duncanriley.com

Category: General

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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?

  • What was Channel Nine’s role in the Chk-Chk-Boom scam?

    Days after Clare “chk-chk boom” Werbeloff was exposed as a fraud online, the Australian newspapers have finally caught up.

    According to reports, “she has also signed a contract with Channel Nine’s A Current Affair and is likely to appear tomorrow night” and that she wouldn’t be speaking to any other media outlet.

    That would be the same Channel Nine that published her false account to begin with.

    Here’s the things I can’t work out. The video on YouTube was placed. Nine doesn’t have an official YouTube account, at least that I can see, and the account holding the video thanks two other people for giving them the video…oh, and it links to Ninemsn. Note the no YouTube account isn’t surprising, Nine, through its relationship with Microsoft publishes things directly on NineMSN through the MSN video hosting platform.

    Next: Nine probably could have pulled the video on copyright grounds: they didn’t. They could have driven traffic to the official video on NineMSN….they didn’t.

    Last: if Claire wasn’t a witness (and wasn’t originally at the location when the shooting took place) how did she end up being interviewed to begin with? Nine interviewed other people, surely the odd witness statement from Claire would have been a give away that something was amiss (and remember, there was no “skinny wog,” the guy shot was built like a brick shithouse.)

    So the question then becomes: was Nine in on this from the beginning? And if so, why?

    Are we going to end up with some sort of story about how social media can’t be trusted perhaps?

    One thing is for sure: we won’t get the full story on ACA Monday. What we’ll get it more lies and more spin, after all this whole thing started at a PR agency.

    Update: I should add on the YouTube account, there was nothing untoward about it…but that’s the problem. The placement is too random…it’s too out of place. It’s the sort of account I’d pick if I wanted to go under the radar on questions, but likewise an account that wouldn’t have found the clip by itself.

  • Where’s the NBN Debt Provision in the Budget?

    As I noted last night, besides some small related investments, there was no additional funding allocated to the NBN in the 09/10 budget, leaving a $38.3b short fall.

    The Government has previously said that the NBN would raise money via infrastructure bonds, but wouldn’t these bonds count as debt?

    The on the books catch is that they may not need to appear in the budget, because the bonds will be raised by the NBN corporation; not dissimilar to Telstra debt when it was still majority Government owned (NBN will be min 51% Government owned.)

    But here’s the part that’s got me stumped: the form of the bonds.

    From a previous Government statement:
    ?¢‚Ǩ?ìThe network will be funded from Aussie Infrastructure Bonds while private sector investment in the new company will be capped at 49%”

    The implication here is that those bonds are Government backed. If they are issued by the company, with the Australian Government backing them, the Government in effect acts as a guarantor for the bonds. The last time I looked a guarantee of debt is counted as a liability until such time the debt is cleared.

    If they’re not guaranteed by the Government, the use of the Aussie Infrastructure Bonds name is erroneous, but more importantly the cost of raising the money will increase relative to the security offered being less, which will further drive up the cost of the NBN.

  • Waterboarding

    Lets take away the arguments for and against the use of torture by the US Government as a legitimate tool in the fight against terrorists, and lets consider the effectiveness of the favored method of “waterboarding.”

    The argument for waterboarding is that it’s an effective way of breaking prisoners, and gaining vital intelligence information.

    And yet

    “CIA interrogators used waterboarding at least 266 times on Zubaydah and Mohammed.”

    If it’s so effective, why do you need to use in 266 times? Surely if it is effective, a couple of times, maybe a dozen max, but 266 times?

    Where’s the real case that waterboarding works?

    I can’t remember where I read it, but it was a fair point: the Allies sent Japanese to the gallows for using the same techniques during World War 2. What does it say about the United States that what was once condemned, is now passed off as acceptable.

  • Qantas Fail

    SMH: Save Qantas from unfair practices, unions urge

    QANTAS needs saving from “unfair competition” from foreign government-backed airlines to protect Australian jobs, the ACTU will argue today when it meets the airline over its decision last week to axe up to 1750 jobs.

    Yes, but who saves us from Qantas extortion on routes without enough competition?

    Or are the Union’s really suggesting that the Qantas, who given they’re suppose to be going into the red at the moment because they couldn’t organize an orgy in a brothel efficiently, should be allowed to charge more? That ordinary Australian’s, including union members, should pay more for their airfares?

    Interesting tactic from the Union movement: argue that people should pay more when many Qantas routes are already excessively expensive.

    Here’s the one thing that is a worry: if Qantas is as badly off as it seemingly might be, will the Government be bailing them out? Too big to fail?

    More importantly: how could Qantas, who has long price gouged on routes like the Pacific, have managed to get into this mess in the first place? What, a cosy duopoly domestically isn’t enough for them?

  • Wnning line: “I’d trust Mr Bolton like I’d trust a rabbit with a lettuce leaf.”

    I still don’t know what this bloke is playing at: I mean seriously, all the media attention and sucking in investors only to sell out at the 11th hour, but I love this line in response

    The Age: Stunned investors vent fury at chairman

    “He’s not going to get (the $4.5 million), I can promise you that,” Mr Byrnes said. “He’s just ruined his corporate life forever ?¢‚Ǩ¬¶ I’d trust Mr Bolton like I’d trust a rabbit with a lettuce leaf.”

  • Blue Moon: NBN waited for you….

    Oz: Telstra open to break-up

    TELSTRA will consider a voluntary separation of its wholesale and retail arms as well as the sale of some assets to the federal Government’s proposed $43 billion broadband network in a spectacular about-face that effectively dumps the aggressive four-year strategy championed by chairman Donald McGauchie and chief executive Sol Trujillo.

    The radically different and more conciliatory approach is part of an attempt to ward off the threat of much greater government intervention in Telstra’s business. The company’s board has set up a special committee of directors and executives to come up with a new approach and to negotiate with the Government.

    Even if the economics still don’t add up for the NBN, breaking Telstra up would be a massive win for the Government, and an even bigger win for consumers.

    Now if only we could do something about censorship 🙂

  • NBN as a TV killer? Unlikely

    Mark Day in the OZ (via Mumbrella)

    IF we look through the increasingly clouded questions surrounding the Rudd Government?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s plans for a fibre-to-the-home high-speed broadband network, how it will be designed, who will build it, who will own it and what it will cost end users, one thing is crystal clear: this is a game-changer for media.

    The $43 billion plan is a television killer. When it is built it will consign the Packer era of TV to the dustbin of history. Our future TV menu depends on new technologies and new paradigms.

    It’s a nice theory. Will the internet kill TV? Yes, I believe it will, as I’ve argued time and time again. But will the NBN kill television?

    No.

    The problem isn’t one of lack of demand. You only have to look at the exceptionally high level of BitTorrent usage in Australia to know that Australians love their internet TV.

    The problem is one of legal rights, and access to that content on a television set.

    There’s no Hulu in Australia, and even Hulu in the US is trying its best to stay off of television sets. We have a mix of content now online from FTA providers, but it’s hit and miss, and not anywhere near consistent.

    Lets say we’re 5 years behind the US (that we are behind is a given, but we can argue on the time frame): does Day really believe that the NBN is going to overcome issues not yet overcome in the United States?

    The real problem comes down to rights distribution models. TV stations here pay a lot of money for rights to US content. The only way a NBC or CBS is going to offer their content directly online to Australians over the NBN to a large screen TV is when doing so delivers a higher return then selling the rights to a local TV stations.

    As much as I wish to believe this will happen soon (and it will happen eventually), that’s not a short term proposition in Australia. NBN doesn’t change that at all.

    Also consider that Australian uptake of pay-tv (cable) is far lower than most comparable markets. Australian’s aren’t all that keen in paying big dollars for content. That complicates the consideration more.

    I mentioned in an earlier post that bundling may be the saving grace for the NBN: in that context, it’s not Day’s suggestion of internet TV (although it may be delivered via Internet protocols) but Cable over the NBN. That could work, well…depending on the cost.