Posts by Alfie
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Hard News: A cog in the Mediaworks machine, in reply to Sacha,
MuddierWorks announces its integrated news brand. Meh.
While newsroom integration appeals to accountants, it doesn’t always work that well in practice because writing for television requires different skills.
When Sky News launched its 24 hour service in the UK in 1999 I was their first freelance video editor. They brought over a number of journalists from Murdoch’s other operations, mainly from The Times. These were all competent journos who could write well for print but received no specific training for TV journalism.
When you’re writing for TV you need to let the pictures tell part of the story or you end up producing scripts that are very Lord Privy Seal or "stating the bleeding obvious”. It took us months to retrain them.
And that penny-pinching business with the photocopier is just plain stupid.
Meh indeed.
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RNZ has a delightful podcast from John Campbell delving into the murky world of international tax avoidance, specifically looking at Apple NZ. For the year ending September 2014, the company declared revenue of $568m but only paid tax of $6.8m – because their “cost of sales” in NZ was an amazing $551m or 97% of their revenue.
Surely that can’t be right?
Either mathematically or morally.Go JC!
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When TV3 relaunched 3rd Degree as 3D back in April, the show attracted an average of 203,000 viewers aged 5+ which is relatively healthy. But when 3D was buried in a later slot on Monday nights, the average audience dropped to just 81,000.
Duncan Greive ponders the implications in Shabby treatment of 3D puts focus on Government funding.
Why does this matter? Aren't private companies free to do as they wish with their programming, even if it does vastly diminish the public audience for these important stories?
It matters because while TV3 parent MediaWorks is indeed a private company, 3D is made with public money: $567,420 from NZ on Air's platinum fund pays for 10 special "3D investigates" episodes a year. Which is all well and good if the programming created is treasured. But being shunted around the schedule so carelessly suggests otherwise.
Greive suggests that Fairfax and MZME would give their eye teeth for that level of government funding to carry out investigative journalism. He has a point.
When scarce NZonAir funding is given to a commercial company which then demonstrates obvious distain for the principles of public service broadcasting, maybe it's time to reaccess TV3's eligibility for such handouts.
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Fonterra is NZ's third largest user of coal. They use it to dry milk powder in ten of their plants. Some of their North Island plants use gas but all of their South Island facilities use coal. In total Fonterra uses over half a million tonnes of coal each year.
To make matters worse Fonterra intends to expand their large South Island plant in Studholme near Waimate, adding extra coal-fired boilers churning out yet more of that low-value milk powder that the world apparently doesn't need. Go figure.
Fonterra's increasing use of coal pretty much cancels out the carbon reductions other businesses and individuals have worked hard to achieve. Their blasé attitude isn't helped by this government, as Jeanette Fitzsimons points out.
New Zealand's Emissions Trading Scheme is supposed to put a price on carbon emissions and encourage alternative fuels but the taxpayer gifts Fonterra 60 per cent of their pollution for free and it only has to pay half of what is already a very low price for the rest.
Are Fonterra really happy to be seen as corporate bastards? The Coal Action Network Aotearoa has started a petition at ActionStation asking Fonterra to reconsider their use of fossil fuels. Please pop over and sign if you feel strongly about this issue.
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I'm sure that by now everyone has seen that wide angle shot of Sam Whitelock towering over the PM, making him look like a dwarf amongst giants. Does Key really feel that he's one of the boys or does he just have an unnatural desire to be in close proximity to rampant testosterone?
For those if us who find Key's sycophantic sucking up to sports' stars a little too much, Toby Manhire has put together a little picture special called When John Key Met the All Blacks.
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Hard News: Judicial caprice is no way to…, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
This can no longer be found, it seems the article you linked to which I read yesterday, has been removed from the Herald .
Luckily, Google remembers everything.
Original article published: Thursday, 22 October 2015 -
An OIA request by a private citizen reveals that Key texted Ritchie McCaw prior to the latter's backing of Key's call for a silver fern flag. The Herald duly reports...
Yo Rich m8, its JK ;-) chk out my cool flg vid on the FB. Go ABs!
But no, that's not actually what he said. The exact content of the text message is lost to history after Mr Key deleted the text message.
Does anyone actually refer to "The Facebook"? And was that prior to Key being made aware that he was not allowed to delete texts? Oh wait... Wayne Eagleson explains.
there were a number of text messages between Mr Key and Mr McCaw and it was unclear whether they would be classed as "official information".
"Most were of a general nature (and not necessarily as Prime Minister) such as text messages from the Prime Minister stating 'good game'."
So Key wasn't wearing his PM's hat again. Maybe he keeps it in a special box in the corner, for those odd times when affairs of state arise.
The response to Ms Coleman's Official Information Act request also revealed the designer of two of the four-strong shortlist flags had lobbied Mr Key in recent years. It revealed Kyle Lockwood sent Mr Key versions of the flag which appeared in the shortlist, and fern lapel pins.
There ain't nothing like opening up those direct lines of communication, eh.
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Envirologue: 1080, "eco-terrorism" and agendas, in reply to Rosemary McDonald,
Rats? No problem. I bought one of these nifty little bait stations on TradeMe. A bargain at $25 but make sure you buy some extra bait blocks at the same time.
These dehydrate the rat and it wanders off to die somewhere else. There's no reason why you couldn't set it in a tree but it would probably work just as well near the base. It has a little dark tunnel which rats love. That leads to the bait area and it's narrow, so you can't poison pets or birds by mistake.
We had a couple of rats causing problems in outbuildings, set the trap with fresh bait and whammo... rat gone within 24 hours. They're deadly effective.
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Envirologue: 1080, "eco-terrorism" and agendas, in reply to Rosemary McDonald,
Seriously effective looking beastie….I am saving up for the rat version…
Maybe think twice about that Rosemary. I mentioned above (without referring to the brand) that my neighbour has one of those new-fangled Good Nature possum traps. Both traps are in similar areas and are positioned only 20 metres apart.
My basic Timms trap has notched up a total of 58 possums while Barry's gas-powered job has scored nil... not a one.
Maybe he's doing something wrong but I know I'd opt for a Timms every time. ;-)
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Here's a little snippet of interest to local media watchers which I missed at the time. On RNZ Gavin Ellis noticed that on 18th September the Herald horoscopes were particularly poignant with numerous references to October 9th... the day the NZME layoffs were due to be finalised. The Spinoff has compiled some examples.
