News Ltd CEO John Hartigan gave a speech today. Inquisitr coverage here.

Interestingly he gave some data on The Punch

The Punch has taken off like a rocket since it was launched in May ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äú our target was to achieve traffic of 80,000 users in the first month. It?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s actually achieved almost 200,000.

Now let me say upfront that I actually like the idea (even if after today I don’t like Hartigan) and I’ve already said I hope the site does well.

But here’s the thing: even with the force of the News Ltd sites backing it (they regularly link in posts as well as other promos) they’ve managed 200,000 something… I say something, because users could mean anything, such as page views, uniques etc… indeed, that Hartigan quotes such a figure shows how detached he is to the online world.

Hartigan is right though, takes a while to establish a site, but likewise when you’ve got the cross-promotional power of News Ltd, 200,000 is surprisingly low.

Mumbrella did a story earlier in the week comparing The Punch to Crikey, but let me stretch that out a bit.

oh wait, I’m just a lowly blogger with no qualifications to run a site (apparently a Commerce Degree in Marketing and ECommerce doesn’t count.)

For the record, I’ve actually held conversations on adding to our content with official wire-like content in the last few weeks. Nothing to announce yet, but we may be expanding our celebrity coverage, and our use of images… more soon 🙂

See previous post for context.

So I finally conceded that the only way I’d jump to the first position was to get a phone line connected. We take possession on the 2nd (July, it’s the 29th June as I type this) and it turns out that Telstra can connect a physical line on the 3rd.

So once you’ve got an actual line (with days notice) getting ADSL2+ is easy, although getting ADSL2+ Naked is still hard. Spoke to Internode, who resell Telstra ports for ADSL2+. 5-10 days, guaranteed, because Telstra does it. If it was their own Naked ADSL…limited to no ports, 20+ days (like iiNet and more).

The key to get ADSL2+ connected at a new place is to connect the phone line with Telstra, and then connect the ADSL2+ with a Telstra reseller. You can switch to others later, but you can’t match 5-10 days 🙂

Mind you, this is all sorts of wrong, but to some degree it’s always been the case. Telstra connections have always had priority in an exchange over non-Telstra connections. I might be connecting with Internode, but it’s a Telstra wholesale connection.

I discovered today that in 2009 it’s as hard, if not harder to transfer an internet connection than it was in 2004 (the last time I tried to move an ADSL connection was ironically with iiNet as well)…and in 2004 I lived in country WA where choice wasn’t exactly thick on the ground.

First I tried to transfer my Naked ADSL2+ with iiNet to the new place. I’m told that the cost is $450 ($300 supposedly because the place is new) and that they can’t tell me whether there’s room at the exchange anyway. If I did apply, I’d find out in 10-20 days (presumably working days) if there was space for me (there’s limited or no space according to a couple of online services). I move next week. Even better: I can’t keep my iiNet VOIP number or my user name….that’s BS, given the number isn’t based on the exchange.

I’m pissed about the $300/ $450, but I’ll cop to it if it means that I’ll definitely have a connection…which they can’t tell me.

So then I start the hunt. Internode, a company that is probably the most loved ISP in Australia at least admitted that if I read online that there are no or limited availability in the exchange (iiNet wouldn’t admit to this…despite me looking at it on the screen) that this means there’s really no ports. They said I could try, but were honest and upfront about the chances. As soon as I get the opportunity in the future, they have my business.

Next stop Netspace. Limited of No availability listed. Didn’t bother ringing.

TPG and Primus: availability, but they won’t connect a Naked plan unless there’s a pre-existing phone connection…which sort of defeats the purpose of not getting a phone connection on a naked ADSL plan.

So now I’m back to square one. It seems that the only safe route at this stage is to get the phone connected with Telstra, get a standard ADSL2+ with someone (god knows who) then eventually churn to a Naked ADSL2+ plan. So much for living a life online without a landline phone.

It proves to me, as Chris Were pointed out on Twitter, that we need an NBN. Fuck the cost, we need it any which way but blue.

It’s complete bullshit that in 2009 I cant get a high speed internet connection put on in less than 2 weeks, or even as the case is so far, in 4 weeks, if it all. And it’s not as though we’re moving to the country, the exchange is Box Hill in Melbourne. Middle Urban Melbourne (although we live a little closer in, just at the end of Zone 1 on transport).

The NBN can’t come fast enough.

News Ltd (the Australian arm of News Corp) has launched The Punch, its much rumored foray into conversational media.

Off the bat there’s a fair bit to like. The site hosts a range of writers and also aggregates content from outside News Ltd properties; that’s a reasonable step forward for a mainstream media owned site in Australia, and in that regard it should be noted as a strong positive (even if we can argue that it’s years late in coming.)

My first impressions yesterday, as they are today is that The Punch is Crikey in a blog format. Editor David Penberthy even recognises Crikey in this bizarre statement on Mumbrella:

And then there?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s Crikey, which operates on the presumption that nothing good has ever come out of mainstream journalism.

Penberthy quite clearly doesn’t read Crikey, or hasn’t for some time, because he’d know that Crikey has become a mouth piece for old media with regular editorials attacking new media, and going to extremes such as suggesting that Google is stealing from newspapers; if anything, Penberthy is less pro-newspaper than Crikey is. But I digress.

My concern, or perhaps what I don’t like about The Punch, is the same thing I don’t like in Crikey in 2009: it appears to be primarily an outlet for views from the rich, famous and/ or well connected. Credit for The Huffington Post is often given due to it providing a similar outlet in the United States, but that analysis ignores the bread and butter in terms of general news reporting and discovery.

But can it work? Penberthy claims that The Punch “fills what we believe is a gap in the market for readers” which is a little bold when there are multiple outlets already for this type of content (be it mostly offline). The better analysis is that The Punch provides much needed competition to Crikey, and better still it’s free competition.

I remember one time I was speaking to Stephen Mayne (Crikey’s founder, no longer with them) and he said to me that he never understood why no one ever set up a site/ service in competition to them. I always considered the problem two fold: establishing the connections Crikey had was difficult to replicate, and the cost of sustaining a competitor at the same scale was prohibitive to most. News Ltd doesn’t face those challenges and hence is placed well in offering much needed competition.

It’s early days for The Punch, and given its near blog/ 2.0 format they’ll probably learn and evolve along the way. I wouldn’t consider it brilliant, but it’s not at all bad either, and it may find a solid future. It will be interesting to see where it is in 6 and 12 months time.

Postscript: This quote from Penberthy comes with epic lulzs:

Our site is clean and simple and easy to use. We have avoided the clutter of sites overseas which have slavishly replicated every section of a general news structure and can leave readers overwhelmed.

So it’s not like the front page of news.com.au then? 🙂

I wrote on Sunday asking what Channel Nine’s role was in the Chk-Chk-Boom Girl scam. Chk-Chk-Boom Girl appeared on A Current Affair (ACA) last night, and you’ve probably never seen a softer interview.

Clare Werbeloff claimed on camera that she saw a camera, and ran up to it, and magically came up with a story about coming out of a tattoo parlor, and seeing a range of “wogs” shooting each other.

The premise was so thin as to be throw up worthy. Seriously: people just run up to cameras and make up an eyewitness statement for a shooting? I respect and understand that our fame obsessed society has changed norms, but there’s putting yourself in front of a camera, and then there’s giving a false account.

Now lets remember: 2 days before the mainstream media exposed the fraud on Sunday, a story surfaced on Mumbrella that pointed to other sites that said that Claire was working for a PR agency. That same PR agency worked at the same address as the PR agent she supposedly took on days after her video went viral. The original post included a photo that might have included Claire in a group PR agency photo. A later post clearly showed a photo of Claire, seemingly in the same location, waving money.

The reason I’m posting this today, and not after ACA yesterday is I’d wished that the ABC’s Media Watch might have picked it up. I’ve only just watched Media Watch now (Tuesday) and they didn’t. Indeed no one has outside of the original it’s a scam, she ran up to the camera spin.

But it’s bollocks.

The next question comes to News Ltd, who took two days to report the scam. Originally I questioned Nine’s role, but after watching the ACA report interview a News Ltd writer, more questions come up. Did News Ltd know about the scam days before? What was the deal with a News Ltd “blogger” being used in the ACA piece?

I have learned, maybe the hard way that the team at News.com.au is mostly smart, reasonable, and dare I say it: people just like us, so I make the suggestion with no prejudice. But the why still remains: they would have known Friday, it’s one thing I can credit the team at News Digital for: they’re very good at picking stuff up. So why Sunday, and more importantly why not the deeper questions.

And that applies to all Australian MSM outlets: why aren’t you asking the deep questions. Why aren’t you digging into her relationships with PR, and that goes for the ABC, and Media Watch as well.

One things for sure: the real story is getting a more “journalistic” treatment in the new media. What say you MSM to that.

What does it say about our country that our best viral video exports are usually bogans? I’ll leave that argument for another day.

If you haven’t seen it yet, this video is so big at the moment that News.com.au has a related story as its current lead (image above)….ironically (well, maybe not) with a Corey Worthington story close at hand 🙂

Turns out though that we may have been had. According to Mumbrella, Clare Werbeloff is working for PR agency The Project, who specialize in youth (or should that be yuuf) marketing. There’s even picture evidence. More here.