http://www.southsearepublic.org/story/2005/1/20/84417/4560

I am doing it to deprive them of potential advertising revenue by denying them referrals. I would encourage anyone else not happy to email the SMH (or any other newspaper) and tell them you wont be deep linking to certain writers.

This is the contact url for the SMH;

http://smh.com.au/contacts/readerlink/

or;

readerlink@smh.com.au

The only way to stop them is to deny the SMH potential revenue. The Australian political blogs have sufficient weight of numbers that if we all start telling the SMH the same thing the writers we target will get dropped.

Same goes for any other newspapers.

Alas, not even close.

Even if you think it is useless – tell the SMH which site you are from, how you arent going to deep link certain writers and that you want those writers dropped. Tell them about it each month.

Otherwise we are going to continue to get the writers the SMH thinks they can foist on us, rather than the quality political discourse we deserve.

I couldn’t help thinking that Blair had already sold his soul, and that Packer should be pissed off that he doesn’t receive free and unencumbered title.

It can be very hard work, or not. I am reminded of some famous author – perhaps Lawrence, but I’ve forgotten – who reported an exhausting day. Asked to elaborate, he explained that he had added a comma in the morning, and then taken it out in the afternoon.

The crazy thing is that writing can be such an intensely demanding craft that it’s conceivable that the story might have even been literally true.

Webdiary has no sense of discipline, of editorial control. How could Margo produce that single statement: “Because the fundamentalist Zionist lobby controls politics and the media in the US and Australia..” without listening for the sound of blowtorches? She was going to get trouble if it was or was not true.

Not the kind of mistake you would find on Crikey, old or new. Interesting that Steven Mayne seems to value shareholder activism more than whistleblowing journalism. And sad.

Crikey’s pitch is insider gossip. People love gossip – particularly if it seems privileged. Somewhere along the line, Stephen Mayne – wasn’t he the eminence grise behind the uniquely unsuccessful “Jeff Kennett is Louis XIV” re-election bid? – has seemingly managed to convince the commentariat that he’s some sort of Emile Zola. But Crikey will always be the Latham bucks night video ‘revelation’ to me :)

You shouldn’t try to read Jack Robertson, Scott. It’s like watching a crazy guy crashing through adjectival thickets, pursued by baying editors waving red pens.

*shudders at the mere thought*

As for writing book chapters being hard work, it certainly CAN be. But it depends on the book. I didn’t bother to buy Margo’s “not happy john” tome, but I scanned it on a friend’s bookshelf and it looked to be the same stream-of-semi-consciousness crap that she, Jack etc spew forth in Web Diary. But I shouldn’t be too sweeping. Although Margo and Jack write little that is intelligible let alone intelligent, some of the other regular Web Diary contributors are often worth reading.

You lot sound like a bunch of jealous old misogynists (not part of the PellAbbott fan club are you?). If you had just 0.001% of Kingston’s audience we’d be able to hear you shouting down here in Sydney! :-)

I’m glad you’ve realised that this isn’t a monotonically left-leaning blog. In fact Troppo contributors have widely divergent, quirky and sometimes unpredictable viewpoints on lots of issues.

Speaking for myself, my objection to Margo and Jack has nothing to do with their left or right political orientation. I have enormous respect for lots of left-leaning op-ed pundits and bloggers (e.g. Chris Sheil, Tim Dunlop, John Quiggin, Mark Bahnisch). It’s simply that Margo and Jack mostly produce material that is both loopy and poorly written. Crap knows no ideological boundaries.

As for your comment about audience size, I imagine that Web Diary’s audience would probably be larger than any blog with the possible exception of Tim Blair’s. But that’s because it’s a part of a mega-million dollar Fairfax publishing empire that’s existed for a century or so, rather than because of its innate quality. I suggest the audience of radio “shock-jocks” like John Laws, Alan Jones or Stan Zemanek would in turn dwarf that of Web Diary (or Tim Blair). In your opinion, does that mean that those commentators are entitled to automatic respect for their opinions or manner of expressing them? If not, why the double standard?

Does she have a huge audience? Connected to SMH, you would hope so.

However, she must be producing the goods for her audience to continue returning.

Personally, I just read the topics there these days: who’s got time to wade through comments that sometimes number in the hundreds?

Still one of my favourite blogs, Ken. I like the variety that comes from having several contributors. Sometimes on single person political blogs, the same pov on all articles gets to be a tad tiresome. I think Ms Fits (Reasons you will hate me) was so popular on those recent blog awards because you are guaranteed a laugh or something outrageous most days (today’s post is heart-stopper – turn you off sausages for life!)

‘monotonically’ – hmmm… as I rush off to dictionary.com.

Yes, one can a write a not particularly good chapter in a short period of time, like one can do an essay the night before it is due. And sometimes one can produce a lot of material in a short period of time but this is generally after it has been thought out to some extent. When it comes to a quality most novels that are written in a couple of weeks, read like novels written in a couple of weeks.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2005/02/04/1107476806777.html