John Hartigan : The Uastralian iS Stell Aa Qaultiy Newpaper

By Darryl Mason

I'm absolutely loving how many blog posts the speech by News Limited CEO, John Hartigan, is producing for this blog. All that free content courtesy of Harto himself. Brilliant. And all from a speech where he berated bloggers and independent online news sites for taking a free ride on "original content" produced by News Limited.

So many stories already, and I haven't even gotten into all the marvelous data he revealed in his speech about how unprofitable online news is unless you can get people to pay to read it, and I haven't yet listed the carnival of Old Media cliches that peppered his News Limited Still Roolz speech at the National Press Club, broadcast by Sky and the ABC.

So here's John Hartigan explaining why newspapers are not dead, and why people will pay to read quality journalism that is "brilliantly written" and "professionally edited" :

This is not the territory in which aggregator sites or amateur bloggers will do well.

This is the natural terrain of the well-trained, professional, experienced, clever journalist.

Inspiring.

And here's how Hartigan's words were turned into yet another "professionally edited" cross-promotional puff piece weeping defiantly for the future of quality newspapers, in The Australian, all under this gloriously typotastic headline :




Mumbrella, who was dabbed with the smirking flint of Hartigan during his press club speech for being "not wrong for long", tries not to laugh too hard :

So let’s do some role playing. You’re a sub on The Australian.

Your boss has just given a speech about the health of newspapers.

You’ve got to put a headline on the speech.

Do you a) Check the spelling of the word “newspapers” in the headline or b) Not check the spelling of the word “newspapers” in the headline?

Clearly the answer is b). Then again, Hartigan has been sacking journos and sub-editors across News Limited, so...maybe it was an intern's fault.

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