Media
Joel Deane reviews 'Becoming Steve Jobs' by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli
I was working as a technology journalist in San Francisco when Steve Jobs made his messianic return to Apple. It was September 1997, the height of the dotcom boom. In the city, the old industrial tracts between Market Street and China Basin were being transformed by start-ups. People were living on free pizza and hoping to strike it rich with stock options in an ini ... More
Geoffrey Blainey reviews 'A Companion to the Australian Media' edited by Bridget Griffen-Foley
This impressive collection of knowledge ranges from the history of newspapers and the biographies of radio and television stars to the rise of media owners (the first of whom, Andrew Bent, arrived as a convict in 1812). It covers war reporting, food and sports coverage, children’s radio, blogging and podcasting, and even the life of the radio serial Blue Hills< ... More
Rodney Tiffen reviews 'Hack Attack' by Nick Davies and 'Beyond Contempt' by Peter Jukes
Bettina Jordan-Barber will soon face trial for receiving around £100,000 over nine years from the Sun newspaper for supplying information while she was an official in the Ministry of Defence. Both the prosecution and the defence during the recent UK ‘phone hacking’ trial accepted that the payments had been made, and that Rebekah Brooks, while she was edi ... More
Rachel Buchanan reviews a new biography of David Syme
David Syme made his name and his fortune in newspapers – specifically The Age – and his life’s course might be compared with the workings of a gigantic web offset press.
I have watched such machines at work. They start off slow; the rolls of naked newsprint snake by gently, round and round. When the presses roar to life the noise is astonishing; ... More
Bridget Griffen-Foley reviews 'Stop the Presses!'
Fairfax Media, which has churned out millions of words since its beginnings in Sydney in the 1830s, has itself inspired hundreds of thousands of words in the last year or so. First came Colleen Ryan’s Fairfax: The Rise and Fall (June 2013), followed by Pamela Williams’ Killing Fairfax (July 2013). Now comes Stop the Presses! by Ben Hills, a ... More
James Der Derian on Edward Snowden and cyber-zombies
The Mystery of the Silent Scribes
Gideon Haigh reviews a major new study of the failure of investigative journalism during the 2008 GFC. He argues that journalists became invested in the economic boom, to their cost.
MoreJan McGuinness on the climate of Murdoch
Jan McGuinness reviews two major new books on Australian media, covering the decline of Fairfax and examining Rupert Murdoch as a political player pursuing and promoting his own business and media agendas.
MoreRupert
When I was a teenager, I attended a theatre workshop organised by Australian Theatre for Young People. Nick Enright, who led the workshop, told a story about seeing the opening-night production of David Williamson’s The Removalists (1971) from backstage. Twenty years on, Enright’s description of the look on the audience’s faces as they contemplated the ... More
Gillian Dooley reviews 'The New Front Page'
Ten years ago, if you moved in certain journalistic circles, calling yourself a blogger was about as popular as leprosy. Few in the industry had respect for the platform, and fewer still would have read your work. Print journalists seemed divided on whether blogging was a joke or a threat. Either way, it was a sure-fire way to end a conversation fast. But the ... More
