Piss off, you’re gone.

Fairfax Media must search for a new editor for its main Melbourne newspaper after the abrupt departure of current editor-in-chief, Andrew Jaspan.

The announcement was made to Age staff late this morning by Don Churchill, Fairfax’s chief executive for Victoria. Mr Jaspan’s senior deputy, Paul Ramadge, has been appointed acting editor-in-chief.

There’s absolutely no question that the quality of The Age dropped drastically during Jaspan’s tenure, along with any semblance of balance. At the same time there was a noticeable increase in sensationalist and style-over-substance journalism, as even the main “serious” section of the paper tended towards an over-reliance on content-neutral, parochial and lifestyle-ish filler.

If the new editor steers The Age back on track and shifts the focus to serious, quality journalism I might just start buying it again.

UPDATE (1.00pm): Will points out in comments that the summary of this story on The Age’s website tells a slightly different story.

Whoa! Would you tap (or peg) this?

Carn git me, laydeez!

UPDATE II (1.15pm): Andrew Landeryou’s pathetic new attempt to make some money post-bankruptcy, VEXNEWS, has hilariously claimed to have the Jaspan tapping story as an exclusive.

Check out them gnarly Landeryou Photoshopping skillz

I bet that’s news to all of the people who have also exclusively revealed the news, The Age itself included.

You know it’s going to be a rough day when you’re walking to the train station along a suburban street in the icy pre-dawn darkness and you’re suddenly hit by a flying rolled-up newspaper.

Damn you to the fiery bowels of hell, The Age, The Australian, the Herald Sun or whatever the fuck you were!

Oh, and paperboy — you just made The List.

(From ‘The Age’ Online)

Um, no thanks.

UPDATE: Is that hypercolour t-shirt in the front row being worn by a dude or a chick?

There’s a big story in the news at the moment about drink driving players who belong to a football team commonly referred to as the “Pies”. It’s a sub-editor’s wet dream. Match the headlines…

* Club bans porky pies
* Eddie chucks pies on sauce
* Collingwood drink drive debacle — out for season

…to the newspapers:

* The Herald Sun
* The Age
* The Australian

Just get a load of those puns. Answers over the fold.

Read the rest of this entry »

GrodsCorp’s favourite Age “journalist” Chris Johnston has written about sport.

The sun will beat down. The little bouncy balls will rocket around. And the players — the greatest players — will leap across the hard green of the court with their straining racquets to reach them. As the roar goes up. Then the hush. The tennis hush.

He has written written about Heath Ledger.

The result, though, was a sick and sad and talented boy who stopped breathing.

He has written about designer terror-porn.

What exactly is the purpose of these remarkable, disturbing pictures?

[...]

The setting is unmistakably an airport customs station. Two officers flank her, watching. Voyeurs; and we watch them watching her. One is only identifiable by his hairy arm and wristwatch. She looks at him, stern but impassive. He is dominant, she submissive.

[...]

It’s sexual, and odd, but also quite mundane, quite familiar.

And he has written about Krispy Kreme doughnuts.

The flagship doughnut, the Original Glazed, is sweet but not cloyingly so, and light, very light, almost fluffy, in the middle. The outside is fried crisp and the yeast-raised inside is contrastingly buttery, which is appealing.

But now he has written about his favourite Australian album of all time.

Since I Left You — the Avalanches

It’s common for bedroom producers to scour the history of recorded music to grab bits and pieces and reprocess their findings into something new.

It’s been a central angle in the newest wave of popular music since the electronic uprising of the late ’80s. What they did in 2000 with their first and so far only album was reset those rules once again. Here was a beautiful piece of musical art made entirely from samples;

Since I Left You was a jigsaw of Kid Creole, Madonna, Jimmy Webb, Sergio Mendez, Mandrill, De La Soul and the Osmonds, stolen and then rearranged by a loose-fit, encyclopedic crew of musicians into, between them, everything from turntablism to Hawaiian steel guitars.

Look at me, kids! I’m cool!

Remember how Jim Schembri slagged off bloggers and then started a blog? You may also be aware that last week he slagged off jazz and then within a few days became a jazz fan.

Jim yesterday announced that he is taking a “short break” from his “journalism” and blogging duties. Let’s hope he makes it a long break. A really long break.

Jim Schembri wearing his trademark smug, shit-eating grin

Andrew Jaspan and The Age salivated over it then, and Melbourne’s leading gutter-tabloid broadsheet is still salivating over it now.

The way that this supposedly respectable newspaper shamelessly uses sex to try and attract readers is pathetic. Andrew Jaspan has a lot to answer for.

(Also, I bet that poor woman had no idea that she’d end up being used as soft-core erotica and reader bait for the rest of The Age’s existence.)

UPDATE (12.55pm): Someone at The Age obviously thought the same as me.

The Age — as is its wont as a trashy, celebrity-driven rag — is today featuring a story about Silverchair’s Daniel Johns and “those” gay rumours.

Musician Paul Mac has revealed the distress caused by false rumours about Daniel Johns’s sexuality, after the singer’s break-up from Natalie Imbruglia.

Mac, who was incorrectly linked to Johns in magazine reports, said the entire episode was very upsetting for Johns, who was already devastated by his marriage break-up.

So do you reckon that The Age juxtaposing a photo of Paul Mac with a pic of Johns sucking a lollipop is completely coincidental?

News you can use

Of course it’s not.

Here’s Melbourne’s “quality” broadsheet delivering the kind of quality investigative journalism that we’ve sadly come to expect from it.

Seriously, Melburnians should just read MX. At least it’s free.

Timmeh Blair uncovers leftist disengagement.

This article was the most-viewed by Age readers on Sorry Day.

The article in question is a hard-hitting investigative piece about a dog show.

Now I’m the first guy to criticise The Age for its lightweight bubblegum stories and over-reliance on celebrity news and lifestyle guff at the expense of proper journalism, but if Timmeh’s going to have a crack at The Age for something like this he should also take a look at the newspapers of News Ltd. — his employer.

Let’s have a look at the most read stories within the News stable yesterday.

Adelaide Advertiser and The Australian (with its three dozen readers): Tick!

Daily Telegraph (Blair’s employer): Nope. Story about shark attacks on the rise.

Perth Now (online paper): Nope. Some person named Ward is shunning limelight.

Herald Sin: Nope. Stories about people blowing themselves up are always winners.

The Courier Mail: But Australia’s hardest-hitting newspaper, The Courier Mail, takes the cake with its top story about a Harry Potter star dating a — wait for it — EX JUNKIE!!!!1!!!!111! Which one? Dunno. Didn’t read it.

There’s a story running on The Age’s website about a teacher who repeatedly screwed an underage student.

A Melbourne secondary school teacher had weekly sex with a student in a school darkroom, a Victorian court has been told.

Paul Anthony Segar, 50, of Mt Waverley, appeared in the County Court in Melbourne today charged with two counts of an indecent act with a child under the age of 16, four counts of sexual penetration with a child under 16 and four counts of sexual penetration with a child aged 16 to 17 whilst under his care and supervision.

Alongside the ad is a purple animated advertisement that begins thus:

And continues thus:

Oh dear. Poor old Fairfax-owned RSVP.

Melbourne’s tabloid-broadband lifestyle supplement Fairfax “newspaper”, The Age, recently added a tagline to its masthead that reads: Australia’s Independent Newspaper

Fair to say that I nearly choked on my cornflakes when I read that. “Independent from what?” I thought. Certainly not from corporate editorial control; nor from celebrity news. Perhaps what they mean is independence from significant right-wing balance or from any sense of ethical conflict when advertising dictates the selection and composition of stories.

Don’t get me wrong — I think the Herald Sun is much more worthy of lining my cat’s litter tray than The Age but at least the Hun doesn’t arrogantly tout itself as “independent”.

What else is the Age independent from, GrodsReaders?

Jason Koutsoukis, writing in today’s Sunday Age, explains how the Liberal Party campaign machine last week successfully manipulated the media in order to take control of John Howard’s sorry/apology semantics debacle.

The trouble over saying sorry started on Thursday when Howard was asked why, if he was not responsible for the interest rate rise, he was apologising for it. “Well, I said I was sorry they’d occurred. I don’t think I actually used the word ‘apology’. I think there is a difference between the two things.”

Watching the disaster unfold, the Liberal Party’s campaign director Brian Loughnane hit the roof.

Too late to stop the “sorry” saga from dominating the 6pm news bulletins, Howard’s office went into damage control mode and bundled the press pack travelling with the PM onto their chartered jet for Sydney.

With all the experienced hands out of the way, the PM’s office then tipped off the ABC and the Herald Sun newspaper to rush a couple of journalists up to 4 Treasury Place and wait for Howard to appear.

Only one question was allowed at this doorstop “interview” and Howard answered it by accusing the Labor Party of playing word games.

Journalists from The Age (and from other media outlets, I’m sure) have been bitching and moaning endlessly during the campaign about how the media packs travelling with Howard and Kevin Rudd are treated. I mean, how are these fiercely independent and hard-working journalists supposed to file reports from the election frontline if the Liberal and Labor Parties don’t ferry them around and drive them to events in luxury? Especially when dastardly campaign teams manipulate journalists’ movements to maximise their party’s advantage.

Maybe instead of sitting back and allowing themselves to be spoonfed information, those press release-regurgitating cyborgs could go out and do some, you know, journalism. Might require the hire of a car or the booking of a plane ticket without the assistance of the Liberal Party, but it’s just a thought.

I’m not known for Internet fads. Everyday I recieve many emails along the lines of “Kevin Rudd has added you to his Facebook. Would you like to join?”

The answer is, of course, shit no. I would barely even have heard of FaceBook if it wasn’t for The Age - a quick Google search of their domain reveals 525 hits for “FaceBook”.

Are these Age journalists really that enthralled by a fairly popular social networking site that they deem it news 525 times? It is of no surprise to find that not one of these news stories was even of the slightest importance. No “Osama found in Facebook offices”, no “Facebook spills oil along Alaskan coast”, not even a “Facebook deems itself President For Life”.

So why the interest?

Any theories?