I’ve moaned before about pathetic journalists resorting to the old “conducting a Google search for ‘Chris Johnston is a hack’ returns over 200,000 results” trick. Even Crikey got in on the act last Friday with this lazy editorial effort:

If you type the words “Indonesia”, “airlines”, “safety” and “crashes” into Google search there are 145,000 results

For a while the craze was to breathlessly report every stupid item up for auction on eBay as if the abuse of such systems would bring western democracy to its knees. Luckily that practice seems to have fallen out of favour but I’ve noticed that the new black when it comes to cookie-cutter “journalism” is the breathless reporting of each new incursion into online game Second Life by a company somewhere in the world. Check out this latest effort from The Age:

Telstra BigPond throws open the doors to its island playground within the 3-D online world of Second Life.

It becomes the first major Australian corporation to create a presence there, following a stampede of international companies who have started to use Second Life as a promotional and commercial tool.

Offering a distinctly Australian flavour, “The Pond” - which consumes 11 Second Life sims or “virtual suburbs” - includes virtual recreations of landmarks such as the Sydney Opera House, the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Uluru.

There are also various activities for visitors - represented in-world by characters called “avatars” - to partake in, such as dancing in the Illusion nightclub, knocking back stubbies at the Outback Billabong Bar, hooning around the race track on a BigPond scooter and snorkelling in a coral reef.

But socialising aside, the primary purpose of the island is to promote the telco’s wares.

BigPond billboards appear at every turn, and content from its main online channels - sport, movies, music and games - has been ported in.

Users can get a taste of BigPond’s content offerings, such as music tracks, from inside the world, before being connected to the BigPond Music store to purchase it if they desire.

Great advertisement for Telstra but not much else.

ps/- By the way, isn’t it funny that Lindsay Tanner got a write up in The Age today about his YouTube exploits after I (via Fang) wrote about it last week. GrodsCorp gets quite a few hits from The Age’s IP addresses every day.