My problem wasn’t the side-scrolling design as such. It was more the way that this design combined with other features of the site, and the content, to suggest that the Global Mail was only reluctantly an online enterprise.

The site’s design suggested to this progressively less frequent reader that the brief was to make it look like a glossy magazine. When you combined that with the lack of a comments facility, and the lack of links and engagement with other sites in the stories, a distinct impression was formed. This was a website that was only grudgingly online. To me the presentation of the site framed the Internet as a necessary evil – a handy distribution method for a pretty old-fashioned product, not a medium with its own possibilities, which might be usefully engaged with. The lack of capacity for readers to make their own contribution suggested an aversion to the culture of online debate.

The stories reflected this mindset, I think. The photographic essays by Mike Bowers are gorgeous, and always worth a look. But otherwise too many stories were worthy-but-dull, with news and editorial values seemingly informed by a pretty wooly set of ideas about “quality journalism”. (Rumopur has it that there was tension over the rate at which stories were commissioned, so this may not have been the fault of the writers involved).

Too often they were at the weekend supplement level rather than approaching the gold standards of online longform journalism – The Atlantic, The New Yorker, TNR. One never felt sure as one does in checking those sites or their feeds, that one would learn something genuinely new, something which you will always want to shoot to instapaper.

So it seemed like GM combined unfulfilled aspirations to be a quality longform project with an apparent unwillingness to be integrated with the rest of the Internet. These went some way towards robbing the GM of the spark, cheekiness, willingness to experiment, competitive elan, doggedness and fight of more durable and interesting online news ventures. Crikey might have a ramshackle site but it also has shown itself able to compel readers with a different take on the daily agenda, and tweaked the noses of bigger players on the way. Think of Mumbrella or New Matilda, which speak for and to well-defined audiences. Think of On Line Opinion‘s sense of mission. Think of the personality that the more successful Australian blogs manage to project. Think of the best things that have happened at ABC Online in recent years – the Drum and ABC Open, which have harnessed the energy of outsiders. Then pop over to Alexa and do the traffic comparisons.

For all its claims to innovation in design, we never saw GM under Attard do anything really innovative as an online publication. There was no data journalism or visualisation, no experiments with interactive features, no live coverage, no standout social media work, no multimedia offerings.

It’s one thing to be away from the news cycle, it’s another to be so irrelevant that you’re not able to get any traction on the agenda. There seemed to be a desire to put foreign affairs and broad progressive issues on the public radar. But the Global Mail seemed too satisfied with itself from the outset to elbow its way into a place in the national conversation. The audience was taken for granted, not competed for.

When it started, it was claimed that its target market was everyone. This seemed impossibly vague at the time; in retrospect it seems like a disavowal. I think the imagined audience was clear enough – it was the editor and other like minds, who were committed to a similar normative old-media ideal of quality (which might just be redundant, if not obsolete) and a similar suite of soft-left causes. But this audience was just not large enough for the publication to have the desired impact.

Perhaps Attard’s background was not ideal for shepherding a new online outlet. She was a storied foreign correspondent with a long tenure in the ABC’s star system. Perhaps by their nature these things need hungry outsiders, who want to do more than dispense patronage to producing a kind of journalism which is exemplified better elsewhere. Perhaps the eye-popping level of support given to the venture was part of the problem – the whole thing just felt complacent from the outset.

It makes you think, though. When she was in the Media Watch chair, is the Global Mail what Attard wanted the Australian media to look like?

PS Tim Burrowes makes some related points, in the form of a list, on Mumbrella.

It’s not support for the principles around freedom of political expression. Menzies House only extends that support to Bolt. It’s not about demanding that limits be placed on political action or expression. Menzies House only wants that to happen in respect of the Tent Embassy. And it’s clearly not good banner design.

What the campaigns have in common is (1) their crude and lazy opportunism; and (2) that they are both targeted at Aboriginal Australians. The first supports Bolt’s right to make loaded calls about other people’s racial identity. The second seeks to end the right of Aboriginal people to continue a long-standing political protest. They share a basis in a rudimentary understanding that resentments about Aboriginal people are easily awakened and exploited in some parts of the community.

All political groups make choices about how to allocate their scarce resources, how to communicate in a way that activates their supporters, and where they should best try to channel their energies. Faced with all of the issues of interest to conservatives and libertarians in contemporary Australia, Menzies House have initiated two campaigns in succession that target Aboriginal people.

What words should we use to describe such an organisation, and the people who direct it?

Cynically exploiting racial divisions is something that American conservatives are historically quite comfortable with, and rather good at, too.

Tim Andrews, the founder of Menzies House, and one of those responsible for these campaigns, is apparently based in the US, doing political jobs. He describes himself on his own blog as a “classical liberal” – perhaps, while he is in America, he is learning how to throw red meat to the worst of the conservative base, the better to apply such techniques when he returns to Australia.

You may remember Andrews as the political genius who posted a bunch of pictures of “hot young liberal” women online, and then seemed uncommonly surprised when he drew some fire as a result.

Do remember the name, if only to make sure that you and other people you know always associate it with stunts and campaigns like these, wherever his future career might take him. If he’s what passes for a rising star on the right of Australian politics, we probably have lots more divisive, racially coded campaigning to look forward to in the future.

It would be far too much to ask that senior conservative politicians tell people like Andrews to pull their heads in. Indeed, people like Cory Bernardi proudly associate themselves with Menzies House, its campaigns, and its frequently (though inadvertently) amusing content. A sign, perhaps, that Senator Bernardi himself sees the value in divisive campaigning of this nature.

Meanwhile, we should be sure to understand Menzies House for the kind of organisation it really is. And we should see the people who initiate campaigns like this for what they are, too.

Dale notes that Question Time here is a much rowdier affair than Prime Minister’s Questions in the House of Commons. He thinks that this runs the risk of bringing the Parliament into disrepute. He implies that the Speaker Harry Jenkins is a little bit out of his depth, and that parliamentarians show little respect for his rulings. He questions the Opposition’s Question Time tactics, and claims they’re inconsistent with the Parliament’s function of holding the Government to account.

Mostly, his criticisms come down to issues of tone. There may be something in what he says, but my overriding impression is that he’s seen some differences between our parliament and his own and has turned them into the basis of a normative distinction.

He’s offered very little context in his piece. This is a very unusual set of circumstances in Australian political history. Neither major party has a majority, and each vote (including censure motions) is incredibly tight. We saw our Speaker come close to resigning the other day because two independents were absent and another behaved cluelessly. Naturally, under these circumstances parliamentary tactics have assumed greater importance. We’re in a phase where it’s not inconceivable that deft parliamentary tactics could change the government.

Further, on a range of key issues, this Parliament is characterised by sharp ideological antipathies. Debates about the NBN and carbon-pricing are also debates about the future of the country for decades to come. The Government and the Opposition are diametrically opposed on these issues, and there is visceral feeling on both issues on both sides.

Larger historical factors also play a part in making our parliament more robust. Parliamentary discipline among the major parties is far tighter than in the UK, which leads to more sharply adversarial debates. Depending on your point of view, the ALP’s binding Caucus is the secret of its success or a blight on representative democracy, but gradually the Liberals have adapted by putting a much tighter rein on their MPs, too.

There’s more to say on why Australia is different, but for now I’ll just say that it’s a bit rich seeing hand-wringing from an Englishman about the possibility that Australia’s parliament might bring itself into disrepute. After the mind-blowing expenses scandal involving MPs from all parties in the British Parliament, I don’t think it’s possible that the British parliament could be held in higher esteem by its voters than ours is.

Politics and democracy involve conflict. Parliamentary politics is about managing that conflict, and if there are heated words, that’s because big things are often at stake. If the clubbiness of PM’s questions conceals that, so much the worse for Westminster. It could be that Australian democracy is more robust because it’s more democratic. For example, we elect an upper house rather than populating it with clerics, aristocrats and superannuated politicians.

The biggest problem with Dale’s analysis, though, is in misreading the function of forums like Question Time in modern parliamentary politics. Contemporary mediated democracies may have enlightenment trappings, but in the Twenty-first century Question Time is essentially a media event. Especially if you’re, say, helping to turn it into a collective viewing experience on the #qt stream, there’s not much point complaining about that.

Dale seems concerned that it’s not a rational process directed at accountability. I don’t really see PM’s questions as promoting that either. Both are rituals, as much about political affect as rational scrutiny. Our ritual is different, and most of that comes down to intensity.

He probably doesn’t like the way we play cricket either.

Since I started following her on Twitter some time in 2009, I have very much enjoyed Jen’s live-tweeting of Woollahra Municipal Council meetings. It’s easy for some to see council meetings as a form of entry-level purgatory for journos starting out. But Jen managed to make Woollahra’s meetings entertaining even for people not in the Council’s domain.

Jen’s style was the thing that caused many to tune into her council tweets. For those not in the know Woollahra takes in some well-heeled parts of Sydney’s Eastern suburbs. Jen’s faintly absurdist take on the councillors, the complaints of bolshy-bourgie residents, planning shit-fights etcetera appealed because of its sense of humour, and occasionally its air of comic resignation. She managed to impart this while still giving an accurate account of events which do, after all, affect people’s lives. And she did it in addition to her necessarily straighter reports in the newspaper, without diminishing the value of either version. Somehow her satirical framing of the meetings showed them to be simultaneously the parish pump affairs that they are and a worthwhile (if exasperating) example of democracy at work.

Talk about journalism and social media often involves lots of buzzwords and bullshit, not least from my some members of profession. Jen’s work at the council showed that actually, the most appealing on-Twitter journalism embodies some basic virtues. Economical writing, a sharp mind, a good basic knowledge of one’s beat, a sense of humour and a desire to share stories are elements of journalistic craft that are still relevant. The possession of these may not sort out the buisiness model but it should ensure people will read what you have to say.

Other new journos assigned to apparentlly unpromising rounds should take note.

Best of luck with the new job, Jen.

There is clear and consistent evidence that the rankings were being deployed inappropriately within some quarters of the sector, in ways that could produce harmful outcomes, and based on a poor understanding of the actual role of the rankings.

One common example was the setting of targets for publication in A and A* journals by institutional research managers.

In light of these two factors – that ERA could work perfectly well without the rankings, and that their existence was focussing ill-informed undesirable behaviour in the management of research – I have made the decision to remove the rankings, based on the ARC’s expert advice.

I personally never experienced any such “undesirable behaviour”. Perhaps I was just lucky. At any rate, having seen the RAE up close in the UK, I figured that doing my job pretty well as normal was the key. As long as an individual researcher is productive relative to their opportunities, I surmised, they should be fine. My managers always seemed fine with that, too. But I don’t doubt that the behaviour Carr points to occurred.

With all that said, I’m actually ambivalent about the end of the rankings. I want to know more detail about what’s replacing it, for a start.

Further, I find today’s post by Joshua Gans pretty compelling. You should go and read the whole thing, but this resonated with me:

But we should be more angry about this. Many academics’ comments on hearing about the demise of the ERA is good riddance. Why? Because they bore the costs of fighting about the measure and then the gaming. But those costs have been borne. I personally bore a ton of them and so did so many others. A complete waste of time.

And for what? Nothing. Just to prove to the Government what we all could have predicted four years ago!

Another squibbed reform from Labor? Gans seems to think so.

One thing’s for sure. There will be a lot of scholars with papers stuck in three year queues at what were once A* journals who might have cause for ambivalence, too.

Playing with politics (PDF download) is a reasonably final draft of a paper that will be appearing in a special issue of Convergence later this year. The special issue is about mobile media and mobile games, so I’ve tried to shape the argument so that it’s explicitly relevant to that theme.

But this paper is an outcome of ideas I’ve been kicking around for a long while, some of which I presented in a seminar at the University of Sydney last April, and at another one at UC last August.

Those ideas include the concept of post-broadcast democracy, which I’ve found productive in a number of papers now, and the idea of Twitter faking as a kind of performative satire. Material gleaned from interviews with Twitter fakers is at the heart of the paper.

Most important of all for me, perhaps, is the idea that the minority of politically engaged citizens in Western democracies constitute a kind of political fandom, with similarities to other kinds of fan cultures. I don’t quite get around to thinking about whether democracy or a fourth estate is sustainable on the basis of this audience in this paper, but I will soon.

Anyway, as always, bouquets and brickbats welcome.

UPDATE Um I actually put up a PDF that’s not in landscape this time.

Anyway, I have commented recently on Lindsay Tanner’s book, which I found interesting (if flawed) because it overlaps with a particular thread in my research in recent months.

In a bout of self-promotion on Twitter last I mentioned a paper whose concerns overlap with Tanner’s book that’s under peer review for an international journal at the moment. Rather than email everybody who expressed an interest, I thought I’d throw it up on the blog for people to download at their leisure. Here it is!

From Sunrise to sunset: The rise and fall of a celebrity Prime Minister in Australia’s post-broadcast democracy. (PDF)

The very, very short version of the argument is that Rudd’s rise and precipitous fall can be understood in terms of his engagement with celebrity media, and the reaction to that engagement on the part of political journalists. There’s more to it, though, at 8000+ words.

A much shorter version of this argument has just been published at Celebrity Studies for those who are able to access it.

Feedback welcome, as always.

I hope to be back writing a bit more on here in the breather we get from teaching over Winter, when I have lots of research and writing planned.

Call for chapters and expressions of interest

Underbelly: A Critical Companion

Edited by Melissa Gregg, Sue Turnbull & Jason Wilson

This book collection offers a critical companion to the Australian television series Underbelly. Drawing on a range of perspectives ­ from academics, journalists and critics to the show¹s production team and the wider public ­ it provides a comprehensive account of Underbelly’s development, screening and reception. In doing so, it explores the social, political and economic conditions that mark a successful program in the landscape of Australian television.

A feature of this collection will be to showcase new partnerships developing across media and cultural institutions in Australian screen industries. A cross-section of work in contemporary media, journalism and cultural studies will discuss key concerns for these fields, and leading critics will illustrate the possibilities for contemporary screen studies analysis.

Writers, producers, actors and directors on each of the seasons to date are invited to contribute to the collection and/or participate in interviews. “Below the line” production staff and workers in affiliated areas (eg. publicity for the series and its distributors) are particularly welcome. Potential contributors for these formats should contact the editors before submitting an abstract.

Several of the chapters for the book are already commissioned, so the purpose of this call is to fill gaps in scope. We seek chapters responding to themes in each of the three seasons of Underbelly, such as:

- underworld and criminal networks
- white collar crime, including institutional corruption
- the drug trade
- commodity distribution and logistics
- drug consumption (including comparative class demographics)
- police culture and/or the politics of bureaucracy
- tabloid media and the law
- inter-state rivalry and cultural prejudice
- the night time economy, including the privatization of security
- sex work
- migration and ethnicity (especially in relation to alternative and/or leisure economies)
- cultural tourism and city branding
- the politics of city space and suburbia
- class and aspiration
- ordinariness
- masculinity and homosociality

Industry concerns for the book include:

- screenwriting and adaptation
- franchising in a global television market
- state and corporate funding strategies
- copyright and distribution (including the piracy threat)
- ratings and advertising
- casting and the Australian acting pool
- the pedigree of successful production teams
- prospects for Australian television careers

Potential chapter contributors are advised to read the following article for
further indication of the material of interest to this collection:

Melissa Gregg and Jason Wilson (2010) “Underbelly, true crime and the cultural economy of infamy” Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 24 (3): 411-427

Abstracts for written chapters should be 250 words and should be sent to:
Melissa Gregg: melissa.gregg at sydney.edu.au
Sue Turnbull: S.Turnbull at latrobe.edu.au
Jason Wilson: jason.wilson at canberra.edu.au

Abstracts are due December 31.

Accepted chapters, of 5000 words maximum, will be due at the beginning of
April, 2011.

Please feel free to pass this information on to others.

Is the ABC illegitimately competing with commercial media outlets by offering online opinion with its online offerings?

This is a separate question from, say, the manifestly spurious claims of bias that crop up about sites like The Drum. The idea that’s been put about recently is that the ABC is making life hard for commercial media businesses by dragging eyeballs away from their websites and email bulletins.

Go read and comment over there, if you like.

In my view, it is the incapacity of traditional parties to provide distinctive forms of identification around possible alternatives that has created the terrain for the flourishing of right-wing populism. Indeed, right-wing populist parties are often the only ones that attempt to mobilise passions and create collective forms of identifications. Against all those who believe that politics can be reduced to individual motivations, and that it is driven by the pursuit of self-interest, they are well aware that politics always consists in the creation of an ‘us’ versus a ‘them’ and that it implies the creation of collective identities. Hence the powerful appeal of their discourse, because it provides collective forms of identification around ‘the people’.

If we add to that the fact that, under the banner of ‘modernisation’, social-democratic parties have in most countries identified themselves almost exclusively with the middle classes, and that they have stopped representing the interests of the popular sectors – whose demands are considered ‘archaic’ or ‘retrograde’ – we should not be surprised by the growing alienation of an increasing number of groups who fdeel excluded from the effective exercise of citizenship by the ‘enlightened’ elites. In a context where the dominant discourse proclaims that there is no alternative to the current neoliberal form of globalisation, and that we have to accept its laws and submit to its diktats, it is small wonder that more and more workers are keen to listen to those who claim that alternatives do exist, and that they will give back to the people the power to decide. When democratic politics has lost its capacity to shape the discussion about how we should organise our common life, and when it is limited to securing the necessary conditions for the smooth working of the market, the conditions are ripe for talented demagogues to articulate popular frustrations.

Mouffe, Chantal, 2005. The ‘End of Politics’ and the challenge of right-wing populism. In F. Panizza, ed. Populism and the mirror of democracy. London ; New York, NY :: Verso, pp. 50-71.

Back here with more soon, I hope.