Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

Let’s take it from the top. Fran Kelly put this project together and she is well respected by other journalists (an interesting enough tale in itself). In my view she hasn’t done a very good job but when all you have to do is sit back and watch a bunch of self-important dimwits who’ve never done a decent day’s work in their lives commit hara kiri in front of you, I guess you lose the incentive to try any harder.

While Australia generally does well in international rankings, those rankings can blind us to a larger truth: Australia will not succeed in the future if it aims to be just a bit better than average. I believe that we need to revive the sense of Australia as a frontier country, and to cultivate Australia as a great centre of excellence. ... Today the frontier that needs sorting is the wider world, and complacency is our chief enemy. (Rupert Murdoch)

Games have been around for ages. They appear in different forms such as riddles to charades, tick-tack-toe to hang-man, snakes and ladders to chess ... But all that has been digitized now and converted into online computer games that allow you not only to be able to play with friends and family on game night, but to connect online and compete with the players worldwide.

There has been a long-term shift of how the public gets its news. In the past several months, more young adults are tuning-in to the late-night television parodies and satirizations of the 2008 US Presidential election than the “real” news broadcast coverage.

This election the candidates are becoming the celebrities themselves. With appearances on popular television shows, such as Saturday Night Live, the David Letterman Show and the Oprah Winfrey Show, Presidential candidates need not to be worried if their political careers fall through because they now have acting as a back-up profession.

Commercial television - where most Australians used to get their news and information - has dropped the ball. Even more disturbing, I think it’s showing serious signs of pulling out of the main news game. I think what we need - desperately - is to find some new models of those ruthless, old privateers we used to sneeringly call media moguls. (Ray Martin)

The decision to axe one of this network's most distinctive and important programs has been approved by the director of ABC Radio, Sue Howard, and it will condemn Radio National to even greater irrelevance. (Stephen Crittenden)

Oliver Stone's latest film W has just been released in the US. It covers the period from George W Bush's student days at Yale to 2004, the last year of his first presidential term. Its reception has, to put it mildly, been mixed.

Henson has done nothing wrong under the law and for lawmakers to be carrying in this manner is actually an appalling dereliction of their role in our political system. Indeed arguably undermining of it. They need to be called on this, every one of them.

On 7th September the 16th Sydney Biennale came to an end. As I am originally from Italy, a country where art is a substantial part of everyday’s life, I was interested in seeing how this important event could affect the approach of Sydneysiders towards contemporary and visual art.

Nothing happened. Did the pope have better security protection than George W. Bush? Or the Chaser was afraid of religion? Julian’s answer in the public lecture showed the other side of the program’s logic. It is an international event; it’s religion; the police got preparation this time; and it would have been more or less the same plot if we did it again.

Child obesity is hardly surprising nowadays. Half the food ads shown during children’s television timeslots were for “non-core” foods like chocolate and fast food, according to a new study by obesity researchers.

When I found that the Australians are still reading China through Chairman Mao in 21st Century, I was overwhelmed by the frustration of misunderstanding at first.

As an avid film enthusiast, it gives me great interest to be up to date with the latest entertainment technologies. I am watching the take-up of Blu-ray in Australia with much anticipation, and am eager to hear other peoples view on the subject.

The name Sarah Palin is one that has resonated in Australia within the last month, for all the wrong reasons. Her personal life has been the focus in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian amongst others. I’m very aware of whom Sarah Palin is but if questioned on all of her political views, without thorough research, I’d be a little rusty.

What an amazing victory for Australian media. Connecting Australia to the heartwarming stories which demonstrate the strength of the human spirit to rise above physical and mental challenges shows our dedication to all of our athletes, limitations or not.

Youtube has given a voice to those who otherwise would not be heard by the masses... The personal nature of Youtube videos makes the delivery of the tragic messages from those tangled up in the euthanasia debate all the more confronting – and, as we’ve seen through Australia’s reaction to Ms Flowers’ video, all the more effective.

Hodges [a candidate in the recent council election for Sutherland Shire (NSW)] has every right to campaign and seek media attention to boost his voting numbers; however, when did racial campaigning become such a news story and part of the normal election process?

Australia’s censorship laws came under tight scrutiny at an Arts Censorship Forum convened after the recent furore surrounding artist Bill Henson’s latest exhibition. Hetty Johnston, executive director of child protection agency Bravehearts, called for an arts tribunal to be set up that artists must first approach before working with children.

In this digital age, when people are getting quite comfortable with shopping, learning, socialising and even managing their bank accounts online, why is having an online picture of the front of their houses becoming so controversial? Is Google Street View really invading our privacy?

Analysis of the reporting of electricity privatisation initiatives in New South Wales brings disturbing confirmation that the major Australian newsmedia does not accurately report essential facts on issues of vital concern to us. Indeed, it often acts as a conduit for propaganda against our best interest.

The real significance of yesterday's announcement is that for the first time in its history, Fairfax has made a public declaration that profits come ahead of journalism. That its role as a major custodian of Australian quality editorial is secondary to its responsibility of maximising the financial outcome. (Eric Beecher)

As Bob Carr, Julie Bishop and Germaine Greer all proceeded to bring their prejudices to bear, backed up with stark and obvious ignorance, my interest turned to horrified fascination. Could decision makers in Australia really be so cocksure and stupid to boot?

The Seven Network are having trouble sticking to a consistent story - first they denied GetUp had booked any ads at all, then, once we produced the confirmed booking sheets, claimed we'd booked another ad unrelated to Tibet. Now they're claiming the ads weren't shown due to time constraints. They've even accused GetUp of engineering this deliberately..

My hope is to become fully engaged with this community while learning as much as possible about the online blogging sites by the time I am finished with my studies here. However, after I am finished, I hope to remain an integral part of this community and take it with me to wherever I am headed next –the beauty of the web.

They bring on an idiot suffering from the delusion that he is funny, who is supposed to impart some information as he goes along,  and people scrunch down in their seats, cringing and wondering why the hell they are there, how much more of this they can take, and thinking ' I might just go home.'   Mercifully the torture ends, suddenly time is of the essence and the final hectic adjustments happen as the panel is let in, one at a time to some applause ― the odd boo ― and 3, 2, 1 second and the show is underway.   

The death of Nightline and Sunday is a strange story, a saga of the deterioration of a once mighty media empire with current events appearing to be a late and inevitable consequence…

The principle effectively ... was that, in order to protect a person’s privacy if that person gave personal data to the collector, the collector could not use that data for any other purpose than what the person had given it for, except by specific authority of law or by the approval of the data subject. ... Then along came Google and Yahoo! (The Hon. Justice Michael Kirby)

Wars make a lot of money and threats of war make more as stable economies can continue in a pyramid scheme to beef up these carrion feeders using taxes. In the USA, the actual government is tightly interwoven with this industry due to the national security impetus and the drive for privatisation as a model. Trouble is the same industry then sells to US future threats and hence the whole thing is nationally stupid but financially gold making.....

For much of my life I've been unable to understand why certain drugs were banned, why prostitution was banned, why certain forms of gambling were banned, why abortion was illegal, or why certain material was censored. The history of the consequences of banning these kinds of activity is well-known. First, they fail.