exclusive: A new competitor hits town

The invasion of foreign newspapers continues with one of the world's greatest broadsheets The New York Times opening a Sydney office and advertising for staff to produce local content.

They join The Guardian, Huffington Post and the Mail Online, all producing Australian content. Industry insiders say while both the Guardian and HuffPost are doing well, the most read newspaper on the planet, the Mail Online is costing more money than it makes from advertisers. How will the NYTimes fare?. After they were attacked by President Donald Trump subscribers to the NYTimes skyrocketed with over 250,000 new online subscribers alone in under three months. While the local Fairfax newspapers and Rupert Murdoch's News Corp tabloids are losing staff hand over fist along with fleeing advertisers, the arrival of the NYTimes adds another worrying dimension for the locals.
Prospective employees can go here to apply for a perch at the New York Times.

Brush With Fame

Anyone who is a regular at press conferences or celebrity soirees in Sydney is used to the sight of Richard Simpkin.

He and an odd collection of fans of fame gather at entrances to parties to get autographs or photos. The assembled paparazzi usually swear to murder them when they momentarily stop the progress of the star du jour for a signature.

There seems to be no rhyme or reason to the concept of autograph hunting. These fans like everyone and no-one.
Sometimes catching snippets of their conversation can be illuminating. They never discuss what Cate Blanchett or Lady Ga Ga was wearing or their work - just how easy or difficult it was to get their signature. The Shuttle has questioned some of them at times and often they don't even know what the star's latest offering is. They heard they will be in town or at some event and they religiously turn up.


At the Australian premiere of Puss In Boots on Sunday with Antonio Banderas and Selma Hayek there was the lady who always gets a sleb to sign her Teddy Bear for 'charity'. She never seems to be able to tell us what charity but she almost busts a piston with excitement when she scores.

Another stopped appearing about 4 years ago when his supply of Polaroid film dried up. Sadly his collection of celebrity autographed snaps of stars done on his Polaroid camera over 30 years has begun to fade just as he was getting into his stride.

And missing on Sunday was Richard Simpkin and it took a perusal of the UK Guardian newspaper to remember what he told us as we went into a party a few months ago-a gallery was having an exhibition of his photographs of he and various celebrities. In Liverpool in the UK of all places.

Simpkin published  a book of these photos Richard & Famous about 5 years ago and it's difficult to contemplate who would actually want a book of a stranger with a variety of famous people (most champing at the bit to flee from him). He admitted there were still boxes of them under his bed. He's bound to have carted a few to the UK.

Is it art, an obsession, an illness, creepy, weird ?. Who knows? The comments section following the newspaper's article says all these things.
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Now the Guardian is getting in on the act and is requesting their readers to send in their own 'brush with fame' snaps (they'll be sorry !) with a prize of-wait for it- a ticket to the 'VIP' opening night of Richard's Liverpool exhibition in January (bus fare included).

All photographs by Richard Simpkin (and assorted passersby)

Chardonnay At Ten Paces : Guardian's Nick Davies Attacks!

News comes of an incident this week between two leading journalists at a book launch in London. The occasion was the launch of Heather Brooke’s new book The Revolution will be Digitised at the offices of publishers Simons Muirhead & Burton in trendy Soho.

Nick Davies guardian.co.uk

One guest was the Guardian journalist Nick Davies who has been diligently plugging away in the back ground for years on the great hacking scandal  that recently brought about the demise of Britain's best selling tabloid, Rupert Murdoch's News Of The World.

In 1996 Davies also worked at The Age in Melbourne where he scored a major scoop by getting several doctors to say, off the record, that they had helped with assisted suicides and would do so again.It caused a political firestorm.

Enter another guest, Australian writer Guy Rundle, popular correspondent for websites crikey.com.au , Counterpunch and more.

Guy Rundle

Rundle is a vocal defender of Julian Assange and had written a piece that appeared on crikey and Counterpunch, dissecting what he says was a 'stitch-up' of the Wikileaks founder Assange by The Guardian.

Davies took Rundle to task in this letter published in The Monthly claiming Rundle got his facts wrong. On the 11th April crikey ran this correction following Rundle's story.

Apparently this wasn't enough for Davies and upon spotting the hapless Rundle at the book launch was finally able to deliver a coup de grâce
with a well aimed tumbler of excellent  publisher's white hurled into the face of Rundle. While Davies did a victory dance around the room Rundle trundled off to change his contact lenses, doused by the wine.                                                

Tom Albanese

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Meanwhile not far from Soho at the British Museum, the mining corp Rio Tinto are sponsoring an Australian season with presentations on our fauna and flora, talks by writers Malcolm Cox and Phillip McLean along with an exhibition of Sydney Nolan paintings and a lecture on that iconic Aussie family saloon the FJ Holden.
                                             
A debate was underway about the environmental effects of European civilisation in Australia with Rio Tinto CEO Tom Alabanese at the lectern when a blaring fire alarm resulted in 340 guest fleeing  the lecture room. It was a false alarm.

The official explanation was that a fierce storm and wind outside had set off the alarm,. Not so according to Stephen Hopper, the Australian director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. He reckoned a slide of red-bellied black snake being used to illustrate a point by Albanese was the cause.

"They have evil powers according to Aboriginals " says Hooper. "they avoid them like the plague".

Some Christmas Cheer from Alan Rusbridger & Rupert Murdoch

On the 1st November Rupert Murdoch gave a speech in Sydney praising his personal baby The Australian newspaper. Rupert is famous for saying he never interferes with his editors. Perhaps they just think like him.

Murdoch also promised that in a few years .. "it will be possible to have all the energy we want from economic cheap nuclear plants..it will be safe..there will not be an energy waste problem..we don't have to rush into a lot of mad schemes fouling up the country..windmills and other crackpot ideas.. "

That came as a shock to the  landed gentry of Rupert's beloved Liberal National Party coalition who have accepted $100,000 a time to allow an energy corporation to install windmills on their land.

.."just don't let the bloody Greens mess it up.." he continued.

The Greens hold nine Senate seats and the balance of power and look like picking up seats in the Victorian state election. Getting anything past them in Parliament will be a Herculean task.

The Australian promised in an ill-advised editorial after the August General Election to "destroy the Greens" The newspaper has been back pedalling ever since.



Alan Rusbridger



Fast forward to Friday night's 702 ABC  Sydney Radio Andrew Olle Lecture  given by Alan Rusbridger, editor of the UK Guardian newspaper. Speaking about the media he said :

"And, of course, most topically, there is the prospect of a merger between a wholly owned BSkyB and the four newspaper titles owned by News Corp. That would give one company control of nearly 40 per cent of Britain‟s press as well as a broadcaster with nearly £6bn in revenues compared with the £3.5bn licence fee of the BBC.

Now, I realize that even raising this question immediately translates, in the minds of some, into an argument about Rupert Murdoch. It‟s not. There‟s no one I would want to have that much power."

In his speech Rupert Murdoch said the profits from the current resources boom should be spent on education. How that could be achieved, he didn't say.

In May this year The Australian was at the forefront of a determined campaign to undermine then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd who had announced a 40% mining tax on the minerals dug out of land owned by the Australian people and which has driven the extraordinary wealth of the country. He hoped to raise $12 Billion in just 2 years.

The entire News Corp mast heads went into bat for the 3 mining billionaires leading the charge-Andrew 'Twiggy 'Forest. Gina Rinehart and Clive Palmer. The 3 funded a multi million dollar ad campaign which News Ltd apparently mistook for news and fact.

The mining tax spelt the end of civilisation as we know it...Forrest, Rinehart and Palmer proclaimed the new  tax would destroy the industry, lead to massive job losses and anyway, they were struggling already as it was.

The ruling Labor Party capitulated. It was the end of Rudd's leadership and he was swiftly replaced by Julia Gillard who limped home in the August election.



Clive Palmer



Just to show there are no hard feelings Clive Palmer, a National Liberal Party supporter threw a $20M bash last Thursday in Townsville for 2000 employees to celebrate the $200M personal profit he had made from just one mine.



Clive's a generous man to those who please him. At the party he announced 55 employees would each be receiving a brand new $50,000 Mercedes-Benz B180 each. Palmer toasted the post-GFC recovery as being responsible for his good fortune.

That's the recovery that Rupert Murdoch said in his speech was "governments wasting billions of dollars " for which Kevin Rudd received world-wide praise for keeping Australia out of recession but whose actions were roundly condemned by the Liberal National Party, but supported by those "bloody Greens"!

Complicated isn't it ?.