Arrivals

Significant events :
Congratulations to motivational speaker and advertising guru Siimon Reynolds and his gorgeous wife Kathryn Eisman who have taken possession of a beautiful daughter, Capri. The happy trio now live in the USA.

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The Shuttle has felt the sharp tongue of a tabloid hack from one of Australia's oldest media organisations that is losing sales at around 20% a year and has sacked hundreds of workers in the past 5 years. The mocking in print we received defies the fact the Shuttle has had around 2 million readers in the past 3 years and has about 2200 visitors a day.
The arrogance of the established media knows no bounds yet when The Guardian set up a local online newspaper less than a year ago it succeeded in becoming the third daily visited website in Australia.

Pierre Omidyar                   Glenn Greenwald

A few months we were contacted in relation to a top secret project underway : and now the news is out.
EBAY founder and billionaire Pierre Omidyar is putting $250M into a new media organisation that is to be headed by Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald of Edward Snowden fame. Omidyar and Greenwald intend bypassing the printed media and old style hacks who seem oblivious to the rapidly changing world.
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Meanwhile the highly successful local Eastern Suburbs newspaper Latte Life which now distributes throughout Surry Hills, Paddington, Double Bay and Darlinghurst will celebrate it's 3rd Birthday with a gala party tonight at Hugos in Kings Cross !. And they said it wouldn't last...congrats to all.

The Guardian (Oz Version) Marches On

News today (but old news for Shuttle readers) : 2 political heavyweights have fled Fairfax Media to join the coming new on-line Australian  newspaper The Guardian which is soon to launch just in time for the September General election.

Lenore Taylor is to be Political Editor and Katherine Murphy to be her Deputy. This is a blow to Fairfax no matter how they spin it- these are 2 of the very best political writers in the country who are rarely vehicles for political propaganda but are known to delve behind the scenes unlike the current Canberra mob who comprise the Press Gallery in Parliament who often sound like an echo chamber.  Nothing illustrated that more than Prime Minister Julia Gillard's famous 'misogyny' speech which had the press gallery in a twitter of disapproval while the Youtube film of her speech swept the world's media to a chorus of approval.

In March the Fairfax titles will change to tabloid size and a former editor Andrew Jaspan has claimed they will attempt to emulate the UK Daily Mail.
Today Murphy and Taylor twiittered their intentions:

Fairfax Mergers - The Smage ?

Do they employ a psychic at The Guardian newspaper or perhaps they have called upon Britain's top astrologer Victor Olliver to cast the runes ?

Their timing is perfect to enter the Australian market and seize the left-of-centre ground abandoned by the once great Fairfax empire.

Now a war of words has broken out between newsmen as former Fairfax editor Andrew Jaspan today told the mUmBRELLA website that The Age & Sydney Morning Herald will combine and  "switch their editorial positioning away from the high ground occupied in the past by Fairfax’s metro mastheads and towards what is referred internally as ‘Middle Australia’. That means more mid-market fare: sport, showbiz, gossip, and fast news. He describes this as"like 2 bald men fighting over a comb".

Andrew Jaspan                 Garry Linnell

Current editor Garry Linnell has hit back and described Japser's claims as "complete fiction" and accused him of having taken The Age downmarket during his tenure.

 The Guardian's Australian editorial team are already in Australia and preparing the new local Guardian website.Many of Fairfax's best writers who last year took redundancy have been offered work on the new web newspaper.
Fairfax would do well to actually take Japser's comments as good advice. Well that's what we reckon.

Scooped Again

Several reports have appeared today on the ABC, in Fairfax Media, in Rupert Murdoch's Australian paper, on the Crikey website and distributed far and wide via AAP : Britain's Guardian Newspaper is to set up in Australia with an on-line newspaper publishing local content.

Graeme Wood

The project is a joint venture with Guardian Newspapers and multi-millionaire philanthropist Graeme Wood who has invested around $20M in his Global Mail digital news magazine.

Annabel Crabb

None of this is news of course for regular Social Shuttle readers who were brought this exact news on the 31st December last year.

The Oz Guardian is expected to employ up to 35 to produce local journalism and already leading ex- Fairfax writers- some who took a nicely padded redundancy package last year including Annabel Crabb and David Marr have been offered posts by the Guardian's deputy editor Katherine Viner.

UK Competetion for Local Publishers

One of the UK's most powerful newspapers is to launch in Australia next year.
In January The Guardian's deputy editor Katherine Viner (left) will bring a team to Oz to work on the project.

The Guardian is teaming up with the successful not-for-profit news website Global Mail owned by philanthropist and Internet millionaire Graeme Wood. It was The Guardian that persisted with the phone hacking scandal that eventually led to the demise of Rupert Murdoch's News of The World.

  Although the newspaper publishes at a loss it is backed by an asset rich trust which exists to fund The Guardian's investigative reporting, the type that Fairfax once excelled in but which has been declining over the past 5 years as it attempts to compete with Murdoch's papers
Graeme Wood is an astute businessman who has made a fortune from Internet publishing and is quickly filling the middle and left-of-centre ground left vacant by Australia's 2 major newspaper publishers. In 2010 he made the largest ever political donation giving $1.8M to The Greens. He looks set to be the new player in town.