As Noel Counihan well knew, the People's Republic of Moreland has a proud history of hosting good old-fashioned shitfights and blues in the name of liberty, socialism, and having good old-fashioned shitfights and blues.
But these days Moreland-specific media is relatively minimal.
The Moreland Leader is the primary media agent. It is owned by News Limited and maintains a devoted online presence in addition to its print run of 67,000.
Reportage usually covers local issues of popular concern, local political developments, or PR for schools and community groups. Like many local newspapers, the Leader has been something of a launching pad for career journalists, as few contributors stick around longer than a year or two.
Happily for The Leader, Moreland Shriek is prepared to countenance its ongoing existence.
Why? Because the 'Leader loves the City of Moreland'.
The same surely cannot be said of The Leader's rival organ, the Fairfax-owned Moreland Community News. With a circulation of just 34,500 and no online presence, the Community News' heart clearly lies somewhere other than Moreland. The good folk at Fairfax labour under the delusion that the Community News is 'respected for its comprehensive and accurate coverage of the local news and community events'. Moreland Shriek humbly submits that nothing could be further from the truth: the Moreland Community News is widely considered to be a second-rate rag primarily concerned with peddling classified advertisements.
Digital media activity in the hyperlocality of Moreland is sporadic. The Republic of Moreland was a pioneering blog, but has recently fallen silent. Now muppinstuff maintains a similar focus on sustainable lifestyles and local events, while the Newlands Community Alliance is more specifically campaign-driven.
Moreland's virtual public sphere, like its corporeal public sphere, has a certain political bent. In the coming weeks will take a closer look at these blogs and the curious beasts who run them.
Update: M.Shriek has been blessed if entirely surprised to learn that the Moreland Community News no longer exists. They should have learned to spell Gowrie right. You don't mess with the Good Folk of Gowrie Station, lest they became the Rampaging Mob of Gowrie Station.
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It interests me that Moreland Leader has a devoted online presence. By that, do you mean it has a relatively sophisticated and constantly updated web site? Or are you talking about regular user activity on the web site?
ReplyDeleteRegular user activity - the Letters to the Editor in the print edition are with increasing frequency using material submitted by readers online.
ReplyDeleteI do not like this trend. Whereas letters submitted by snail-mail/email generally require a full name and an address (and identity witheld on request if reasonable), letters derived from online submissions are often written by unidentified and unidentifiable authors: 'Bob in Brunswick', for example, rather than 'Robert J. Terwillger, Brunswick'. The kind of people who submit letters to the editor are often the kind of people who are pushing barrows, and I think it behooves an objective or non-partisan press to permit readers the opportunity to identify those barrow-pushers.
I noticed a similar trend when I was up in Darwin earlier this year. The NT News (also owned by News Ltd) regularly publishes anonymous letters to the editor on highly partisan topics. When I read an anonymous letter praising a sitting member of parliament to the heavens, I was moved to write a letter of complaint - how were we to know that the editor of the newspaper or the MoP themselves didn't write the letter? In the end I had to be satisfied with righteousness, as my own letter was not published. Perhaps I should've submitted it anonymously.
Ah well, just as well righteousness tastes so good.