Daily Examiner editor leaves the building: don't slam the door on the way out

When Peter Chapman took over as The Daily Examiner editor little was known of him locally in the Clarence Valley except that he hailed from other climes in recent years, was a former television sports commentator and had been rapped over the knuckles by an ABC TV Media Watch program in the 1990s.

I think I can safely say that a number of residents looked forward to having a new editorial voice at the helm of their only local daily newspaper on the grounds that a change was as good as a holiday.

So at first some Daily Examiner readers were puzzled by the odd discordant notes hit by Chapman in his early articles and comments.

Puzzlement quickly turned to something close to outrage in certain quarters, as those odd notes turned into frequent reports and opinion pieces which attempted to either demonise and marginalise segments of the Valley community or blatantly bag various small towns, villages and community facilities.
While an increasing number of so called news reports, whose raison être seems to have been advertising goods or services, tried the patience of many.

What wasn't widely known at the time was the fact that Chapman was using an APN News and Media running sheet benignly called Readers First. [APN version Ewart version Press Council version]

This publishing philosophy calls on editors and journalists to report news which is more responsive to and reflective of the needs and interests of a newspaper's readership, to make advertising an important part of the editorial/news team and have journalists give a less detached account of events or embed themselves in their stories.

However, in Chapman's rather clumsy hands this meant that The Daily Examiner abandoned editorials, began to pander to perceived community bias and prejudice, published blatant advertorials and allowed hearsay or downright gossip to form the basis of a significant part of the news in some issues (with a tinge of racial profiling or chauvinism often thrown in for good measure).

The Clarence Valley reacted in various ways - by simply shrugging shoulders as they turned the page, challenging the editor in the letters column, phoning him directly to refute some of his more outrageous assertions, complaining to senior management, contacting watchdogs, stopping any engagement with the newspaper or laughing outright at claims that newspaper circulation was rising rapidly rather than merely marking time as it has done since the turn of the century.

It was noticeable that some of the goodwill garnered by the 150 year-old newspaper was being needlessly dissipated under the Chapman editorship, but a few locals still tried to support this North Coast icon with news tips even when personal irritation levels were high and rising higher.

After less than fifteen months as editor Peter Chapman officially left The Daily Examiner this week as far as I can tell.
He is heading back to Queensland to take up the position of editor at yet another APN masthead, the Fraser Coast Chronicle.

When Telstra upsets a journalist......

The Daily Examiner, 24 August 2009
Click on image to enlarge

Not only in print but online goes the complaint when Telstra can't get its billing right and then charges for the bungle:

But the really galling part of this is that Telstra, having had us jump through hoops, is going to bill us for the privilege of paying our bill. It is sick.
I believe this move started months ago when Telstra sent me a beautifully crafted letter saying how kind it was of them to change their billing period from three months to one. We were quite happy with the three monthly billing and had no choice about the change.
So now we are being billed monthly and being charged $2 a shot to pay the bill over the counter or a percentage of the bill if we pay electronically.
Someone said to me over the weekend it was like a shop advertising an item for $100 but when you went to pay for it you had to fork out an extra $2 for the privilege.
Maybe if enough people complain about this unfair imposition the giant might be forced to change.

In the national media Telstra fares slightly better as it is reported that Telstra post-Truijillo is a much more customer friendly place and, elsewhere that complaints have leveled off (rather confusingly citing that in 2007-08 Telstra received 19,364 customer complaints).

One has to suspect that hard-pressed metropolitan journalists haven't gone much further than the media releases.

According to the Telecommuncations Industry Ombudman's own report, between January and June this year Telstra recorded a total of 62,541 complaints (37.3% of all telco complaints issues), with some recorded along these lines:

You will see in the pages of notes I’ve taken over 4 months that I have made hundreds of calls and spoken to approximately 70 customer service representatives. On one occasion, I was
on the phone to different departments from 9.30am until after 5pm. But to this day we still do not have the landline service that is so paramount, given our child’s situation. I have received conflicting information from Telstra’s representatives. Conversations have ranged from, ‘That staff member is not trained appropriately…’ ‘They shouldn’t have told you that…’ ‘Why
did they do that?’ to comments such as, ‘Don’t panic, there is no reason why we can’t connect you today.’ At one stage I was on a conference call with two Telstra staff from two different
departments, both disagreeing about the information they were giving me.

The Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman's January-June 2009 public report on Australian telecommunications companies here.

It appears that Telstra is not the only telco which still has a long way to go in balancing service delivery and customer satisfaction.

Hartsuyker gets negative press in his own Cowper electorate

Apparently the Nats are really getting desperate over their lack of relevance and absence of policy impact.
Federal Member for Cowper Luke Hartsuyker literally resorted to megaphoning his message to the Rudd Government last Tuesday.
Which put a number of his constitients offside, as well as apparently offending the mayors of two local goverment areas who had undertaken coordinated lobbying on behalf of February-March 2009 flood victims in the Coffs and Belligen districts.
It seems that The Coffs Coast Advocate readers are swinging away from Hartsuyker as well.
When I last looked Luke was polling badly when it came down to this local issue.

Snapshot from The Coffs Coast Advocate 27th August 2009

Bureau of Meteorology declares exceptional winter heat over large parts of Australia in 2009

Click on graphic to enlarge

Special Climate Statement 18 by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology National Climate Centre, 26 August 2009:

August 2009 has seen highly abnormal heat over large parts of Australia, especially in the subtropical areas of Queensland, the southern Northern Territory and northern New South Wales....

August 2009 is almost certain to be Australia’s warmest August on record. National maximum temperatures have averaged 3.14°C above the long-term average3 for the month so far, more than a degree above the previous record of +2.06°C set in 2006 (Table 2). It is also possible that August 2009 will break the record set in April 2005 (+3.11) for the largest monthly maximum temperature anomaly ever recorded for any month. Despite the less extreme overnight temperatures, daily mean temperatures (day and night combined) are also running well above record levels.

Full statement, maximum & minimum temperatures list and temperature anomaly map here.

Religion v Science: 'creationist' gets cranky

Religion versus Science: Round MXIV?

This intriguing little snippet turned up on Kwoff the other day. It is sourced from the New Scientist.

How to spot a hidden religious agenda

28 February 2009 by Amanda Gefter Magazine issue 2697

This article was temporarily taken down on legal advice after New Scientist's editor, Roger Highfield, received a letter from a law firm on behalf of James Le Fanu, the GP and author of the book Why Us? Following discussions, New Scientist has now reinstated the article accompanied by a comment from Dr Le Fanu.

Apparently Dr. Le Fanu sees himself as a firm believer in science and, objects to having both his motives questioned and to being lumped in with creationists.

The published article in question is pay for view, however Wikileaks obligingly has a copy of the original up on its whistle blower site.

The following are its closing paragraphs:

Some general sentiments are also red flags. Authors with religious motives make shameless appeals to common sense, from the staid - "There is nothing we can be more certain of than the reality of our sense of self" (James Le Fanu in Why Us?) - to the silly - "Yer granny was an ape!" (creationist blogger Denyse O'Leary). If common sense were a reliable guide, we wouldn't need science in the first place.

Religiously motivated authors also have a bad habit of linking the cultural implications of a theory to the truth-value of that theory. The ID crowd, for instance, loves to draw a line from Darwin to the Holocaust, as they did in the "documentary" film Expelled: No intelligence allowed. Even if such an absurd link were justified, it would have zero relevance to the question of whether or not the theory of evolution is correct. Similarly, when Le Fanu writes that Darwin's On the Origin of Species "articulated the desire of many scientists for an exclusively materialist explanation of natural history that would liberate it from the sticky fingers of the theological inference that the beauty and wonder of the natural world was direct evidence for 'A Designer'", his statement has no bearing on the scientific merits of evolution.

It is crucial to the public's intellectual health to know when science really is science. Those with a religious agenda will continue to disguise their true views in their effort to win supporters, so please read between the lines.

From the San Francisco Examiner: New Scientist mystery solved: it's James Le Fanu.

James Le Fanu's hype site.

Picture from Google Images

Herding cats in the Liberal Party

This week Malcolm Turnbull held the line according to his Newspoll results.
With the Nationals partner well off the reservation on the subject of an emissions trading scheme and its own Wilson Tuckey very vocally critical of teh leader, senior members of the Liberal Party must be holding their breath at the thought of what the Coalition backbench will do once Parliament resumes.
Will the boastful claim, that all Liberal MPs aren't bound to the party line in any vote but are allowed to follow their conscience, lead to a WA-inspired debacle gleefully watched by the nation?
Or will party heavies pull the climate change deniers into line behind Turnbull?
Despite all the closed door chest thumping that is obviously underway, I'm betting the latter. There's not a political tiger among the lot and the Bradfield by-election announced yesterday has thrown another spanner in the works.

Newspoll graphic

Brendan Nelson continues parliamentary tradition by treating the electorate as his personal plaything

If there is one thing I hate above all else in Australian politics it is that elected members of parliament appear to think that (after standing for election and entering into a contract which lasts until the next general election) it is best practice if they decide for matters unrelated to their health or family that they will retire early.

Liberal Party MP Brendan Nelson is the latest to treat electors as his playthings and the public purse as his to order, by deciding that he will retire at the end of September from the safe seat of Bradfield ahead of the next federal election saying:

"I would not be returning to the frontbench or the Liberal leadership should I stay, as such it is time to go'' .

Well, tough cheddar Mr. Nelson. It will cost the public purse at least a half million before poll results are called and, it is the height of self-indulgence (obviously endorsed by the most narcissistic of political parties) for you to decide that you have had enough of playing at politics outside of government.

An unnecessary burden on taxpayers in times of national economic uncertainty, by a typical specimen of the political class who will also be putting his hand out for a handsome pension/superannuation payout.