While media critics focus on the doomsday scenarios for print media it is easy to forget that newspapers face two crises: the business crisis and the journalism crisis.

Ross Gittins has written a sort of autobiography – Gittins: A life among budgets, bulldust and bastardry. It’s a great insight into how a Salvation Army kid became an outstanding economics editor respected by Reserve Bank Governors, Treasury officials and others. But, more importantly, it provides an incisive commentary on the twin problems of what’s wrong with journalism and the newspaper business – subjects which tend to be regarded in isolation rather than as inextricable aspects of one problem. read more

One should never be surprised by what might happen in politics.

After yesterday morning’s post the blog received a bit of feedback about the likelihood or unlikelihood of the ALP putting aside attacks on Malcolm Turnbull for a while and offering to work with him.

While it never occurred to the blog that’s what would happen it is exactly what did. Bill Shorten,  in his parliamentary comments addressed to the new PM, made an offer to work with the government to address national issues. He then subsequently wrote offering to meet to discuss the China-Australia free trade agreement. The latter made it into the media but the former didn’t. read more

The ALP leadership has almost reflexively – but probably more in panic – started to attack the new Prime Minister within minutes of him being elected.

However, even if they make a few dents here and there the odds are he will still be more popular among voters than Bill Shorten and the blog hesitates to think about the Shorten debacle that pre-election TV debates between Malcolm and Bill are likely to be. More importantly, instant attacks overlook the reality of the honeymoon period Turnbull will experience partly as a result of the community relief that Abbott has gone. read more

Increasingly political PR people resemble James Jesus Angleton – the infamous CIA counter espionage head – who probably did more harm to the CIA than any other single individual.

Angleton disappeared into a vast conspiratorial web created by his obsession with what things really meant. If The Russians did one thing what were they really trying to signal? If I work out what they were trying to signal, he thought, then perhaps the hidden message was actually the real disinformation. In Angleton’s defence he spent much of his later career recovering from the shock that his good friend Kim Philby was a spy for the Russians – and Angleton didn’t even have the benefit of thinking, like Philby’s English colleagues, that “one of us” could be unsound. read more

Around the end of the 19^th century and the beginning of the 20^th anarchists were great believers in the propaganda of the deed. Bombs, assassinations and so on were deeds which also acted as propaganda and promotion of the cause.

In reality the concept was old and the phrase was actually just a new way of framing actions. Similarly, over centuries rebels, fighters for freedom and defenders of the status quo fought over just how to frame the other sides’ actions. This was exemplified by the comment that one person’s terrorist was another’s freedom fighter as illustrated by the differing views of Nelson Mandela or the American Revolution. read more

What do the current Federal election poll numbers actually mean for the result of the next election – particularly now we are a bit more than 12 months out?

Nate Silver’s use of Bayesian theory to predict election results has been referred to by the blog from time to time. Last time it was to use Australian data and Silver methodology to give a rough prediction of the probability of the Victorian ALP winning last year’s State election. The blog, based on Silver, put it at about 65%. Bookies were even more confident and started to pay out on the ALP before the election. read more

PR people are quick to embrace the new – whether it is social media or something else in the past (like the fax machine) which became the banes of the lives of the people they were targeting with promotional material.

At RMIT under the then head of the Media and Communications School, Lauren Murray, there was growing emphasis on understanding design as a crucial part of communication and in some courses today there are preliminary attempts to introduce students to infographics. Lauren is a great fan of Edward R. Tufte whose book The Visual Display of Quantitative Information is one of those astonishing books which metaphorically and literally changes the way you look at things. He also produced a pamphlet, The Cognitive Style of Power Point: Pitching out Corrupts Within, which points out why all those endless Power Point slides are not only boring but also often misleading and a source of mistaken thinking. read more

After a recent presentation on community engagement strategies the blog asked what advice could be given to the Prime Minister, assuming he might listen, on the reconciliation referendum. The response: “Trust the people.”

The comment says much about Tony Abbott, much about the dire state of Australian politics and much about the evolving nature of community consultation and engagement. read more

For many years the blog always felt a bit of displacement when travelling to and from the US. Even when your travels tend to be limited to the east and west coasts there is no doubt that the US – its politics, culture, gross inequalities, eating habits and social problems – was always a stark contrast to Australia. read more

PR for terrorists

Most terrorist organisations have fairly significant PR operations. Governments are responding – often not very effectively to this – but much of the response seems to be centred on trying to crack down on their use of social media to recruit more martyrs.

Yet the real problem might be that governments themselves are feeding the terrorist PR campaigns. According to the ABC “ a terrorism expert has warned that Prime Minister Tony Abbott is feeding Islamic State’s own propaganda machine by calling it a death cult”. The expert,  Abdul-Rehman Malik, was reported as saying: “I think to call [Islamic State] a death cult, as the Australian Prime Minister does, is a complete misnomer and it actually feeds in to IS propaganda. The propagandists of the Islamic State, when they hear themselves referred to as a death cult hell bent on global domination, are patting themselves on the back because you know what? You’ve bought in to their narrative.” read more