Hope for the future of newspapers

The media can be incredibly self-involved, attaching an importance to its output that just doesn't exist in the lives of most people. In today's Crikey, Margaret Simons said that the media occupy a "privileged position" - really? No more so than any up-themselves spruiker pushing something I don't want. The Economist recently published a number of stories claiming that newspapers are on the road to oblivion, echoed amongst others by Mark Day. There is a good deal of wistfulness about Ye Goode Olde Days, and a bit of grumpy-old-man fist-shaking at new-fangled technology. What is missing is an appreciation of how media can add value into the future.

Day sees the value of newspapers in providing fresh, breaking news only. There are, it seems, two types of FBN: long-term investigative reporting and daily blah (i.e. recycling of press releases). The traditional economic model for newspapers is that advertising funds the content, and that the cost of the paper itself barely covers printing and distribution; the death-of-newspapers crowd complain that the internet breaks the link between content and advertising, hence newspapers are apparently doomed.

Some people fret about negative coverage in a newspaper article because they think that it will permanently colour people's perceptions of them. Old newspaper hands like Day will self-effacingly dismiss their output as "fish-wrappers", often as a way of limiting libel litigation against them. This self-effacement is quickly dispelled when you see the self-importance media attaches to itself; a change to the regulatory environment of, say, universities or uranium mining is covered much less than what happens when there is a change to media regulations. Imagine a combination of the children's games musical chairs and pass-the-parcel, throw in a flurry of accountants and lawyers, and it's much like a shakeout in any other industry.

Never mind the internet, I would have thought newspapers were used to other forms of electronic media by now. I get my raw information from the radio, supplemented by TV in the evening. If I get time at work I hit the internet. It would be hard for any advertiser to reach me during this process. I make a point of avoiding internet advertising, and will often surf sites from outside Australia. I mostly listen to/watch the ABC.

ABC local radio is basically The Sydney Morning Herald read out, featuring interviews with those quoted in the paper (who, if they are briefed in the techniques of media management, will say nothing more than that which was quoted in the paper: it is the dull and lazy radio interviewer who will be content with nothing more than that). The evening news often carries reactions to the day's newspapers and radio: this is known as "the news cycle" and it starts again the following day. It is the very definition of a short-sighted imbecile who thinks the news cycle is the be-all-and-end-all, and it is an indictment of the political and media systems of this country that these myopic people occupy senior and vital roles in those organisations.

But I need more than raw news: and I'm above-average in terms of education and income, and I'm under 40 - so advertisers listen up. People like Day are worried that Google are bringing out a facility that will aggregate information on whatever you're interested in and spoon-feed it to you. This needn't bother newspapers as much as it apparently does. I read newspapers for the analysis.

Newspapers are almost irrelevant in terms of FBN. There's the occasional long-term investigation which leads to FBN, but you get those from Four Corners and you used to get them from Sunday. They're expensive, claims Day: media organisations have plenty of money so that isn't a problem for most newspapers. What he means is they detract from the bottom-line focus, particularly if said investigations upset advertisers.

Newspapers should concentrate on is longer-term analysis of trends that affect the world; they're good at it and it is helpful in forming opinions to make decisions. I read newspapers and news magazines to get some measured analysis of events in the world. The major difference between Australian media and quality media elsewhere is the lack of this longer term analysis by well-informed people who aren't obviously pushing a barrow.

If newspapers wanted commentary on politics, they shouldn't bother asking Tony Abbott or Tanya Plibersek for a piece: they put out press releases and should be busy doing things that are worthy of reporting. If someone wanted an insight to their thought processes, one would go to their websites or read an interview. The piece in today's Australian Financial Review on opportunities for Australia with India's growing nuclear industry might have made a useful speech in Hansard, but as newspaper content it was a waste of space. Politicians like them may complain about the media but as each of them belong to parties which worked to restrict media diversity, forcing discerning readers onto the web, they can just shut up.

The nearest Australian newspapers get to this is the publication of a diverse range of considered views on fake militant Islam. Some are long-serving and distinguished Arabists, some are Washington think-tankers, some are Russell Hill defence nerds; there is a good range available to find entertaining and informative pieces within Australia and overseas. I am not convinced that a similar range of people can't be found on other subject areas. When you need broad and long-term analysis of a subject of which you have known little, you should have a newspaper to go to.

If the quality of the writing is there, I am prepared to dip into articles about other subjects: wine, opera, particle physics, areas where I can't imagine doing a Google search but where a good piece will get me involved. It would be dreary to read articles which reflected a certain line all the time; I need a provocative article to sharpen my views against, or to reconsider them. I'd subscribe to a newspaper if it did this reliably: I always buy the Fin on Friday for the Review section. I used to buy The Bulletin but it's too hit-and-miss. ACP aren't serious about producing it and neither am I about reading/buying it.

You can't train young journalists to do this analysis, but you can persuade them that it's important. Easier to start off doing that earnest noddy stuff on TV outside a court house, and start doing some reading.

What has been imported into Australian papers from the States is the intellectually lazy ideological shill: Bolt, Albrechtsen and Devine on the right, Horin, Davidson and others on the left, largely ignored by readers and generating heat rather than light only among myopic autistics referred to earlier. These people do not change votes or increase readership and they don't sell advertising. Why are they in the paper at all? Dumbing down hits newspapers hardest - they start competing with junk mail catalogues, which are free. Now, as Margaret Simons pointed out in Crikey today, the same is happening to TV (can't wait for the book).

Newspapers will survive if they're worth reading, and they'll be worth reading if they take a more considered view than is possible in media where time is of the essence. This may mean that old-school dumb-down chuckleheads like Mark Day, David Pemberthy, Peter Blunden or Eddie McGuire may have to go, but we all must make sacrifices. If McDonalds can lift the nutritional quality of their menu, News Ltd can too.

I don't pretend that what I like reading is what everyone likes reading. I think it's risible that people like David Flint or Glenn Milne criticise someone who has won and held elected office for being "out of touch with public opinion", as if they'd know! However, I think the media in Australia and elsewhere is in a state of flux, and hopefully something appealling will come out of that.

Australia and the twilight of the Bush Administration

When George W Bush became US President in January 2001, John Howard was Prime Minister of Australia. Bush said recently that Howard would probably still hold his office once Bush's term expires in January 2009.

Australia's friendship with the United States is strong and long-standing, and has taken different forms over the turbulent past century. Within the next three years it will change again as we adapt to a post-Bush USA. What form will this relationship take, and how will events of the Howard-Bush era affect the future?

It takes two to tango, but Australia's interests will remain relatively constant. We will maintain a close political relationship. We will seek but not get greater access for our exports to the US. We will participate in US-led military expeditions with enthusiasm, but with limits imposed by the size of our military and by commitments in our region such as East Timor, the Solomon Islands and elsewhere which the US will largely leave to us. Even if Labor won government, the general tenor of the relationship from Australia's point of view wouldn't change much apart from political rhetoric, and even that would be a matter of degree rather than any shift in direction.

Any changes on trade will be incremental and we will continue to try to work both sides of the street in our relationships with China and the US. The spectre of American cultural imperialism is not what it was as the appeal of Chinese and Japanese films and games have diminished the power of Hollywood. American fast food companies used to loom large here but their brand powers have also waned despite Australia's obesity epidemic. For all the Howard Government's determination to be part of the "coalition of the willing" in Iraq and Afghanistan, our presence there is not large nor crucial nor hard to replace. These changes may signal shifts in Australia's attitudes toward the US over time, but it isn't clear yet what effects these changes might have.

The impetus for change over the next few years will come from the larger partner in this relationship, the US. It is possible that the next President will, as Bush urges, "stay the course" and elect someone like Condoleezza Rice or Virginia Senator George Allen who will perpetuate Bush's neo-regal policies and style of government. However, Bush has been consistently unpopular throughout this year, which will see elections for the US Congress in November.

Victories for the Democrats, vague and hesitant, cowed by Bush's weakness-is-strength electoral tactics, will encourage a change in political direction. The lack of connection between the war in Iraq and the effective control of fake militant Islam. It is likely that the Democrats will win control of the House of Representatives, and possible that they will win the Senate as well. This will certainly open Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld to greater scrutiny than they have experienced to date, which will set the stage for a Democrat response to America's political situation that will resonate with voters.

The failure of Bush's outlook on the world is not only confirmed by isolated incidents like this or the inadequacies of the Iraqi government, but by the failure of the Bush-Cheney end of an acquiescent world accepting of American leadership. Iran, North Korea and others flout pax Americana with impunity, and will increasingly do so as Bush enters his endgame. More time has now elapsed since 11 September 2001 than had elapsed between 7 December 1941 (when Japanese attacked the US at Pearl Harbour) and 9 August 1945 (when the Japanese surrendered and Hitler was dead). Bush was wrong to present the war against terror as a war that could be won under his leadership.

Democrats may be more likely to expand the lopsided Australia-US Free Trade Agreement in our favour, unless the Howard Government repulse them in their affection for Bush or if sucker Mark Vaile remains as Trade Minister. They are less likely to pander to rural states with their overprotected agriculture sectors, though they may pander to them in states like Florida, Montana or Idaho. Republicans tend to give ever-loyal Australia little more than patronising lip-service.

The future of the US-Australia relationship is really up to the Americans over the next few years - how far are they going to go with neoconservatism, and if they retreat from it will there be such a backlash that we are tainted by it? Once the Americans work out what their priorities really are and what lessons they have learned from the Bush years, this close relationship will adjust accordingly and go forward.

Lest we forget

Forty years ago today, 108 Australian soldiers were ambushed by about 2500 VietCong near the village of Long Tan, Vietnam.

John Howard was happy to apologise for the way Vietnam veterans had been treated (no cost to him; no political consequences as Liberals broadly agree, including those gutless ones who played down the war and its participants in the face of the Whitlam juggernaut). Howard did not, however, address the issue that Long Tan veterans were not rewarded adequately by officialdom. He did so in a particularly weaselly way and it robbed his "apology" of any moral force.

The shabby way Vietnam veterans were treated is also an indictment on Whitlam's legacy. A man with classic education should know that those who return from the battlefield should be honoured and put on a sound economic footing for the sake of the state. After all this time he should be able to transcend the long-haired activists of old who burnish his legend and recognise that Vietnam veterans did important and often exemplary work under impossible circumstances.

Any culture where moral greatness is not rewarded and moral failure unpunished is doomed to mediocrity, and the Australian military is no exception. Yes, it's hard work, with a bureaucratic storm ahead and probably a lot of long-buried private pain which will get wrenched into the public domain. With Imperial honours, the Australian Government will have to go cap-in-hand to the Poms in a way that it no longer has to do in any other area of policy. However, it is worth doing. It will give substantive justice to a section of the community long wronged (including other veterans, not just from Long Tan, similarly overlooked and fobbed off).

To re-examine aspects of our military history would spur the very sort of study of key events on Australian history that the recent history summit would have young people do. No amount of windy rhetoric would have this motivating force. It also adds another dimension to Australian history: whatever you might think of Australia getting drawn into Anglo-American wars, there are significant achievements by Australians worthy of recognition and respect.

Appropriate recognition of our brave and clever service personnel will make it easier to reform the appalling failure of military justice for serving personnel. If you can go back through the records of those whose careers are over, it will make it easier to embellish or eviscerate those currently in uniform. This failed system, which ensnares good and bad equally, makes the profession of arms profoundly unappealling in a time of low unemployment. The fantasy of those supporting the status quo is that effective warriors are potentially denied to the military, when a properly-functioning justice system bids good riddance to bad rubbish. It ultimately hinders our military capabilities and adds to cost.

Accountability is a joke while layers of crusty cover-ups clog this vital organ of state. We can neither criticise the Japanese over Yasukuni or "comfort women", not the US military over Hicks - even if we wanted to.

It is very important to revisit the honours given to Australian servicemen, and Howard's inaction hurts us on so many levels.

Lessons from the ACT

If your financial performance has been this bad, don't you start developing a social conscience or whingeing about the Constitution. It didn't work for Whitlam and it won't work for Stanhope either.

I think gay/lesbian civil unions are absolutely equal to heterosexual de facto relationships. Marriage is different, but nobody is talking about gay marriage in this debate - asking why gays/lesbians can't get married is like asking why Muslims don't take Holy Communion. Opponents of this measure are few but active - still irrelevant in a democracy with compulsory voting. Just because something isn't forbidden, it doesn't mean it's now compulsory - the very essence of liberalism which, despite five hundred years of Enlightenment, churchy people just cant grasp. There are bigger issues to focus on, but you can't blame those for whom gay issues are deeply personal issues, nor those of us who regard homosexuality as part of the human condition whose recognition costs non-homosexuals nothing.

The ACT is basically a jumped-up council. It would be fair to call it a one-off were it not for the example of Brisbane, a proper city council that executes its functions in a responsible manner. The sheer degree to which these Brindabella hillbillies are out of their depth is a clear example of why the fringe movement to break down the states and introduce regional councils like this is a non-starter. There is a critical mass for the kind of services that State governments deliver, and the ACT is attempting to limbo under that.

The transition costs would never be recouped, and regional areas would go backwards even faster than they are now. Take this guy: his solution for New England is to devote their hard-earned to buying some sheep runs and building a New Canberra between Tamworth and Armidale (and not just local money - you know he'd be panhandling from growth centres in Sydney and Brisbane to make his absurd dream work). The best thing this joker can do for New England is to stay in Hornsby. Earle Page is dead, so is the idea that country people are better and more special than other Australians, as well as the idea that they create all the wealth for this country. OK, it's not dead as long as there are characters like the New England dreamer and the ACT incompetents, but hopefully they'll find reality bracing if not discouraging. If regional areas think they're being neglected now, they should try cutting themselves off politically from the cities.

Except for the ACT, the States are configured such that they all contain a major city, a number of regional centres, and some remote and sparsely populated areas. When COAG comes together on the big national issues like native title, mental health or terrorism, everyone's sitting up and taking notice. If that were extended to a multitude of regional councils it would be a dialogue of the deaf, amid an orgy of waste. Political ineptitude exists despite the Constitution, and not because of it.

The love song of J. Hyde Page

I had been a Young Liberal for over a decade when John Hyde Page joined a neighbouring branch. He was even more dull than the prose in his tome, Servicing Me, Servicing You: The Edification of a Piss Boy. I had no idea why he joined the Liberal Party, and after reading him spit out all the butt-ends of his days and ways I still don't. He uses some real names and applies pseudonyms to others; he claims to have witnessed events that he didn't and couldn't; and he leaves out examples of his own behaviour that would leave a reader feeling robbed of any time spent with him in his book. As with this song, what's puzzling me, then as now, is the nature of his game.

Hyde Page's is basically a love story. Here was a young man who was not that bright, nor distinguished in any other way. The branch he joined was run by a character not dissimilar to Fagin from Dickens' Oliver Twist (mind you, this could be pretty much the factional warrior's anthem). Fagin convinced Hyde Page that talent, ability to contribute to the common weal and hard work counted for nothing in politics; that self-abasement was the way to success, that you could suck your way upwards by some sort of capillary action. Hyde Page was in love with the idea that someone so unremarkable as himself could get anywhere at anything; and he fell in love with Fagin. He became an easy tool for Fagin: deferential, glad to be of use, and on that basis prepared a face to meet the faces that he met. He clearly bamboozled his publisher as well, but spivs sell and Australian publishers who understand the Liberal Party would be few enough for someone like him to try it on.

The book, like its author, has none of the ideology that is claimed on the wrapper: it was all about him and Fagin. As an activist Hyde Page targetted mostly well-functioning moderate branches and promising moderate liberals than yer standard wood-duck Howard-lovin' conservatives, and almost never did he take on the true enemies of moderate liberals (and humanity generally) the mad, bad Dave Clarke Taliban. You're not a moderate liberal because you say so, or because Fagin considers you part of his furniture. You're a moderate if you believe that the far right and the far left should just go at each other while moderates get on with the business of good and sensible government. You're a moderate if you stand up for refugees and other aspects of human rights without buggering the economy through red tape and bullying like the far left do - Phillip Ruddock and Amanda Vanstone used to be moderates before they got ambitious and impatient, believe it or not.

Hyde Page believed nothing more than that he would make an effective and eminent Liberal, that attaining a title might substitute for an achievement. He believed that doing Fagin's bidding was the way to that attainment. There, then as now, endeth his beliefs.

There is no "moderate liberal" justification, for example, for his attack upon my old branch of Paddington Young Liberals. You can read this at pp. 125-128 of the book: no need to buy it, just skim it in the bookshop before one of the staff asks you to buy. Hyde Page tries to demonise his victims, but his description of the people in that branch reveal a fundamental failure to understand human nature: an understanding essential for all leaders and manipulators, and give insight into his political and personal failure:

• The person he calls 'Lachlan' is actually named Paul - the mistake is understandable once you appreciate how dull-witted Hyde Page is. He has a genuine sense of humour while Hyde Page's lack of sense in this area reveals him as far more "gruesome" than the person he so labels - especially once you realise he made up the incident that apparently galvanised him to act. If you ever wonder why politicians are so same-same, look at 'Lachlan' and realise that he was the second-highest ranking moderate in the Young Liberals. Hyde Page invested all the works and days of hands in forcing out a branch President who was standing down: this proves him to be not only capricious but stupid. It is this combination that helps make both his book and the Liberal Party what they are today: not worth your while.


• His description of two female members of that branch, Sarah and Nicole, shows that Hyde Page is baffled by women and not in some harmless, gentlemanly way. He accuses one of them of not wearing a miniskirt - now Sarah could sure wear a miniskirt(!), but I suppose that Hyde Page learnt miniskirt deployment at Cranbrook. He says that Chris McDiven's vapid offspring were part of his moderate-anti-moderate stack. Hyde Page's descriptions go beyond misogyny - this is someone who doesn't even like women in general and couldn't be bothered understanding them, another failure in interpersonal relations generally let alone Liberal politics in particular.

If the book was more important, I'd give further examples: chapters that follow like a tedious argument of insidious intent to lead you to an overwhelming question … why? well, that question would overwhelm him. Factional hacks like Hyde Page (or, for that matter, Morris Iemma or Steve Bracks) are not used to answering questions and as such they make appalling politicians, furtive and exclusionary and frightened of scrutiny. It is tiresome watching such people pay hide-and-seek with journalists who are both gullible and lazy. Hyde Page's book lays out the landscape of his mind like a patient etherised upon a table, but offers no reason why you should care about him or his little world.

Read the section on John Howard's contempt for him; a position he developed after the first few minutes and one position of his well worth your emulation. He is not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be. As an author he is not a truth-teller, nor is he imaginative or clear in his writing, full of high sentence and a lot obtuse, certainly not worthy of emulation however briefly.

You have now spent all the time on this book that is necessary, and more than is wise.

For Israel

I support Israel in its war against fake militant "Islam" (hereafter: FMI), represented by Hezbollah and Hamas, for three main reasons. First, Israel had done everything right before hostilities broke out - withdrawn from Gaza and Lebanon, and cracked down on suicide bombers, while Iran was organising gabfests on wiping Israel off the face off the earth. Second, it has a proper government: responsible for health and education and other actual public services which is accountable to voters without the gangsterism and tribalism found elsewhere in the Middle East. Third, I'm an unabashed admirer of the plucky little Israel of Entebbe and the Six Day War, Dayan and Rabin, Meir and Barak, and I trust that mighty spirit lives on.

Not that you have to be such a fan to think Mel Gibson is a toerag.

Hamas came to government last year without the epiphany experienced by South Africa's ANC, another nationalist movement with militant tendencies, that throwing off the oppressor is only the prelude to the grind of responsible government. Had Mahmoud Abbas embraced this vision he would have had some claim on Israel to keep open the financial spigots, some leverage with the West; instead, he played a double game against interests incompatible since 11 September 2001, which drove him down the dead-end of FMI. Palestine has lost support from Christians, Muslims and other non-FMI groups; they've been forced out by the maddies. If the EU was a proper government they would be re-examining what exactly they are funding (social programs? I don't think so) and how much of the sentimental nonsense of the soixante-huitards actually applies to the situation in the ground.

The Bush doctrine of democracy over stability depends heavily upon sensible democratic leadership. Abbas and the other Arafat relics have not only botched it, they have left FMI with a monopoly of competent leadership in those parts. In Egypt, Libya and Syria, amongst others, the only alternative to the incumbents with money and organisational skills are the FMI parties, to the point where traditional tribalist parties or neo-Western ideological groupings would be left for dead, literally.

The Israelis have not been sufficiently clever in their selections of targets which suggests these have been selected by politicians, rather than military leaders acting on reliable intelligence. It has worked as a show of strength, and as a lesson to the Lebanese about the need to excrete Hezbollah from their body politic. Hopefully, Israel will go after Hezbollah where it really is: now a hotel in Damascus, now a cafe in Amman, now a hadassah in Qom, now a mosque in Paris. The Israelis are masters of asymmetric warfare, and hopefully they have not become so reliant on US hardware that these skills have been blunted.

Any Iranian Revolutionary Guard members found in the war against Israel should be eaten by pigs, or humiliated in some grotesque way in death as we have seen in recent years on FMI webcasts. Peace in the Middle East tends to follow the obliteration of some large-scale piece of Arab military hardware, and the US ought not be backward in supplying the equipment that might help Iranians see another side of what it means to develop nuclear power.

The weasel vs the chicken

For ten years the Australian media have speculated about when Howard will retire and hand the Prime Ministership to Peter Costello. Acres of newspaper and blogspace, days of airtime have been lavished on this. It separates politics nerds from those who aren't: the Howard-Costello thing is fascinating to those who are insider-wannabes, terribly dull stuff to those who aren't. We all have to work with people we don't like, and the ambitious find their way blocked by time-servers. When I think what other public policy issues could have been investigated instead of Parliament House scuttlebutt, I could weep.

Only now that it has come to a head is it an interesting topic of conversation. Costello can't back down without crippling himself as a man of principle and resolve. Howard has shown himself to be the opposite. He will only hand over to Costello (or someone else) if he thinks he'll lose.

There is only one way forward for Costello: to the backbench; read some fat books and pen some thoughtful articles, get to know his family, smirk at the unfolding disaster.

There is only one way forward for Howard: a different Treasurer, and a clear demonstration of how shallow the talent pool really is. The economy will start to sputter over coming months, a bit of inflation here and a few job cuts there - a Costello resignation/dumping could be one of the great hospital passes in Australian history. Abbott, Downer or Nelson are the obvious choices as Treasurer: each would do the bidding of Howard's office and none would achieve anything independent of that. Downer would make some silly remark that sent the markets into a tailspin (he, Howard and Vaile are also vulnerable to new revelations over AWB, in a way that Costello mightn't be); Abbott would make a sincere statement of belief that sent the markets into a tailspin, and would show his colleagues that he is not really a tough guy but just a prick; Nelson would have the entire staff of the economic policy organs of government engaged in inquiries so that no one did any work, sending the markets into a tailspin. Each of them would feel Costello's smirk burn into the backs of their necks like a brand, as did Kerin and Willis in 1991.

Oh, and Vaile needs a domestic portfolio after the end of the month if Cole doesn't sink him. Treasury would be way too hard for him, the markets would see through this small-town pollie and the Libs would undermine him.

Costello may play no role in the coming election campaign, but that may be no bad thing if it is a disaster for the Coalition (a narrow victory is the most likely outcome). His most likely fate is to end up like Michael Heseltine, the man who coulda-but-didn't. After a long-term Prime Ministership the heir is likely to be someone who wasn't even on the scene at the start: Holt was not the heir-apparent to Menzies in 1949, or even 1959. Truman was not FDR's heir apparent in 1933 or '43. While Costello is unencumbered by milk-of-human-kindness issues, someone who would wield the knife and wear the crown needs patience that Costello lacks.

This is only a win for Labor if you believe in zero-sum politics. The wounds will heal quickly if temporarily, and an early election ought not be ruled out after a few housekeeping issues. A narrow loss next election would be Labor's worst-case scenario: not in government but Beazley vindicated and unwilling to make any changes.

Did you see Liberal activist and Senate reject John Ruddick with that silly banner outside Kirribilli House - the one with love-hearts over the "O"s in "John Howard"? What a dipstick.