Change For Change's Sake

"Change for change’s sake is not a good enough reason"

Why am I not surprised this opinion is held by the editors of the Adelaide Advertiser?

It's exactly this kind of attitude that drives so many people out of the State, and will help keep Adelaide the backwater it is.

It's just so conservative. In everything.

I was chatting to Cut Le Roc on Saturday night and he said he was there the night before and it was "disturbingly quiet in Adelaide". And he's right.

Adelaide is quiet. There's never any people about. In Melbourne and Sydney and even Brisbane there's always people about. There's a vitality that's felt in the city.

Adelaide only experiences this occasionally, at times of the Festival/Fringe and Womad. Not even on New Years Eve is that sense of excitement present anymore.

And it's more than merely a "lack of population" thing.

The future is so exciting and opportunities abound, but when you're living in Adelaide it's like there's a fog and you can't see anything.

When Ratbag closed down I was at loss as what to do. Totally and utterly. I was rejected from both Team Bondi and Pandemic, and if Krome hadn't started I would still probably be on the dole.

I've been in Melbourne two weeks and have seen opportunities in case this job somehow goes sour - opportunities that would work for me in Adelaide but stuff I just didn't see or consider because of Adelaide is so conservative that it suppresses that kind of thinking.

I admit it was also me and my thinking that held me back, but it's more than just that... I've only been living out of the state two weeks, and even though I love the people back there, I honestly can't see myself returning for a while...

The Advertiser Editors have some bloody nerve!

I had to laugh at the editorial entitled “Free people must be allowed a free press” that was on the AdelaideNow website on April 28, 2007.

The gall of the Advertiser editors to claim that they are some kind of bastion of democracy is phenomenal. If they actually think that they need to stop smoking the crack they are obviously are on and come down from their ivory tower and actually participate in the local community, because it's obvious they have an over inflated perception of them selves and their newspaper.

I couldn't help myself - I had to write in:

You claim that “A free media, the freedom of speech and expression of opinion, is the heartland of any democracy”.

The moment News.Corp appropriated all of Adelaide's papers into one was the moment the “press” ceased to resemble anything remotely associated with the word “free”. Murdoch's constant and consistent meddling in political affairs in Australia, the UK and USA stripped his media of any claim to the democratic process. Add to that the Federal Government's recent relaxing of media ownership laws to allow Murdoch more control and your entire diatribe at the government and lawmakers becomes fallacious at best, diabolical at worse.

You claim that parliaments are “the epitome of half-truth and obfuscation” yet in the last few months the Advertiser has shown itself to be more than equal to that task.

You claim that we are “fed a diet of misleading and shrewdly crafted press releases” but who publishes these releases? Who constantly publishes unresearched feeds from PR people and foreign newspapers?

The story about Knut the polar bear still has not been corrected in ANY news corporation publications, although the ABC's mediawatch showed that elements of the story were completely false and the animal rights activists involved now fear for their life because you “copy and pasted” the article from AP's news feed.

Examples of this sloppy journalism on corrections has increased phenomenally in recent years and yet your responses to such places as mediawatch when queried on it are unapologetic in most cases, and downright rude in others.

I have a challenge for you – you research and report the truth properly according to the MEAA's code of ethics, and when you do screw up the truth of the story you print a prominently positioned apology, and we, the public, will help to fight to stop your freedoms being eroded.

But until that time to ask that we support you would be laughable if it wasn't such a disturbing and disingenuous use of the Advertiser's editorial.

How real are the commentators?

I was thinking about something whilst looking at Andrew Bolts blog today - How many of those people are REAL people with real desire to know more and debate the issues Bolt puts forth, and how many are news corp stooges and cronies?

Likewise with the AdelaideNOW blog, which is full of praise for the new layout?

I don't like the new page because the stories are different from the Advertiser, meaning if I want to read the front page I have to go buy the paper, which I refuse to do. I'm not paying for one or maybe two stories. Also, you used to be able to read the paper and stories from up to a week previously, but I can no longer find that functionality on the website.

Sure, I can go online and read other sites, but when Adelaide only has one news source, it kind of makes it a little hard to find stuff about us from an Adelaide perspective. But that's besides the point.

Anyway, on Sunday there was a story by Amanda Blair, an ex Adelaide radio jock, about how DJs and radio hosts are aware that most callers to the station are fake.

And it got me thinking... how do we know these blog commentators aren't fake?

The posts are moderated anonymously, and there's nothing to tie people to their posts like other sites like Kotaku or even a web forum.

I added a comment to the AdelaideNow website, and hopefully Rod, the editor, can answer...

Hey Rod,

Just like to get your opinion on something...

Given that the fake radio caller thing has been blown wide open by the Sunday Mail (well, for those listeners too stupid to realise the truth beforehand anyway), I'd like to know what guarantees do we have that people responding to these blogs aren't just newspaper people posing as 'concerned readers'.

Because the posts are moderated before we see them, I feel that this is very open to abuse, much like the Radio calls.

Surely a registered user database would be better than anonymous posting coupled with anonymous moderating.

Adelaide Now Sucks Even More

Can Adelaide's newspaper get any worse?

Top story on "Adelaide Now", the web portal for our newspaper, The Advertiser, is Top tipster admits it's all for Show, the story of six year old Henry Stevens being the top of not his class, not his sport, but of the footy tips.

The fucking footy tips!!!

He's a headline for you. FOOTY TIPS ARE BULLSHIT!

Sorry to burst little Henry's bubble, but there is absolutely no skill involved in being on top.

How do I know this? How can I make such a bold claim?

Because in both my footy tipping competitions I'm (on or near) top and I THOROUGHLY DISLIKE footy! Click HERE to see the ladder if you don't believe me...

I don't watch it. I don't follow it. I don't support a team. I don't know any players' names and every week I have to try and remember which team is on top and what colours they are.

I'm all for feel good stories, but come on Advertiser... there's so much else which is newsworthy in this state that the story of a six year old kid who wins footy tips should NEVER be the leading story.