It used to be called gossip, and it was denigrated as useless. The funny thing is the purpose it serves isnt well understood or is lost in the…

People said that about newspapers 20 years ago. And it's probably still true but they have had remarkable legs. Blogs are not as popular as Twitter, certainly, but they still sit there are very low cost ways for people to generate content they…

Paywalls thwart that.

Soper has a go at twisting a…

Quite.…

right there with Large Rock on a Camper Van in my local fave names list..

I do love a good band name, especially the hard-to-write ones. Why Shayne didn’t ever do a solo performance as…

Nah, dat stain.

I'm sure eel manage it somehow.

PS while the Herald is indeed a stained and disgraceful…

I've been phasing myself off The Herald for a while now. There was a point when it was one of my go-to morning sites for local news, back before the editorial direction threw a screaming right and veered off towards Dailymailsville.

The Herald's policy of amplifying the…

This is already being done, but it seems that libraries aren’t so great at promoting it. There’s a service a lot of libraries in NZ subscribe to called Press…

Forgive me for wanting a bit more specificity around your generalization.
But I fail to see how suggesting that articles that require some working knowledge of the science specifically climate change should have some intellectual rigor, or at least an understanding of the topic rather than ones…

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12227499

Remember that people’s financial relationship with a publication isn’t purely transactional. “You write stories I want to read, I give you money” is…

I know, but you are one column and Young and Trevett publish multiples of trash on their own.

No I'm saying I don't want to pay the demonstrably evil pimp based of his promise that he'll keep paying those working journalists (yeah right).

You…

I'm trying.

What happens outside of this pay barrier isnt of any concern to those erecting it. They will just fuss about what goes on inside it.
Anyway Im sure they think anyone who's having "financial difficulties" has, in their minds, only themselves to blame.…

Moi aussi. Their political reckons are so fucking bad, I want them to curl up and die. Which would be hard on Fisher, Ng, et al but the rest of the…

Yes! That's where I read the paper version today. So I guess not all is lost.

I don't have any answers for the fine art of journalism. I very much doubt this is going to work out for the Herald writers, when far, far more successful newspapers…

There’s a subtle but important difference between “you can read the one copy of the newspaper we have” and “you can book a computer to read the online copy of the paywalled newspaper”.

My local library literally has one computer that can access some of the subscription-only…

Exactly!

Give me the option of paying those journalists directly. I know I'm incredibly privileged to be able to afford that and I know that isn't perfect either but it's a whole lot better…

Yeah I've got that impression and it's causing serious cognitive dissonance.

Yes, that would be like the bad old days when they literally had to buy the paper one because that's all there was.

Director Paul G. Buchanan will do interviews with media that do not put his quotes behind paywalls. When he agrees to make "public" statements, he means for all, not just those who can afford to pay to read them. Do…

If we accept the current market incentives are not working to fix that, let’s regulate accordingly. If a media organisation does not want to behave like a responsible corporate citizen, they should lose some…

Is it possible that the underlying problem is in fact, google and facebook have hateful, racist, anti-science promotion algorithms written by hateful, racist, anti-science programmers?

I mean, when I…

I do too, but here’s my issue. If we end up with good-quality journalism behind paywalls, how are poor people supposed to access it? What if we risk a class-based economy of information, where the middle classes can access Matt Nippert, but…

It's more that if this doesn't work they may not have jobs soon.

I'll pay individual journalists who don't spread shit.

I'll pay organisations who try to get it right, even if they sometimes fail.

But I'm sorry I cannot bring myself to give Teh Herald any money while they continue to spread shit.

And…

The main difficulty is that pressure groups will seek to police the rules in ways that unfairly advantage partisan political agendas. These…

So I had a bit of an epiphany earlier this year when I realised that my trans son was wandering past my computer quite often and reading my twitter feed. And that meant that he was in danger…

A lot to discuss there, but let me just take one, because it's so true and it bugs me so much:

Most of the people I’ve mentioned are gifted communicators who could do so much better if they tried, or if the incentives supported them to.

If…