Fairfax Clanger of The Year

It's that Silly Season time of the year when tabloids print endless round-ups of yesterday's stale offerings so here is Whisper's take which we think is the Clanger of The Year.
It's a tale about our most wonderful Opera star  who took the stages of the great Opera Houses of the world by storm and dominated for several decades.
We refer of course to the late great Dame Joan Sutherland who may be turning in her grave if she read this tale in the Sydney Morning Herald to find the Sydney Opera House- where she appeared in so many triumphant performances including her final public concert (watched by Whispers) is to re-name it's theatre the Joan Sullivan Theatre (who she?)

Perhaps they are all in the local pub celebrating New Year's Eve early. Even on their uncorrected Google web search the Mysterious Joan Sullivan lurks.

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.

Epic Tabloid Fail

Oh dear- just as it was all going so swimmingly well for the UK Daily Mail & MailOnline newspapers as our stories below  indicate.                                         
Now the world's trashiest most widely read tabloid has had to apologise for 'lifting' an supposed interview with James Bond star Sir Roger Moore. The interview and excerts from it swept the world but alas- it was a phony and after Sir Roger complained, editors back pedaled like crazy
You can read the tale here in The New Statesmen.
But there are Aussie culprits in this saga : the media agency Australian Associated Press ( owned by Fairfax Media & News Ltd)  picked up the fake story and syndicated it around the world as an original article.
One thing you can be sure of : tales picked up by the Mail from the social shuttle ( as they regularly are) are accurate and genuine.

Copy This ! : Designer's Anger at Newspaper

Strong words have been appeared on Facebook with professional Australian designers expressing their disgust at an advertisement that appeared in the Fairfax newspaper The Sun Herald on the weekend.
Heidi Dokulil, former editor of Monument Magazine and co-founder of the respected Australian Design Unit posted:
 "SMH you should be ashamed of yourself! Yesterday's advertorial for copycat furniture placed opposite the work of an absolute design legend is disgusting. The headline 'make a classic choice' rubs salt in the wound and shows just how low some major newspapers are going to make advertising $$. Design rip-offs hurt the industry and the thousands of hardworking local designers. What next SMH, a feature on Coco Chanel flanked by fakes? I'd like to see how that goes down".  Ouch !.
 Other designers have condemned the positioning of the advert for 'replica' Eames furniture and were busy arranging an email campaign to the Sun Herald. Some have forwarded a complaint to Media Watch. 
An Eames original can sell for around $5400 while the Taiwanese copy, sold out of a showroom in inner Sydney goes for just $1800. In 2011 the US Henry Miller company which distributes furniture designed by the legendary Americans Charles and Ray Eames reached a settlement with the distributor but they are still trading on the valuable Eames name.

left : a genuine Eames chair and right : the "replica"

The Double Bay newspaper Latte Life found recently when it discovered a local shop flogging handbags that looked identical to well known brands like Gucci and Louis Vuitton, that the law is difficult to get enforced and authorities can be apathetic much to the annoyance of other shopkeepers in the Bay selling genuine goods. 
China is famous for producing 'replicas' (today's speak for rip-off) of just about anything including a Rolls Royce Phantom, Mini Cooper and the humble Toyota Corolla. While the Rolls copy, labelled a Geely GE sells for just $30,000  a genuine Rolls Phantom can cost up to $1M.
 Australia is not new to rip off designs. In the days before the Internet one fashion store chain owner turned property developer was known for having models and friends regularly bring back a suitcase of the latest London and Paris designs which were whipped up into copies in local factories and on sale within days of their appearance on the international catwalks  
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As the election campaign revs into high gear, a 'replica' front page newspaper war has also broken out on Facebook after the Daily Telegraph published it's front page attack upon prime Minster Kevin Rudd.
Those firmly in the Labor camp were furious and a replica was soon on-line replacing KRudd with Tony Abbott. By the end of the day Rupert Murdoch's face had replaced Abbott's. By midnight News Ltd journalists were in the firing line.
And this is just Day One !

Superman Fails Julia

In the end, the pleadings of superstar Russell Crowe couldn't save Australia's first female Prime Minister Julia Gillard from the combined attacks from Kevin Rudd and the chorus line of media hacks at News Ltd, Fairfax and the ABC.
Here is Julia Gillard's elegant resignation speech. But following is her real speech- the one she wanted to say channeled by comedienne Jackie Loeb.

Charlotte Dawson : You Go Girl !

Tonight TV presenter Charlotte Dawson will present film about her Twitter 'trolls' on Channel Seven . It will be a must see show.

Dawson has been defending her actions today :
'‘‘Who are they, or you for that matter, to tell me what to do? Are you a mental health expert? No. So they can all f***k off,’’ an emotionally raw Dawson told PS this morning when asked why she would appear on Seven News at such a sensitive time in her treatment.'

We agree. Charlotte should tackle this problem the way she sees best. The world is full of advice on how to handle 'trolls', often with conflicting ways and means. Some are journalists who boast of their own trolls and how they ignore them or fight back. Some are mental health experts and so on.

The problem is that no-one can anticipate how a genuine troll can affect a person. Once a troll (and who gives a damn what the troll's reasoning is) begins a campaign it can have devastating affects not just on the subject but family members and friends.

And the Shuttle knows only too well because we have been fighting a determined troll who has been attacking a friend relentlessly for 3 years. Even worse, a Fairfax journalist inadvertently (we like to think) re-tweeted a troll's tweet that lead to more anguish, more upset, more tears and frustration to the person attacked.
And the response from Fairfax or the journalist?. Nothing. Not a word. No reply, no acknowledgment. Zilch.

So Charlotte Dawson should be given the freedom and support to handle those who attack her the best way Charlotte decides to. And she should know that she has tens of thousands of people supporting her.

Fairfax : Stating the Bleeding Obvious or Taking The Piss

 The Fairfax family were once the proud owners of titles like the Sydney Morning Herald first published in 1831 and the Melbourne Age established in 1854 and once regarded as one of the greatest broadsheets on the planet.
The Fairfax family have long departed (making hundreds of millions of dollars in the process) and the Fairfax empire has been stumbling along badly ever since. The last remaining family member John B.Fairfax sold his shares for $189M in 2011.
 Reputedly the editor who spent time and money trying to convince Fairfax board members to embrace digital was booted only to be snapped up by The Guardian in the UK which now slightly lags behind the Mail Online as the most popular newspaper website in the world.

Tomorrow's Sydney Morning Herald will feature a piece titled Most powerful players in Australian film, basically a list of household names who command power and big money in the Australian film industry. the real heavy hitters with surprising results it trumps !

Well not quite. Sam Worthington, Chris Hemsworth, Geoffrey Rush, Mia Kasalwoska, Rose Byrne, Hugh Jackman, Emile Sherman etc etc are unlikely to surprise anyone. And who is one of their sources ?

Rose Byrne

A photo agency called Jamie Fawcett Photo News run by Jamie Fawcett the photographer bankrupted by Fairfax during a court case in which Nicole Kidman appeared as a witness.
A Shuttle reader sent us an email a week ago with 2 screen shots which we cannot display for legal reasons.
The Sydney Morning Herald had published a story about the arrest of a union official. We had already read the tale the night before on a website called Independent Australia which has been miles ahead of both News Ltd and Fairfax on the same story. In the first screen shot the SMH claimed it had "exposed the embezzlement" of union funds by the official as well as claiming something similar about a Member of Parliament.

By Mid-day the word 'allegedly' had finally been inserted before the damaging claims. Did Fairfax inform their readers of their mistake and apologise as  their code of conduct requires ?. Most certainly not. 

The editor of Independent Australia, David Donavon has ripped into Fairfax over their incorrect claim in their Brisbane Times that a woman had yelled at Prime Minister Julia Gillard during a Queensland community meeting that she was 'white trash', duly reported by the BT and picked up around the country by various news outlets.
What the woman actually said which is clearly audible on BT's own website is that "we are not white trash" referring to herself and her son.

The Sun

And the Brisbane Time's reaction when asked to correct the lie : total denial it had ever happened.

Sydney Morning Herald

Fairfax share price is plunging almost weekly despite it owning a reputed $5B in assets. Staff are being made redundant at a great rate with 29 fired a fortnight ago in Melbourne.
A month ago the Shuttle ran into a former Fairfax editor, now publisher of on-line magazines. Asked to comment on the anouncment that Fairfax will go digital in 9 years he scoffed. "5 at the most and possibly 3" was his reply. 

On Thursday the Shuttle attended the opening of the French brasserie style Aranas Bar in The Rocks owned by the same people as the nearby Lowenbrau beer cellar. We had forgotten it was Oktoberfestt and had to pick our way past a blaring oompah band and some thigh slapping chaps in lederhosen (we are assured they are of German descent). It was a reasonably staid affair with good food and copious amounts of Veuve Clicquot but the Shuttle didn't visit the Gents or we may have witnessed the bizarre urinals that became a feature the following day in the media.

Gina Rinehart

What we did notice is that the venerable Sydney Morning Herald produced a piece that was almost a carbon copy of Britain's infamous The Sun newspaper which 20 years ago would have been it's ideological opposite, quoting the same sources, feminist Ann Summers and former Parliamentarian Meredith Burgmann.

Will readers sign up to a digital version of Fairfax Newspaper to read this stuff ?. And more importantly, why is the world's richest woman Gina Rinehart snapping up Fairfax shares as they plunge. Is it to put it out of it's misery?.
                                  

Russian Invasion

With a report that Russian oligarch David Traktovenko (left) has slipped into town for Summer, the Shuttle hears a former KGB spy has his eyes set on Australia.

Alexander Lebedev worth a reputed $3B owns Russia's largest bank, a third of Aeroflot, and the UK Independent and Evening Standard newspapers. The Shuttle reported last year that Lebedev and his son Evygeny who runs the families UK interests had cast their the attention on Australia's media.

Evygeny &Alexander Lebedev 

That was put on hold when the Huffington Post re-launched it's new UK & USA on-line newspapers which have become a roaring success, and mooted plans for a Southern hemisphere edition based in Australia. The Aussie version didn't eventuate.

Apparently Lebedev has re-newed his interest and a representative has been in town for 2 weeks based at the Park Hyatt Hotel, holding meetings with a number of people including several well known media figures and meeting with local banks.

Could this be a lifeline for workers of the ailing Fairfax empire that appears to be stumbling badly ?. Last week it's reported Fairfax laid off 29 employees in Melbourne including 18 photographers. News Ltd is also planning large redundancies.
Lebedev subsidies his UK newspaper businesses which don't make a profit but he enjoys the power that comes with being a media mogul while son Evgeny is a fixture on the London social circuit.

On-line newspapers will be the future of publishing.  The Global Mail with it's unique reading format is going from strength to strength and attracting quality writers while crikey has just re-launched it's new website. A recent competitor Independent Australia is quickly gaining a reputation for breaking stories. It's been way ahead of both News & Fairfax in the HSU scandal and been publishing exclusive stories, even trumping both with a scoop about the imminent arrest of the former HSU boss Michael Williamson . The 2 major Australian publishers have lagged in coming to grips with digital and they could now have a well heeled competitor with solid media links on the other side of the world.