Andy Coulson, the former editor of the News of the World newspaper who rose to be David Cameron’s head of communications, has been found guilty of conspiracy to hack mobile phones. His former colleague…
So, Andy Coulson has been found guilty of plotting to hack phones – but former colleague Rebekah Brooks walked free after the jury in the hacking trial cleared her of all criminal charges. The verdicts…
User-generated content has become “a central element of the news gathering process,” says the controller of BBC World (English) Richard Porter, in a recently-released international study by the US-based…
It was June 4 2014. That was the date the British public learned that, in spite of their relatively free media, the power of the state – as expressed by the executive and the judiciary – was poised to…
Many readers will know the name Mark Willacy, an Australian journalist who was the ABC’s North Asian correspondent for five years. On March 11, 2011, he would witness events that would redefine Japan as…
In the lead-up to the Abbott government’s first federal budget, there was one standout headline that stole attention from “exclusive” pre-budget leaks: WHY I’VE GOT A PACKER UP MY CLACKER In terms of tabloid…
The digital era has led to increasing challenges for western and traditional news media business models. Media outlets are facing steady declines in revenue, while the migration of advertising online has…
In the late 1980s, shortly after Rupert Murdoch’s News Ltd had swallowed the Herald and Weekly Times to become the print media behemoth that it is today, I found myself working on the subeditors’ table…
Last summer the World Economic Forum (WEF) invited its 1,500 council members to identify top trends facing the world, including what should be done about them. The WEF consists of 80 councils covering…
The Guardian and The Washington Post have been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for their work in bringing to light documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. It is fashionable…
This month, ABC Radio National (RN) launched a pilot digital magazine, White Paper, which presents “the distilled wisdom of RN” in a monthly interactive offering delivered free to your tablet. Newspapers…
Access to independent information about what is going on locally is essential to a healthy democracy and vibrant community. News, views and information are the life-blood of engagement and action. For…
The Sydney Daily Telegraph’s reaction to an Australian Press Council ruling that it breached the council’s “fairness and balance” principle raises concerns about the council’s relationship with the big…
In 1999, then-Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak visited the small, dusty Al Jazeera compound in a suburb of the Qatari capital of Doha. “This matchbox! All this noise is coming out of this matchbox?” Mubarak…
Yahoo has launched a new app aimed at making reading the news easier. News Digest is the latest invention from Nick D’Aloisio, Yahoo’s 18-year-old recruit who found fame with Summly, another app that takes…
After more than a century of a “life of plenty” with its lion’s share of a seemingly ever-growing advertising market, newspapers have fallen on hard times. The turmoil in the news media is not confined…
Making the personal political has long been a feminist project. But parenting blogs — known popularly, but often with a special sort of sexist sneer as “mummy blogs” — increasingly run the risk of making…
Public relations and arts journalism are inextricable. And so, unlike in other areas of the media, the influence that PR has on the arts sections of newspapers and magazines is not so contentious. But…
On Wednesday evening, after an afternoon of lecture preparation to teach my Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies class “Doing Media Research”, I settled down to watch Newsnight. Alain de Botton, “philosopher…
Businessman and publisher Morry Schwartz’s decision to appoint a 25-year-old, relatively unknown journalist to edit the first serious newspaper launched in Australia in more than four decades might be…