Now Much Easier To Ignore

The Daily Telegraph moves with the social networking times and replaces this blog click-thru box on its digital front page...



With this :



The TB Appreciation Society on Facebook has 21 members.



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Fade Out



Alleged West Australian blogger 'JF Beck' finds something better to do, and, as is becoming all but standard practice now, closes down comments at his old blog :


Why?

Barring last minute technical hitches, from Monday I'll be blogging from Asian Correspondent. Beck is moving into the mainstream...

The best of luck to JF Beck for his future at Asian Correspondent, regardless of who is funding it.

Correction : the photo above confirms JF Beck is male. Post corrected accordingly.

UPDATE : JF Beck's first post on Asian Correspondent, where he has apparently gone "mainstream", seeks to confuse readers, at best, about who any of these people are. Will anybody care?

Considering that Pure Poison, Ziegler's blog, exists as a lame Lefty response to Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt, Australia's gun bloggers, his comment is hilarious (not to mention exceedingly inane).

The Lefty whine-fest that is Pure Poison is never going to be as successful as Blair and Bolt.

"Gun bloggers"?

Like I said, the best of luck.

The Orstrahyun Hails The Murdoch 'Death To Free Information' Movement

By Darryl Mason

Rupert Murdoch's News.com.au 'heralds' the end of Free News. Yeah, go away free information. How we hate you.




I'm as reluctant as The Professional Idiot and Tim "Immeasurable Hurt" Blair are to announce that soon you will have to pay to read this blog.

But you will.

I'm sorry, but days of Free Information are gone now.

Wake up to yourself. You know it's true. Rupert said so. Yes, he lost a couple of billion dollars, but so what? He's the Sun King.

Like Rupert's 'quality journalism', you will soon have to pay to read this blog.

Or I will no longer be able to bring infrequently posted, vaguely coherent, content before your eyeballs.

It's that simple.

So here's how The Orstrahyun 'You Will Pay!' business model will work :

1) I will data-mine any and all personal information I can find out about you, then I'll find out where you live.

2) I will turn up at your front door expecting a decent dinner (no vegan shit) at least twice a year. "My family's asleep" and "who the fuck are you?" will not be acceptable excuses for non-honourance of our verbital food-for-blog-stuff contract.

3) After dinner, you will only be allowed to show me holiday photos of places I haven't been, and you will accept that I can shout "Oh, Boring!" whenever I want to.

4) You will have to supply drinks before and after the dinner. You don't have to come on all flash. This is not a shakedown. Woodstock Bourbon & Cola in a can is fine, but if you're rich, you will be expected to break out the Wild Turkey Special Blend.

Death to Free News (And Blogs)!


And don't miss this. The Inquisitr has an hilarious story where a media buyer claims Murdoch is preparing to sue Google and Yahoo because their search engines drive traffic to Murdoch media sites. The bastards!


UPDATE : Only hours after Rupert Murdoch announces he wants to have a go at foolishly attempting to destroy the link-based free-sharing New Media culture by locking his content behind pay walls, Reuters announces that not only do they want independent bloggers, like me, to link to their news stories, they are also happy for bloggers to excerpt their news stories and build new content from it. As long as we all play fair.

Of course, compared to the bloated executive excesses of Murdoch's News, Reuters is a lean and mean operation. But they aren't taking a chance by encouraging bloggers to link to and share their content. They don't have a choice. Murdoch thinks he can still Own The News. He becomes more like Mister Burns every year.

Rupert Murdoch still doesn't get it. Reuters gets it.

So on day one of the New Murdoch 'You Will Pay!' Digital Media Reality, the legend of 20th century Old Media goes and gets trumped by Reuters, who clearly understand the way it has to be.

What a monumental fuckarama the rollout of Murdoch's 'You Will Pay!' new media devolution promises to be. It's a shame so many Australian employees will lose their jobs as the awful reality of Murdoch mega fail sinks in.

UPDATE : Success! My 'You Must Pay!' proposal to readers of The Ostrahyun is already showing results only a few hours after launching. I've now received twelve invitations to dinner via comments, Twitter (@darrylmason) and e-mail, in Sydney, Brisbane, Wyong, Adelaide, Cronulla, Melbourne, Baja California, Boston and Exeter, England. There was, however, a general reluctance to supply bourbon with the meals, but regardless....

I was wrong. The 'You Must Pay' system clearly works. Go for it, Rupert!


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Old Media Already Suing Bloggers For Linking

By Darryl Mason

If a Daily Telegraph blogger allowed the following violence soaked comment to remain on his personal blog site for a couple of years, all of it posted under your name, even when that blogger knows you didn't write it, and even when asked nicely that blogger refuses to remove it or post an apology, what would you do?

Would you try to take legal action to get compensation for any "immeasurable hurt" that might be caused by this filth remaining online under your name?

Killing Howard is laudable. Killing his cabinet got to be OK too. Killing members of the Liberal party - that has to be a plus, surely. And what about the Nationals? We’ll kill them too. They helped keep Howard in power. And Family First, slit their throats. And what about other Christians, they are conservative and probably voted Liberal. Best kill all them along with small businessmen. There is a real hotbed of Liberal sentiment among these fascist businessmen. Don’t forget the Jews, the money grubbing bastards. They have to be next. Then there are those class traitors, the workers who voted Liberal. Kill them all. Purge the public service of suspected Liberal sympathisers too. That teacher over there. He’s wearing a tie so he must be a conservative. String him up. Hey, that guy’s got an American accent. Slaughter him and his baby too. It’s in their genes, you know. It’s a lot of people to be massacred but it will reduce greehouse gases in the long run.
Darryl Mason

The rest of the story explaining the headline, and the necessary sockpuppetry-related context, is here :

A Long Overdue Update To An Earlier Post About Online Fakery And Cats That Can Type (And Sushi Chefs That Don't Exist)


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I Am Not A SockPuppet, And Neither Is My Cat

UPDATE : Even though I didn't mention the name of Daily Telegraph journalist Tim Blair in the story below, Blair's lawyers seem to think this story is about him, and have sent threatening letters demanding a compensation payment for the "immeasurable hurt" I've supposedly caused by publishing it on this blog.

Much of this "immeasurable hurt" appears to have been inflicted by my merely linking to the posts on the Pure Poison blog that first broke the story that either Tim Blair, or someone in Tim Blair's household, using the alias 'WB', was filling comments at his own blog and other blogs defending him, or trying to steer conversations about Blair away onto other subjects.

At Tim Blair's Daily Telegraph blog, 'WB' posted some 70 comments in just a couple of months.

According to blogger Jeremy Sear, who claimed he spoke to him on the phone, Tim Blair acknowledged that while 'WB' was posting comments at his blog, and other blogs, all through his home internet account, he didn't know anything about it. Or that he did know, but wasn't prepared to disclose who 'WB' was.

The letter from Tim Blair's lawyers I received after first posting the below story, also demanded I stop posting other "defamatory" stories about the Daily Telegraph's associate editor on this blog, though they didn't point out any other stories that are allegedly defamatory.

Letters from Tim Blair's lawyers threatening legal action have also been sent to at least three other bloggers who either wrote about what 'someone' in Tim's house was getting up to online, or linked to the same Pure Poison stories that I linked to below (which are now deleted).

Even though the links in the below story now lead to a blank page at Pure Poison, I've been told by Blair's lawyers these links to nowhere should disappear from this blog.

Not so long ago, Blair would have taken on his critics and his mockers at his blog, and would have made a fair to decent attempt at slaying them mightily. It probably would have been funny, too.

Not now.

The game has changed. This is serious.

You occasionally hear about people taking legal action against Murdoch newspapers or columnists or journalists for something they've written or claims they've made online or on air.

But this is the first time I've heard of any Murdoch journalist trying to sue bloggers for merely linking to a story about them, and demanding other stories and comments discussing the linked story be deleted from a blog, and forever disappeared from the Google cache.

Obviously I won't be taking down the below story. Such an action could be perceived as an admission of guilt. Or cowardice.

Anyway, if I disappear the below story Vex Voyager will be pissed. It's the only thing he's done that I've allowed him to post on this bog. I have no intention of causing him "immeasurable hurt."

And as far as "defamatory" comments on a blog go, here's one that's been up for a couple of years at Tim Blair's old blog, where one of his regular commenters made up the following psychotic slander and posted it under my name :

Killing Howard is laudable. Killing his cabinet got to be OK too. Killing members of the Liberal party - that has to be a plus, surely. And what about the Nationals? We’ll kill them too. They helped keep Howard in power. And Family First, slit their throats. And what about other Christians, they are conservative and probably voted Liberal. Best kill all them along with small businessmen. There is a real hotbed of Liberal sentiment among these fascist businessmen. Don’t forget the Jews, the money grubbing bastards. They have to be next. Then there are those class traitors, the workers who voted Liberal. Kill them all. Purge the public service of suspected Liberal sympathisers too. That teacher over there. He’s wearing a tie so he must be a conservative. String him up. Hey, that guy’s got an American accent. Slaughter him and his baby too. It’s in their genes, you know. It’s a lot of people to be massacred but it will reduce greehouse gases in the long run.
Darryl Mason

Blair knows I didn't write that. But he has no problem with it remaining on his website under my name. He refuses to delete it, or apologise for its publication.

Fortunately, I don't suffer so easily from the "immeasurable hurt" bloggers and commenters and links apparently inflict on Tim Blair, even though the above grim tirade posted under my name has led to some interesting, if very short, job interviews when some Googling was done.

Previously.....

I AM NOT A SOCKPUPPET AND NEITHER IS MY CAT

By Vex Voyager

There's been a bunch of accusations floating around the Australian blogstream in recent weeks, in which it is claimed that a 'journalist' with a major daily Sydney newspaper has been commenting away like a maniac on his own and other blogs under an assumed identity, or assumed identities, or that someone very close to him is doing all this, from his home.

The journalist's excuse when he was called on this alleged sock-puppetry by the rowdy lads at Pure Poison, basically ran something like this (not direct quotes) :

Yes, someone in my household has been commenting on my blog, and other blogs, trying to shield me from criticism, but it's not me. I either don't know who is doing it, from my home, maybe even from my own laptop, or I'm not prepared to say who it is. And by the way, my lawyers have a letter for you. So here's a big bowl of shut the fuck up.

The 'journalist' now accused of what most bloggers call 'sock puppetry', and who has had great fun in the past accusing other bloggers of doing what he now stands accused of, and who has often railed about Evil Pagan Lefties threatening defamation to try and shut up up bloggers like him, has swallowed down a whole bucket of "I'm A Fucking Hypocrite" and has now set his lawyers loose on bloggers who won't shut up about this story.

The Orstrahyun has asked the 'journalist' three times to answer three simple questions about who, if not himself, is writing all those nice things about him online, from his home. Three simple questions. But he refused to answer any of them, instead warning The Orstrahyun to leave the story alone, and go away.

As if that's going to happen.

So, instead, I made up a false identity, Vex Voyager (edit...No you didn't, I'm real - Vex Voyager), to ask myself some hard questions about The Evils Of Sock Puppetry.

VV : You've been accused of sock puppetry, that is writing comments online about your own work under an assumed name, haven't you?

DM : Yes, I have. But I deny everything. It could have been anyone in my house doing it, when I'm away or asleep. You can't prove anything.

VV : Who else in your household could have done it?

DM : Anyone. It could have been the maid, the butler....the sushi chef, he spends a lot of time online, playing games I think, but you never know....

VV : So someone else in your house is going online and writing nice things about you, and going after your critics, when you're asleep or at work, and you don't know who that person might be?

DM : LIke I said, it could be anyone. But It's Not Me. I know that....I'm pretty sure of that. Yep, damn sure. I think.

VV : Hmmm...

DM : Maybe it was the cat....

VV : The cat?

DM : Yeah. He's pretty smart. He can knit blankets out of his molting fur to keep himself warm. How environmentally friendly is that? He should get a whole lot of carbon credits for cutting down on...

VV : You must think I'm the Mayor Of Stupidtwon to believe something like that.

DM : I'm not telling you what to believe. Make up your mind. But my cat is whip-crack smart. That I do know.

VV : Can your cat work a keyboard?

DM : He can hit the keys, but the music is mostly shit.

VV : ....no...I meant, does your cat know how to type?

DM : I've seen it sitting there, licking the mouse pad. I don't think if it smells of mouse, but...

VV : But you were saying before that someone else in your house must have been leaving those comments saying nice things about you online, under fake names....

DM : What's a fake name anyway? I mean, what sort of fucking name is Vex Voyager? I once met a guy named Tooty Von HammerFix, and...

VV : That never happened. Now, you claim as your defence against accusation of sockpuppetry that someone else is writing comments on your own blog, from your home, from the same internet IP address, but you don't know who it is. Is that correct?

DM : Maybe someone comes in at night, when I'm asleep and pushes the cat aside and...It could happen.

VV : Someone breaks into your home and steals nothing but while they're there they get on a computer and leave nice comments about you at various blogs, talking up your work? And they do this over and over again? Night after night? And you don't know who it is?

DM : Hey, like I said, before....how do I know it wasn't the cat? I'm sure the cat understands that if, say, I was working at a major Australian daily newspaper, and I was doing a blog that maybe earned money for me based on how many people were recorded visiting and commenting on my site, if that was the situation, well, the more I earn, the better the cat eats, right? I mean, if I earn more because more people are supposedly visiting my site and leaving comments and I could make retarded claims that my blog is The Blog An Entire City Is Talking About, then I could afford those treaty cat biscuits with the soft, creamy fishy centres. Cats love them. They're like fucking crack for cats.

VV : And you also think your cat might be waiting until you go to sleep, then jumping online and reading through blogs looking for valid and often viciously accurate criticisms of you and then your cat is typing responses either defending you or steering the comments off onto another subject so other commenters stop hammering you...

DM : Yes, this could be so.

VV : And your cat is doing all this, while you're asleep...

DM : Or at work.

VV : Or at work....your cat might be doing all this, falsely inflating your blog's comment counts because it knows if you earn more money it will get a better kind of cat food? Do I have that right? Is that the full story?

DM : I didn't say that is what happened, I'm just saying, maybe it could happen that way. Who knows? I don't know. But someone in my house is doing it, and it's not me.

VV : So it could be the maid, the butler or the sushi chef, correct?

DM : Or the cat. I'm not saying it is, but....

VV : You don't have a sushi chef, do you?

DM : No.

VV : And there's no butler. No maid.

DM : ............correct.

VV : Do you think there's a need to exaggerate about such things?

DM : What do you care? You don't even exist.

VV : Yeah, that's right....


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Aussies Trust Bloggers As Much As Mainstream Media Sites

'Known Brand' Media Losing Value, Authority, Readership

First, a rambling comment :

Long before the first news blogs, and a few years before most of the mainstream media went online, I used to get e-mails from friends in different parts of the world who would write short summaries of interesting news stories from their local city newspapers. Some of those stories would make their way into Australian newspapers a few days, or weeks later, but most did not. I, likewise, used to write a kind of newsletter with stories from Australia to these friends. Our shared circulation list grew into the hundreds, and we all thoroughly enjoyed summarising our local news, or deciphering it. In many ways, these newsletters we used to share were a precursor to news blogs, like 'The Orstrahyun'. What we were doing wasn't particularly innovative. E-mail newsletters were bouncing around university campuses, military bases and science research labs in the late 1970s.

It was remarkable how quickly we grew to trust each other's take on the news, to the point where most of us would read each other's newsletters in preference to what began to flow through the internet when newspapers like the UK Guardian and the New York Times went online in the mid-1990s. I lost most of those 1990s e-mails, but I remember how often my e-mail friends in England or Germany or Spain or Mexico or Russia were right about a slowly emerging news story, days before the mainstream media confirmed what we had been discussing and debating.

I only mention all this in relation to the story below, which highlights the fact that a growing number of Australians are placing more trust in news blogs than the mainstream media. That might not be much of a revelation to the readers here, but it is interesting to note that the distrust of the mainstream media also appears to extend to their websites and their news blogs.

And the mainstream media, which once so utterly dominated how Australians got their news, are getting nervous, because their audiences are not growing exponentially, and because they know they are no longer the only choice for how millions of Australians will get their news.

story continues after...
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Go Here To Read Darryl Mason's Online Novel ED DAY

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story continues....


Australian news blogs finding audiences in their thousands is a relatively new phenomenon. We were late starters compared to the American, British and Japanese bloggers. The independent news blogs, up until only two years ago, that did pull more than a few hundred readers found a large slice of their readership through link-alliances with American blogs. Crikey was one of the few exceptions to this rule.

This blog pulls anything from 1800 to 5000 individual readers per day, with about 80% of the readers coming from inside Australia. The next biggest regular chunk of readers are Americans, then Brits, then Germans, Canadians and French. A few hundred regular foreign readers, from what I've gleamed from your e-mails, are ex-pats or tourists, looking for a different take on the news from home.

To say that my mind has been blown by the growth of readers in the past 18 months (particularly in the past six months) would be an understatement. This site is now only a few thousand readers away from providing something between a part-time and full-time living. The genorosity of readers saying thanks through the PayPal link (above right) is greatly appreciated, and I probably should have thanked you publicly on this blog much earlier.

As with the e-mail newsletters I mentioned above, much of the growth of readership here apparently comes from readers e-mailing links to stories they've found here to their friends, who then become semi-regular readers themselves.
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It's still a strange thing to be sent a link to a story on this blog by someone on the long CC lists my e-mail address has been added to, perhaps not realizing the person they're sending it to is the one who posted it.

There's no reason why news blogs will do anything but grow in readership, and influence, in the coming years. It was only eight or nine months ago that supposedly reputable mainstream
media commentators were spouting that blogs would have little influence on the federal election.
Yeah, they were hoping.

Okay, enough ramble.

The claims that Australians are trusting news blogs, as much as the mainstream media sites, to get their news comes from no less an authority on consumerism than the chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). One Graeme Samuel :

"What is even more worrying for traditional media organisations is that some of their assumptions about users trusting known brands are starting to look a little shaky," Mr Samuel told a Walkley business lunch in Sydney today.

"For a growing base of users, (blogs) are all equally valid sources of news, information, entertainment and gossip, and users are not necessarily discriminating between traditional and new sources."

Mr Samuel said although "old" media companies still dominated many of the most visited sites, they could no longer assume users would always default back to "traditional houses of journalism".

This meant the media had to find new ways of remaining relevant to a fragmented and disloyal audience.

I'd presume most readers of independent news blogs read them for the same reasons I do : they publish stories you don't always find in the mainstream media, they provide mostly fearless and sometimes outrageously entertaining comment, they show there is more than one or three sides to a story, they punch holes in the sacred myths that so much of the mainstream media continually perpetuate and they let readers know that just because the mainstream media claims something is true doesn't necessarily mean that it is.