I'm losing hope.
Media proprietors are giving Aussies what the majority seem to want.
Entertainment using outrage, fear, indignation, gossip, idolatry, commercial sport, a bit of sexual titillation and ideas for material consumption. And controversial political opinion.
Even ABC radio and online news bulletins consist largely of small snippets of information about numerous trivial issues.
Just enough words about interesting issues to leave you frustrated by your unanswered questions which mostly will not be resolved by recourse to the internet.
TV news content seems driven by available pictures rather than its relevance.
International news often appears to be filtered through Washington or London first. Maybe it isn't, but that's the way it seems.
The ABC might eventually be our only comprehensive source of credible news and quality background information.
Digital radio could allow multiple Newsradio stations - one for detailed news, another for sport, another for policy analysis, another for health, science, religion etc. Instead of more TV channels showing entertainment duplicated elsewhere, those resources could be used to provide information about the world beyond the blinkered view of two or three English-speaking countries.
All available in transcripts & podcasts. Imagine ! Fat chance.
Tear-jerking Australian Story stories will get the dosh in preference.
That's what's fashionable.

Audiences in developed societies, such as Australia, are losing interest in local and regional world affairs.

The declining readership, under the age of 40, have little care about the allegiance of quality journalists. Many Australians regard most media traditional outfits as culturally irrelevant to their immediate daily-lives.

At the core is a drop in journalistic standards, is the over-production and engagement of popular approaches, which service a status audience, selecting narrowly, a security of mainstream views, that support commercial advertisers.

Simultaneously, this is alienating that part of the audience that craves quality journalism. It is also having a apathetic effect on the social fabric underlining the quality of wide social debates, in this country.

Findings show that most Australians don't fear the concentration of media ownership and nor do they appear to comprehend the power of media moguls as something that has any influence - beyond anyone's control, let alone their own.

The future of authentic journalism is under grave threat where it is being "replaced by entertainment at the heart of the media power edifice".

I don't know what you - all you posters here - are all on about. You're here, in On Line Opinion, discussing and posting at will. You are participating and creating the new media.

The old media, quaint as it was, is dying as Beecher wrote about. It's nothing to complain about. Now, you are the media. Never before in the history of mankind has the ordinary person had so much power over control over the media, and that's what the article was really about, although the writer seems not to admit it.

Welcome to the new way brothers - it's going to be as good as you can make it, and the old media can't do a thing about it. They're history.

You are the new journalists.

Maximus

You obviously didn't read my post when roundly knocking your fellow posters.

Hence "This change is a good thing. Its not like the old days. But the media (and media commentators on the media) should go with the flow.

Posted by plantagenet, Wednesday, 26 October 2005 12:42:49 AM"

Bushbred

Our perceptions are not incompatible. The media barons have run regional papers (that your concerned about) for years. The media companies that are coming in while offering multi media services (including internet) would also want market share of regional newspapers. If WA consumers want to buy the newspapers they'll give consumers what they want.

Any expectation that consumers can be disciplined into accepting "quality journalism" is like forcing people to watch quality progams on SBS and ABC when they'd rather watch Big Brother.

I think its all about giving the public what they want. Many people wanting quality have turned to the internet eg sites like OLO, as Maximus notes.

tus wrote:

"If The Age keeps telling everyone Howard is an evil - they are really saying Australians are evil (or dumb) for electing him.
If I had a choice between looking at a buxom celeb or being told througha thinly veiled attack I was an evil moron, guess what I'm going to purchase."

Yes well... as a Murdoch journo he would say that, wouldn't he? A major point of the article is to decry the decline of the honourable profession of journalism. All we seem to have now in print are sports reporters, entertainment tarts and fascist wannabes.

If he's worth a pinch of his salt, he'd also be aware that the Australian electorate has exactly the government that it deserves.

No wonder I had to explain to my 15 yo son the other day the perils of the imminent demise of collective bargaining - he certainly wasn't going to learn about it from the newspaper, TV or radio!

Mahatma Duck - Murdoch journo am I. Sorry to disappoint you mate, but I have never worked for News Ltd or any Murdoch company in my life, so I guess you are just making things up or assuming.
Well, that is very bad and something a good journo wouldn't do.
My paper is independent, one of the few left, actually.
However, you are right about the decline in the honourable profession of journalism and it is the preachy-types of The Age who are in part ruining it.
Journalists should deal with facts - not assuming someone works for Murdoch just because he doesn't like Fairfax papers.
Journalists are there to serve the interests of the public, not themselves.
Most Aussies can smell pretension a mile away and too many journos tell people what to think, rather than engage.
And if they disengage with the public, they will lose readership or audience.
Which is what is happening to a couple of broadsheets in Australia.

t.u.s.