Kaleidoscope Jelly

Virginia Trioli has become the latest in a long line of role models and people to aspire to for me. (The list also includes the likes of Catherine Deveny, Andrew Denton, Marieke Hardy, Bryce Courtenay, Michael Parkinson and Ceri Radford, just to name a few).

(Image taken from: http://www.theage.com.au/ffximage/2007/11/09/rgn_trioli_wideweb__470x287,0.jpg)

A recent article in theage (melbourne) magazine highlights Trioli’s achievements, outlining her move across a wide variety of journalism platforms, from working in print at The Age beginning in 1989 (where she pointedly moved to the business section to illustrate her versatility), to ABC radio 774 and most recently, the ABC2 morning program, Breakfast.

Although ABC2 is still in the relatively early stages, it does serve to offer a contrast and a more serious alternative to already existing programs such as Channel 7′s popular Sunrise program and Channel 9′s Today show. It is, however, currently only available to the 50 per cent of Australians with set top boxes and other digital TV technology. Nonetheless, the program is destined to grow and Trioli is destined to be part of that growth.

This is an extremely big deal for a woman who says that she didn’t come from a privileged background.

“It’s a long working life if you’re going to work, and I don’t have inheritance and I don’t come from money, so it was always going to have to be me relying on me, so you have to do jobs that you love,” Trioli said, in the article entitled ‘Back in the hot seat,’ by Gabriella Coslovich.

I think this is very good advice indeed.

-Kaitlyn Opie.

It’s pleasing to hear that reporters do get some summer holidays. Further to my revelation that the ABC’s Foreign Correspondent shuts down its overseas bureaux over the summer is an article in today’s Age about where these hard working journalists like to go for their summer holidays. Enjoy.

Tony Jones is the presenter of Lateline on the ABC. Interviewing is far from a frivolous activity. Nicole Kidman is the mother of Sunday Rose and Foreign Correspondent shuts down operations over the summer. These are just some of the things I’ve crammed into my brain over the past few weeks as I completed my final days as a journalism student. Now comes the serious stuff. The job hunting. The knock backs. The interviews. And the feeling that perhaps I should have studied something more ‘useful,’ like law, or commerce.

But I would have hated those. Journalism’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do. I will be a journalist, no matter how long it takes.

Anyhow, here’s something else I’ve learnt. Chris Masters, who was apparently the longest-serving reporter on Four Corners, retired from the ABC last week after 25 years. His article in The Australian
sums up how I feel. It also reassures me that I’m not useless because at the end of the day, there are always stories waiting patiently to be told.

-Kaitlyn Opie.

Okay, so I’m not a knitter. But I thought it was worth posting about Stringativity, which has a picture of Barack Obama holding a half-knitted sock. Yes, a bit random and possibly not as interesting as the Biden vs. Palin VP debate (which sadly enough I missed, playing the role of a video journalist that day), but it’s something a bit different. The picture itself is from December 2007, but taking photographs of politicians, royalty, film stars, etc. holding half-knitted socks seems to have become something of an underground challenge in the knitting community. You can read more about it at Yarn Harlot.

The Hack Half Hour, hailed as “the 7.30 Report for the under-25s,” has also begun showing on Mondays at 8.30pm on ABC2. I’m a little late to jump on the bandwagon here, but that’s because I don’t actually get ABC2. However, that’s not an issue, because the ABC website offers live streaming and downloads of the Hack Half Hour, an offshoot of Triple J.

Lastly, in my travels through cyberspace over the weekend, I came across two current affairs blogs- TV Tonight and Media Spy. Both offer up-to-date information on what’s happening in the Australian television industry from news and current affairs, to the personalities themselves. I also came across the website of the youngest pig farmer in Britain- a 15-year-old girl named Emma who became involved in the industry after asking for piglets for her birthday. You can read an article in the Telegraph (UK) about Emma here.     

-Kaitlyn Opie.

I enjoy reading The Telegraph (UK) online, particularly when I should be doing other things. As it happens, I’ve just chanced upon a fantastic piece on Michael Parkinson, former talk show host, and how the 73-year-old has re-emerged on the internet.

Image taken from

http://www.theage.com.au/news/entertainment/its-sir-michael-after-paper-talks-up-parky-knighthood/2007/12/26/1198345081403.html

The article addresses the issue of ageism in television, but argues that while there may be a use-by-date for personalities on T.V, the internet is a place where people can reinvent themselves. And Michael Parkison has done just that, launching Michel Parkinson T.V.

Clive James has also done a similar thing with his “culturally highbrow” website.

Good on them I say. Now, if I can find a couple of examples where women have challenged the status quo I will be quite content.   

-Kaitlyn Opie.

Until this week’s class, I had no idea what a ‘mojo’ was. I just thought it was some kind of secret power that Austin Powers possessed. However, mojo is actually a technical term for a go-get-em’ ‘mobile journalist.’ These journalists, equipped with mobile phones and toolkits are revolutionising the way in which reporters report the news. Considering that I can’t work out how to download photos I took at The Age protest a couple of weeks ago on my mobile in the absence of a camera, mojos seem pretty revolutionary and highly technical to me. Which is perhaps why there aren’t too many in Australia right now- we’re still learning the lingo.

Image taken from

http://www.webdesign.org/web/photoshop/photo-editing/blending-faces.11118.html

According to Stephen Quinn, the potential for journalists to be trained as mojos remains limited in developed nations such as Australia because of the high costs associated with surfing the web on our phones. I know this only too well when I became excited to discover that I could access the internet on my mobile only a week or two ago. But I soon found that the service was second rate and wouldn’t allow me to access my email account- and I was stung by my service provider for attempting to do so.

However, in the U.K, Reuters has been training its team as mojos for the past year and a quarter of 18-25 year olds regularly use their mobiles to check their Facebook accounts. This is due to the rise of unlimited data packages. Hopefully one day in the near future Australians will be able to embrace similar technology without fear of increasing mobile phone bills.

-Kaitlyn Opie.

As a bibliophile, or bookworm, I have a great love of the printed word. Which is why I was excited to see in The Age on Friday, that Angus and Robertson have recently installed an ‘Expresso-Book Machine,’ which prints books, not coffee, while you wait. The machine, which has been described as resembling “an oversized photocopier,” has the ability to print copies of books which are out of print, or out of copyright, on the spot in approximately fifteen minutes. They are then bound, complete with cover. Voila!

Hailed as the ATM of the bookworld, the machine is the first of its kind in Australia and can be found in Angus and Robertson’s Bourke Street store in Melbourne.

However, other bookstores have had similar multi-media practices embedded into their every day sales in recent years. Dymock’s offers digital books, which can be read on a PC, or listened to on an iPod in audio form. Apparently both formats are quick and easy to download, so you can access them within minutes.   

Another, pricier option is to purchase something similar to a Sony Reader, “an electronic handheld gadget that you use to store your books and read on the go.”  

(Image taken from wowio.wordpress.com)

Each Sony Reader can hold up to 160 e-books, but can be expanded to hold more with memory cards. At around 200 English pounds though I think I’ll be giving it a miss for now! But it certainly provides an interesting insight into the way in which the publishing industry, and thus the traditional medium of newspapers is going. Perhaps one day we will only be able to access newspapers online, and if we want a hard copy, pay $1.50 to have one printed and bound on something akin to the ‘Expresso-Book Machine.’

At any rate, you can read more about the Sony Diary Reader, here. There are also three posts at dovegreyreader (scroll down to Friday September 19, 2008). And for more on the ‘Expresso-Book Machine,’ take a peek at Jane Finnis’ commentary here. 

-Kaitlyn Opie.

The video journalist, or VJ would appear to be the way of the future. In Indonesia for example, VJs are looked upon by graduates as more glamourous than their counterparts in the print industry- and this is echoed by the better salary. The fact that VJs are expected to be multi-skilled also bears upon salary.

However, the quality of the journalism can suffer as a result of losing that extra second or third pair of eyes out in the field. Alan Sunderland argues in Barbara Alysen’s The Electronic Reporter (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press Ltd, 2006, p.168), that “a lot of people talk about video journalism to mean the camerawork suffers and the audio suffers and that is true. But I think that in a lot of ways the journalism suffers. The opportunity to go somewhere and chat to somebody while the cameraman is doing something else disappears altogether.”

While this is almost certainly the case, student journalists such as myself shouldn’t be discouraged- using a video camera and being able to edit and produce a story oneself is still a great skill to have. It also means that one is never left in the lurch. For tips on how to shoot better video, have a look at the iReport Toolkit.

-Kaitlyn Opie.

The online user-generated content site, Stomp (Strait Times Online Mobile and Print), launched by Singapore Press Holdings in June 2006, is a good example of media converging on a multi-media platform to reach out and interact with their readers. Up to 85 per cent of content is generated by users themselves on three platforms: print, online and via mobile phone. The aim of the project is to create “new communities of Singaporeans,” who are bonded by their shared interests. This results in active rather than passive consumers of news.

But while the concept is the Hitwise Top Ten website for April-June 2008, it would appear that the site relies on sensationalism, gossip and scandal, with articles such as ‘Customs stamped my passport 30 Feb ‘08! and ‘Liquid paper used to vandalise bus stop ad.’  Even the youth section of the website which I thought might provide some educational content such as in the Herald Sun’s ‘Learn’  published once a week was concerned with sex appeal, asking for students to nominate and vote for their ‘hot teachers.’ As such, it would seem that Stomp is just another example of ‘churnalism,’- quality journalism turned to mush as a result of citizen journalism. However, as the voice of the people Stomp does in fact reflect changing community views and has proved invaluable as a vehicle for social change in Singapore.

According to this week’s reading by Stephen Quinn, Straits Times online, multimedia and print, Stomp has been beneficial to Singaporeans, assisting in shortening the cues to health clinics, or at least getting people off the streets and into waiting rooms, and resulted in the successful prosecution of a man who attempted to murder his girlfriend. Furthermore, the site offers a form of  ‘alternative’ journalism, as opposed to The Straits Times, whose online site “effectively mirrors the print edition.”  The 300,000 visitors Stomp attracts each year is surely a testament to the model.

-Kaitlyn Opie.