Mood:
a-okTopic: independent media
Sydney Alternative Media has gone to roughly 20K pageviews a month. As Lili the lovely jobsearch consultant this last 2 months has said "that's alot". Yeah but what the hell to do with it? To sell adverts on it would surely spoil 'the vibe'. Even google adsense seems grim and bound to end in tears flogging more useless widgets. Subscription business model? Who could be bothered.
We do enjoy the 20K per month pageview figure (about 10 stories per page) built up over 16 months. That's overtaking the usual monthly circulation of the erstwhile employer Sydney City Hub reborn 6 years now. That's satisfying.
And what about imitation as flattery? Well that would be exagerating but we do notice ABC spruiking the 'go local, online, interactive' exhortation this week in their old media radio spruiking on 702. This is what they are referring to:
Daggy vacuum cleaner indeed (!?). There is an interactive link at the bottom of their front page leading to this:
Similarly I like and respect the ABC but I don’t trust it entirely. I am heartened by an article by Tony Moore where he notes:
“The ABC is grappling with how to transform itself from a paternalistic public broadcaster catering to a loyal if passive audience to a multi-channel narrow-caste, engaging diverse and conditional audiences that have an expectation they will participate, or at least be consulted, in content creation.” SMH 25 March 08 p11 [bold added] in Your ABC board should be sacked, not stacked - Opinion - smh.com.au
Meanwhile New Matilda has expanded it's horizons too with a daily news story and good looking new webpage format, seeking to build up it's own interactivity with cut and thrust comments section, where sleeping dogmatists may not lie (?!):
Meanwhile in the huge email influence stakes there is the original Crikey.com.au which has expanded it's comment section on stories to a whopping 1000 characters limit up, from some 250. This might be a mixed blessing in terms of brevity and clarity of comments -time will tell. Here is one of our comments and notice the clumsy URL went off the page. The intention was to expose a covert ALP lobbyist also mentioned there.
We are not sure what (now venerable) Get Up have done to tweak their model post Rudd election and this bears some investigation in due course.
Also honourable mentions to maverick Stephen Mayne's Mayne Report which is pitching to the business market building on his business editor experience with News Ltd and of course as original founder of Crikey.com.au itself:
