Posts by Alastair Thompson
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This looks to me like classic smoke and mirrors. Much the same thing can be achieved via public service restructuring. Obfuscation of the figures and a new set of quarterly numbers only for comparisons vs monthly now. Is this correct?
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I vote for made it up on the basis of the evidence till this point in the thread.
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I would add Toby Manhire, Ana Samways and dear old Zagzigger whose recent but wily adoption of the twitter "tone" is to be commended.
Most important of all in my mind is the deliberate adoption of an open approach to public self criticism and letting writers have a relatively long rope.
In this case possibly a little too long.
To my mind Fairfax seems to be operating a little too much on #planetfairfax.
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Since this is such a civilized conversation I will repost my remarks on this controversy (posted on the KJA Facebook page where they have sunk like a stone – the denizens of NZ’s media establishment are not really as keen to debate the state of the media as they appear to be at first glance) here:
“Firstly Scoop is not really a blog it is a news website with breaking raw news and a cast of hundreds of contributors. Scoop was launched before blogging really existed and doesn’t (yet) have comments activated on the main site – though we do encourage conversations about stories on our subsites like this one of Gordon’s (see below).
Secondly Gordon Campbell is not really a blogger though he has become happy to be considered such – which says volumes about the supposed sanctity claimed by some of the “real” media. Gordon is Scoop’s political editor, has been in the Press Gallery longer than John Armstrong and has been a professional journalist for over 40 years as far as I know.
While I may seem tetchy about this I am really quite pleased that John came out and said the things he did. As Campbell concludes. “Accountability is dying on the vine, and that really is outrageous. Probably, even John Armstrong would agree with me on that one.” I certainly would. And the role and relationship of the “blogger” and the “news” communities is one worth debating.”
I would further add in response to Stephen Judd that this story is unquestionably being very well read. Our logs show several thousand long reads of Gordon’s story and this post on PA is doing rather well also.
However it is worth pointing out that the traffic is pretty much one way. Scoop and Public Address and Kiwiblog are referring traffic to each other – but almost no traffic is coming out of the NZ Herald to any of these posts. In the case of Gordon Campbell’s response to Armstrong our logs currently show just 13 Herald referrals.
It is pretty clear from what Fran has been saying since this issue arose that what she really objects to about Bryce is that he links out to the blogosphere and in the process brings the blogs into the debate at the NZ Herald. In doing so he has been doing the Herald a great favour, and Toby Manhire is doing a great job of achieving the same thing over at the Listener.
Meanwhile what no doubt incensed Armstrong so much was the “indirect” insult about interviewing typewriters which we can see from Russell’s quote wasn’t actually directed at John in any event. Fran and now Felix Marwick have now elected to focus on this part of Armstrong’s critique probably thinking it is the bit that holds the most water.
Bottom line. It is about time that the Press Gallery and the media establishment stopped being so precious about the internet and bloggers
There are no bright lines distinguishing between the two. Journalists are bloggers and vice versa. As Damian Christie so eloquently pointed out this has been the case for years now.
The fact that John Drinnan, Shayne Currie, Fran O’Sullivan and Tim Murphy are now cutting it up on Twitter is progress in the right direction. And it is abundantly clear that the NZ Herald is miles ahead of Fairfax in adoption of a more “on net” attitude to the news process.
Lets just hope everybody learns a bit from this experience.
Unfortunately, knowing how so many of my Press Gallery colleagues often think (or group think), I am not entirely certain that this will be the moment of catharsis just yet.
We shall see.
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Hard News: Paying for what doesn't come…, in reply to Geoff Lealand,
And your generosity to Werewolf is greatly appreciated Geoff, you are blazing the trail.
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Hard News: Christchurch: Is "quite good"…, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Canary Wharf damn right. And also central Canberra. What we don't want for Chch.
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Capture: Cats Love Cameras, in reply to Robyn Gallagher,
Our snow leopard - Lyra. Thankyou for doing this Robyn.... I have been trying to photograph her blue eyes for ages! And just got this yesterday.
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Fantastic idea. Welcome.
That pic of Auckland Uni health and safety nightmare reminds me of Canterbury in 1987. Yoof of today may be a disgrace with regards to their drinking behaviour but nothing has really changed.
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Hard News: Occupy: Don't call it a protest, in reply to Hilary Stace,
I know I'm a child of the 60s and I find this whole global movement pretty heartening but there definitely is something very positive and happy about the Wellington Occupy, as if a lot of gentle little elves have come to visit, and as a result the city is somehow blessed.
My thoughts precisely.
Re the FTA discussion it was fascinating to see in the PREFU that Chinese Exports are expected to grow from 4% of exports to 14% of exports (roughly) between now and 2015 while US bound exports are forecast to halve over the same period in terms of their importance. Makes you wonder why we are pursuing an FTA with the US at all. Also makes you wonder how fast our exports to China are currently growing - it must be very very fast.
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Hadn't thought of that. But it is good that we seem to be having no difficulty borrowing money at nice cheap rates while we struggle to work out whats wrong with the economy.
My view (influenced greatly by Geoff Bertram's recent work) is that the problem is that we have been allowing foreign depositors - dentists and housewives - to invest fast money in our mortgage market for the past two decades.
The result has been not only to favour housing investment over productive investment - but it has also resulted in an imbalance in favour of the non-tradeable sector business investment vs the tradeable sector. This can be seen in the very high levels of inflation in non-tradeable goods and services - food, professional services, utility prices etc.
The kicker is that it has also resulted in foreign funding of bank lending (not because its necessary - but because it is very profitable) and this in turn has resulted in NZ (and Australia as they are fundamentally the same as us - hence the recent rating downgrade of their banks) having a banking sector with a massive foreign exchange exposure.
In NZ's case it is estimated that this position is roughly $86 billion, i.e. the amount of NZD lending which is funded with non NZD wholesale funds.
And the consequence of this is that our banks have 86 billlion reasons to keep the NZ currency high - which further hurts the tradeable/export sector.
There is a solution to this but it requires some considerable bottle. Which may give rise to some interesting choices for our former currency trading PM in the relatively near future if it turns out that the above theory has any merit :)
