Regional reporters kept busy
Another 80 newspaper jobs will be lost in Victoria on Fairfax Media’s regional papers including the Border Mail, the Courier, the Bendigo Advertiser and the Standard. Fairfax’s regional arm, Australian Community Media, has confirmed 62 newsroom roles including editors, subeditors and photography staff will disappear, as will another 18 administration and sales staff. The News Now model, which Fairfax is rolling out across the country this year, allows the mastheads to remain open with fewer staff. It involves a template-based, “write to the space” editorial model in which reporters sub, caption and headline their own stories. While staff call it the “systematic gutting of regional newsrooms” ACM director John Angilley says it’s “all about setting up our newspapers and websites for the future”.
Angilley: “Journalists will report local news across multimedia, as well be trained to write headlines, captions and fact-boxes. Quality-checking processes and procedures will be in place and our editors will remain responsible for managing risk and maintaining editorial standards.” The MEAA’s regional director for Victoria, Carolyn Dunbar, told Beast the News Now system effectively meant the remaining journalists had to do three jobs in one: write, sub and take their own pictures. “The quality of the reporting and the photography will suffer,” Dunbar said.
Channel 7: the enemy within
When a TV star is as popular as Sunrise co-host Samantha Armytage, the media like nothing more than to write about how the star behaves when the cameras aren’t rolling. Hence Armytage has been the subject of “difficult diva” stories in newspapers, magazines and even Nine’s A Current Affair in recent months. But where do these stories, these nasty anecdotes, come from? Well, on the weekend a Seven spokeswoman said they were coming from rival network Nine because Sunrise was beating Today. “We felt for [ACA host] Tracy Grimshaw, having to introduce a segment attacking another female presenter,” the Seven spokeswoman told News Corp. “When a show holds a clear leadership position in a timeslot, opponents feel compelled to attack.” Well, we think Seven should gets its story straight because the woman herself has named where the attacks are coming from: inside Seven. “Every woman out there has to deal with office politics, whether they’re a nurse, a vet, standing at the school gate or a TV reporter,” Armytage told News Corp in November. “In my situation, it’s coming from leaks inside the building. I can actually read a newspaper article now and tell you who leaked it. In most scenarios, the information is untrue and, in some situations, defamatory. It’s unjust and that I find incredibly disappointing.”
I’m the EP – Get Me Of Here!
Ten’s reality show I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here! wraps up on Sunday after a week of live evictions culminates in the crowning of the king or the queen of the jungle. A crew of 380 people has been working around the clock to put 90 minutes of television to air five days a week. But one eviction from the campsite in the Kruger National Park in South Africa was not televised – even though it is said to be the most dramatic of all the departures. The executive producer of IAC Peter Abbott, famed for creating the successful Australian version of Big Brother, was quietly dispatched by production company ITV Studios Australia two weeks before the show was due to end. ITV chief Anita Jacoby told the TV Tonight blog Abbott was a key architect of the show but his “role on the show has been completed”. We hear Abbott was hampered by the sheer number of producers assigned to the show: we’ve counted six from ITV and three from Ten.
ABC gets wrist slapped by Acma
A story on 7.30 back in 2013, about debt refinancing, breached the ABC code of practice, according to the communications watchdog. The ruling published on Thursday is the Australian Communications and Media Authority’s first adverse ruling against Aunty since the infamous The Hamster Decides segment on columnist Chris Kenny and the dog, which was published last June. Acma found the 7.30 program breached the code by failing to give MyBudget, a personal budgeting business, “a fair opportunity to respond to allegations of mismanagement and neglect”. But it’s been a long and drawn out fight by both sides and a spokeswoman for ABC News said they had “vigorously defended” the story. “It is always a matter of judgment on how much information is provided to people who are being asked to respond to allegations. The judgement from the Acma was that, while we did provide information and an opportunity to respond, it was not enough and we should have given them more specific information. We take these matters seriously and the 7.30 team will go through the judgement and look at the lessons learned.” The story transcript will now carry an editor’s note: “In response to a complaint about this story, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (Acma) found 7.30 to be in breach of standard 5.3 of the ABC code of practice. Acma concluded that MyBudget was not given a fair opportunity to respond to specific claims made by two former customers who appeared in the story. 7.30 acknowledges the Acma finding.”
Greste to speak of plight
Less than two months after he was set free, Peter Greste will address the National Press Club on 26 March to talk about his seven-year sentence and the 400 days he spent in an Egyptian prison.
ABC managing director Mark Scott: “The plight of Peter Greste and his al-Jazeera colleagues captured Australians’ attention, not just because of the injustice they were subjected to, but also because of the dignity with which Peter and his family met that injustice.” The Peabody award-winning correspondent has also worked for Reuters, CNN and the BBC.
