The Magpie's Nest is full of it (again)

It's amazing how quickly you can achieve something when yow what you're doing. It seems that it only took 14 deposits in The Magpie's Nest for Townsville's very own Magpie to get far enough up The Bulletin's nose to draw a reaction where it took me a year and a couple of hundred posts to draw a reaction!

While he's been dumping the dirt on the Bully's editor-in-command since his first droppings in the blogiverse, he seems to have generated a real fightback at Fortress Murdoch down in Ogden St. with last week's post revealing that Pete 'Typo' Gleeson is being transferred out by the Murdoch machine to spread his management magic in some other minor outpost of the empire. The post is recommended reading for those who'd like to know more about editor-in-command Gleeson's style.

I know that the language breaks the blog
etiquette rules but I just couldn't resist.
Source: Unknown and hopefully not litigious

Clearly demonstrating the old adage that "the truth hurts", The 'Pie reports in this week's post that the commander-in-edit editor-in-command responded to the Old Bird's outing of him with a bit of good-old, true-to-form smear.

While the Old Bird's post sets the record straight, for me it confirms a suspicion I've long held - that there really is a fortress mentality within Ogden St. and the Murdoch empire more generally (witness, for example, their reaction to the rise of the bloggers). It seems to me that this is symptomatic of a dominion under threat and in decline. And typical of all empires in decline, HQ invariably promotes to commander-in-edit editor-in-command those with the greatest ability to create a fortress mindset amongst the foot soldiers/workers.

Of course, eventually even the foot soldiers see the inevitable and start to turn on the crumbling empire!! Hopefully, The Magpie started the tide in this small outpost.

Magnetic Island's monumental marketing opportunity

As I've noted before, there is a bit of a buzz around about building a monument to Wikileaks founder and former island hippie Julian Assange. Magnetic Times editor, George Hirst has even offered a first design option although I must admit to being a bit taken by Rolf's suggestion of one of those "cutsie little boy peeing sculptures" (see comments).

Magnetic Times also has a poll at the bottom right of their front page asking Should Magnetic Island commission a sculpture to celebrate the achievements of Julian Assange? With 385 votes so far 98% responses have been positive.

And I see that The Magpie's Nest has seen some "ripper marketing opportunities" in Assange's association with Maggie island - including the tourism pitch: `Want a tan like Julian Assange's? Holiday on Magnetic Island - in the rainy season!' - an increasingly accurate xmas tag given the forecasts!

I reckon that both local scholars are on to something here.  If you consider the potential value in niche tourism Maggie Island could be sitting on a marketing goldmine (Checkout for example the 12-day Lord of the Rings tour of NZ).

But when you think of the types of people who might come to visit the childhood home of Assange, I think that any monument would need to be able to be visited in all anonymity and would need to include a free and highly encrypted wifi connection and highly secure server.  Sorry George and Rolf but I'm not sure that electricity and water are going to work!

PS: Don't forget to vote on the Magnetic Times poll.  You can also join this Facebook group if you're into that sort of thing.

I can see the smoke from The Bully already

I reckon I can see the smoke coming from Bully Headquaters as they read the latest post over at The Maggie's Nest.  You see, the old Maggie has published the latest circulation catastorpie at the Bully under editor Gleeson's watch - a 4.2% fall in the last quaterly audit - on top of the previous 10% fall I posted about here.

I wonder whether, as a result, the old 'pie will get an editorial dressing down similar to the one I recieved?  Or perhaps 'Typo' Gleeson* will be too busy looking over his sholder for Murdoch's crack accountants death squad.

* The term "Typo" Gleeson is completely the invention of The Magpie and less demafitory than anything I could think of.  It is used with permission (I hope)

Flying free, making a racket and crapping all over Townsville's "opinion makers"

The Towsville blogosphere is exploding and The Townsville Bulletin and a few other of Townsville's high-and-mighty should be afraid - VERY afraid!!

Check out The Magpie's Nest:

What, The Magpie Finished?!  FARK NO!

The old bird has simply moved to a new nest in the blogosphere, a universe where both you readers can move your lips while you peruse his regular load of old cobblers, or `column’ as it is known in some circles. In this smarty pants techno world, it’s now officially a `blog’, with regular `posts’ and guess what? You readers – yes, both of you – can have a say too. Just stick the tongue out of the corner of your mouth, crinkle the brow in concentration and – hey, knock yourself out, use two fingers if you like - tap out a message in the comment area provided. It will be published if it gets past the battalion of lawyers on alert for legal naughtiness.

The Magpie blog is also a work in progress, and will expand as the weeks go by with new links to some very interesting places. If you like, The Magpie will give you an email alert whenever he posts a new load of drivel, which will be at least every week, possibly more often. Just email him requesting same at townsvillemagpie@gmail.com

I know that The 'pie has been around the town a lot longer than I, has much better connections, knows a lot more about racing and punting and front-bar stuff and has a bit more time on his hands that I do - so expect to see his scoops regularly cross posted here.

Or better still, just get on his email list at townsvillemagpie@gmail.com

Welcome to the blogosphere Magpie - I'm looking forward to this!