duncanriley.com

Blog

  • John Hartigan, your shipment of fail has arrived

    skitched-20090806-104912.jpg

    John Hartigan, CEO of News Ltd in a speech July 1 talking about the decline of newspapers

    I mean, at its most basic, it?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s just bad reporting. There?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s almost no evidence.
    For starters, newspaper ad revenue in Australia has been growing ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äú not declining over the past 5 years as it has in the US and the UK.
    Even in the past year, the decline in ad revenue in Australia is a fraction of what?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s been happening overseas.

    ABC’s AM this morning (August 6)

    Now this slump in profits comes mainly because of plunging revenue, particularly in the newspaper industry. Rupert Murdoch says his papers in Australia have endured a 30 per cent slump in classified ads and a 12 per cent drop in display ads in the fourth quarter, and that’s thanks mainly to a drop-off in car and real estate and employment advertisements, Tony.

    Take away question: did Hartigan deceive the market July 1? That’s a fairly significant fall, perhaps not as hard as the US, but likewise you couldn’t describe it fairly as a fraction either.

  • If you’re going to give 16 year olds the vote, why not take it further

    WTF: Push to give 16-year-olds the vote in federal elections/ The Oz

    The idea clearly reeks of Rudd looking for extra votes for the ALP given that under 18’s would be more likely to vote in that direction. But having said that I’m not dead against the idea: “young” people should have a say to some degree.

    But if we’re going to give 16 year olds the right to vote, why not take it further. Reduce the legal age for alcohol and tobacco to 16 (note that it’s not that long ago that the legal smoking age was 16.) Why not give 16 year olds the right to obtain a full drivers license as well?

    If we’re not, why offer the right to vote. If you’re not old enough to legally take responsibility of a car or old enough to buy alcohol, why would you be old enough to vote? Voting is an adult responsibility that doesn’t exist in a vacuum: as a society we’ve decided that 18 is the magic “adult” number for many things. It would only be fair then that if we were to redefine that age to 16 for voting, we should do it with the others as well.

  • Personally, I’d blame the parents

    Fourth Geelong student commits suicide: News.com.au

    Suicide is a terrible business, but it’s not helped by quoting mentally deficient adults in newspapers either.

    The opening paragraph…and the sub-headline used on the front page of news.com.au reads

    A GRIEVING mother has blamed the internet for the death of her 14-year-old daughter.

    Yes, the internet KILLED her daughter! It reached out and grabbed her, causing her to kill herself…or something like that. But wait…

    I want to tell people to keep their kids off the rotten internet, it?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s a horrible place,?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ she told the Geelong Advertiser.

    ?¢‚Ǩ?ìI can guarantee you that if she didn?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t go on the internet on Friday night she?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢d still be alive today.”

    Yes, the internet is to blame clearly. But here’s where we pull out some more details. You see, we’re actually talking about a case of school bullying, backed up with cyberbullying (despite what the article says, the two are rarely not linked.) As for the person who was bullying her child? We’ll clearly she’s not to blame…

    ?¢‚Ǩ?ìI don?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t blame the girl either, these are just kids throwing comments at each other for God?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s sake, but she (Chanelle) obviously could not see past what was going to be done to her,” she said.

    Yes, you see it wasn’t the bullying that caused the suicide….it was the internet! And it wasn’t related to this…no….

    She said Chanelle was having trouble with some friends from school, but it was a minor issue that had not changed her mood at all.

    Now remember how she was having a minor issue at school?

    ?¢‚Ǩ?ìWhen you?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢re 14 years old, who knows, if you don?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t think you?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ve got any friends ?¢‚Ǩ¬¶ maybe that?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s not worth living and obviously it wasn?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t for her

    .”

    So lets get this straight: the child was being severely bullied at school, the mother considers it a minor issue, ignores it, the child kills herself, and the mother blames the internet and not the child or children that drove her daughter to commit suicide to begin with.

    You know if I had a parent that dumb I might consider ending it all as well. It’s also cheap fodder for News Ltd to be publishing that does nothing to help in the fight against teen suicide…indeed publishing this crap actually causes more damage by perpetrating bullshit reasoning for teen suicide while all but ignoring the real reason behind the loss of this girl.

  • Tips for blog applicants round 2

    I’ve started shortlist candidates for our Associate Blogging positions tonight and I felt it might be time for a follow up to this post back in May.

    – When the ad includes the line “The email should absolutely under NO circumstances come with an attachment. If you don?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t have examples of your writing online, upload it somewhere and include the link” I’m not trying to pull your leg or take the piss: this is meant quite literally in every sense of the word. Over a dozen of the nearly 300 applications had attachments.

    – I am neither a Sir or Madam. See the previous post there. I understand that old habits in regard to formality die hard, but I’m most definitely not a madam, and I’d struggle at times to count as being worth of Sir as well 🙂

    – Saying you’re a fan on The Inquisitr and failing to spell Inquisitr right in the first line of your application means I didn’t read on any further.

    – While I find it impressive that you may choose to attempt to impress me by writing a 1000 word application that highlights your ability to write, not getting to the point until the final paragraph or two isn’t a sound strategy…particularly when I never read the full email because it was too long

    – “The email should include why you want one of these positions and why we should consider you. This is an opportunity to sell your skills and personality” is also meant literally. Saying you want the position and not explaining why we should consider you isn’t a great strategy.

    Here’s the fun takeaway: I’ve only shortlisted for one position so far…so there’s a pile more to read.

  • Internode speed test

    The interwebs were connected last night (Wednesday) exactly two days after I finally managed to place an order with Internode to get it connected over a Telstra landline (no Naked ADSL for me 🙁 ). They said 5-10 days, so I’m doubly impressed, although it helps a lot that the connection is a Telstra resale connection, because we know Telstra is always quick with their own product.

    I’m on a 40gb plan at $109.95 a month, not cheap, (the Telstra resale plans are more expensive) although notably Internode doesn’t count uploads….which is mighty fine. The speed isn’t half bad on the ADSL2+ connection either.

  • Quest to 100

    June 22 was a blip, but Technorati has sorted it out ever since, at least we’ve been steady for over a week. Quest to 100.

    The Inquisitr: Blog Reactions on Technorati

  • Changes at The Inquisitr

    The good news before we start is that hopefully the worst of the US recession is over for us ad wise on the site. We’re still not doing anywhere near the fill or CPM rates we were getting in the last quarter of last year, but through a combination of improved traffic, improvements from our main ad provider, and a strong secondary set of ad providers we’ve leveled out a bit. Still no Caribbean holiday for me, but likewise I’m not having a heart attack at the end of each month (no, that comes when I try to pull money out and find the AUD has gone from 60c to 80c USD 🙂 )

    We’ve floated in the 2-3m page view range now since earlier in the year, and although we were down slightly in June (2.55m from 2.7 May) we’re comfortable now…which means it’s time to push to the next level.

    New writer

    We’ve expanded our writing team to 4 (5 if you include me) with the addition of Paul Montgomery as our first dedicated sports writer.

    Australian readers will know Monty through his previous startup Tinfinger and his leading Australian Rules Football site FanFooty. Paul is a journalist by trade, but I ignored that when I offered him the spot 🙂

    Paul will be covering the full gauntlet of international sport with a touch of Australian sport (cricket specifically.)

    Sport feed/ category

    With Paul on board we’ve broken out sport into its own stand alone category + feed. If you’re subscribed to the News + Sport feed you’ll no longer see sport stories. The Media feed is still available if you’re subscribed, but media has been rolled into news.

    Sport page here.
    Sport feed here.

    Celebrity Syndication

    We’ve signed a deal with London based celebrity content provider BANG showbiz. Under the deal, we’ll be running up to 10 of their items a day (usually less, but that’s our cap). This will primarily come on top of our existing coverage. The initial deal is for three months with a review at the end. Sort of AP for celeb stories if you like. We’ve never tried syndicated content before, but you never know if you don’t try…or something like that. Because the content comes out of London, you’ll see most of it late night/ early morning US time, or occasionally late afternoon (ie, my morning.)

    Picture provider

    We’ve also signed up with GumGum, an ad support licensed celebrity picture service. GumGum provides images to b5media and a range of leading celebrity sites so we thought we’d give them a go. I can’t see us using them on every post, but certainly the next time we cover a big opening or similar we’ll have a ready supply of pictures to include in each post, where as today we are mostly limited to single pictures due to copyright law.

  • Here’s The Punch on numbers

    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.

    punchthis

    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 🙂

  • How to get a new home connected to ADSL 2 in Australia without a 1 month+ wait

    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.

  • Wanted: Opposition leader, apply to the Liberal Party

    News.com.au: Malcolm Turnbull’s political career has been smashed in just one week, and senior Liberals believe there could be moves within the party to remove him as Opposition Leader within days or weeks.

    It takes an awful lot of specialness to completely fuck up Utegate, and yet Malcolm Turnbull has. Instead of Rudd and Co being on the ropes, it looks like Turnbull is history now. The alternatives to Turnbull aren’t clear, but Hockey looks like he’s the short price favorite.

    Welcome to the thousand year Rudd Reich.

    It’s actually a little sad to see Turnbull go. His complete cock-up of Utegate aside, here’s a man who could have made a great Prime Minister. I was never a fan in the past (particularly when he headed ARM) but there’s no doubt that he understands money and unlike the current mob may have been able to balance the national books.

    Hockey on the other hand…. well, I guess the positive there in a political sense is that he’s a lot like Rudd so he’ll be a small target, but that’s not enough to win elections.

    I might have voted for Turnbull at the next election, but I won’t be voting for Hockey, but I can also remember him well from his younger days, and he’s representative of what was, and still is wrong with the Liberal Party.

    With no effective opposition going into the next election, how the hell do we stop internet censorship now?