In six weeks, the Townsville Bulletin will start operating a full paywall on its website, much like the Courier does now. News Ltd reckons its knows what to offer for free as a come-on for readers to buy other content … this is going to be a hoot to find out just what the Bulletin thinks are the buyable priorities on the mind of this town. The Magpie investigates.
The ‘Pie reveals a secret memo from Chicken Little’s media advisor …
And lost in translation (not): Bentley on Long Tan
Also, strong stomach department: Donald Trump unmasked – and in his morning glory – WARNING: skip this one until after breakfast …
…and why a Queensland newspaper refused point blank to support a press campaign seeking more blood donors.
Disgusted Diggers And That Viet Veto
Seems there was more than a bit of local politics in the Vietnamese Government putting the last minute kybosh on the Long Tan memorial service during the week. Claiming local sensitivities was their first ploy, but subsequent ABC TV interviews, where locals said they were upset that the service didn’t go ahead, made that excuse seems as thin as pho soup.
Bentley reckons if something was lost in translation to cause the 11th hour cancellation, there was no misunderstanding during the aftermath.
t was put to The ‘Pie that if the boot was on the other foot, and the Vietnamese had wanted to celebrate a decisive victory over the Aussies here in Australia, how would we have reacted? Well, Australia did host a Japanese delegation to unveil plaques in relation in the midget subs that had a devastating impact in Sydney Harbour in 1942 (21 Aussie and British sailors killed when a dormitory ferry was sunk, all crew of the three subs died.)
Horses for courses, one guesses …
Racist? No. Funny? Yes
Using the above as a lame excuse for an old joke, here’s a riddle.
Name the odd one out:
A Lobster
A Salmon
A Morton Bay Bug
A Vietnamese Run Over By A Steamroller.
Answer;
The Salmon, all the others are crustaceans.
Boom tish.
Even At The ABC …
This may be a Pedant’s Corner brief, but heard on ABC radio national on Friday: ’Police have uncovered an internet site which displays thousands of naked photographs of schoolgirls …’. Naked photographs? A clear case of over-exposure.
Your Blood’s Worth Bottling, But Not At One Queensland Newspaper
In a moment of either madness or genius, certain papers recently decided on a novel way to draw attention to the shortage of blood donors. Several papers deleted the letters A, O and B– representing blood types that were running low – from their mastheads. So we got, this for instance, with the message ‘Notice anything missing’.
But one newspaper, for reasons that remain unexplained, refused to fiddle with it’s masthead.
Missed opportunity there, would’ve been a sold out issue that would’ve gone worldwide.
An Astonishing Do-Or-Die Gamble
In this freewheeling age of invented words, certain terms shimmer brightly into the language, and while all have star-burst arrivals, they’re life span varies greatly. Some quickly get fixed in the linguistic firmament, while others die with a sigh like the remnants of high flying fireworks drifting to the ground. But some are going to stick around.
One you will certainly be hearing a lot about from now on is ‘freemium’, an amalgam of ‘free’ and ‘premium’. And while it’s been around web games, start-ups and some sales sites for a while, freemium is about to go mainstream – and it’s heading your way.
Here’s the full definition is ‘’(Freemium) describes a business model in which you give a core product away for free to a large group of users and sell premium products to a smaller fraction of this user base’.
(Skype is a good example.)
This business model (the corporate smarty-pants buzz phrase is ‘content gating’) is now being touted as publishing’s panacea to its print woes, and is the marketing theory which traditional news companies are pinning their faith in the future.
News executive Damian Eales
Here’s the theory spelt out by News Corpse head of metro and regional publishing Damian Eales
“We think (circulation decline) will almost halve again in the year ahead and combined with our growing digital subscription base, we now have more customers paying more money for more content than ever before.”
“It’s a very positive sign, where many have said that our industry has lost relevance with customers, with readers. It’s patently false based the fact that our total paid audience is actually in growth. Our consumer revenue is in growth and we see that continuing into the future.” (Read the full article here.)
And in a separate interview with media website Mumbrella, Mr Eales was more than upfront about what’s in store for us yokels here in the ‘Ville and his hopes for the future fortunes of the Townsville Bulletin. The article, by Mumbrella’s Steve Jones, reads in part:
‘Eales cited the Townsville Bulletin as an example where a regional paywall would work, saying he was “very excited” at the prospects of applying its learnings of its metro titles to its regional titles.
“In Townsville, 40% of the population reads our newspaper at least once a week; digitally it’s about 70%, and at the moment all the content is free,” he said. “Everything that’s in the paper is online so it’s no wonder the circulation decline [at the Bulletin] has been faster than in other markets. And we are not making a dollar from digital subscriptions.”
That will change with the introduction of the freemium paywall, Eales insisted, adding that desire for local news has proven to be a “valuable” driver of subscriptions as consumers seek access to the locked content. If you want local news you come to us,” he claimed. “We have more journalists than any other news provider in Townsville.”
Let ignore the sad fact that Mr Eales clearly suffers the News Corpse generic disease of ‘mathi-otosis’ – an imagining of how mathematics work, particularly in relation to known population and readership figures – and instead consider if there might be any flaws in his argument.
Let’s clear up a couple of things first. The Magpie completely agrees that news providers should make a profit from their operation in order to pay for their news gathering, back-up staff and shareholders. Just where that money comes from is where the debate ping-pongs back and forth now – readers or advertisers or a combination of both (Mr Eales plumps for the latter, naturally).
Another matter: having more journalists than anyone else in town doesn’t address the question of the quality, experience, leadership or ultimate product of said journos. Nor does it address the one crucial question of connection with the community, whether they be readers or advertisers. Readers have deserted the paper in droves in recent years, and advertisers have been angry at both the monopolistic print premiums they’ve had to pay (that’s now been forced down, the paper finally bowing to reality). But most tellingly, the widespread and often voiced conviction that apart from big ticket advertisers, small to medium ads in the Townsville Bulletin mostly bring zero results. Thousands who previously would use the Bulletin are now using Gumtree and similar sites to get quick, positive results.
The other problem Mr Eales has is that the Astonisher is starting virtually from ground zero when it comes to digital subscriptions, less than a pitiful 140 at last count. The only hope there is that the ‘bundles’ offer – a metro paper as a bonus – almost certainly the Courier Mail, maybe the Australian – in various forms with the Bulletin tagging along as virtual extra. Because the disconnect and distrust of the paper’s bias and – quite frankly – manufactured bullshit in its news columns is now so entrenched, these new plans offer nothing to tempt anyone back to start reading it again. (See the following examples further on).
So one possible hiccup is that as digital sales go up –despite irrelevant metro experience to the contrary – print sales will continue to plummet, as current readers simply swap their medium of choice. And digital ad revenue is a fraction of print revenue, even at the current reduced rate card.
Meanwhile, This Is The Stuff They’ll Want Money For
The Astonisher gets the special ‘If My Aunty Had Had Balls, She Would’ve Been My Uncle’ Award for one particular wishful thinking bit of overreach during the week.
You may have heard there was a largish earthquake offshore from Bowen on Thursday. A couple of jars of vegemite fell of a supermarket shelf, but it was indeed a biggy by measure, and a worthy story that didn’t really any need hyperventilating follow-up twaddle. But after a gazillioin interviews trying to hype up what was a good story anyway for more mileage – plus one of the most fatuous iditorials you’ll ever see – there was a big Friday spread on what it might have been but wasn’t!
You could almost hear the wails of frustrated ‘Oh, what might have been,’ across the newsroom.
Oh, purleese, Bogan, give us a break.
Exclusively Revealed: A Secret Media Memo
Memo:
To: Chicken Little
From: Media Advisor
Re: Anonymity
Dear Chicky Babe,
Noted you have been running around openly proclaiming that the sky is falling, all because an acorn fell on your head.
Maaateee, take a lesson from the Townsville Bulletin – when you’re going to make an outlandish and totally unsubstantiated claim, don’t use your name, just tell the paper ‘I do not wish to be named’ – and make sure you ask for reporter Henny Penny, she’ll believe anything.
(Henny Penny is a close relative of Attila The Hen, and both share a dislike of naming names.) They’ll still print whatever you say, they have no interest in actual investigative journalism, their own credibility or ethically identifying their source.
They’ll then ring up a whole raft of sky-watchers and various authorities who will deny any knowledge of the sky’s alleged instability, imminent descent and/or point out that they have no jurisdiction over that area anyway.
For instance, have a squizz at Thursday’s yarn about the ‘possibility’ that a pond where kids may or may not occasionally swim may or may not be contaminated with chemicals from fire fighting foam from the nearby airport/RAAF base.
And The Bulletin’s sole source of a whole heap of very quotable alarmist claims? A Garbutt resident ‘who doesn’t wish to be named’.
See how it works, Chicko, m’boy? The anonymity is hard to fathom, unless said person – if they actually exist at all – wants to shield themselves from charges of being a show pony media hound dingbat, but the paper is always happy to go along with that particular type of contact. The nameless person just spouts a string of shadow flinching thought-farts, (possibly after a few schooners in the front bar) which are duly printed.
This is a flawless example of the Townsville Bulletin’s masthead motto ‘Never fuck up a story with facts’.
And don’t worry at any other aspect of your ‘sky falling claim’ being actually investigated with some real out-of-office reporting. In this pond matter instance, one wonders that being that close to it, a sample of water could’ve been collected easily and for a few bob, the paper could have organised a private test to be done, and the Bulletin would’ve had something substantial to report, one way or the other.
Of course, the Astonisher ain’t that silly … hard to whip up alarm and despondency out of a negative test result. Do nothing but quote or invent drivel is the safest course, even at the risk of losing a Walkley opportunity with a positive result.
All just to try to scare the bejesus out of the few folks left who read the Astonisher, so your sky claims are lookin’ good, you old poultry poltroon, you.
BTW as your media advisor and agent, had a call from a Colonel Sanders, wanted to know if you’re free for lunch. Will arrange a meeting.
Cheers,
Your Pal in confidence,
(ummm, I’d prefer not to be named).
The Naked Truth
The US Presidential election campaign is losing all ability to shock or even titillate, it’s just one long silly season. But it seems one group who apparently don’t like Donald Trump have come up with a ‘message’ that will have you scrubbing your eyeballs with a wire brush.
Statues of a naked Donald Trump sprang up overnight in several cities, including New York and Los Angeles, and were instant instagram hits … while they lasted, which wasn’t long.
And it’s easy to see where the centre of attention was for some onlookers.
And finally, The ‘Pie is thinking about setting up a meeting place for all his weekly commenters to get together to exchange pleasantries, and he thinks he’s found the ideal spot. Feel free to drop by.
If you got a giggle out of this load of old cobblers and can spare a dime or two, a donation to help out with the blog costs would help a lot. A ‘how to donate’ button is below.
