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.

On Nick Hodge’s excellent video podcast last night, noted futurist Mark Pesce said (and I quote) that I should “shut the fuck up.”

He’s entitled to his views, but it’s what he said around it that I take offense at (and the reason I’m writing this post), in particular the idea that I ignore the excellent work done by a range of Australian startups when I don’t. I’ve never met Mark, let alone swapped an email with him, so I find his claims bizarre to say the least given he had never read my views (outside of one post), nor asked me about them. Australia has a vibrant startup community, full of people who are succeeding despite the lack of support (specifically a vibrant VC community that invests in web based startups.) Not only have I had the privilege of meeting many fine people in the community, I’ve also written about them.

I do find it odd though that a futurist who earlier in the interview spoke about reading so extensively doesn’t understand the meaning of context as well.

This post was in the context of the Future Summit, an event that was suppose to be a show case of Australia’s biggest and brightest leaders. If we accept that underlying premise of it representing the best, tech doesn’t have a bright future in this country because they don’t get it. Conversations I had the day after that post horrified me even more and confirmed what I had written. Tech, and particularly web based startups just aren’t on the radar for these people. The idea that millions are employed directly and indirectly in web based industries in the United States is foreign to them. I can’t help that they don’t get it, but stating that they don’t is stating fact.

That is in no way to say that Australian startups don’t exist today, or more will emerge tomorrow: they will because of bright people like Mick Liubinskas at Pollenizer (a company I should note that builds projects for other startups), but likewise given what I heard, the Australian web startup industry will remain at its current low and slow rate (again, we have startups, but we’re not even close to a range of other comparable countries by volume.)

But Pesce wasn’t there. A few smart people in the room (and there was some) doesn’t balance the sheer weight of tech ignorance from the rest.

Pesce also claims incorrectly that I’m some how a big Government interventionist, again having never once spoken to me. Quite the contrary, and this can be confirmed by many others (including Bronwen Clune who heard me speak on this over lunch at the Summit), or in the submission I made yesterday to Elias Bizannes who is compiling submissions for the Government on the question “what do we need to tell Australia’s Government to build our tech industry?”

Indeed Pesce and I agree: Government should get out of the way, and direct Government support isn’t necessarily the answer either.

But here’s the part Pesce either doesn’t understand, or is ignoring: we don’t have a level playing field, and this is holding us back. Here’s part of what I wrote in my submission:

The Government needs to level the playing field when it comes to investment within the various sectors of ICT, and with investment opportunities outside the sector. That can come in two forms: removal of investment incentives in sectors that currently receive it, or the extension of investment incentives to those that currently miss out, specifically web focused companies. For example, there are tax incentives offered currently in areas such as Biotech and Blue Gum trees, but not in web based industries (tax credits, R+D etc). The problem today is simple: those with money to invest favor those investments that offer tax incentives over investments that don’t.

Then there’s the CGT problem vs the United States

The Government should consider reviewing CGT, in particular with consideration to CGT deferment on rollover where the capital gain is reinvested in ICT, and more specifically web based industries. This has been cited in the United States as being one of the big drivers behind the VC industry there (I can provide references later if required.)

Government does have a role here, and that’s in creating a favorable environment for investment in web based startups. Even if you hate Government intervention like Pesce does, you can’t ignore the role of Government in the United Sates in creating a favorable investment environment that has fueled the growth of web startups, particularly in the San Francisco Bay region.

The alternative of course is Government intervention and spending. It’s not my preferred outcome, but it is a point strongly argued by others. If CGT and incentive reforms can’t be undertaken to create a favorable investment environment, only then do I become a supporter of direct Government intervention. Consider that millions, billions have been spent on legacy industries such as clothing and car making. If only a small amount of that money was allocated to supporting local web industries, it has to help.

I’ll guess I’ll shut the fuck up now, because I don’t know what I’m talking about. PS: we were up one spot on the Top 100 Australian Web Startups yesterday.