Let’s destroy the joint

Alan Jones must have been worried that Grahame Morris was going to get the top Ernie Award this year, because why else would he say – in response to Julia Gillard announcing aid to the Pacific to raise the status of women to help end domestic violence – that women in politics are “DESTROYING THE JOINT”? It’s purely about missing out on the Gold Ernie, and nothing to do with the two-year tanty that he and Tony Abbott have been having because they didn’t win the election. How embarrassing for them.

He’s got a point, though. These uppity women, you let them go to school and then they get involved in politics and then they don’t want to be hit and it’s POLITICAL CORRECTNESS GONE MAD and what’s a bloke to do? Sheesh.

Jones then repeated his suggestion that women in positions of power should be drowned: “There’s no chaff bag big enough for these people”. (By the way, he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia for his sports and charity work for children and young people. Does he know that Youth off the Streets and the Starlight Foundation help girl children as well as boy children? Has someone told him that girl children grow up to be These People?)

Thanks to Jane Caro, the hashtags #destroythejoint and #destroyingthejoint were all over twitter on the weekend. Instead of insulting the man who seems a little too comfortable with violence against women – in April he said that trying to stab your ex-girlfriend to death is just “Shakespearean“, plus, you know, saying that women should be drowned – everyone just took the piss out of his statement.

Check out these great posts:

Jill Tomlinson’s Destroy the Joint:

Some Tweeps expressed concern that the attention was feeding Alan Jones’ desire for publicity. I understand their concerns, but #destroythejoint was about laughing at Alan’s misogyny, showing solidarity through ridiculing the suggestion that women were out to #destroythejoint. It was an opportunity to respond for every woman who has received a put down comment that irrelevantly cites her gender.

Wendy Tuohy’s Witty Twitter women ‘destroy the joint’:

In the last 24 hours, women tweeters and their many male supporters have redeemed Twitter as a place where you can make a powerful political point without getting vicious or violently abusive.

It’s been such a deft but peaceful takedown, it’s enough to make you proud.

And Feminism and the power of social media at Crooked Fences:

Words that were meant to degrade and undermine women instead became a clarion call to action. The women of twitter became keyboard warriors of the best sort, using social media to mock (and dare I say it, destroy) one of the most arrogant and politically powerful voices of MSM.

If “destroying the joint” means laughing at one-trick-ponies like Alan Jones and ending the gender pay gap and ending gender discrimination in the workplace and in sport and ending violence against women, then I say FUCK YEAH GIVE ME LASERS!

Don’t we have more important things to do?

I had a great chat with a bunch of journos and academics on Friday about whether or not journalists are allowed private thoughts/lives/expression outside of work hours.

What started it is the story about Matt Nicholls, the Glen Innes Examiner editor who was stood down for posting a comment on his personal Facebook page saying the death of Constable Bill Crews – originally from Glen Innes – would boost circulation of his paper.

Is that fair? Dumb, yes. Offensive, yes. But reason to be stood down? In my opinion, no. (This is a good time to point to my About page, which clearly states that this is my personal blog and does not reflect the views of any organisation I work for, have worked for, or may work for in the future.)

How did we end up in this place where your employer can punish you at work for something you do or say in your private life? Things that are perfectly legal. This is not a criticism of any particular media company – it is simply an observation of boundaries and the public reach of private comments. Some organisations are so fearful of what might be said in social media spaces that they have policies that punish you for embarrassing yourself online. That is ridiculous. And it means that anyone with a job can’t use social media for anything other than being bland. Sure, everyone has a bad day at work, but is writing ‘Work was completely boring today’ on your personal Facebook page really that embarrassing for your employer?

Journalists naturally want to talk and talk and talk about our work – the stories we write, the stories our colleagues write, the people we interview, the companies we work for. It’s part of how we improve our reporting and writing, get contacts for new stories, and work out where we want our careers to go. When we talk about what we think our employers should be doing to survive paid content, does that mean that these companies can get shirty with us at work because we’re implying, by talking about what they should be doing, that we think they’re not doing it right?

Matt Nicholls wasn’t stood down because he said something stupid in a private conversation in a public place. He was stood down because he said something stupid in a private conversation in a public place and someone dobbed on him.

Yes, putting things online is the same as saying them in public, but I think we’re evolved enough as a society to be able to have a nuanced understanding of public and private places. A personal Facebook page is a private place – even if it’s not locked – because it’s no different to having a quiet D&M with a friend in a cafe. Or having a barney with your partner in the street. Sure, it’s in public, but you’re clearly having a private conversation. Ah, but journos don’t really care about privacy – that’s why we all right-clicked those party photos on Stephanie Rice’s Facebook page and turned them into a story and showed our age (and our pretend-outrage) by calling them raunchy.

Remember the Andrew O’Keefe “scandal” a few years ago? A TV host stumbling in the street after too many drinks was a Big News Story. Why? Is it because he was enjoying some alcohol in his own time? Alcohol is legal, so he wasn’t breaking the law. It it because we’re all so pure that we’ve never seen/been a drunk person before? Or is it simply because he’s a celebrity doing something? In which case, why don’t we run stories about celebrities breathing, because that’s them also doing something? Oh, right, it’s because we can’t pretend we’re outraged by it.

The thing with this faux-outrage is that we use the language of outrage for things that aren’t outrageous. We write, “This person slammed that person today for their policy announcement”, when this person simply disagreed with that person. If someone from one political party disagreeing with someone from another political party is so outrageous that we have to use the word “slammed”, then what word can we use when someone is really pissed off? Our readers know we make things more dramatic than they really are, yet we continue to act like we’re smarter than them. I don’t even think it’s about writing for each other, rather than writing for our audience – I think we’re so used to using journalese that we’ve long since stopped thinking about what the words mean.

There’s nothing wrong with the media covering genuine outrage, as long as it’s productive in some way. Pointing and saying, “look at this thing, it’s outrageous and we’re outraged on your behalf” is not productive. Our audience should come away with an understanding of why the issue is causing outrage, rather than just “oh, it’s political correctness gone mad”. If that’s all we give people then we’ve failed because we’re not giving our audience the information to make decisions about, and understand, current events. And if that’s not the purpose of news reporting, then what is? In all the coverage about the blackface skit on Hey Hey It’s Saturday, did anyone learn from the media why it was offensive? Or did we find that out because we went off and Googled it ourselves?

What we seem to have forgotten is that we need people to want us. If our audience loses any more interest in what we do, we’re all screwed. Sure, the managers at the top can take their management skills and work in any industry, but what about the journos? We’re the ones who produce the content that people pay for, and we’re the ones who will suffer most when we finally drive our audience away. And the more rubbish we give them, the more we’re screwing ourselves out of a future.

News fail

Check out the main image at news.com.au:

The text under the image says: “TV personality and model Tila Tequila has asked for privacy after repeatedly Tweeting about the death of her 30-year-old fiancee, Johnson & Johnson heiress Casey Johnson”

Vaguely famous woman asks for privacy over lover’s death. Lesbians! Twitter! Heiress! Death! Wow, this story has everything. Including some nasty comments being published by the moderator. I’d hate to see the ones that weren’t published.

Why do I think this story is a news fail? Because it’s nasty. Tila Tequila isn’t well known in Australia. Maybe her show was on pay tv here, who knows. But the only reason this story was used as a main pic is because it has Lesbians! Twitter! Heiress! Death! And because readers would say nasty things about her.

Should I tweet my nipples?

After a day and a half at the Media140 conference (which was criticised by some of the audience for being too focussed on Twitter, rather than other forms of social media like, um, Facebook, and um, stuff), I’m yet to be convinced about Twitter. I can see the benefits, but just don’t know if it’s something I want to do. I might have to give it a crack though. As Chloe Walker pointed out on my previous post, the only way to “get” it is to use it for a while.

Anyway, here’s what happened:

The ABC’s MD Mark Scott put up a little diagram of three circles representing narcissism, ADHD and stalking, and Twitter is where they meet in the middle.

There will be 25 million people on Twitter by the end of this year. That’s just a few weeks away. The aim is for one billion by 2013. I probably need to be part of that. Hmm, not sure if I like where this is going.

Malcolm Turnbull has someone else do most of his tweeting and doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with that. You guys know I don’t say mean things online about other people (except when I called Kyle Sandilands an arsehat. There, look, I did it again), but Turnbull is so arrogant. He even started with a joke about bloggers and tweeters being baseball-hatted fatties beavering away on the internet in their parents’ garage. Am surprised it didn’t get more of a reaction.

Still on Turnbull, and he rarely answered a question. He just waffled on until you were so bored you forgot what was asked. The funniest bit was when he said he does use his Blackberry in the House, and pointed with both hands to his crotch. Ha ha, he’s got a blackberry. Gross. Can’t believe I gave myself that mental picture.

Mike Van Niekerk, online editor in chief at Fairfax, quoted the head of the BBC, saying that Twitter is highly overrated at this point in time, but underrated in the long term.

Robyn Williams from Radio National said Twitter was karaoke journalism.

Caroline Overington was the only News Ltd journo involved and she just talked about how Fairfax is about to keel over. Julie Posetti said the News Ltd absence wasn’t for lack of trying, but I suspect it’s more about snobbery.

Annabel Crabb is awesome.

Chris Warren from the MEAA said we’re fundamentally damaging the brand of journalism at a time when journalism can least afford it.

Valerio Veo, head of online news and current affairs at SBS, said one platform ponies will become redundant. Uh oh.

The stench of cat poo keeps wafting in my window. I’ve looked, but can’t find it. Just another reason to dislike cats. (Crap, that sounds like a tweet.) That didn’t happen at the conference. That’s happening now.

I think some of my reluctance about Twitter is that I like being low-fi. And do I want to be a brand?

What’s so bad about being old school?

I’m off to the Media140 conference tomorrow and Friday to see if the experts can convince me to be on Facebook and Twitter. Showpony thinks I’m mad not to be using these tools, but I just don’t feel like they’re ‘me’. I don’t own ‘i’ things.

Let me explain. Eight or nine years ago, my boyfriend (who’s now my dickhead ex for more reasons than just this one) used to give me shit because I was still using my old tape walkman that I bought in year 6 (1988 if you want to know). It was held together by a rubber band, but worked fine. And it meant I could create my own mix tapes. Anyway, one Christmas he got really excited, saying his present would take me from being old school to being new school. Guess what it was? A fucking electric toothbrush. He’s lucky he didn’t get a toothbrush enema.

When I started this blog in March, I joked with the awesome tech editor at work that I’ve become a late nineties girl. I’m always being told by other journos that I should be tweeting my blog posts. I think that’s kinda rude. What do you guys think? Is Twitter worth it, or is it just journos plugging their stuff to other journos in the hope that they’ll seem relevant?

The banned list

Listeners are calling in to James Valentine’s show on 702 about conversations they never want to have again: what school do your kids go to; did you have IVF; I had a funny dream last night…

Here are some journo things I never want to read/hear again:

Love rat – why use two words when you can use one: cheater;

Seemingly endless – it only seems that way because you’re too dull to think of something better to say;

And finish with a slick of your favourite colour – it’s up there with “I’m loving this right now”;

Journos who include themselves in celebrity interviews, particularly with the pointless “I am waiting in the lobby…” – you are not, and will never be, Hunter S Thompson, and from the simple fact that you are quoting the celebrity in the article, I’ve figured out that you were there. I’m quite bright like that;

Quick, write a news story on this Twitter feed – Twitter is not a reputable news source.

The ethics of Twitter

Here’s a question: When you’re out with a friend and they post Twitter updates during the conversation, apart from being rude, is it a violation of privacy? Is it any worse than repeating the conversation to other people later?

I may be the only journo not on Twitter because I think it’s a load of wank. People talking about their Twitter posts bores me almost as much as hearing about their iPhone apps. And when journos write opinion pieces about how they’re addicted to Twitter – six months after it became popular – it reeks of lame. Yawn.

Anyway, when do social media rules evolve and are they based on the real world?