Can you find the Townsville Bulletin?

John Sherffius says it all again.  Can you find the Townsville Bully in the trash pile? 

I though that it could be the red speck about 1/3 of the way up on the left but then it's way too big and it's the wrong colour! 

Any ideas?

Andrew Bolt's next conspiracy story:

"It's all all a publicity stunt" or "It's all a result Julia's knifing"

Which will it be?

The funniest story on earth (as reported in the Townsville Bulletin)

Yes, I'm still here!  My apologies to any regular visitors for the 'little' hiatus in my posts - put it down to a combination of work and other things going on in my life and arriving at a point of total despair at the state of the mainstream media in Australia and locally.

So what would break me out of all of that and and lead me back to the blog?  Why, the funniest story for decades of course, the one which brings an instant smile to my face with every new day's revelations - the crashing and burning of brand Murdoch (and potentially his empire)!

While there are plenty of others writing about what has to be the best and biggest spectator sport on earth at present, I'm currently particularly enjoying watching the developing blood-lust in (all but Murdoch) media's reportage of the action - it's sort of like watching Frankenstein's monster feeding on the corpse of the dead Doctor.

And of course then there's the Murdoch press reportage of the biggest media story for decades.  And what better example is there of the Empire's commitment to truth and balance that our very own Townsville Bulletin?

Their coverage of the crisis engulfing their Empire over the last few days?

• Wednesday 13/07 - nothing
• Thursday 14/07 - a 7x6.5 cm piece on page 19 or 0.10% of the 40 page edition
• Friday15/07 - a 7x6.5 cm piece on page 38 or 0.08% of the 52 page edition

And of course these little snippets are not available online and were hidden away in the "World Snapshot" section of the Bully - not so much because no one will notice it there but rather because when they do The Empire's local minions want the reader to be left with the impression that "the troubles" are restricted to quaint old England.

Surely there's nothing more pathetic than watching this blimp on the periphery of The Empire desperately protecting it's little patch while Rome burns.  And burns and burns and burns.

The Townsville Bulletin - Murdoch's very own digital kamikaze?

(Too) Much has been written about the likely success of Murdoch's plans to turn his newspapers into online earners and I have to admit that for some time I've been meaning to add to that debate with some pithy localised comment like "the Townsville Bulletin can't even get people to buy it's hard copy edition - why would they buy its crap in digitalised form?"

But today comes the clincher.  The New York Times has announced its digital pricing strategy and it's gonna cost you just $15.05 (AUD) a month to read one of the most prestigious rags in the world over your breakfast. 

But, if you're still hungry for real news after reading the product of over 600 journalists and some of the best commentators in the world, you can also purchase a digital copy of our very own Townsville Bulletin for a measly $30 a month!!

Either the Bully's local management is just plain commercially stupid (we have written about that quite a bit - 97 times in fact - as of course does former 'insider' The Magpie) or Murdoch is setting them up to see just how quickly a paper can die in the digital age.

My guess is that it's the former.

Postscript: Should the Bully wake up and drop their digital prices anytime in the next year or so, I of course will take full credit :-)

There's important news and then there's REALLY important news

Just in on my RSS Reader. 

Ah!, priorities.

Worth a read

A couple of good links found today:

• Good on him:   School chaplains facing High Court fight.  A guy from Toowoomba has launched High Court challenge because he opposes the Commonwealth funding of chaplains in state schools.  But check out the story's student flood victims angle - I wonder how many school Chaplin's are qualified trauma counsellors?

• 22 Minutes at Helidon on Monday, January 10: Amazing pictures at the Courier mail showing how fast the floodwater's rose at Helidon here

• And finally, Murdoch link to hacking fallout deepens - just because I love stories that shine a light on Murdoch's ongoing abuse of power and because you won't see it reported in The Bulletin

Bullsh*t survey proves bullsh*t surveys are bullsh*t

So far, at least of my predictions about what you would read in The Bulletin over the holiday period seem to have come true.  By my count, numbers 1, 3, 7 and 12 have been ticked off already with No 9 getting fulfilled today with the headline Victims pay for crime:  Townsville region courts are sentencing criminals too leniently, a survey says.

Of course the data that this and the earlier ones base their conclusions on are totally meaningless - they only tells us about the views of that proportion of the population who read the Bulletin and could be bothered to then fill out and send off a survey form.  To conclude or propose that people who read the Bulletin are like everyone else is a nonsense.

True to form though, the Bully report this bullsh*t as fact and on that basis spin a story about the need to get tougher on sentencing - including by interviewing the authoritative voice of the Townsville Residents Against Crime group (see: 0.01% of Townsville citizens can't be wrong).

The whole thing is nonsense (but dangerously so) and no more honest or valid that this press release accompanying the release of Blogging Townsville's own online poll:

POLL SHOCK:  Murdoch's Townsville Bulletin doomed

An international survey released today reveals fatal reader anger about Rupert Murdoch's most peripheral outpost.

The Murdoch empire was rocked today with the release of a world wide Internet survey of attitudes towards the Townsville Bulletin

Globally, over 70% of respondents described The Bulletin as a shocker or as embarrassing.  A further 11.5% of respondents had never even heard of The Bulletin.

It is thought that the five respondents who indicated that they viewed the paper as Rupert's pride were the only staff remaining at the Bulletin and were sucking up as hard as they could.

The two votes describing the Bulletin as 'cerebral' are being investigated as it appears that they were sent from the same computer in the Townsville Bulletin Editor's office

Note to The Bulletin:
Next time try Googling "perceptions of crime" - No. 2 on the 269,000 long list is this little number, for example:  (Mis)perceptions of crime in Australia - Trends & issues in crime and criminal justice, Brent Davis and Kym Dossetor, Australian Institute of Criminology, July 2010.   To save you time, you can even download the paper here (pdf 1.29 MB)

PS:
Any ideas for a new poll topic??????

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.

The Big Leak on Maggie or The Big Rip-off by the Townsville Bulletin?

I see that The Bully has this morning finally reported about the buzz on Maggie Island about building some sort of statue in tribute to the Island's one-time son, Julian Assange.

We reported on it here at length yesterday and earlier (about 10 days ago) here.  And we of course took our lead from Magnetic Times who first raised the idea in this story on 11 December and a week later developed it further in this story (including with the cartoon by George shown at right).

But true to style, in finally running the story, the Bully fails to give any recognition or reference to Magnetic Times (reflecting the old mainstream media paradigm of 'every other media outlet is a competitor and therefore shouldn't be given an inch').  In fact, when you read  the Bully's piece, you could swear that their hard-working journo, Anon, wrote it based on their own detailed investigative journalism.

Rather, The Bully ignores the originators of the idea (and the story) and instead focuses on "local island character" Crusty Heron.  Of course, in any small community such as the Island, "local character" is a euphemism for "local nut-job". 

Don't get me wrong, Crusty is a nice guy, good to wave at from the other side of the road and does quite a reasonable wedding (although I brought one from him and it didn't work).  It's just that you want to avoid getting into a conversation with him at all costs.  If you're wondering why, just have a read of his diatribes in the comments to these Magnetic Times articles here and here! 

But hey, he's a talking head who always answers his phone - making the 'investigation' by The Bully's increasingly familiar Anon all that much easier and providing the perfect out from giving due credit to The Magnetic Times.

Finally I really wonder whether the photo-shopped graphic with the Bully's story was really done by Crusty as implied in the article or was it actually mashed-up by Anon him/herself?  You certainly won't find it on Crusty's website, facebook page or from any google search I could think of!

PS: - Magnetic Times got eight weblinks out of this story and The Bully only one - a good score I reckon and one that won't help The Bully's google rankings one bit!

The Bulletin does good

Credit where credit is due!

I thought the headline on the Bully's story this morning about the horrific and wretched deaths on the cliffs of Christmas Island yesterday was both sensitive and respectful. 

Full recognition that these were/are people seeking freedom and security and none of the "illegal immigrants" "people smugglers" or "queue-jumpers" we normally hear so much of from the MSM.  It also happens to be a beautiful construction. 

Well done to the sub-editor who wrote it.

PS: Compare the Bully's effort with this little trash piece from (surprise, surprise) Dennis Shanahan in (surprise, surprise) The Oz:   NO politicians wanted to be seen to be taking political advantage from the tragic sinking of the people-smuggling vessel.

Sex shame or just plain pedophilia?

I find the headline highlighted below fascinating. 

Pedophile becomes sex shame teacher when it happens in a private school (or is that, a private school formally attended by many of Courier Mail's elite?)

Anon and proud if it: Part 2

There were some great comments on my last post about The Bully bullying bloggers, including a fantastic offering from NormanK called We're the Voice which I've now given pride of place in the blog sidebar.

In case you didn't see it, Inside Business (I wonder how many at the Bully watch it?) on the ABC this morning had a great piece on the media's absolute fear of transparent (read,  real) circulation figures and the lengths they have gone to (and still do) to bodgy the data in order to continue hoodwinking their real customers - the advertisers.  Read the transcript or view the vision here

Anon and proud of it: The Townsville Bulletin celebrates our first birthday

Well, well, well! Haven’t we bloggers really got up the nose of The Bully? :-)

As a rule, I don’t read editorials – mainly because I know that the only people who do are journos and politicians (editorial cartoons however are a very different matter).

So when reader M pointed me to today's Bulletin editorial, I just had to go out and pay good money for a hard copy !! And what a doozey it is – it’s not available online, but click on the graphic to read it full-size!

The story about the outing of Grog’s Gamut is now getting pretty old given that it happened over 10 days ago (I posted here on 28 Sept.)

For a fantastic summary of the action and reaction got to Craig Thomler's eGov AU blog here. 

Now I might be getting up myself a bit here, but I can’t help but think that rather than finding a bit of passion in a 10-day old story, the Bully are lashing out at this post from yesterday morning where I pointed out data from the Australian Newspaper History Group showing that the Bulletin’s average daily readership (or sales - it is unclear) is just 26,395 and had declined by almost 10% over the first half of the year!!!

Touchy aren’t they?   Not information they would be keen to have out there perhaps? 

Touchy as the the Oz was at the critiques of their work by Grog's Gamut?  I've asked the question before here, but, given that I seem to have drawn their fire publicly, I wonder if they are so touchy they will out me next? - after all, I know they've worked out who I am! 

Of course I could use their own language back at them and say they are the cowards if they don't - knowing the increased readership I'd get and backlash they'd get!!  But I won't.

For the record, my reasons for Island View’s anonymity are simple – I’m a small businessman trying to make a living and pay the rent in a small regional city and, believe me, publically calling the most powerful and most connected media outlet in the town to account wouldn’t be real good for business!

I may well be a coward but I’m certainly not stupid!

PS: today is more-or-less the first anniversary of Blogging Townsville and The Bully's Editorial has been the absolutely best anniversary gift!!  It's given me food for another post which will now float in the blogosphere forever with a Townsville Bulletin tag and showing them for what they really are.

UPDATE:  In the comments below, both Bill and Craig Thomler @ eGov AU point out that Townsville Bulletin Editor, Peter Gleeson, chooses for his Editorials to be published anonymously - just like this blog and yes, just like Grog's Gamut.  See more in Craig's post here on the propensity for the mainstream media to publish material by the widely read (and often either very wise or very funny), Anon.

Craig also managed to find the Bully's editorial online here

Finally, I note that in the hardcopy Saturday Bully this morning, there were no letters and no published txt messages about yesterday's Editorial.  As of this morning, there are no comments on their on-line opinion page.  Doesn't sound much to me like their editorial was representing the "voice of the people" - more like the voice of someone in power who's not used to being challenged, let alone questioned or held to account.

Mudoch's approach to his papers' critics - will Island View be next?

I'm well aware that, like its big sister The Oz, our provincial rag the Bulletin has a lot of trouble with its online critics.

In case you haven't caught up - the Oz yesterday outed the identity of anonymous blogger and Murdoch press critic, Grog's Gamut, who just happens to be a public servant in real life.

Kim at Larvatus Prodeo has a great listing of the Blogosphere's reaction to the Oz article as does Tobias Ziegler at Pure Poison in his piece The Grog’s Gamut outing: In whose interest?

Update:  Kim at Larvatus Prodeo has an updated posting on what is now being called 'grogsgate' here

The general online reaction has been rightfully savage - particularly in pointing out the Murdoch press's self interest in doing as they did. 

But I wonder if the episode is more a reflection of their insecurity?  It's pretty clear that the Murdoch press in particular can't handle analytical criticism that shows up the quality of their journalism for what it is.

Which leads me to also wonder whether The Townsville Bulletin will try and out me?  I know they have spent a lot of time and energy in trying to work out my identity and that they certainly don't like criticism

The Townsville Bulletin called to account by the Townsville establishment

I had thought about posting in response to the Townsville Bulletin's trash-piece about school bullying in what must have been a slow news day last Saturday - but to be honest, I was way too busy to pause and bash my head against that particular brick wall.

However, in today's Bully, there is a couple of great letters in response to the 'article' by the Ryan Catholic College community.  In particular, the letter from the school Principal is well worth a read (click on the graphic for a readable version) - pointing out as it does at length the appalling journalism/professionalism represented in the original article by Alexis Gillham.

Interestingly, the Editor of the Bully chose not to make the letter available online or to comment on it as he so often does when his rag is criticised (including [anonymously] through the comments on this blog).

Could this be an admission that the Ryan Principal nailed the paper for what it is and for which there is no defence - a wholly unprofessional regional bullsheet?

Or perhaps the Ed. remembered exactly how much the Catholics spend in advertising in his rag each month and decided to back-off?  Still, they couldn't even come to write a reasonable header for the letter - "Sticking to the rule of pair play" it reads (whatever that means).  They couldn't even come at using the more appropriate and accurate, "Sticking to the rule of fair play"!!

Trash journalism from a trash advertising rag.

Well said

Cross-posted in full from B Sides ...because it is spot-on!

The unreflective mirror

This is a quote from a Barry Cassidy article:
via abc.net.au

This election is not about gender, or even policies; thus far, it's not even about Tony Abbott.
Social researcher, Hugh Mackay, is spot on. It's about Julia Gillard, yes or no.                                                                                       

I'm always stunned when journalists say things like this, as if what an election is "about" somehow happens in a world in which they themselves do not exist. Does it really not occur to them that what an election is "about" cannot be separated from how the election is reported?

I'm really tired of reading articles written by journalists who presume their own non-existence.

It's like when you read them saying that "Labor can't get traction" or "this story about the Coalition was buried". Those two states (traction and buried) merely reflect editorial decisions about what was covered. They are basically saying, we chose not to cover these stories. And yet they write about the lack of traction or the buried story as if it happened in a world where they are mere observers.

Truly, I'm not trying to be rude. I'm just perplexed. Do journalists really think that the lack of focus on Abbott (or policy) and the total focus on Gillard happens independently of their reporting?