (a way to start with Fairfax)

“Papers are lazy” they won’t advertise, you need your name on their list of a potential writers

Changing times = its never been harder but those who are proactive and persist will get jobs

Call newsroom and offer to do ANY job. It will lead to work

To start out as a freelancer is hard - 1st you need a reputation so get published ANYWHERE. Get your name known. Try TV first.

take rejection and persevere - Keep rejection letters to look back on when successful

Prepare for interviews by following these next steps…

INTERVIEW PREPARATION

With interviews - the most critical steps are adjusting your portfolio for the job that you are going for - don’t bring 2000 word features if it is a sports reporting job!

And prepare properly beforehand - Channel 7, and The Age were amazed that candidates came to interviews and knew no current headlines and had not read the papers that morning…. This is considered a Big NO NO.

Also, the news director at Channel 7, Scary (as he is commonly known) - said people even came to him for interviews and said ‘gee Hitchner is going well isn’t he’ - which he replied ‘yeah, maybe you should get a job at 9’…! So know your product and prepare thoroughly beforehand.

Always take a pitch to an interview

Know the product (paper/TV channel), target audience and writers/presenters (different styles and names)

Read the headlines that morning, and know the current issues in that product and in that region! **AN ABSOLUTE MUST**

Know all the main newspapers, their differences, know what you want to do there AND what you can give to them

Adjust your folio for what your applying for

Be confident BUT don’t be arrogant

SKILLS NEEDED

Multimedia skills are the absolute must in today’s media industry and you also need to be energetic, flexible and resilient! But above all the technical skills you need - you also need to be passionate - if news and writing are your passions - this is the career for you!

Strong online research skills

Multi media skills and social networking experience is a must

Strong oral and written communication skills

Passion for news and media

Flexibility, resilience

Ability to tell stories, people who can write clear crisp copy

Be a perfectionist - get angry at spelling mistakes in published work, it does matter!

Recognize when a story slaps you in the face

News bosses want journo’s to find their own stories, not just press releases

Patience: You may have to write about things you have no interest in

Passion, persistence and luck!

Write well, there’s no excuse for a bad copy

Don’t get overly impressed with stars; stay focused on your work. You will need to be critical sometimes.

Diverse writing and publishing skills - depends on the subject/media publication

Need to talk under water!

WHAT TO EXPECT

Of course, there are certain elements that you need to be weary of if thinking about a career in Journalism.

Most journo’s start with instructions from their editor to do “death knocks” on a grieving family or other member of society…this is a hard task and you may be against it but u need to be strong, stay respectful and read signs for when you need to back off from the interviewees. You also cannot be too precious – as you will get abused from readers and/or the Chief of Staff when they are stressed – so don’t take it personally!

At the end of the day, if writing and news is your passion, MOST Of the time it will be a fun, fast paced, rewarding and interesting job!

Long hours, no downtime, 24 hr news cycle

Cadet jobs are hard: death knocks & low pay BUT it will lead to other jobs

May get abusive letters / phone calls

Chief of staff may rip shreds through you when stressed, don’t take it personally

You cannot say ‘no’ too many times, as your editor will stop asking and give the stories to someone else

People do burn out & it is hard with a family but it is possible!

If you want to do it, it’s fun, exciting & fast paced

If bored easily, it’s a great job because you simply change stories!

You can follow your dreams in writing…

And don’t forget our Social Media chapter for extensive advice on how to create your powerful online presence to gain employment.

So there is no more for me to say, there are the tips so go and make it happen!

Posted via email from Journalism

Research Report on Journalism: CURRENT AND FUTURE TRENDS 3

2010-06-16T07:12:00.001-07:00

1.7 JOB PROSPECTS

So what do all these changes mean for the type and number of jobs in journalism?

As you can see, workload has increased by about 70% and this is mainly due to the need for multi-media skills and reductions in staff. Journalists have to do everything now - write, design, film, photograph and publish all to endless deadlines in the new 24-hour news cycle. You also have to write for a number of sections, rather than your own specialised area. Currently when people are made redundant in print media, they are not replaced; their role is simply handed over to another journalist at the paper or individual stories offered to a freelancer who can be called in last minute. The changing climate in journalism with online media and 24 hours news cycles does mean that you no longer have slow days waiting for breaks, and you have to constantly seek stories. As Rafael Epstein, The Age comments, “We are living in the midst of a Revolution” and reporters such as Nick McKenzie (also at The Age) is constantly on his phone and email investigating and finding stories.

As Colin McKinnon, Editor, Training and Development, The Age confirms with this statement, “there has been a 20% cut in journalists in the last 18 months, and gaining a job is very competitive. More than 550 applicants competed for just three positions as trainees in 2010.” In 2009, the Herald Sun offered no cadetships at all, there were 3 available at The Age and the ABC normally has a few available each year.

There are also shifts in the disparity between the numbers of male and female journalists in Australia. It was noted in the interviews that Channel 7 now has a lot of women and older women for that matter. Scary (Steve Carey, News Director at Channel 7) said the applications from males were lacking some crucial elements now, including communication skills. Other facts gained in our interviews with industry heads were:

70% of applicants to the ABC are women now

70% of trainees at The Age were female in the last 10 years

70-80% of the newsroom at the ABC is female.

Hence the majority of journalists will be women in the future if current statistics are indicative of future trends. Evidence of this changing landscape is seen with the Chief Editor of the Sunday Age being female (a traditionally male dominated role). What are the other future trends predicted?

1.8 FUTURE TRENDS

Source: Louise Connor, Media Entertainment & Arts Alliance

Here is a screen shot of a slide that Louise Connor sent to us from her presentation at the http://www.walkleys.com/media-pass-student-days

Social Media is having a big impact on Journalism. Look above and see what would it be like if news had been broadcast only in Tweets. These are some key news stories that have been converted to Twitter in an experiment. Yes journalism and media in general is changing, it will not be broadcast in Tweets only, but Twitter is an ever-growing contribution to news and a key research and networking tool for journalists. Currently 10% of traffic to the online NY Times is sourced from Twitter (that’s 2 million people per month). However, to the notion of social media replacing journalism, Jason Whittaker, Deputy Editor from Crikey states, “It is not the be-all and end-all. Twitter will not save journalism, as some may have you suggest. But as a self-marketing journalist it’s pretty powerful.” And it is expected that social media will continue to be a prominent tool for journalists in creating their individual online presences and by media companies in attempts to capture new audiences. To read more about this trend and its uses, check out our Social Media chapter.

Where exactly the print media industry will be going over the next few years is disagreed on mostly, but prominent opinions suggest fewer papers, a smaller size and less frequency. Also there will be more outsourcing (as already seen with the sub’s sections and the separate magazine publishing companies) and some say newspapers will transform to a more magazine style format. More and more companies will focus on their online content as this cuts printing costs. Taking into account Louise Connor’s comments, hopefully the Australian mainstream media companies will develop their online content in a more innovative manner than currently seen with their copy and paste style of the print media stories.

It is also expected that “smart” newspapers will use Twitter and other social media tools more effectively, as the NY Times has done. Stephen Quinn comments that the “Profession will continue, yet the product and delivery will change. The newspapers will shrink in size and frequency (i.e. Weekend Australian only) and the physical size will shrink”. Stephen qualifies this statement with raising the issue that the public transport problems in metropolitan areas actually prevents people from being able to read the current size of a newspaper and it needs to adapt to this and be more like a magazine (more color, less frequency).

As Collin McKinnon from The Age states, “The newspapers will survive but they will be different.” He also states that he is “optimistic about the future. There are many new and exciting opportunities for journalism in the multimedia age. And The Age wants people who are enthusiastic, energetic and full of ideas for the future of journalism.”

With regards to technology, it is clear that the iPad and similar portable devices are going to continue to transform how news is consumed. As seen on Mumbrella there are already applications for The Australian and The Age which will more than likely continue to shrink readership levels of print media, but will not reduce readership as a whole to these large mainstream media sources who are taking advantage of the new technology.

Mumbrella can exclusively reveal the first screen shots of The Age’s iPad app, after a prototype of the Fairfax Media newspaper’s application briefly appeared on the iTunes store on Saturday night. And the app will even read the stories out for those who find looking at text too much of a chore.

Designer David Curry was able to download the app for $7 a month – slightly more expensive than rival The Australian’s $4.99 app which made its debut on Friday to coincide with the Australian launch of the iPad.

Fairfax revealed last week that it was creating iPad apps for both The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald. But it did not announce its pricing or when the products would be available.

Following the initial panic and denial of new media, the major players are now taking advantage of technology and how they can once again make more money, as Murdoch states,

“Mr. Murdoch said the Internet and technology was not the enemy, but complementary platforms that media owners could take advantage of.”

http://mumbrella.com.au/exclusive-the-ages-ipad-app-revealed-26914

This is in reference to the latest figures he had just received on people paying to subscribe to the iPad App’s for all of his newspapers. Hence, it is clear that the mainstream media owners (or should I say owner) will manage to pull through their crisis with the Internet and move forward into the future of online media. As of course, innovative and independent news sources such as Crikey proved several years ago when people agreed to pay a nominal subscription fee to read quality and un-corporatised news reports. The only question left to ask, is what sort of news will subscribers be paying for from Murdoch’s main papers? A question that I personally, or even the current editors of mainstream media cannot answer at this point.

To conclude, media companies will most likely adjust to this changing climate through focusing on their online media sites and their applications for iPhones and iPads. In the future, it would be expected that any surviving news companies would all have applications for these portable devices or they will be left behind, as some of them already have with the mis-management and weak adoption of online media opportunities.

Go back to the Introduction Page with links to the chapters

References:

http://www.alliance.org.au/

http://www.walkleys.com/media-pass-student-days

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-business/australian-newspapers-post-drop-in-sales-20100514-v2dc.html

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/small-dip-in-metro-paper-sales/story-e6frg996-1225797973630)

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-business/australian-newspapers-post-drop-in-sales-20100514-v2dc.html

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/online-split-in-newspaper-readership-survey/story-e6frg996-1225831969462

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2010/jun/14/newspapers-downturn

http://www.presscouncil.org.au/snpma/ch01.html

www.ausstats.abs.gov.au/.../internet%20access%20at%20home%20final%20version.pdf -)

http://mumbrella.com.au/exclusive-the-ages-ipad-app-revealed-26914.

http://www.presscouncil.org.au/snpma/ch02.html

http://journalism-research.blogspot.com/2010/05/comments-made-on-deveny-blog.html

http://www.crikey.com.au/

http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/07/02/newspapers-and-bloggers-isnt-there-room-for-everyone/

http://www.alliance.org.au/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/community

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/asia/

http://www.nytimes.com/

http://spot.us/pages/about

"Center for Media Change"

Knight Foundation.

http://www.everyblock.com/

http://www.holovaty.com/

http://www.lasvegassun.com/

http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2009/s2565007.htm

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Flat-Earth-News-Award-winning-Distortion/dp/0701181451)

http://journalism-research.blogspot.com/2010/06/730-report-abc.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/feb/03/society

http://catherinedeveny.com/about/index.html

http://www.kas.de/proj/home/pub/130/2/year-2010/dokument_id-18599/index.html

http://www.vericorder.com/

http://qik.com/

http://www.soundslides.com/

http://globalmojo.org/”

http://www.deakin.edu.au/arts-ed/scca/staff-directory2.php?username=stephenq

http://mumbrella.com.au/exclusive-the-ages-ipad-app-revealed-26914

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from PunchyP

Research Project CH 4: SOCIAL MEDIA AND ITS IMPLICATIONS

2010-06-16T05:56:00.001-07:00

Social Media: How to create a strong online presence, what precautions to take and what happened with Catherine Deveny

This chapter will explore social media applications and what resources are available to you (at no cost) to create a strong online presence for your journalistic endeavors. It will also discuss what precautions you need to take in forming this presence, as everything you write will remain in online search engines for years to come. And with this in mind, I will also discuss the recent Twitter incidence with Catherine Deveny and offer some first hand insight into why she was sacked – from Catherine herself.

Why is an online presence vital?

Show off your work, market yourself

See what others are writing/discussing/thinking

Assist your research skills, interview possibilities and job prospects

Create a online CV for prospective employers

Stay up to date with new technology, sites, software and media personalities

Embrace the notion of “do what you do best, and link to the rest” (Jeff Jarvis)

What precautions need to be taken?

Data will stay online for years to come

Pretend someone who hates you is reading your tweets/blogs/comments and write as if it will be used against you!

Social Media is the perfect tool to show off your work and create a strong online presence which also allows you to join important online communities, keep up to date with the industry and create your own persona as a writer or as Jason Whittaker from Crikey says ‘create a brand for yourself’. And best of all it is all free!

HOW TO GET STARTED

Stephen Quinn is Assoc. Professor of Journalism at Deakin, Geelong, Australia and a freelance Journalist and Mojo. In this video

Stephen provides some important tips and details which social media applications you should be using NOW to improve your online presence and employment prospects in the media industry.

This interview was conducted via conducted via Skype and recorded it with a demo version of Call Recorder v2.3.10. The file from this recording is then transferred directly to a movie file in your chosen destination on your computer. I then uploaded my interview video file to my Postperous account http://filethis.posterous.com/ which automatically auto posted the link and description to my Twitter, Facebook and other personal blogs. Due to these functions, the finding of Postperous, which this report is posted on, is without a doubt the most useful social media tool, particularly as it makes you appear as if you are posting on numerous sites throughout the day, even though you are simply adding posts on the one site.

The main suggestions from Stephen were to use: Twitter, Linkedin, Skype, Delicious, Postperous, Blogging platforms, Google apps such as Buzz (a version of Twitter type application) and photo galleries such as Flicker, video editing programs and audio programs such as Audioboom.com (which can be updated via your mobile or web).

A great site that explains each of these tools and many more can be viewed here: http://www.quanrel.com/top-social-media-network-sites/

The main incentive for mastering these social media tools is the fact that to be a journalist in today’s media market, you must be entrepreneurial, market yourself by creating a brand for yourself, in addition to actually writing articles! And social media is a great way to find people to interview, request information from your followers and people you are following regarding interviews and leads for stories and it is a great research tool on trends and society

Case Study

http://twitter.com/JEFFJARVIS

http://www.buzzmachine.com/

Jeff Jarvis is a great example of how to use social media effectively to market yourself and create a strong online presence to gain employment. He is a media commentator, media adviser and paid blogger (last year he made $20 000 US from advertising alone on his blog). Why?

He is knowledgeable on his chosen subject, - you need to find your own niche market which you can write comfortably about or that you are interested in. Your best writing will always come from areas of interest. He is energetic, he markets himself effectively and he writes a minimum 2 blogs per day. Look at his followers: 43, 029 and his recent tweet that markets his latest book. Of course, you don’t always do this, it will become boring and people will not follow you, so you also need to retweet interesting comments/articles that you read, post videos, links and other information from yourself and others. This way you can build your community of contacts and followers effectively

HOW TO CREATE AN STRONG ONLINE PRESENCE AND WHY YOU SHOULD DO THIS

Jason Whittaker, Deputy Editor from Crikey and prominent freelance journalist, writes a great summary of his presentation at the Walkley’s MediaPass Student day in May 2010.

Jason has created his own prominent online presence in the media world and he admits that this is how he got his job at Crikey. He also offers some great tips and tricks in navigating through the social media applications on offer (primarily with Twitter and blogs) in order to participate in the media communities and to start branding yourself as a writer. He states you need to be “using social media as a tool to engage with the industry and promote your work. I absolutely know it to be true.” And here are his thoughts regarding his presentation on creating an online presence, which was sourced from his blog and discussed in my blog,

So I want to talk about the relationship between PR and journalism. Not as you may think. I want to talk about why journalists need to engage in their own PR. How, increasingly, you are all brands that must be marketed and commoditised. How you have to sell yourself, blatantly, shamelessly, in a market that is ruthlessly competitive.
Now, let me state one thing up front. I hate PR. It’s a dark art performed by many slimy practioners. And I only say that half-flippantly. But your ability to sell yourself — to devise a PR strategy, even — to win employment is crucial. You’re going to have to get your hands dirty.
The good news is the Internet and social media puts all the tools you need at your fingertips. But doing it well is a real challenge, and doing it badly will do untold damage to your reputation and employment prospects. It’s a fine line.
Getting your work read and seen is crucial, and ever-more-so in a greatly diversified and fragmented media environment. Fewer of you will have photo by-lines in the Herald Sun, or stand-ups on the nightly news, and fewer people will be seeing them anyway. At least initially you’ll be filing for online student publications, you’ll be writing for your own blogs, you’ll be pitching stories to be paid as a freelancer. You’ll be working on mediums and publications that don’t necessarily come with built-in audiences. The onus, at least partly, will be on you to go and find them. To build audiences for your writing. And, importantly, making sure the right people are reading.
Twitter is a great start. You need to be on Twitter. Trust me. I was a cynical as many of you know doubt are. It truly is white noise so much of the time. It’s dull people doing dull things. None duller than me. But as mass media goes it’s almost all that’s left. And anybody who you will ever want to employ you is reading and participating.
It’s the place to start to build your online reputation. Don’t treat it solely as a feed for shamelessly promoted links — nobody will follow you. It needs to have personality. It needs to be provocative and funny and engaging. You need to be following interesting people, re-tweeting interesting things, posting interesting information. And always, always, it needs to make you look eminently employable.
Use it to build your contacts list. Link it to your online profiles and work portfolios. Use it to drive people to the platforms you’re using to market your brand and publish your goods.
You should have a blog. There’s no excuse. When nobody will employ you, when nobody will publish your work, everyone can self-publish. Use it to compile any student or freelance work. And write well, write provocatively, write passionately about the things that interest you. Passion breeds the most compelling writing. It puts your best foot forward.
I got my job at Crikey because I nagged the powers that be to the point of annoyance. But also because they knew me. I existed in this sphere of media influence that is quickly developing online. They might have followed me on Twitter, they might have read my blog, they might have seen the online publications I was writing for; they saw me engaging with their products and participating in their community. I simply wouldn’t have got the job without it.
You cannot afford to be outside this community. You need to be incredibly, shamelessly conspicuous. You need a beachhead, a brand, a presence. And when everyone else finally catches up and joins you in the pool, you need to be more professional and, yes, more popular than anyone else. You need to sell yourself harder and faster than the rest.
At least for the moment, you need to be really good at PR. Don’t be ashamed.

And Jason also suggested in his presentation, the following tips for marketing your blog:

Sell it! Tweet it to people you want to read it

Advertise on google, to get more traffic to it

Cross-link it to other blogs

Think commercially

You cannot just put it online, you have to market it

After Jason himself caused problems in his employment with PPL when he wrote a blog on the management of New Limited being incompetent, he now states that this was “dumb” and he should not have written that, at that time. Read more in our Precautions section below.

Case Study

Tom Cowie set this site up http://tomwantsajob.wordpress.com/ and his subsequent Twitter @tom_cowie during an internship at Crikey. As the name of his blog suggests, it was created, solely for Tom to get a job. As described in http://www.upstart.net.au/former-upstart-editor-tom-cowie-wants-a-job/

Tom Cowie, former editor of upstart, has taken the idea to the next level with his new blog Tom wants a job. The blog, which was conceived by Tom in the wake of his internship at Crikey, will detail the ins and outs of his hunt for a job in journalism.
The blog will act as a diary, attempting to document life after uni for Tom as he goes through the processes of searching for an elusive job in print, radio, television and online journalism. Tom wants a job will also act as an experiment, investigating the possibilities of building a personal brand through blogs, social media and the digital grapevine.
The applications, the interviews, the knock backs. Tom’s life will be laid bare in what he calls a “part online documentary, part shameless self-promotion”. Be sure to check in regularly to see how he is progressing down the rocky road to gainful employment.
Tom’s blog is called Tom wants a job. You can also follow Tom’s journey on Twitter and Facebook, and hear him talk about his quest on the episode five of upcast.

And as of today, he is now officially employed as a full-time junior reporter at Crikey. As he states,

It only took three years of tertiary studies at La Trobe University and 38 days of social media campaigning.

Therefore, this case study clearly shows that creating an online presence and as Jason Whittaker suggests “shamelessly” marketing yourself will undeniably lead to work, so get started today…after you read the important precautions section below!

PRECAUTIONS

With all these new social media tools and recent headlines on Catherine Deveny’s sacking from The Age it is important to analysis the do’s and don’ts for these applications and know the implications that can occur if you plan on working professionally in the media industry, particularly a mainstream publication or even for the government or for any other organization or individual that may not appreciate your style, commentary or opinion now or in twenty years time.

The following tips were collected from our interviews and should be considered when developing your online profile:

With Twitter, the out of context is everything in excess of 140 characters so be careful on Twitter and other platforms. Stephen Quinn.

Pretend someone who hates you is reading your Tweets and imagine if they were used against you. Stephen Quinn.

Graduating students beware: everything is archived (even web-based email), so “assume that somebody who doesn’t like you is reading it”. President Obama recently warned final year students in the USA that if they want to work in public politics, they need to be careful because in 30 years it can be dragged up to attack them

Default settings on Facebook are public, so you must change to them to private

Knowing how precarious your online presence is requires reflection and ethical queries daily

As stated, “This week's witty truism on Twitter is that the social media platform Facebook is for your school friends and Twitter is for the people you wish you went to school with.” LINK

So know your target audience and write appropriately in relation to who you want to impress and how you want to be perceived

Louise Connor, from MEAA comments that Twitter is about momentary thoughts of people and can be read as a comment on its own, without the opportunity for further explanation and larger contexts

At the time of writing, the thought process of what your writing and the possible consequences must be in your head and you must acknowledge that it could come back to you at a later date. Jason Whittaker.

Sure you can choose to write what ever you want, but consider your stance and accept it if it comes back to you. Jason Whittaker.

The microphone is ALWAYS hot — everything you say and do could be used as evidence. Never forget that. But don’t be afraid of it. Jason Whittaker.

Case Study: So what happened to Catherine Deveny?

If you have not heard that she was recently sacked from The Age due to her Twitter comments on the Logies night (and contributing factors discussed below), you clearly do not have an online presence and should carefully follow the previous steps before you read on…

I did not say you would like her but if you are conversing in the media communities and engaging with online forums you would certainly have heard her she was and what happened recently on Twitter. Here is the story from Catherine herself:

How her career at the AGE began and ended:

Ø She asked for work at the Age after working on ROVE and other freelance jobs. She was offered a temporary column commenting on TV for 4 weeks and the last column was writing on the Logies (which she has done every year since). At the end of this contract she was offered an ongoing column and she was later moved to Opinions section where she was a columnist for 10 years. She wrote her controversial commentary on the TV industry and other topics as she states, “all I can do is tell the truth”.

Ø When she was offered the ongoing job in the opinions section she stated to the editor,

“I’m just a suburban mum”

The editor replied, “perfect, the suburban perspective“

Catherine responded, “but I don’t even read the newspapers, I skim the headlines from international papers online”

The editor replied “perfect, the global perspective”.

And Catherine jokes, “yeah the suburban, global perspective, a real niche market.”

Throughout her time at The Age, she was spoken to about swearing on Twitter and asked to “stop ranting” – which Catherine highlights is a term only used for women. Later she was also banned from writing about the Catholic Church or atheism (she only wrote 12 out of 600 columns on Atheism, which The Age or perhaps their vested interest in the Catholic Church, led them to a decision that this should also be banned from her allowable writing topics. She was also banned from writing on Anzac day and what it represents (but she notes a man was allowed to write on it in the same week Catherine had requested to air her opinions, in the opinions section about what she thinks Anzac Day stands for and how if Political Leaders want to start wars they should be prepared for them and their sons to be on the frontline). She also had a fairly long-standing pay dispute after her wages were cut by 40% for performing the same tasks.

Thus, Catherine believes her Twitter case from the Logies was the perfect excuse for them to sack her. She started her writing at The Age with the Logies and ended with the same commentary (and contributing factors) leading to her sacking. “The Age was leaned on very heavily by the Catholic church to have me leave” since her recent stand-up show on Atheism and her ban in Mildura from talking about religion and pedophilia cases in the Catholic Church”

So of course, this leads me to ask, what should upcoming writers talk about if the current environment is so fearful?

and you can go here for the answer...

Posted via email from Journalism

Research Project CH 4: SOCIAL MEDIA AND ITS IMPLICATIONS

2010-06-16T05:49:00.001-07:00

Social Media: How to create a strong online presence, what precautions to take and what happened with Catherine Deveny

Why is an online presence vital?

Show off your work, market yourself

See what others are writing/discussing/thinking

Assist your research skills, interview possibilities and job prospects

Create a online CV for prospective employers

Stay up to date with new technology, sites, software and media personalities

Embrace the notion of “do what you do best, and link to the rest” (Jeff Jarvis)

What precautions need to be taken?

Data will stay online for years to come

Pretend someone who hates you is reading your tweets/blogs/comments and write as if it will be used against you!

HOW TO GET STARTED

Stephen Quinn is Assoc. Professor of Journalism at Deakin, Geelong, Australia and a freelance Journalist and Mojo. In this video

Stephen provides some important tips and details which social media applications you should be using NOW to improve your online presence and employment prospects in the media industry.

A great site that explains each of these tools and many more can be viewed here: http://www.quanrel.com/top-social-media-network-sites/

Case Study

http://twitter.com/JEFFJARVIS

http://www.buzzmachine.com/

HOW TO CREATE AN STRONG ONLINE PRESENCE AND WHY YOU SHOULD DO THIS

Jason Whittaker, Deputy Editor from Crikey and prominent freelance journalist, writes a great summary of his presentation at the Walkley’s MediaPass Student day in May 2010.

So I want to talk about the relationship between PR and journalism. Not as you may think. I want to talk about why journalists need to engage in their own PR. How, increasingly, you are all brands that must be marketed and commoditised. How you have to sell yourself, blatantly, shamelessly, in a market that is ruthlessly competitive.
Now, let me state one thing up front. I hate PR. It’s a dark art performed by many slimy practioners. And I only say that half-flippantly. But your ability to sell yourself — to devise a PR strategy, even — to win employment is crucial. You’re going to have to get your hands dirty.
The good news is the Internet and social media puts all the tools you need at your fingertips. But doing it well is a real challenge, and doing it badly will do untold damage to your reputation and employment prospects. It’s a fine line.
Getting your work read and seen is crucial, and ever-more-so in a greatly diversified and fragmented media environment. Fewer of you will have photo by-lines in the Herald Sun, or stand-ups on the nightly news, and fewer people will be seeing them anyway. At least initially you’ll be filing for online student publications, you’ll be writing for your own blogs, you’ll be pitching stories to be paid as a freelancer. You’ll be working on mediums and publications that don’t necessarily come with built-in audiences. The onus, at least partly, will be on you to go and find them. To build audiences for your writing. And, importantly, making sure the right people are reading.
Twitter is a great start. You need to be on Twitter. Trust me. I was a cynical as many of you know doubt are. It truly is white noise so much of the time. It’s dull people doing dull things. None duller than me. But as mass media goes it’s almost all that’s left. And anybody who you will ever want to employ you is reading and participating.
It’s the place to start to build your online reputation. Don’t treat it solely as a feed for shamelessly promoted links — nobody will follow you. It needs to have personality. It needs to be provocative and funny and engaging. You need to be following interesting people, re-tweeting interesting things, posting interesting information. And always, always, it needs to make you look eminently employable.
Use it to build your contacts list. Link it to your online profiles and work portfolios. Use it to drive people to the platforms you’re using to market your brand and publish your goods.
You should have a blog. There’s no excuse. When nobody will employ you, when nobody will publish your work, everyone can self-publish. Use it to compile any student or freelance work. And write well, write provocatively, write passionately about the things that interest you. Passion breeds the most compelling writing. It puts your best foot forward.
I got my job at Crikey because I nagged the powers that be to the point of annoyance. But also because they knew me. I existed in this sphere of media influence that is quickly developing online. They might have followed me on Twitter, they might have read my blog, they might have seen the online publications I was writing for; they saw me engaging with their products and participating in their community. I simply wouldn’t have got the job without it.
You cannot afford to be outside this community. You need to be incredibly, shamelessly conspicuous. You need a beachhead, a brand, a presence. And when everyone else finally catches up and joins you in the pool, you need to be more professional and, yes, more popular than anyone else. You need to sell yourself harder and faster than the rest.
At least for the moment, you need to be really good at PR. Don’t be ashamed.

And Jason also suggested in his presentation, the following tips for marketing your blog:

Sell it! Tweet it to people you want to read it

Advertise on google, to get more traffic to it

Cross-link it to other blogs

Think commercially

You cannot just put it online, you have to market it

After Jason himself caused problems in his employment with PPL when he wrote a blog on the management of New Limited being incompetent, he now states that this was “dumb” and he should not have written that, at that time. Read more in our Precautions section below.

Case Study

Tom Cowie, former editor of upstart, has taken the idea to the next level with his new blog Tom wants a job. The blog, which was conceived by Tom in the wake of his internship at Crikey, will detail the ins and outs of his hunt for a job in journalism.
The blog will act as a diary, attempting to document life after uni for Tom as he goes through the processes of searching for an elusive job in print, radio, television and online journalism. Tom wants a job will also act as an experiment, investigating the possibilities of building a personal brand through blogs, social media and the digital grapevine.
The applications, the interviews, the knock backs. Tom’s life will be laid bare in what he calls a “part online documentary, part shameless self-promotion”. Be sure to check in regularly to see how he is progressing down the rocky road to gainful employment.
Tom’s blog is called Tom wants a job. You can also follow Tom’s journey on Twitter and Facebook, and hear him talk about his quest on the episode five of upcast.

And as of today, he is now officially employed as a full-time junior reporter at Crikey. As he states,

It only took three years of tertiary studies at La Trobe University and 38 days of social media campaigning.

PRECAUTIONS

The following tips were collected from our interviews and should be considered when developing your online profile:

With Twitter, the out of context is everything in excess of 140 characters so be careful on Twitter and other platforms. Stephen Quinn.

Pretend someone who hates you is reading your Tweets and imagine if they were used against you. Stephen Quinn.

Graduating students beware: everything is archived (even web-based email), so “assume that somebody who doesn’t like you is reading it”. President Obama recently warned final year students in the USA that if they want to work in public politics, they need to be careful because in 30 years it can be dragged up to attack them

Default settings on Facebook are public, so you must change to them to private

Knowing how precarious your online presence is requires reflection and ethical queries daily

As stated, “This week's witty truism on Twitter is that the social media platform Facebook is for your school friends and Twitter is for the people you wish you went to school with.” LINK

So know your target audience and write appropriately in relation to who you want to impress and how you want to be perceived

Louise Connor, from MEAA comments that Twitter is about momentary thoughts of people and can be read as a comment on its own, without the opportunity for further explanation and larger contexts

At the time of writing, the thought process of what your writing and the possible consequences must be in your head and you must acknowledge that it could come back to you at a later date. Jason Whittaker.

Sure you can choose to write what ever you want, but consider your stance and accept it if it comes back to you. Jason Whittaker.

The microphone is ALWAYS hot — everything you say and do could be used as evidence. Never forget that. But don’t be afraid of it. Jason Whittaker.

Case Study: So what happened to Catherine Deveny?

How her career at the AGE began and ended:

Ø When she was offered the ongoing job in the opinions section she stated to the editor,

“I’m just a suburban mum”

The editor replied, “perfect, the suburban perspective“

Catherine responded, “but I don’t even read the newspapers, I skim the headlines from international papers online”

The editor replied “perfect, the global perspective”.

And Catherine jokes, “yeah the suburban, global perspective, a real niche market.”

Throughout her time at The Age, she was spoken to about swearing on Twitter and asked to “stop ranting” – which Catherine highlights is a term only used for women. Later she was also banned from writing about the Catholic Church or atheism (she only wrote 12 out of 600 columns on Atheism, which The Age or perhaps their vested interest in the Catholic Church, led them to a decision that this should also be banned from her allowable writing topics. She was also banned from writing on Anzac day and what it represents (but she notes a man was allowed to write on it in the same week Catherine had requested to air her opinions, in the opinions section about what she thinks Anzac Day stands for and how if Political Leaders want to start wars they should be prepared for them and their sons to be on the frontline). She also had a fairly long-standing pay dispute after her wages were cut by 40% for performing the same tasks.

Thus, Catherine believes her Twitter case from the Logies was the perfect excuse for them to sack her. She started her writing at The Age with the Logies and ended with the same commentary (and contributing factors) leading to her sacking. “The Age was leaned on very heavily by the Catholic church to have me leave” since her recent stand-up show on Atheism and her ban in Mildura from talking about religion and pedophilia cases in the Catholic Church”

So of course, this leads me to ask, what should upcoming writers talk about if the current environment is so fearful?

pppp

MsoNormal

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What news would be ike if broadcast only in Twitter?

2010-06-16T05:16:00.001-07:00

Here is a screen shot of a slide that Louise Connor sent to us from her presentation at the http://www.walkleys.com/media-pass-student-days
It is pretty interesting to see how major news stories could have been relayed in 140 Tweets...you can read more on this in my Social Media chapter to be published shortly!

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Photo for Ch 3 part 3

2010-06-16T05:07:00.001-07:00

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Research Report on Journalism: CURRENT AND FUTURE TRENDS 3

2010-06-16T04:53:00.001-07:00

1.7 JOB PROSPECTS

So what do all these changes mean for the type and number of jobs in journalism?

70% of applicants to the ABC are women now

70% of trainees at The Age were female in the last 10 years

70-80% of the newsroom at the ABC is female.

1.8 FUTURE TRENDS

OMG Hitler invades Poland, allies declare war see tinyurl.com/b5x6e for more

JFK assassin8d @ Dallas, def. heard second gunshot from grassy knoll WTF?

Future of Journalism

Source: Louise Connor, Media Entertainment & Arts Alliance

Mumbrella can exclusively reveal the first screen shots of The Age’s iPad app, after a prototype of the Fairfax Media newspaper’s application briefly appeared on the iTunes store on Saturday night. And the app will even read the stories out for those who find looking at text too much of a chore.
Designer David Curry was able to download the app for $7 a month – slightly more expensive than rival The Australian’s $4.99 app which made its debut on Friday to coincide with the Australian launch of the iPad.
Fairfax revealed last week that it was creating iPad apps for both The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald. But it did not announce its pricing or when the products would be available.

Following the initial panic and denial of new media, the major players are now taking advantage of technology and how they can once again make more money, as Murdoch states,

“Mr. Murdoch said the Internet and technology was not the enemy, but complementary platforms that media owners could take advantage of.”

http://mumbrella.com.au/exclusive-the-ages-ipad-app-revealed-26914

Go back to the Introduction Page with links to the chapters

References:

http://www.alliance.org.au/

http://www.walkleys.com/media-pass-student-days

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-business/australian-newspapers-post-drop-in-sales-20100514-v2dc.html

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/small-dip-in-metro-paper-sales/story-e6frg996-1225797973630)

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-business/australian-newspapers-post-drop-in-sales-20100514-v2dc.html

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/online-split-in-newspaper-readership-survey/story-e6frg996-1225831969462

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2010/jun/14/newspapers-downturn

http://www.presscouncil.org.au/snpma/ch01.html

www.ausstats.abs.gov.au/.../internet%20access%20at%20home%20final%20version.pdf -)

http://mumbrella.com.au/exclusive-the-ages-ipad-app-revealed-26914.

http://www.presscouncil.org.au/snpma/ch02.html

http://journalism-research.blogspot.com/2010/05/comments-made-on-deveny-blog.html

http://www.crikey.com.au/

http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/07/02/newspapers-and-bloggers-isnt-there-room-for-everyone/

http://www.alliance.org.au/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/community

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/asia/

http://www.nytimes.com/

http://spot.us/pages/about

"Center for Media Change"

Knight Foundation.

http://www.everyblock.com/

http://www.holovaty.com/

http://www.lasvegassun.com/

http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2009/s2565007.htm

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Flat-Earth-News-Award-winning-Distortion/dp/0701181451)

http://journalism-research.blogspot.com/2010/06/730-report-abc.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/feb/03/society

http://catherinedeveny.com/about/index.html

http://www.kas.de/proj/home/pub/130/2/year-2010/dokument_id-18599/index.html

http://www.vericorder.com/

http://qik.com/

http://www.soundslides.com/

http://globalmojo.org/”

http://www.deakin.edu.au/arts-ed/scca/staff-directory2.php?username=stephenq

http://mumbrella.com.au/exclusive-the-ages-ipad-app-revealed-26914

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Research Report on Journalism: CURRENT AND FUTURE TRENDS 2

2010-06-16T04:24:00.001-07:00

CONT from Current and Future Trends 1

The concern for the media publications in 2006 was the emergence of blogging and the threat this was making to the credibility or the need for print media:

“The growing availability of free-of-charge blogs (both news and opinion) on the Internet threaten the previous monopoly over authoritative news, and the informed questioning of government and privileged minorities essential to democracies, that newspapers uniquely offered. Even the historic richness and variety of their information sources is being challenged. More and more newspapers are responding by encouraging their regular journalists to publish blog pieces. Lack of credibility and doubts about authenticity is the chief drawback of self-motivated, unedited blogging, particularly anonymous blogging. Newspapers entering the field, insisting upon the normal requirements for authenticated material and appropriate ethics from their staff, expect, no doubt, that those features of their "brands" will eventually result in them becoming the sole, or at least preferred, choices of readers.” http://www.presscouncil.org.au/snpma/ch01.html

And in 2010, it is clear that this should still be a concern, although the major players have all of their prominent journalists blogging and have blogs attached to their online sites. This does lead to an individual’s personal readers to also follow the newspaper columns by this journalist, but it also means when the journalist leaves that media company the readers may follow. This occurred with the recent sacking of Catherine Deveny from The Age, when hundreds of her fans threatened to never read the paper again, as they only read it on Wednesdays to see her column. See http://journalism-research.blogspot.com/2010/05/comments-made-on-deveny-blog.html to view these comments. The other implication of blogging is that it is now a paid profession and many freelance writers are making their own money from their blogs and websites, which means they no longer need an attachment to a mainstream media company. More on this can be read in our ‘Types of Journalism’ section where we discuss the different avenues you can take in journalism and offer case studies and tips for how to make it happen’.

Crikey took the lead with the online media format and in addition to this showed that people will continue to pay for journalism, in print or online, it is of a high standard and independent of corporate agendas that are even more evident in the mainstream media sources in Australia and elsewhere. Scott Bridges from Crikey writes about the threat of blogging to the media empires and how these companies did not utilize online media effectively from the beginning. The consequences of this avoidance rather than an empowering use of online media capabilities are now being fully realized by the mainstream media companies, in their late attempts to shift to an innovative and uniquely online format for news.

‘Newspapers and bloggers: isn’t there room for everyone? – Crikey’

"But one day along comes this thing called The Internet, promising to democratise the flow of information, and something terrible begins to happen: the plebs grow bold and start to rise up, empowered by having their voice heard, unworried about profit or business models. If you were that media baron what would you do? Would you adapt or would you atrophy?

When this news and journalism environment started to change dramatically about a decade ago, newspaper media companies initially refused to change with it. They whacked their stories online, slapped a couple of ads up with them, and sat back waiting for the rivers of Internet gold to flow. But people don’t use the internet like they do traditional media forms, and most attempts by traditional players to adapt to this new form have been contrived and poorly executed. The failure to adapt a product to a market is bad business, but the petulant bitching and moaning from dinosaur media chiefs who want the world to stop moving so they don’t have to get off their arse and move with it is just bad form." Scott Bridges http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/07/02/newspapers-and-bloggers-isnt-there-room-for-everyone/

This is a great article on mainstream media in Australia and their response to the internet and the 'power' that was taken away from big business papers when 'ordinary people' started to blog and share their stories, opinions and actual news. So what trends can be seen with these companies in Australia?

1.3 TRENDS in MAINSTREAM MEDIA Companies in Australia

Louise Connor, VIC branch secretary, Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) has been involved in the research that has been conducted over the past two years. This is centered on the changes that have been occurring in journalism and the emergence of new media and the subsequent implications of decreasing revenue streams for print media. Louise raises the issues that have been mentioned above in Crikey and which are evident in examining the use of online media by the mainstream media organizations.

Louise states that current trends in the industry in Australia (with only 2 main corporations owning the majority of news sources) means there is decreasing opposition to publish diverse views that are not covered in the media mogul’s papers. The major players (not including the ABC) limit the voices that can be heard. This means that increasing the voices and funding for the ABC is vital in maintaining this large public broadcaster. The new environment is limited with the majority of editors at the mainstream papers not being up to date with the multi-media opportunities available now. Louise feels that the mainstream papers are not utilising effective advertising opportunities that should be organized differently for online media sources (if they are to offer an online news forum that is different from their print media formats). Louise admits that this issue will be solved over time, as the older editors retire or new multi-skilled people work their way up in these companies.

In relation to The Age and their ongoing reference to advertising opportunities through counting “the eyeballs” that are looking at their site, Louise highlights that this does not take into consideration that those viewers may not be anywhere near the local BMW dealership and may be reading the story from the other side of the world. Thus there are different advertising needs for effective online news media. As Louise states, “the fixation on eyeballs is irrelevant and they need to be more discerning in their material”. Such sites as The Guardian in the UK have managed to set up their online content in relation to the needs of their viewers and have changed it for their market and their chosen advertisers. As can been seen here http://www.guardian.co.uk/community with their community section which incorporates social media tools and forums. In addition, the TIME online magazine which has a huge market in Asia centers its advertising on global products that can be sourced all over the world. With only 40% of media being sourced from print media, Louise continues to discuss that a newsroom in today’s environment should be agnostic of platforms and news should be published in a variety of manners on different platforms. She believes the current situation in Australia is “unhealthy”. The issues raised with mass media ownership in Australia can be seen when the ABC was beginning to set up regional centers and being told by Fairfax that the regional hubs were their areas. Louise comments that the Fairfax monopoly needs to learn the lessons from their mistakes in ignoring the advances with new media. They need to be more proactive and offer quality journalism in those areas if they wish to retain their regional monopoly. The problems with current mainstream media sources is that they decide on their news stories on what will make money and not through ascertaining what the audience wants. Louise’s advice to media organizations is to create newsrooms that effectively publish on a range of platforms, such as the NY Times which has properly integrated their online material this involves offering a continuous flow of news throughout the day and not simply repeating the print media stories until the next paper is published. Louise believes that readers need to be more critical of stories in these forums and as it evolves the quality of journalism will increase once again. The other contributing factor to the lacking quality of online media from these companies is seen with the new centralized sub’s areas that he Herald Sun and many other organizations are moving to. Even in the UK’s Telegraph the sub’s department is located outside of the UK. This means that having specialist knowledge in journalism in currently being downgraded and resulting readership issues can be seen from this.

1.4 INNOVATIVE MOVEMENTS WITH ONLINE MEDIA

The opportunities available with online media have also led some organizations or individual groups of journalists to create innovative, multi-media websites that cover news in a new manner. Louise Connor lists below some innovative uses of this technology by international media players in comparison to what has not been seen largely in the mainstream media companies in Australia thus far:

Spot.Us is a nonprofit project of the "Center for Media Change" and funded by various groups like the Knight Foundation.

“We are an open source project to pioneer ‘community powered reporting.’ Through Spot.Us the public can commission and participate with journalists to do reporting on important and perhaps overlooked topics. Contributions are tax deductible and we partner with news organizations to distribute content under appropriate licenses. On some occasions we can even pay back the original contributors.” This is a useful resource for journalists who wish to write informative and community minded articles, which are not consistently commissioned by mass media publications.

http://www.everyblock.com/

This site created by Adrian Holvaty (see his website) http://www.holovaty.com/is a very innovative media site that provides news stories in people’s local areas. It works by typing in your zip code (US based site) and offers your published news stories from your area, real estate listings, business reviews, crime reports and photo’s.

http://www.lasvegassun.com/

This site was set up by a group of journalists who were locked out of a mainstream paper in Las Vegas and decided to set up their own multi-media website instead. It has since won a Pulitzer Prize and contains news stories, videos, graphics and local and national quality news stories in their interactive site that successfully incorporates social media networking tools.

http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2009/s2565007.htm

This Four Corners story won the Walkley for best sports reporting in 2009. This website includes social media tools effectively and offers numerous multi-media elements such as video on demand (ABC’s iview), maps, slide shows, reports, transcripts and ‘have your say’ forums. This displays the difference in the acceptance and the subsequent innovative use of online media by the ABC, which displays its status as the industry leader online news media in Australia.

1.5 The CURRENT STATE OF JOURNALISM and CORPORATE MEDIA

The current state of journalism or ‘churnalism’ as Nick Davies labels it, can be reviewed in his book ‘Flat Earth News’ and his interview on the 7.30 Report http://journalism-research.blogspot.com/2010/06/730-report-abc.html where he states that he “found that the business of truth had been slowly subverted by the mass production of ignorance.” And as Mary Riddell http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/feb/03/societyreviews,

“Davies unmuzzled deplores the rise of 'churnalism'; the quick-turnover dross peddled by hacks less scrupulous or fortunate than him. Costs are being cut and standards eroded by greedy proprietors. Hidden persuaders are manipulating truth. At its worst, the modern newsroom is a place of bungs and bribes, whose occupants forage illicitly for scoops in databases and dustbins. Newspapers hold others to account while hushing up their own unsavory methods. Self-regulation does not always offer fair (or any) redress to citizens who have had lies written about them. Stories are often pompous, biased or plain wrong. Some close scrutiny is not only legitimate: it is overdue.”

In addition to these remarks, Catherine Deveny describes what she observes as the current issues with corporate media in Australia:

“Corporate maggots are running a fear campaign at The Age” and there is a corporate and Catholic control of the newspaper.

Newspapers have vested interests in corporate enterprises – this affects everything they do and when they start loosing money the hidden agendas come out even more. “They are struggling with social networking tools, which have gone over their heads.”

Newspapers in Australia are currently run by issues with gender, class and relevance deprivation. “The state of newspapers is like watching a house you lived in go to ruins. Australian mainstream media is being run by middle aged, middle class, white men who are desperate to hold on to the power and continue their ‘prefect club’ in corporate Australia.”

“When the GFC hit, old media realized they were on their way out and the men at the top are lining their pockets with money while cutting jobs and the pay of the writers, who are being managed by a fear campaign.”

Mainstream media in print and TV is being run by the fictitious “mainstream audience”, which is the “imaginary nana in the sky that they blame their content decisions on”, the content produced for the LCD’s (Lowest Common Dominators = Hey Hey its Saturday viewers)

She states that her sacking from The Age, due to their stated reaction to her Twitter comments has had a positive impact on her and a negative impact on her colleagues; as writers are running scared at the moment in relation to Twitter – they don’t know what to write and how to write now, the freedom of speech is gone in this application which is used largely by comedians and writers. To read more about the implications of social media and further discussions on Catherine’s sacking from The Age, see our Social Media chapter.

Therefore, Deveny, the freelance writer, TV writer and social commentator and Nick Davies, a prominent investigative journalist state, both indicated that journalism in mainstream media publications is a changing landscape. This is being largely affected by the corporatisation of news sources, the shift to online media and the emergence of social media technology.

1.6 WHAT DO THESE TRENDS MEAN FOR JOURNALISTS?

It is clear newspapers are different commodities now. They have different deadlines (24 hr news cycles) and different types of owners (corporate not family owners) and editors. Redundancies are ongoing and as David Hastie from the Herald Sun commented at the Media Pass Student Day in May 2010, LINK http://www.walkleys.com/media-pass-student-days “if someone resigns now they do not get replaced, with the work being reshuffled around the remaining staff.” Currently the requirements for newly employed journalists ask for a lot because of the changes to the journalism jobs and the career path is much different now. The prevalence of cadetships is less than before and you should most likely finish university, and then work at a community newspaper before going to larger publications such as The Age. To see exactly what mainstream media publications are looking for now, check out our Tips and Tricks chapter and our Complete Interview Summaries, which includes lists of the skills required by these organizations. In general, journalists today are older and have more worldly experience before starting at large newspapers. You need to look at social networking sites and find your own stories. The Age, The ABC and Channel 7 all stated that they need people that are familiar with social media technology, which leads to a different style of stories, as there is a current push for younger audiences.

Catherine Deveny states that journalism was once a carefully crafted trade, however bloggers have changed this. Now you cannot write and not be ‘in it’ (particularly the comedic and social commentators who write). Journalists are so under the pump that they cannot even learn the craft like they used to in downtime as they are constantly racing for the next story or Australia’s great writers are going into spin (in political forums.)

As a result of these changing times and technological advances the modes of journalism are rapidly expanding and transforming. Stephen Quinn, Associate Professor of Journalism at Deakin University, Geelong and a Mojo discusses the emergence of mobile journalists (Mojo’s). A Mojo is somebody who reports only using a mobile phone and it is currently very popular throughout SE Asia, USA, Canada and Europe. Stephen suggests that as the technology in the phone cameras is advanced, this will increase as a common form of journalism. Mojo is a tool to publish videos online and across networking sites and for graduating students is aids the creation of an online portfolio which shows employers that you can film and publish video easily and effectively. This free software allows you to photograph, film and write up your story live from the scene and publish it instantaneously (with Wi-fi access) directly from your mobile phone.

As Sharon Green reports from the Media Pass Day in May 2010,

“Gone are the days where a journalist can sit in an office and log stories. The future of news will mean that journalists need to be where the story is happening. Associate Professor Stephen Quinn has written a book on the practice of mobile journalism and a free copy can be downloaded online: http://www.kas.de/proj/home/pub/130/2/-/dokument_id-18599/

He also recommended the following websites for mobile journalists who want to engage in software options for reporting from a mobile phone:

http://www.vericorder.com/

http://qik.com/

http://www.soundslides.com/

The rise of social media also allows reporters to disseminate information quickly to an audience and will increasingly play a role in how we communicate news. Stephen Quinn is heavily involved in social media research and believes that having social media is a good way to build your brand and is a powerful way to do some self-promotion. He also emphasised the importance of having a blog that can double as a marketing tool and offer an online location for your portfolio. This makes it easy for prospective employers to visit one location on the web where they can get a clear idea on where you want to position yourself as a journalist. To view Stephen Quinn’s blog, visit: http://globalmojo.org/”

1.6.1 ARE MULTI-MEDIA SKILLS A MUST NOW?

In a reflective analysis of the 2006 State of News Print Media it was stated that, “Emerging trends have implications for journalists. In the future it probably will not be the sole role for journalists employed by newspaper companies to find stories and compose them into well-written reports that appear only in print. The same, or re-written or re-edited, content might be destined for the company's online site, for fee-based stored audio and video files available to a variety of text, audio and video devices, or even SMS mobile phones… will journalists have to become multi-skilled, able to appear in front of a camera and speak engagingly for audio files as well as seek out and write original stories for the newspaper? Will physical attraction become a key recruitment criterion?” http://www.presscouncil.org.au/snpma/ch01.html

The short answer is ‘yes’. It is certain that journalists today need multi-media skills in print, TV, film, photography, social media knowledge and both web-based and now phone-based and iPad based applications and software. More information on the current skills need for journalists can be found in our extensive Tips and Tricks section, which details what skills the industry heads are requesting from new graduates. To see what social media tools you need to utilize to create your online presence and gain employment can be seen in our Social Media chapter. You can also see what the need for these multi-platformed skills means for job prospects and job conditions in our Job Prospects section, which is below.

1.7 JOB PROSPECTS

So what do all these changes mean for the type and number of jobs in journa

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Research Report on Journalism: CURRENT AND FUTURE TRENDS

2010-06-16T03:57:00.001-07:00

This chapter will explore the following areas in examining the current and future trends in Journalism in Australia

1.0 TRENDS IN THE JOURNALISM INDUSTRY

1.1 PRINT MEDIA TRENDS

1.2 THE SHIFT TO ONLINE MEDIA: In Australia and Hong Kong

1.3 TRENDS in MAINSTREAM MEDIA COMPANIES IN AUSTRALIA

1.4 INNOVATIVE MOVEMENTS WITH ONLINE MEDIA

1.5 The CURRENT STATE OF JOURNALISM and CORPORATE MEDIA

1.6 WHAT DO THESE TRENDS MEAN FOR JOURNALISTS?

1.7 JOB PROSPECTS

1.8 FUTURE TRENDS

2.0 REFERENCES

1.0 Trends in the Journalism Industry

The Journalism industry has certainly experienced some changes throughout its time and more so in the last few years following the emergence of the internet and the subsequent development of blogging, multi-media software and social networking sites. This has led most recently to the substantial changes to the operations of the traditional newsroom, the skills required by journalists and the use of social media tools to not only capture and distribute micro-news stories but to also utilized to market individual journalists and media companies in today’s changing landscape of journalism.

Current Trends in the Journalism Industry

Newspaper sales are down
Online media is growing exponentially
Jobs in mainstream print media are down
Opportunities to be entrepreneurial are up
Technology is developing rapidly and multi-media skills are a must

And it all started way back then when news print media was “the spring of the knowledge”, as seen below in a poem from 1770. This was shown to us by Louise Connor, from the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) in her presentation at the Media Pass Day in May 2010.

The News-Paper

Tis truth (with deference to the college)

Newspapers are the spring of knowledge,

The general source through the nation,

Of every modern conversation.

What would this might people do,

If there, alas, were nothing new?

A newspaper is like a feast,

Some dish there is for every guest;

Some large, some small, some strong, some tender,

For every stomach, stout or slender.

Quebec Gazette, March 1770

Journalism dispelled through newspapers was once the prominent source of news information in society. And it is evident that times have changed dramatically since then. Some people still refer to print media as a feast -as mentioned in the poem (although this is mostly the large corporate owners) and more so people are referring to it as a famon (the readers). So what changes are occurring and where is journalism headed now…

1.1 PRINT MEDIA

There are undeniably changes to the readership levels to print media in Australia. There has been the incidence of decreased readership for some years, due to the emergence of the Internet and the fast growth of online media options for readers. Recently, as discussed in May 2010, http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-business/australian-newspapers-post-drop-in-sales-20100514-v2dc.html

“Australian newspapers post drop in sales

SARAH MALIK

May 14, 2010

Australian newspaper sales continue to fall and the industry body for major publishers lays the blame on a slower news year rather the inroads made into circulation by online news sites.

Sales of metropolitan and national newspapers fell by an average of three per cent in the March quarter compared with the same period a year ago, Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) data on Thursday showed.

Fairfax Media Ltd's The Australian Financial Review was the hardest hit, with the daily circulation of its Monday to Friday edition falling 8.6 per cent to 75,624 copies.”

As discussed in this article in The Australian LINK http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/small-dip-in-metro-paper-sales/story-e6frg996-1225797973630) by Sally Jackson in November 2009, there are continuing declining readership levels in metro paper sales in Australia, however, this is still considerably better than the US and the UK, but is this simply foreshadowing Australia’s future?

“THE Australian newspaper market showed a small decline in the three months to September with sales of national, metropolitan and regional Monday-to-Sunday titles down 1.5 per cent compared with the previous corresponding quarter.

Sales of Monday-to-Sunday metro newspapers decreased by 1.1 per cent and regional titles dropped 1.2 per cent.

Sunday metropolitan circulation was 2.5 per cent lower.

However, that continued to be the biggest day for newspaper sales, with 3.2 million Sunday papers sold every week.

On average, Australians are buying more than 20 million newspapers a week, according to figures released last night by the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

The audit report showed the Australian market was continuing to outperform the US and Britain, said Tony Hale, chief executive of industry body the Newspaper Works.

In the US, year-on-year weekday newspaper sales dropped by 10.6 per cent and Sunday sales by 7.5 per cent in the six months to September.”

Despite it being stated in the first report above, that the reductions in readership are a result of it being “a slower news year rather the inroads made into circulation by online news sites” it is difficult to even compare readership figures for print media with recent years due to changes in separating the figures of print and online editions, as seen in this article, in The Australian in February, 2010.

“THE Monday-to-Friday readership of The Australian averaged 446,000 in the year to December 2009, according to the latest Roy Morgan Research survey.

Readership of The Weekend Australian was 853,000.

Roy Morgan said the figures could not be compared with the previous year because of changes in the survey to differentiate reading of a newspaper's printed and online editions.

"We believe the figures we are now reporting are accurate estimates of hard-copy newspaper reading," a spokesperson said.

Average readership of the other national daily, Fairfax Media's The Australian Financial Review, was 263,000 on weekdays and 172,000 on Saturdays.

After a long dispute between publishers and Roy Morgan over its methodology for measuring readership, industry body The Newspaper Works is running a tender process to find an alternative metric.”

Thus, as can be seen in the statistics, newspapers are certainly not dead, although they may be a dying breed, as the levels of readership in print media have been declining steadily in recent years. And this and other factors have led some prominent media commentators to say:

“The survival of newspapers is by no means guaranteed. They still face big structural obstacles: it remains unclear, for example, whether the young will pay for news in any form.” http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2010/jun/14/newspapers-downturn

1.2 THE SHIFT TO ONLINE MEDIA: In Australia and Hong Kong

All of our interviewees from mainstream and independent media publications and media commentators concurred that the Internet is a big part of the future for journalism. This is largely due to the technological opportunities available and the fact that currently at least 20% costs go to printing. It is also evident that more and more people these days prefer to read their news online due to cost and convenience.

Ed Lee (ex South China Morning Post) stated his view about online journalism:

‘It’s important because the Internet is everything. More and more people are switching from traditional media platforms to the net. It only makes both editorial and business sense to have an online presence. How they do it is another story. Some establishments have greatly embraced this trend like the Washington Post and The Guardian. To look at Hong Kong, one big player is Next Media's Apple Daily. The English papers however, SCMP and the Standard, fall far below. In fact, the SCMP, which was, once lauded for its multimedia push, has now fired everyone from that department, including me.’ He then commented ‘I think media companies will try to blend both. But it's only a matter of time where newspapers and magazines will devote more time & effort to mobile, web and other online platforms where costs are lower.’

This demonstrates journalism is following technological trends as it is developing largely online content sites and most companies have applications available for IPhones and even more recently the IPad. Perhaps the next stage within each of the big journalism companies may be to hire a team who will take charge of phone journalism. This can be different to online and traditional media platforms as a wider audience will be able to be reached through developing specialised sites for phones. Special effects may be needed to stand out which differ from how the online journalism layout would be.

Billy Clarke, Asia City Publishing, states ‘the line between journalism and blogging will become a blur soon as anyone will have the capability to reach the same audience as a journalist would.’ Some people may get the news before actual journalists as they may record an event as it is happening on their iPhone and reach a large online audience with the documentation. Therefore it is important journalists are original, can pick out good stories and are passionate about what they write as they need to keep the audience interested at all times as it is a very competitive time.

By reviewing the comparison of opinions discussed in the 2006 Press Council’s State of News Print Media Report it is clear that the internet has and is having a large impact on print media companies and by looking at the changes that were predicted and the generational data of who the remaining readers actually are, readership may continue to decline:

Traditionalists believe that the Internet is no more likely to bring down newspapers than the advent of TV half a century ago. The special attributes of newspapers, their immediacy, involvement, credibility, creativity, consistency and flexibility of use will continue to ensure their longevity…Traditionalists are, however, being stalked by doubters, including most recently The Economist (August 2006) which is following the line that extinction of all or some of the papers in the UK is only a matter of time. It claims '…that newspapers are on the way out and that it is only a matter of time before there are closures with half the world's newspapers likely to close in the foreseeable future because 'business of selling words to readers and selling readers to advertisers, which has sustained their role in society, is falling apart…The data is threatening. Reading habits are changing. Some age groups are reading newspapers less. Circulation is threatened. Nearly half of those who read Australian metropolitan newspapers are over fifty. Successful responses to the ubiquitous Internet challenge are essential.

Admittedly this report is from 2006, as the more recent reports have to be purchased (and as I am a student and unpaid writer I cannot afford it!). Despite this, the positive elements of having this report to examine is that it offers a reflection on what the predicted trends were only four years ago and offers an opportunity to analyse what has happened since. In looking at Chapter 2 of the report on the top trends, it is interesting to note that the penetration of internet access in Australian homes was at 56 percent in the 2004-2005 period and the Press Council offered an analyse of how this effected the media companies at the time:

Newspaper companies are rapidly transforming into multi-media companies
Penetration of Internet access into Australian homes had reached 56 per cent (65 per cent of which was by broadband) by the end of the 2004/2005-year. Abundant indications that an increasing number of Australians were turning to Internet sources for information in real time have led major metropolitan newspapers, and some regional dailies, to establish parallel print and online editions. http://www.presscouncil.org.au/snpma/ch01.html

With reviewing the most recent statistics of Internet penetration in Australian homes,

The rate of household Internet access has quadrupled over the
past eight years, from 16% in 1998 to 64% in 2006–07

In connection with the above commentary, it is clear that the movements the print media companies were making in 2006 have only been exaggerated since then. The focus on the online content has changed dramatically, through ending the process of saving ‘breaking news’ for the morning print edition and instead ensuring that it is immediately published on the online site, in desperate efforts to ‘beat’ other media companies. More so this shift can be seen with the recent developments from The Australian and The Age being the first of Australian mainstream newspapers to introduce new and interactive applications to read news online via the latest portable device the iPad in early June 2010, as Mumbrella discusses. Is this the device that will save newspapers or does it simply indicate a more permanent shift to online news media as a whole? I am certain that the media companies owned by Murdoch will survive as companies, however, it is more the question of whether the quality of journalism will survive and whether this will remain to be printed in hard copies in the near future.

One of the pressing issues here, is that the large media companies in Australia did not capture the essence of the online environment early on and some are still struggling with its uses. There have been some changes seen in relation to how the online media is now managed by the large media organizations, as described below in the Press Council Report:

The race to be first to disseminate news has already led to sections of on-line newspaper sites devoted to breaking news. In the last 18 months metropolitan newspapers that had been updating their Internet sites as the day progressed, while reserving exclusives and scoops for the morning newspapers, have reviewed that policy. Newspapers such as The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald and the Herald Sun, are moving to the 24-hour newsroom, filing stories online as news breaks.http://www.presscouncil.org.au/snpma/ch01.html

It is certainly not the case currently that any media source would consider “reserving exclusives and scoops for the morning newspapers” anymore. With readership levels being down, competition is as fierce as ever and if a station or paper has a breaking news story they will publish it immediately on their website or in a news flash on television or via social media sites. With the use of current technologies, journalists will report live from a conference simply via a Tweet back to the newsroom, which will instantly be re-tweeted by the media organization and published instantly on their Twitter site. This story will then be further developed and published via their online site or in their print form, but sole consideration of the morning paper is mostly a thing of the past. And this is precisely where the print media is struggling. What can the print editions offer that are different to the online content? The emergence of more colored lift-out’s and specialized magazine style components on food, travel, the Arts and real-estate is a small solution to this, but as these magazines are now available as separate downloads on the new applications for IPads this is still not going to lead to increasing sales for print editions.

The concern for the media publications in 2006 was the emergence of blogging and the threat this was making to the credibility or the need for print media:

The growing availability of free-of-charge blogs (both news and opinion) on the Internet threaten the previous monopoly over authoritative news, and the informed questioning of government and privileged minorities essential to democracies, that newspapers uniquely offered. Even the historic richness and variety of their information sources is being challenged. More and more newspapers are responding by encouraging their regular journalists to publish blog pieces. Lack of credibility and doubts about authenticity is the chief drawback of self-motivated, unedited blogging, particularly anonymous blogging. Newspapers entering the field, insisting upon the normal requirements for authenticated material and appropriate ethics from their staff, expect, no doubt, that those features of their "brands" will eventually result in them becoming the sole, or at least preferred, choices of readers. http://www.presscouncil.org.au/snpma/ch01.htmlhttp://www.presscouncil.org.au/snpma/ch01.html

And in 2010, it is clear that this should still be a concern, although the major

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Research Report on Journalism: CONCLUSION

2010-06-16T02:35:00.001-07:00

FUTURE TRENDS

Media companies will most likely adjust to this changing climate through focusing on their online media sites and their applications for iPhones and iPads. In the future, it would be expected that any surviving news companies would all have applications for these portable devices or they will be left behind, as some of them already have with the mis-management and weak adoption of online media opportunities. Some print media companies will adjust to the changing needs of their remaining readers and develop smaller, less frequent and more magazine style formatted newspapers. More departments will be out-sourced and more effective use of social media tools should be evident in the next 12 months. More independent media sources, such as Crikey will be given a voice in the Australian media circles, as the focus on online media rather than expensive print media businesses will enable a more dynamic and diverse set of news sources to be accessed by the public at large.

SOCIAL MEDIA

It is clear that an online presence is vital in today’s media world, if you want to market yourself and create an online portfolio for your writings, video, photography and audio files. It also offers extensive research gateways and enhances your networking capabilities enormously, in relation to employment, interview possibilities and leads for stories. But of course, like all your work in the media industry, your published material can be brought up at any time and may be used against you, used as a reason to not give you a job or lead to public embarrassment if you have made comments that you cannot stand by at a later stage. So as Jason Whittaker states, “don’t be afraid of it”, but be diligent and consider the consequences and benefits involved with your social media presence.

TIPS AND TRICKS

The most important tips that were shared with us from prominent industry heads were the need for an online presence and multi-media skills. Of course, the ability to write and effectively tell stories is still a must in being a journalist but the industry is changing and you need to be multi-skilled, flexible, resilient and energetic to cope with the new continuous news cycles. To gain employment, you need to prepare thoroughly and reading newspapers every day will be a definite advantage in job interviews and in your writing skills and knowledge. And you need to write every day, whether this is published on your blog (preferable) or simply filed away somewhere. You need to follow journalists that you admire and examine their writing styles. If you want it to happen, it is possible, so read our full Tips and Tricks section and take advantage of the extensive information that has been gathered for this report.

The major benefits of conducting this research report was to gain the enormous amount of insider information that was gathered through online research and interviews with leading professionals in journalism. It was also an excellent opportunity to network with industry heads on a professional basis and the personal emails and phone numbers that I have now collected will undoubtedly prove useful upon my graduation and subsequent search for employment in this very competitive industry. The tips and tricks that were collected will be followed closely and the knowledge gained, which I have now shared with you, will benefit all of us in our future goals of becoming journalists! I will now present my report to various organizations that I spoke to through the research process such as the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance and the Walkley Foundation http://www.walkleys.com/media-pass-student-days or organisations that I found along my travels, such as Upstart http://www.upstart.net.au/ to see if they may want to publish my report on their respective websites.

So good luck to all of you out there that are seeking a career in Journalism and if my tips were helpful in you gaining employment in the industry, or you are an industry professional reading this, remember me when I ask you for a job!

Clare Peterson

E punchyproductions@gmail.com
Twitter: PunchyC
Skype: Punchyp
punchyp.posterous.com
www.punchyproductions.com.au
B http://thoughtsbecomethings-dreamer.blogspot.com/
B http://journalism-research.blogspot.com/
B http://raws.adc.rmit.edu.au/~s3087922/blog/
Delicious: clares_bookmarks

To go to other chapters in this report, go to:

Introduction

http://filethis.posterous.com/pages/research-report-on-journalism-in-australi a

Ways to Make Money in Journalism

http://filethis.posterous.com/pages/different-ways-you-can-make-money-in-journali

Types of Journalism

http://filethis.posterous.com/pages/types-of-journalism

And more to come, once they are posted!

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Watching newspapers on your computer? That's crazy talk...

2010-06-11T00:44:00.001-07:00

This news report from 1981 points out how much has changed over this time, with not only computers being developed, but data speeds have enormous development and now with the Ipad it is apparent that this 'crazy' news bulletin was correct when they said reading newspapers on your computer with your morning coffee "is not as far fetched as it seems"...

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What the Ipad has done for newspapers...is it the answer?

2010-06-11T00:35:00.001-07:00

Exclusive photo's and information on The Age application for Ipad's can be read below at Mumbrella. Is this the answer Murdoch has been waiting for or will consistent trends of falling readership continue for the 2 media moguls in Australia?

http://mumbrella.com.au/exclusive-the-ages-ipad-app-revealed-26914

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State of News Print Media Report

2010-06-11T00:11:00.001-07:00

Some interesting data can be see in the below report regarding the print media industry, which is even more apparent now in 2010.

http://www.presscouncil.org.au/snpma/ch01.html

"Traditionalists believe that the Internet is no more likely to bring down newspapers than the advent of TV half a century ago. The special attributes of newspapers, their immediacy, involvement, credibility, creativity, consistency and flexibility of use will continue to ensure their longevity.

The traditionalist argument makes many good points, including that newspapers are the most flexible of all news products and the role of editors and journalists in bringing the news together for readers is uniquely valuable.

Traditionalists are, however, being stalked by doubters, including most recently The Economist (August 2006) which is following the line that extinction of all or some of the papers in the UK is only a matter of time. It claims '…that newspapers are on the way out and that it is only a matter of time before there are closures with half the world's newspapers likely to close in the foreseeable future because 'business of selling words to readers and selling readers to advertisers, which has sustained their role in society, is falling apart.'

The data are threatening. Reading habits are changing. Some age groups are reading newspapers less. Circulation is threatened. Nearly half of those who read Australian metropolitan newspapers are over fifty. Successful responses to the ubiquitous Internet challenge are essential."

Clare Peterson

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A Presentation on Journalism and Social Media

2010-06-10T23:40:00.001-07:00

Click here to download:

FINAL Presentation for MI_CP.mov (4751 KB)

Here is the presentation I created as a summary of our research project and presented to our class in Media Industries. It should have lots of interesting information for you if journalism is a career you are considering. And remember to come back and have a look at our final research report for further details and complete interview summaries and heaps of tips for you to kick start your career!

Clare Peterson

Twitter: PunchyC
Skype: Punchyp
punchyp.posterous.com
www.punchyproductions.com.au
B http://thoughtsbecomethings-dreamer.blogspot.com/
B http://journalism-research.blogspot.com/
B http://raws.adc.rmit.edu.au/~s3087922/blog/
Delicious: clares_bookmarks

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My First AC Nielsen Poll and resulting commentary #Nielsen #politics #polls #election

2010-06-07T20:32:00.001-07:00

Well I have officially just contributed to my first Nielsen Poll! However, the questioner kept cutting me off because apparently my answers were too long...I found issue with the question "are you a 'traditional voter' of that party" and when I queried if that was supposed to mean would I vote for them without considering the implications of their policies, their leadship abilities and their vested interests...the man did not have an answer. So I continued (in detail) to explain what I based my voting considerations on (despite this not being a question) and how outrageous that it was that people define who they vote for on whether they care about either the environment or education/health or business (as my daughter came home from Primary School and informed me of what her teacher had told her about why people vote certain ways). As Government is defined as: "A government is the organization, or agency through which a political unit exercises its authority, controls and administers public policy, and directs and controls the actions of its members or subjects^[1]," does this not mean that all eligible 'Government' contenders need to have LEGITIMATE and openly transparent policies on ALL of these issues and responsible people who are 'working out' who to vote for can judge the policies on these key public policy areas and work out which party serves these public concerns in the most effective manner. And those debated policies prior to an election should always be focused on education AND health AND the environment AND business and the economy...rather than one or the other. How did we develop a political environment where we choose which area we are more interested in and thus choose to vote Liberal (if you are a corporate maggot and care only about oil companies profit margins or the big banks multi-million dollar payouts to 'deserving' CEO's) or vote Labor (if you saw the destruction that occured to the education system and the public health system under 12 years of Liberal reign) or vote Greens if you think the environment is the only priority? Why do we then vote for a party based on these separtist goals and agendas and then see none of their policies actually passed in the senate and thus never enable a change in the situation trying to be mended - and then to top off our disappointment the apparent failure to not produce any change (due to be blocked in the senate) is used against that party at the next election...

However I am not sure if the questioner from Nielsen was still listening but he did stop me at that point and say a quick thanks before hanging up. Despite this, I am proud that I have finally contributed to one of the Nielsen Polls that last claimed in May 2010 that there was a 50-50 split in the preferred party options (not some dodgy poll no doubt run by Abbutt in collaboration with Murderoch) that is splashed across all the quality media sources such as the Herald Sun and ACA 'breaking news' in an effort to swing votes); however, whether my elaborate comments will be included in the statistical data or swept aside into the 'too mental to vote' category will be unknown when the poll results are announced shortly but fortunately it is not a mystery to me why I actually choose who to vote for and what is wrong with the lack of complete and transparent political debate and the subsequent voting mentality of the Australian public (which unfortunately includes the LCD's that watch 'Hey Hey not only our host but our show's name is redundant' and thus choose their preferred party based on who wears the most offensive outfit whilst parading in public).

Thanks AC Nielsen on including me and leading me to think about these issues!

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Connections between our K Film and Roland Barthes theories on the writerly and the readerly

2010-06-03T21:27:00.001-07:00

The below essay is partly a reflective piece on the process of making this K FILM and a discussion of its structural elements that allowed us to build this moving production. It also discusses the films connection with Roland Barthes 'Readerly and Writerly'theories.

Our final K-film entitled ‘An Infinite Promise, Like the Echo of the Second Hand’ is our final K film for Integrated Media 1 at RMIT, Melbourne. Its central theme is centered on 'movement and the infinite promise of time'’, as seen with the movement within and between the clips, the thumbnails and the soundscape. The stillness of the single title, seen in the browser window only offers a contrast to the ongoing movement in the piece.

I will discuss the process of creating this film, its thematic structure and the content within the clips. There will also be correlations made between this film and Roland Barthe's readerly and writerly theories. The essence of the Korsakow application and the production of this K film, is that it now contains 'an infinite promise' to continue through the process of being published and through its allowance for readers to also be the writers of the film. The edits you make, the timing you choose for navigating from one shot to the next and the meanings you generate are all independent of any pre-determined meaning or deconstruction that we could have lugged you with in a 'final' product created in traditional cinematic media. So I hope you enjoy it, I hope you find it interesting, with whatever reasons that may lead to this and I hope you can generate a meaningful connection with the individual clips or the sequences that you generate for yourself.
This film was created through a slightly different pre-production stage than with one of the two options given to us for defining a shooting script prior to commencing production. Through developing concepts for our project with group members and Adrian Miles, it was decided that a different process would allow us to capture footage prior to ascertaining what aesthetic or structural themes would be decided on for the final film. This process allowed us to create the type of film that we wanted to design, with a repeated rule for filming, without predetermining a central meaning or narrative thread.

We decided to capture individual clips first, under closely confined rules and then examine what content was created through this method before making structural or design decisions. Our rules were for three group members to film everyday on the same accessible and easily moveable equipment (our iPhones) and capture what we could see whilst traveling to and from university for a week. Undoubtedly this was going to result in consistent footage of varying traveling shots from the viewpoint of the car, train, tram or feet that was getting us to our destination. We were very unsure of what content this would produce in regards to connections and relations that would present itself in the footage (apart from the obvious mechanical similarities of our transportation vehicles). It was an interesting process to then ascertain what other connections were presenting themselves in the footage. Consistent themes of suburbia/city, morning/night and light/dark presented themselves; however an overall essence of movement was what captured our attention. The movement between morning to night; the different movement found in the modes of travel (physical and cinematic); between traveling to and traveling from; the movement through time from breaking day to dusk to night and back to day again; the movement of days into other days, the movement of the skies into differing colors in the morning sun, cloudy days, sunsets and the changing travel modes contrasted and repeated themselves throughout the footage. We decided on the umbrella theme of ‘movement’ with an essence of elements interconnected with this as our structural focus. As we were already deconstructing our clips into meanings that may or may not be seen by our readers, we decided to focus on a more ‘writerly and readerly’ text and leave the many connections that could be made open to the active individuals that will help produce the final product on their own computer screens.

The lighting in the shots was reliant on natural movements in the environment throughout the day and framing was open to focus on what the camera operator felt to capture in these small movable moments of our travels. Composition was also less defined as a consistent rule for the film maker as technically the camera movement and impossibilities of zooming were constrained by the media we filmed on and we felt a diverse approach to these elements would enhance the content that was captured. However we did naturally compose the shots with a focus on the landscape around us, the transforming skies that passed us by. The movement of the camera was directly correlated to our own movement and how we navigated through our landscapes; where our eyes turned, or where our hand was bumped, the camera followed and moved with our motion and the motion of the transport vehicles. Atmospheric sound was recorded, if possible, in all clips to offer a constantly moving soundtrack throughout the film and to add a layer of motion and a visceral soundscape to the film as a whole. We also decided to not edit any of the clips as an aesthetic and structural choice. In relation to Barthes ‘Readerly and Writerly’ theories[i] it was decided that the edits themselves would be made by the reader and the writer of the text (the active viewer) and that the only edits required were the ones that the viewer decided upon when they chose to switch to a different clip at their own decided point. The connections, relationships and cinematic edits seen in the piece would be created by the reader/writer whilst actively participating in structuring the non-linear film, independently from any pre-determined sequential structure dictated by the creator of the shots. We then also added an ongoing soundtrack to the background of the film as another layer to the piece that could capture the essence of movement and the individual sounds of instruments that traditionally hold their notes for extended times. This works in this piece as it related to the themes of movement and infinite time, which structures the work.

After further discussions with Adrian Miles, our group was advised that we did not have to include written typographical text if it was not going to add to the thematic or aesthetic structure of the project as a whole. This is in line with the films connection with Barthes theories and the notion that our producers’ role was in creating the clips and refining rules to display them within an umbrella theme that informs the piece on ‘movement’. The meanings derived by the reader/writer would be constructed by the addition of text and could lead to the viewer being confused, baby stepped through our meaning of the film or for viewers unfamiliar with Korsakow it could lead them to assume that the meaning they create (which could be travel or trains or city or anything else) is the ‘incorrect’ meaning if their interpretation does not fit the text. This would also lead the viewer to pause in contemplation of the text and prevent them from a continuous flow of thought whilst watching and writing the film. Whether the text related to what we thought the focus of the clips or film as a whole was or if it was abstract; it would still connect it to the film and pre-determine a meaning, mood or theme and label it as a signifier to the singular clip; as the theme of the project is ‘movement’ and the continuity and “infinite promise” of time, place and natural landscapes in the sky. A cognitive reflection on the text would disconnect the viewer from their ‘writerly’ position and force them into a solely ‘readerly’ position. This would create a disjointed experience of movement in thought and time whilst watching and reading the pre-determined product, rather than reading and writing the infinite production itself. There is a visual theme created within the clips themselves and the film as a whole and this does not require further textual expression as it would have been a stagnant element in this particular piece. As Roland Barthes states “doesn't a sentence, whatever meaning it releases, subsequent to its utterance, it would seem, appear to be telling us something simple, literal, primitive: something true, in relation to which all the rest (which comes afterwards on top') is literature.”[ii] And with our attempts to not tell the viewers anything directly in relation to truths and literal meanings we felt it was enough what we had already pre-determined by structuring the clips in relation to movement and time. The remaining signifiers and resulting signified would have to be determined through the process of reading and writing the text. At whichever point the reader edits the K film (moves to another clip) the meaning generated will inevitably be different. To add text based on either our pre-determined meaning for the film or the entirety of the single clip or as a purely abstract addition to the film would not correlate with the theme of continuous movement that we were exploring.

This rule regarding text is not to say it cannot be a thematic and visual element to a K Film, it simply does not fit this particular project and its theme of movement. Movement is explored in a number of ways in the film’s programming in Korsakow. The clips, as discussed are all filmed from a moving person’s perspective, the thumbnails are moving (at a slower rate of 2 fps) to introduce snippets of the clips and to add another layer of sound into the project. The soundtrack is ongoing and travels itself through time, with long notes and continuous sounds. The infinite nature of the landscapes in the clips (the skies, the roads, the train tracks, the city, the country) and the ‘never-ending’ structure of the film all contribute to the moving essence of the film.

The actual structure of the K Film was challenging to create in the beginning, but I finally worked out how the clips could be ‘SNUified’ so that the morning and the night could interconnect with themselves and each other, through the linking of the two different groups of dusk films. At first it was structured very tightly to have one search for dusk1, 6 searches for itself (morning or night) and an additional search for dusk2. However, this very ordered approach meant the second dusk film always came up in the same spot, which was too regimented for our approach and in some cases the 8^th search did not fill up at all– despite all clips having infinite lives, random links turned on (and off to test this) and having 8 ‘out’ searches for every clip. After checking each of the 60 clips several times, I decided to loosen the searches up to include an infinite search for its own keyword, which seemed to worked well and ensure that 8 thumbnails were offered each time a film played. With the dusk clips (which are the physical and semantic link between morning and night) we adjusted the exposure and coloring slightly to enhance the aesthetic elements of the work and to highlight the difference in the timing of these shots. It was already quite clear in most of the films but aesthetically it seemed to work quite well, particularly in the night screenings. In terms of other design elements on the page, we tried to leave as much black space around the clips as possible and we choose 8 thumbnails to be displayed as this worked neatly in the grid of the interface and allowed us to come up with easily organized programming elements for the SNUifying stage. With 24 clips each for morning and night, 6 Dusk1 clips (connecting out to Morning) and 6 Dusk2 clips (connecting out to Night) I could easily work out a system for organising the interface and programming requirements. After the minor delay in problem solving the missing 8^th clip in some searches, this system worked quite well strategically and aesthetically. Even with knowing myself how to travel through to other times of the day (via the Dusk thumbnails) it is easily navigated through by an unknown viewer who will see the stark contrast between the lightness and darkness of the clips that a ‘dusk’ click will result in. Or perhaps if they don’t want to travel this way, they may stick to one of the settings for morning or night, depending on if they are a morning person or a night owl! There are endless ways to read and write the film.

Therefore the structure aided the programming of the film more than pre-determining a single meaning for the reader/writer. I believe we achieved our project goals, having fulfilled the assessment criteria and more importantly having completed a functioning (no dead ends, no repetitive ‘traps’) K Film. Our structural, aesthetic and theoretical decisions express an interesting nonlinear film and the theme of movement and infinite time can be read or written by the viewer. I feel that this film achieves our intentions, as discussed above, very effectively.

Roland Barthes theory on the ‘Readerly and the Writerly can be discussed with reference to our K film. As the Korsakow application achieves in its own form, we focused on producing a K film which does not constrain itself to what Barthes describes as “the pitiless divorce which the literary institution maintains between the producer of the text and its user, between its owner and its customer, between its author and its reader.”[iii] When this separation is mandated (by a single set path through the K Film or a pre-determined meaning already generated and imprisoned in the work), the reader is refused “access to the magic of the signifier, to the pleasure of writing, he is left with no more than the poor freedom either to accept or reject the text; reading is nothing more than a referendum.”[iv] In reflection of this theory, our K-film has a number of considerations that attempts to allow the reader to also be the writer and play an active role in the film. The omission of written text was a significant step in attempting to not weigh down the experience of the film by placing signifiers on each clip, which directed the viewer to either “accept or reject the text” and the meaning we had generated for the clip. The openness of being able to edit the clip at any time and selecting any of the 8 available thumbnails, which led to 8 more in an endless rhythm meant the viewer could create the product they chose, not read the product we chose for them. We intentionally did not want the viewer to either agree or disagree with a linear sequence, text (as a sentence of ‘truth’ or as an abstract notion somehow connected with the clip) or through an ending that was pre-determined and somehow signified that this clip, this navigation is the most meaningful way to read this pre-written text.

After reading Barthes definitions of the writerly and the readerly, it is evident that through the aesthetic choices in the interface, the connected, interconnected and disconnected elements in the clips and the infinite pathways that are available for the reader to write the finished product, this K Film can be described through the following text from Barthes:

The writerly text is a perpetual present, upon which no consequent
language (which would inevitably make it past) can be superimposed;
The writerly text is ourselves writing, before the infinite
play of the world (the world as function) is traversed,
intersected, stopped, plasticized by some singular system (Ideology,
Genus, Criticism) which reduces the plurality of entrances,
the opening of networks, the infinity of languages.
The writerly is the novelistic without the novel, poetry without
the poem, the essay without the dissertation, writing without
style, production without product, structuration without
structure. But the readerly texts? They are products (and not
productions), they make up the enormous mass of our literature.[v]

To conclude, it is stated that our K Film ‘The Infinite Promise, Like The Echo of The Second Hand’ denotes and connotates itself as being a K Film and as such is an unfinished product which has “structuation without structure”, through its keywords and connections made between the clips which allow it to play from clip to clip with the only edits being those decided or not decided by the viewer. It can be viewed as the “poetry without the poem” in as far as the lines of the poem are drawn and linked to the next line, but the words (the clips) are still awaiting to be placed in their chosen position by the writerly participant. It then becomes an infinite production that will soon become a temporary product in the eyes of the viewer alone, before the “play of the world” brings a sudden end to their momentary glimpse into the “infinity of languages”.

By Clare Peterson

RMIT, MEDIA

clare.peterson@student.rmit.edu.au

punchyproductions@gmail.com

[i] Barthes, Roland. Writerly and Readerly, Extract pp.3-16. S/Z. Trans. Richard Miller, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1974.

[ii] Op.cit. p5

[iii] Op.cit.p5

[iv] Op.cit. p5

[v] Op. cit. p5

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Pulling the all nighter to finish my 4th assessment this week... #bored #uni #pain

2010-06-03T06:56:00.001-07:00

Was it always so hard? I am sure procrastination was far more exciting when I was younger...or maybe it is because I just accidently poured ginger tea rather than gin in my glass before. What tweets can I read? Where's my chocolate? What am I writing about again...oh yes good old Roland Barthes will be sure to keep me awake. Read this 'writerly' text Barthes. yawn.

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Final K Film is online and ready to be written by you...

2010-06-03T05:07:00.001-07:00

This is our final K film for Integrated Media 1. Its central theme is centred around 'movement' - as seen with the movement within and between the clips, the thumbnails and the soundscape. An essay detailing this process and its connection with Roland Barthe's 'readerly and writerly' theories will be posted via my RMIT Blog http://raws.adc.rmit.edu.au/~s3087922/blog/?p=554 and on this site.

The essence of the Korsakow application and the production of this K film, is that it is 'an infinite promise' through the process of being published and allows readers to also be the writers of the film. The edits you make, the timing of navigating from one shot to the next and the meanings you generate are all independent of any pre-determined meaning or deconstruction that we could have lugged you with in a 'final' product created in traditional cinematic media. So I hope you enjoy it, I hope you find it interesting, whatever reasons that may lead to this and I hope you can generate a meaningful connection with the individual clips or the sequence that you generate for yourself.

#sarcasm #vline thanks again!

2010-06-01T21:06:00.001-07:00

Well it's pretty lucky I don't have to be anywhere anytime and just randomly run to catch trains into
the city for light entertainment value.

In a shocking turn of events it seems another train is late. Lucky I'm
not tired or already fuming from waiting 3 hours for a train to get home
last night and its really really lucky I'm not already 2 hours late for my
presentation day.

Thanks again vline, its a joy to spend time with you.

http://thoughtsbecomethings-dreamer.blogspot.com/2010/05/thanks-for-nothing-m...

#sarcasm #vline

Clare Peterson
Punchy Productions

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