ideas: on media

Punch no knockout for journalism

The Punch – News Limited’s brave foray into stand-alone online publications – will “celebrate journalism”, according to its mouthpiece David Penberthy. News tsar John Hartigan calls it “an investment in journalism at a time when everyone else is scaling back”.

And it does all this, remarkably, without actually doing any journalism itself. An extraordinary feat, it must be said.

Well, thanks for the invite, but I don’t feel the sense of celebration. Only another missed opportunity by a major media company that just doesn’t get it.

The Punch is “Australia’s best conversation”. It is “for every Australian with a passion for debate”, featuring “some of the nation’s best writers and biggest names” ranting on about “current events in politics, entertainment, sport, business and more”. Penberthy – former chief muck-raker with The Daily Telegragh; an all-Aussie, self-claimed man of the “punters” – calls it “a place for spirited, sleeves-up, energetic, engaging commentary, written by people who enjoy writing, for people who enjoy reading”.

Terrific. Its aim of egalitarian engagement on social and political debate is worthy. It’s not a particularly novel concept, despite its claims, but the more the merrier. Its mix of writers is a fairly intriguing list of The Usual Suspects along with some new names and, hopefully, some new ideas. It’s a clean and effective blog-style website mercifully free of News Limited’s cross-promotional clutter. It should succeed, with enough push from News and its many titles and properties, though it’s hard to see it being wildly successful given the content matter.

But let’s just focus a little on what The Punch is not.

It’s not, Penberthy proudly states in his welcome, a “fancy, la-di-dah site aimed at people with three university degrees”. No, because you wouldn’t want expert, educated people participating in the debate… (I’ll leave how much that sort of anti-intellectual, typically News Limited neanderthal attitude riles me for another post.)

It’s also, most importantly, not a place for reporting the news. Certainly not for investigating reporting. That’s fine; News has plenty of newsrooms (with dwindling numbers of journalists, mind you) to do that. But as an “investment in journalism” it is a dismal failure. As a clue as to how big media – and the thousands of journalists they employ – will operate in a new media world it is futile.

The Punch is a blog – immediately the country’s most well-resourced, well-marketed blog, perhaps, but still just a blog. Opinion is not journalism. And the distinction is important not just in definition. The really crucial reasons why journalism must survive into the future are not served by blogging.

I’ve bleated about this before: on why blogging is merely new-age op-ed, and on the lack of vision and courage by traditional media owners in preparing for an inevitable digital-only future. It’s so fundamental to the ongoing debate on the future of news journalism.

And I continue to beat the same drum for entirely selfish purposes: because I want somewhere to work in 10 years. I desperately want to see innovative digital media projects that support traditional reporting. I think news readers desperately want to see them, too. It is demoralising to see companies invest in digital media – and there is a significant investment in The Punch, certainly – only to see the opportunity wasted by delivering more cheap, lazy opinion.

Not a single journalism job created. Not a word of original reporting published. Not a step towards a new model of reporting, the reporting all these bloggers continue to feed off.

News Limited is now betting the house on charging for online subscriptions to its mastheads, putting a price on the parochial, populist tabloid content it currently gives away for free. If The Punch is its only Plan B, god help us all.

Related posts:

• Blog off, you still need journalism
• Incompetence, not net, kills media
• Google should search for fix, too

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