Hard News: Campbell interviewed
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Good lord, Roughan's smear sounds like the vision statement of a good TV current affairs programme. Comforting the afflicted and all
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excellent interview, and another good insight into the gap that has been created by the demise of the programme.
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Tim Darlington, in reply to
Roughan’s smear sounds like the vision statement of a good TV current affairs programme.
And the complete opposite of Fox News - can't see anyone characterising Fox's mission as "to side with people against power."
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In an extraordinary New Zealand Herald column, John Roughan slated Campbell Live as “this country’s little Fox [News],” – but from the left – a programme whose creators “made it their mission to side with people against power and express the pain and frustrations of those on one side of a problem.”
Pot, kettle, black, Mr Roughan.
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I hope someone saved that interview somewhere. One day it will simply disappear. (Didn't play for a couple of minutes, but still there now ...)
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When you write a book about a Prime Minister, and that Prime Minister endorses it, is the main attraction at the book launch, and cheerfully signs copies for supporters at party conferences, then you have abandoned any claims to "journalism".
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Russell Brown, in reply to
I hope someone saved that interview somewhere. One day it will simply disappear. (Didn’t play for a couple of minutes, but still there now …)
Don't worry. We have a copy. We made the show!
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Two more post-mortems:
Typically lovely writing by Hayden Donnell on the “viking funeral” among journalists that marked the death of Campbell Live.
And more on the existential anxiety in the journalism trade by Deborah Hill Cone.
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
And more on the existential anxiety in the journalism trade by Deborah Hill Cone.
As I read that it made me grumpy, "How could she complain when it is the journalists themselves who gave up the power".
But she is in exactly the same place as most scientists now. Like journalism, my own profession is owned and run by white male managers who neither understand nor care about what is done "at the coalface". Their last job was selling a sharemarket or selling milk powder to the Japanese - their next job could be anything so long as the remuneration package is better.
Somehow we have all collectively decided that managers are somehow mystical beings who deserve more money and absolute power over our lives. Most times we have vastly more knowledge and experience than they - yet they make the decisions.
We've all chosen to hand over control of our lives to MBAs in suits and there is no evidence that our lives are better for it.
It's hard to be critical of DHC when my own profession is in exactly the same situation.
Yet I think we still need journalists (and scientists, but I would say that). I think somehow there has to be a way that a journalist can make a living without the vast share of the money being earned by their efforts going into the hands of someone who's only interest is buying a new suit.
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
But she is in exactly the same place as most scientists now. Like journalism, my own profession is owned and run by white male managers who neither understand nor care about what is done “at the coalface”. Their last job was selling a sharemarket or selling milk powder to the Japanese – their next job could be anything so long as the remuneration package is better.
In other words, private equity shills. It’s not exaggerating to describe it as ‘fast food finance’ or simply ‘McFinance’.
Somehow we have all collectively decided that managers are somehow mystical beings who deserve more money and absolute power over our lives. Most times we have vastly more knowledge and experience than they – yet they make the decisions.
We’ve been led down the blind alley that somehow anyone can be a CEO, or that we're all CEOs now.
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Kiwiiano, in reply to
Russell:
two more post-mortems.....
And another funeral I discovered last night, TVNZ Heartland* has gone titzup. SKY and TVNZ must have had a falling out. It may have been a collection of mouldy oldies but a lot of the stuff they were showing gave the modern reality crap a hiding.
(*pity they chose a name forever besmirched by association with one of the most evil organisations on the planet.)
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Rob Stowell, in reply to
my own profession is owned and run by white male managers who neither understand nor care about what is done “at the coalface”.
Education is in the same boat. So is health. The idea that health professionals and educators should have a role in managing health and education seems almost quaint now.
That's why we're all so cynical about 'measurable outcomes'. We expect managers to be able to count. Heck, most of us can count ourselves. Making decisions about quality is never that simple. Yet the managers get the big money for counting - and the hard-to-define-but-you-know-it-when-you-see-it goodness or greatness of things shuffles quietly off into the corner.
And it makes some of us furious! -
Any chance you could do a follow up interview with John (Campbell... not Roughan) on Media Take?
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
Education is in the same boat. So is health.
Absolutely. The list of professions where the highly trained knowledgeable and skilled professionals are managed by twatcocks with an MBA are alarmingly long.
The same applies just as well to the trades where the best way to make money as a tradesman is to stop actually doing the work yourself.
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NBH, in reply to
The list of professions where the highly trained knowledgeable and skilled professionals are managed by twatcocks with an MBA are alarmingly long.
Although conversely, there is an unfortunate tendency in a lot of professions to denigrate management and assume that it's something that anyone can do. That's absolutely not true at all, and in some areas the sort of qualities that professional success rewards or selects for are not those that will make for good managers - and I've seen that phenomenon again and again. In my own area, for example, having a publication list that needs to be spiral-bound is no indication that you're particularly good at thinking about the current and likely future challenges to your department, have any understanding of what students actually need from their lecturers, or are particularly good at maintaining good relationships with your colleagues - including that nasty relic from the 1950s who does, however, have a publication list that needs to be spiral-bound. Good management is an art and a skill in its own right, and - like the ability to teach or communicate to 'lay' audiences - it doesn't automatically go hand-in-hand with professional expertise.
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Stephen Judd, in reply to
Good management is an art and a skill in its own right, and – like the ability to teach or communicate to ‘lay’ audiences – it doesn’t automatically go hand-in-hand with professional expertise.
Amen. While I will rail against the cult of management and managerialism with everyone else, nonetheless good management is a thing, ideally coupled with the appropriate technical/professional background. People with no training for it in management jobs can be pretty terrible too.
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
there is an unfortunate tendency in a lot of professions to denigrate management and assume that it’s something that anyone can do. That’s absolutely not true at all, and in some areas the sort of qualities that professional success rewards or selects for are not those that will make for good managers
A very good point. I'm a crap manager, some of the reasons for that are the same things that make me good at my job.
But there is still no reason why the person employed to do those tasks I am crap at should be allowed ALL the control and be paid 6 times my salary!
I think there is a place for managers in any organistaion, but it is NOT at the top of the pyramid. They have skills that are useful. We don't let the folks in stores decide our research directions so why should we let the managers decide research directions.
Same in the media, there is no reason why Weldon and Christie should decide what journalists should work on nor what a current affairs program should focus on - they have NO skills that allow them to make intelligent decisions about that. Yet that is precisely what has happened.
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
good management is a thing
Yup indeed. And rare.
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I remember a survey many years ago that NZ managers rated themselves much higher than managers in most other countries rated themselves.
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Jeremy Andrew, in reply to
I think there is a place for managers in any organistaion, but it is NOT at the top of the pyramid. They have skills that are useful. We don’t let the folks in stores decide our research directions so why should we let the managers decide research directions.
The management of the CRI I work for have largely come up through science, including the CEO. I can't say it makes a huge difference when the majority of the incoming money is directed by the people doing the spending, mostly the government. The research is directed where the money is, because that's where the money is.
Huge campus and staff upheavals are a different matter, depending which conspiracy theory you listen to, of course. -
New Zealand comes up short in global surveys of governance and leadership quality. It's not staff who hinder our various organisations from performing better. Yet look who trousers the most money? Broken system.
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Joe Wylie, in reply to
It's not staff who hinder our various organisations from performing better. Yet look who trousers the most money? Broken system.
But-but-but it's a grand NZ tradition - or at least, trying it on is. It's probably all of 25 years since the new "management" team at a provincial hospital, in the course of priming the place to become a Crown Health Enterprise (remember those?) decreed that medical staff would have to pay for car parks. Management, however, would be exempt. If it hadn't been for the entrenched clout of doctors they'd probably have gotten away with it.
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I think there is a place for managers in any organisation, but it is NOT at the top of the pyramid.
Just my opinion. Such "skills" rise to the top when" the bottom line" takes on an inflated importance.It kinda means we, organised or not, have lost our way, and are too timid to choose another option. So sitting counting dollars is the only thing that makes sense, to the manager in all of us. We have been pushed/led in this direction tho'. The pity is some mistake this for a viable option, it ain't IMO Its a fallback position
Whew! talk about multiple meanings.
Oh the powers back on -
Steve Barnes, in reply to
I think there is a place for managers in any organistaion, but it is NOT at the top of the pyramid. They have skills that are useful. We don't let the folks in stores decide our research directions so why should we let the managers decide research directions.
As Hunter S. Thompson said... "The Scum also rises".
There are good managers and bad. Trouble is that those higher up that ladder get to pick the next person behind them. Heard of the Peter Principal?.
Then there is Empire Building, put those two together and you have the nexus of New Zealand buisiness at the highest level.
Shame really because the root of all this is the artisan/patron relationship, "look what we have achieved together" rather than the "winner takes all" philosophy we seem to admire so much these days. -
Brent Jackson, in reply to
(*pity they chose a name forever besmirched by association with one of the most evil organisations on the planet.)
I presume you're referring to Heartland Bank. What is your beef with them ?
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