From behind the door: The interminable art of trying

Well the morning started off abysmally - late as usual with nary a cup of coffee in sight, and blood on Wall Street slicing the prospects of a straightforward dollar story thrown out the window as the third-quarter earnings of New Zealand's biggest phone company loomed large over me and the boss wasn't in yet and the other boss was in but not making coffee and once Telecom posted its result there wasn't time for me to pick it up because we hadn't had the conversation and it should've been a bit more organised, but that's the life of being behind the door in an office of three, soon to be four, maybe even more, but that's just mere speculation.

So I got through the usual malarkey of getting my soundbite from Mike, he's a good bloke, and my friend says he's very pleasant on the eye and she knows these things so I'll probably tell her to come along next time me and Mike meet up for a beer, though that's likely to be a long way off with the budget looming and other things on the go that I don't even know about yet, and now I'm way off topic so I should get back to finishing off my currency story 'cos it's already 9am and we're trying to get it out earlier and earlier and earlier and Jonathan's got the Telecom result and he's going to do a cheap and nasty version and later on in the day he says we should've sat down and discussed this and made sure that I'd picked it up 'cos I'd done a preview the afternoon before and Telecom's - and the wider telco sphere in general (though I can't call it the telco sphere 'cos Jon hates the word telco and he's the boss after all) - my baby and even though it was challenging at first, I do quite like writing about phone companies and broadband and mobile phones and all the stuff that seems to come in the telecommunications sector.

So I'd managed to encapsulate the cliff that Wall Street dived off after some guy's finger got a little itchy, then I read through Jon's write-through on Telecom and prepared to dial in for the conference - 40 minutes of which was the usual PR flackery that goes on and on and on and turns into a war of attrition until people can actually get an opportunity to ask these masters of the universe questions about the state of their business and what it actually means, and that if the level of disclosure across all the divisions of their company is so great why don't they answer questions when asked, rather than just fob it off as commercially sensitive information, and you know that while you might get something, someone else will use it, which is sometimes a blessing in disguise, 'cos sometimes after an hour and a quarter of listening to people more intelligent and knowledgeable than you, you really don't want to ask your questions because they've been answered in roundabout ways and they aren't really that interesting anyway and you've just taken up 2 minutes that someone else could've used, but instead you gave a nice soundbite to another guy but that's alright because you know that you secretly use their work to give yourself a decent background on the issue, and then you get off the conference and you realise that you don't really have a story, because the numbers were pretty bland, even if they did beat Guy's forecast slightly, and the XT report was pretty lame, even if it did call management immature, which the boss wanted in the write-through, so I had to go for a wander with the boss and try and get my head around what I was going to write about, then I talked to Alan, 'cos he's absolutely lovely and always gives you a good quote and tries to give you something even when there's nothing there, and so I came up with something, and eventually got the write-through, and then the stock price fell to a new low, and I'd already written the story, so I threw that at the top, and lo and behold, it made it to the usual suspects, and everything was alright, but two days on, I'm no wiser about what happened, and if anything, perhaps a little more confused - so until the next thing comes out, it's all business as usual.

And that's life from behind the door.

PB.

Footfalls echo in the memory, down the passage we did not take

I can't blame poor old Dr Reynolds - he hasn't really been in New Zealand very long.

But his choice of words in laying the blame for XT's repeated failure over the past three months could've been better.

"Enough is enough" he cried in his opening plea to the media (and all credit to him for fronting up for what was a gruelling - and often ill-informed - session with hacks from all over).

Unfortunately the only image I can conjure up with this particular phrase is one of one-eyed hatred and ignorant bigotry. Something that was just as powerful at splitting the nation as the foreshore and seabed - and perhaps a tad more depressing when you boil down the root causes.

Admittedly, you can almost understand his frustration with Telecom's french partner, Alcatel-Lucent and p'raps 'twas dark irony the phone company's flack were playing at, but I don't think so.

So credit to the telco for fessing up and paying out to its customers - I can almost feel the pain the CFO's going through opening up the cheque book yet again - but definitely a "could try harder" over the historical allusion.

PB.

Oh - and big ups to the flack at Telecom for being accessible and human - we (read me) had a bit a mare last week with to-ing and fro-ing over a regulator's statement - don't get me started on that one - but all is well after a good old-fashioned conversation. It's good to be a hack.

You don't talk with that man - you listen to him

I'm not really a fan of these types of blog posts, but this column in the Herald was too good to ignore.

Read it - it'll give you a very good basic understanding of the situation in the Congo - and offer some kind of deeper analysis of the situation.

I know - it's a little surprising.

The only thing I think it lacks (or it may merely be my own curious nature) is how the problems in the Congo can be related back to New Zealand, and why it's important for people to care here (and not just in humanitarian terms - which, when you consider the situation, should really be enough).

Thank you granny - gold star for you.

PB.

(The cynic in me wants to link this to an attempt to help sell the Independent's stake in APN, but I just cannae do it - sorry)

Some day you'll know. They're calling to you too.

It is with a heavy heart that I read Colin James' last column in the Herald today.

For the last ten years, Mr James has given Granny readers a taste of analysis over the usual empty rhetoric that passes for columns these days, and to my mind, it seems an absolute waste that the Herald's decided to give him the flick.

What's most concerning for this baby journalist, though, is if luminaries like Mr James have grown either too stale for the Granny's taste or too expensive, what's going to be left?

Are newswrooms shrinking to such a state that columnists will now be on staff?

Is long-term analysis that tends to shy away from any strong partisan position no longer in vogue? (I know I know... it never really was...)

Are quality hacks being cut down one by one, in order for them to be replaced by drones waiting for their $60k comms job?

I couldn't even turn to the blogosphere for answers, as his demise doesn't seem to have attracted much attention (he got a tribute from the Tailor on Panama St, and nods from DPF, IrishBill and Adam Smith).

I hope I'm being paranoid...

But I've got a sneaking sensation I'm not...

PB.

(PS - check out the Tailor's blog - methinks it'll be a goodie... and not of the Bill Odie kind)

The hope only Of empty men

Far be it for me to criticise laziness (my prolonged absence from the blogosphere can attest to that), but - there's always a but - I'm a little disappointed with John Roughan's profile of Steven Joyce in the Herald yesterday. It looks remarkably like Dwayne Alexander's blog post at the start of September.




I'm being unfair. Mr Roughan did actually address a couple of timely issues in his interview with Mr Joyce, such as the Labour Party's response to the economic crisis and the unveiling of the universal student allowance policy. And Mr Joyce, to his credit, addressed them - even if it was merely to bat them away.

However, after his auspicious start, a fairly lame profile piece followed - something that is happening in far too many papers at the moment. I don't think I'm alone in considering a straight profile of a political candidate to be boring and unambitious.

Sure, give us a general outline of who the candidates are and what they have done in their previous lives, but stick with a line of questioning where the reader might actually get some handle on what the candidate stands for, what their motivations for entering public office are, and what they plan to do, given the opportunity, when they take the reins of power.

Y'know, act like a representative of the Fourth Estate and all that jazz.

OR, if you must do a profile (and I'm feeling charitable here)...

Don't make it a promo listing all of the candidates' achievements... we know these people are talented - it's generally why they manage to get into the party hierarchy. What's more interesting is how they've acted in their previous incarnations, and how this may relate to how they'll represent us in the future.

Using Mr Joyce as an example, what Mr Roughan could have done was delve into the crossover of Mr Joyce's radio career and his position as campaign manager of the Nats. In the lead-up to, and fall-out from, the 2005 general election, he was the drive show host on RadioLive. I remember listening to Mr Joyce every afternoon (as was the wont of my employer at the time), completely oblivious to his position with the Nats (which was never disclosed). I merely thought he was another of those crazy talkback hosts that loved the phrase "nanny state" (he replaced Paul Henry who was forced to resign by TVNZ, and was up against Larry Williams on ZB, who models his show on Bill O'Reilly's). We should also note that, by this stage, Mr Joyce had sold his holding in RadioWorks to the Canadians (better known as CanWest) - not that Mr Joyce let his listeners' knew of his former association with the station.

Curiously, a quick google search finds few acknowledgements of Mr Joyce's tenure ever occurring: there's a post by DPF at the end of November 2005 and another, which no longer exists, but has an extract available on Lawswatch.

I find nothing untoward about commericial radio holding a conservative bias - it's a natural fit, much like the perceived liberal bias associated with public radio - it's just that, y'know, I would have liked to have been made aware of the fact that there was some active political campaigning going on in the lead-up to a tight election that some 30-odd thousand people were listening to every day.

I can see the argument that would likely be put up - my opinions are obvious to anyone who listens to me, and my audience, in the main, agrees with my point of view, but that's a little different form being active in a party political campaign while putting out your views as an independent voice (albeit, a conservative one).

I know all of this screams conspiracy, and I don't actually have a problem with figures in the media holding a political bias. I think it's good for views contrary to my own being pushed and discussed in an open forum. But an open forum requires a certain level of disclosure, and Mr Joyce's inability to let his listeners know that he was actively campaigning for the Nats in '05 leads me to conclude there's only one position he wants after November 8...

... and that's the role of Machiavelli's Prince, Murray McCully.

Thus ends my case study and wildly inaccurate conclusion.

I'm sure the nation's fearless army of journalists would be happy to dig a little deeper when approaching their candidates for a simple profile piece - it's certainly a lot more fun to do (and read). And maybe, just maybe, it might inform the public of whom, and what, they're actually voting for.

Dreaming of better journalism,

PB.

Let us be diverse and without prejudice

There has been a bit of commentary about the Diversity Forum held by MSD last week. I've obviously heard a fair amount about it as one of the NewsWire babies who listened to Arlene Morgan speak about diversity in the newsroom, and I have to admit to being somewhat pleased by Deb Coddington's column in the HoS today. Her back-handed contrition, however (some objectors are better than others), continues to play into the same old divisive stereotypes that compel the need for forums like the diversity one and for offices like the Race Relations Conciliator.

Karl du Fresne admirably defends his distaste for meddling in the affairs of "free speech" - yet the crux of his argument is market driven and summed up nicely with:

The main thing about the controversy over the Clydesdale paper, however, was
that it demonstrated that a free and open society, if left to function properly,
tends to be self-correcting.

Self-correcting implies that every citizen, nay, every reader, is equal in intelligence and experience and able to disseminate a piece of information with the same veracity as the next one. That's the kind of idealistic twaddle you'd expect from a socialist like meself, not a curmudgeon like Mr du Fresne.

Which leads me on to prejudice (I know - this is a long one). The inimitable Jim Tucker plugged our push for diversity here, here, and here, but it was his latest post on his reading prejudices that ties in nicely with my fear for the fragmentation of voices in the media. One of the winners of the Excellence in Reporting Diversity Awards was Justin Latif, a chap who doesn't think his stories are diverse - they just are. This is all well and good, but as Jim points out:

We all, I suspect, choose our information sources according to deep-seated
biases created over lifetimes.

Which leads me to believe that as our media sources converge under the umbrellas of the major players, minority voices will be ignored in favour of the mainstream market (a continuation of a current theme), and our minorities will create their own media (much like we're already seeing in our local Asian communities).

While this isn't new, the growth of Asian media is a worrying trend - if we (read white, middle-class males) can't reach out and gather news like Justin, we're going to be holding the shortest straw when the interweb finally destroys flagship news outlets and the fragmentation of news sources is so diverse as to make it impossible to have any kind of "authoritative news".

This might not necessarily be a bad thing, but it does play to Jim's prejudices - we'll only read news and commentary that re-affirms our own experiences and ideologies. I don't see me being the token whitey in a newsroom as a bad thing, but I do see the creation of niche media that doesn't challenge its own assertions as one step closer to endgame. Here's hoping someone can allay my fears - as yet, no-one's managed the task.

To all the blogs I've loved before.

When I read Vernon Small's blog on blogging and journalism this morning I pegged it as rant worthy for later in the day. Unfortunately, being a baby journo, I hit the bar with some of my classmates instead, and now I've found every half decent (yes, it's an exaggeration) blogger has already covered it in much greater depth than I would have. So instead of reading my rants and raves, check out Dim, DPF, Idiot/Savant and Adam Smith, and make sure you wade through the comments too. My 2c go to Dim, purely because I/S sounded way too smart for me at this time of a Friday night.

Oh, and check this out on stuff, it's the best news for a poor beleagured (rich) girl in a long time (hey someone's gotta have a soft spot for the gal).

REDUX: Thank the blogging gods for this thread! It's finally given Queen Bee the opportunity to write something worth reading - something she's been struggling to do for quite some time (it's all Winston's fault naturally). Her coverage of Georgia is keeping me optimistic...

My my my, said the spider to the fly...

Yeah. Well. What can I say? I'm slack. Sue me.
In fact, the only reason I'm actually back is because someone actually read and commented on one of my musings. Thanks Grant. You're wrong in respect to RNZ National, but thanks for waking me up from my malaise. Here's why.
There is no such thing as objective reporting, nor does any broadcast or print journo (let alone some filthy blogger) aspire to it. They may claim to offer 'just the facts', but that's an impossibility. Everything they include is subject to editorial approval, and their own personal agenda. They do not, and cannot, offer 'just the facts'. That's a fact of life. You must be sceptical of what you read, and you must question the agenda behind the story.

In other news, the story of the week has to be Brian McClennan's resignation as coach of the Kiwis. So much fun. Yesterday, in particular, when the rage of Tony Veitch, Goran Paladin, and Kath Harby-Williams built to crescendo level in taking talkback calls defending the NZRL and the ultimate announcement that Andrew Chalmers and Graham Lowe would appear on Telfer's show (this is all on Radio Sport) was absolutely brilliant. Everyone loves the little guy, and everyone loves being suspicious of the corporate structure.
Even Telf's interview had all the confrontation of a veteran broadcaster grilling a couple of very experienced and intelligent people about something they were not too comfortable answering questions on. Maybe not on par with being a little creep, but good fun nonetheless. The general consensus was that there was a conspiracy theory, and although Joseph Romanos didn't quite agree today, his heated exchange with Telf regarding Bluey's exit was more of the fiery fun we like to listen to.

Today's best moment of the morning was (surprise surprise) Marcus Lush's disdain for the Youth Parliament. People people people. Don't make these kids grow up before they have to. People like Peter Dunne are sad for reading Hansard from age 11. I love Marcus. He makes life worth living. He makes you want to get out of bed, and enjoy the simple things in life. Just go here and get a taste of it. Please. Let's get RadioLive's breakfast show some real ratings.