In a rush to get this post out, I buried it in another article, Email Old News to Gen C.
It reappears now because it needed to be republished in its own right as a review of Twitter usage in Australian media and politics.
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In Australia, very few news organisations use Twitter. As full disclosure, before I continue, I work at The Courier Mail, a News Limited paper.
An informal audit of a selection of Australian media and their Twitter presence
I am assuming the unused Twitter accounts above belong to these publications, but it’s entirely possible someone could simply be ’squatting’ on the Twitter user names. I set up Twitter accounts for all of The Courier Mail’s news sections in early October last year, making our newspaper one of the only two news outlets in Australia using Twitter (that I have found), and definitely one of the largest media contributors to Twitter by number of content categories, but not necessarily volume of content.
The Courier Mail’s current crop of 20 Twitter user accounts are providing free SMS/IM updates on topics ranging from sports, to business, to breaking news, all with tinyurl links to the original story content. I’m now trying to find time to play around with a Facebook page for The Courier Mail, although I rarely have any spare hours at home to spend doing that.
During the process of setting up these Twitter accounts, I did a search to see if other Australian news outlets were already using Twitter.
Of News Limited mastheads, apart from The Courier Mail, none of the other existing News Ltd Twitter users have posted.
Of Fairfax mastheads, only The Age has a single feed, last updated in May 2007.
The ABC has two feeds - one of which I follow to receive local news alerts on my mobile phone.
In the UK, the BBC and Sky have a larger selection of Twitter updates that can be followed.
The 2007 federal election was approaching when I was working on the Courier Mail Twitter accounts so, having already written a story about politics and social networking, I had a look at what political parties had on Twitter.
At the time the results were:
Greens: http://twitter.com/Greens
Three updates in total, all on August 2, 2007, that are worth mentioning.
The Greens have established a twitter and are testing it. 04:11 PM August 02, 2007
Do you receive my Greens twitter? 04:26 PM August 02, 2007
Hrrrmmm, if I was 14 I’d know exactly what would happen 06:39 PM August 02, 2007
In 2008, however, the Greens seem to have got their act together with a Twitter page feeding from the Greens Blog website. https://twitter.com/greensblog
I also didn’t find this during the election last year , but https://twitter.com/kevinrudd is another spoof Twitter account.
The possibilities of Twitter as a quick and easy mass distribution method would be well utilised by politicians.
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Can a single journalist really be a one-stop shop for all your online multimedia needs?
I like the thought of that future, but hadn’t been able to wrap my mind around the concept of how the journalist could record audio, video, get some stills and take a few handwritten notes all at the same time.
The picture I had was similar to that of the one-man band - bass drum strapped to back, harmonica brace, foot pedals, cymbals between the knees and a violin for some fast fiddling.
But for Jane Munro, one of the Radio Online producers for the ABC, it’s just part of the job.
‘When I am shooting a video story I use the camera to acquire everything I need to publish on a range of platforms.
‘I extract the audio from the video package, and sometimes broadcast that audio unchanged as a complete radio package. I then extract still images from the video to accompany a text article. That and a compressed version of the video is published on our local website.’
Some journalists can’t wrap their heads around more than asking questions and taking notes. It’s easy enough to set up and leave a small camera on a tripod while you interview someone, or record audio (which many do for personal record anyway), but the problem comes in the production process.
The editing and posting online of content is where more technical skills are needed. Journalists shouldn’t be expected to learn and do these things themselves, but those who can or want to should be given the opportunity, and this is where organisation-wide collaborative systems need to be in place to make it possible.
It requires just a little effort. If a stills photographer has been taking their own camcorder out on jobs years before newspapers - let alone video - went online, it would be unwise of the organisation to not recognise that persons worth, or encourage their efforts.
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Many Africans regard this as an unrealistic, if noble, dream. Sceptics point to decades of wars, coups and massacres that often sprang from ethnic and religious fault lines on a continent artificially carved up by former colonial rulers.
You could also argue uniting the continent would remove those artificial lines created by arbitrary colonial division, and reduce the chance for ethnic and religious conflict. But only if the united ’states’ of Africa are not the states as we know them now.
If the same states remained the resulting union would only be as peaceful as the other continental union if it followed their same pattern - radical integration deterring conflict. In the case of the European Union, economic integration has worked. In Africa there’s not a lot of economy to share around and prosper in, so they might have to go with what the EU has shied away from, political integration.
Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi is one of the main proponents of the idea.
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Another reason not to dismiss YouTube as unprofessional. It’s not about the worst content you might find there, it’s about the best content you can find there.
As internet censorship in China becomes more sophisticated and crackdowns on pro-democracy bloggers have been well publicised, find out if your website has inadvertently (or intentionally) offended the authorities in China.
Is your website blocked in China?The earleyedition is!Try it out at now:
I’m at ABC TV interning for the next two weeks, which is going well so far. I appeared scowling in the background of the 7pm news last night as Peter Beattie talked about a new water pipeline.
Last week on Friday I put together a video clip for the Courier Mail online, that can be viewed if you follow this link. It’s fairly low on informative content, but I spent a lot of time working with the transitions and timing for the music… It was fun playing with editing software (Adobe Premiere Pro) for only the second time.
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In my lecture on European Political Issues, the lecturer put up this image by Turkish artist Burak Delier, and then asked 12 people to describe the image using no more than three words.
After the first volunteer had to have it pointed out that “racist, terrorism, Muslim” was probably not the vibe the Turkish artist was going for, we were subjected to a bit of long-windedness. Terms like disestablishmentarianism, and supercalafraj - okay, they weren’t thrown about, but everyone was trying for those big, impressive words.
My favourite was ‘bandaid assimilation’. My favourite that is, apart from my own bit of three word self-congratulation.
Where the veil?
Unfortunately, I knew both the levels would be lost and my brilliance not recognised simply by saying the words, but neither could I write it out for people. Not surprisingly, “Where, that’s W-H, where the veil. Question mark”, also lost them.
Philistines.
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For years now Kosovo has been essentially an independent nation, but administered by the United Nations to ensure they don’t actually try to claim independence. Their status as either a Serbian province or nation in their own right has been in limbo while the international community has tried to avoid giving either Serbia or Kosovar Albanians what they want.
The UN finally delivered their recommendations on Kosovo’s future status a few days ago.
While the UN special envoy Martti Ahtisaari has said Kosovo should split from Serbia, it’s independence in theory, but not reality. While Kosovo will legally have national symbols separate from Serbia, and be allowed to apply for membership to organisations like the UN, they will still not be able to claim outright independence.
NATO and EU forces would remain, and it pretty much looks like things would stay as they are now. I’m not really sure how this resolves Kosovo’s status.
Barack Obama has virtually decided to run for president of the United States. I say virtually because until February 10th, when he will make an official announcement of intent, he’s formed an ‘exploratory committee’. Presumably it’s to see if he wants to run a campaign, but the chances of that happening are fairly high.
The fun bit is that if a Democrat is elected president, they are almost certain to be either America’s first black or female president, since Hilary Clinton is the only other likely contender.
Obama’s big strategy seems to be a little too, how shall we say, optimistic?
Today our leader’s in Washington seem incapable of working together in a practical, common-sense way. Politics has become so bitter and partisan, so gummed up by money and influence, that we can’t tackle the big problems that demand solutions. That’s what we have to change first, we have to change our politics.
Good luck. I thought ‘bitter’ and ‘partisan’ was what politics was about, not to mention money and influence. Of course rival politicians aren’t going to work together for the common good. It’s a sign of weakness to agree with your opposition’s positive measure, as it’s often claimed to be an obvious lack of policies or initiative of your own. Nobody’s brave enough to say, “I think you should all listen intently to this brilliant idea my rival has”.
Fix politics. I’ll have to remember that for the second edition of my book, Standing by the Wishing Well. The best-selling first edition featured that wish popularly know as ‘the beauty pageant’: world peace. It’s available at all good book stores and self-help centers.
If you want to watch it, this is the video of Barack Obama’s announcement.
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I don’t know if Australian journalism is regarded by international consumers as any better or worse than their own. For most people, it would never even be a consideration but, like news everywhere, it’s what you see that counts.
A thousand stellar stories may be told through print, online, or broadcast, but not many people outside our shores are likely to see it, or care. Unless there’s EXCITEMENT, that is!
Last night at the Walkley Awards, Australia’s version of the Pulitzers, a journalist who writes for several News Limited publications attacked a well-known online journalist.
Stephen Mayne, founder of the independent online news site Crikey.com.au, was presenting an award when Glenn Milne, a prominent political journalist, mounted the stage. While drunkenly abusing Mayne, Milne managed to push him off the stage before being restrained, and was then ejected from the event.
Now there’s excitement for you. Unfortunately, this is the ‘newsworthy’ face of Australian journalism the world gets to see. Earlier this year it was one journalist pulling a gun on the other outside a pub. Oh, those drunken Australian rogues!
Columnist shown exit after attack - Sydney Morning Herald (with a nice picture of Milne being escorted out by security, for the voyeurs amongst you).
The Age and SMH are Fairfax papers, The Australian is News Limited. At the moment I can’t see anything about this on The Australian site, but it is on news.com.au, again with some pictures, and even the embedded YouTube video action.
Interestingly, the Fairfax wording is that “the audience, which consisted of a representation of Australia’s top journalists, looked on horrified”.
In contrast, News describes the reaction as “an audience of the nation’s media elite erupted into laughter”. Because, after all, it was just a bit of fun, yes?
Fairfax also described how Mayne considers he may have injured himself, whereas News confidently refutes that with, “the uninjured Mr Mayne dusted himself off and paid tribute to his detractor”.
I look forward to seeing how Crikey reports the event when their story goes online later today.
As a partially related aside, it’s good to see that, while the Walkley’s don’t offer any ‘online’ award categories, it at least recognises their existence by allowing an ‘online’ representative to present an award.
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Ashgrove State School, mentioned yesterday, is set up for use on polling days for elections. As I happened to be living nearby for a few months when I was 20, I meandered down the street on the Saturday election morning and into the school grounds.
Having run the gauntlet of oppositional volunteers waving how-to-vote pamphlets at me, I approached the second wave of volunteers, this time sitting at desks checking voter registration. My intense concentration on the next hurdle made me feel like I was in slow motion when, clearly a few seconds later, my brain registered that someone had just said my name.
I glanced around, not immediately recognising anyone, before noticing a stationary figure amongst the moving people, his eyes definitely looking at me.
I studied the shaven head and familiar goatee - a small, blonde, triangle that clung to the chin. “Mr Welsh?” I queried.
After a brief conversation, the contents of which I’ve entirely forgotten, I cast my vote and was on my merry way. I was thoroughly impressed that my teacher from the one year at Ashgrove, in Grade 5 when I was 10 years old, recognised me and knew me by name 10 years later.
On a related tangent, something I’d never thought of before writing this post is that the school’s acronym is particularly unfortunate. I don’t remember it ever being an issue when I was in Grade 5, when quite clearly it should have been a running joke for the school’s entire history.
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The poll for President of the United States, 2008, has closed. I was one of the four who had already voted, but the ballot needed to be decided, so I cast a second deciding vote. It wasn’t the same as my first vote, but if exit polls at the earley edition are anything to go by, and I assure you they are, Oprah Winfrey will lead the United States forward after the 2008 elections!
Here are the final results
Sorry, there are no polls available at the moment.
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Voting is still open for President of the United States, 2008 (see the sidebar). Currently four votes have been counted, one each going to Hillary Clinton, Colin Powell, John Edwards and Oprah Winfrey. It’s starting to look like a Democratic candidate runoff, but they’ve all demanded a recount.
Cast your vote today! Polling closes Sunday night.
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Fairfax masthead sites
News Limited masthead sites
I set up Twitter accounts for all of The Courier Mail’s news sections in early October last year, making our newspaper one of the only two news outlets in Australia using Twitter (that I have found), and definitely one of the largest media contributors to Twitter by number of content categories, but not necessarily volume of content. 
Can a single journalist really be a one-stop shop for all your online multimedia needs?