Gender Equality! Girl Power! SRS ISSUES!

Every so often, men involved in the music scene who see themselves as believers in social justice get a bee in their bonnet about the oversupply of Y chromosomes in their local music scene.

Where are all the chicks? Why aren’t there more female band members, music writers, roadies, or sound techs? In an issue of the sorely-missed hardcore magazine Death Before Dishonour, editor Lochlan Watt wondered,

In a male dominated music scene, where there exists a number of females screaming for equality and to have their intentions and passions recognised as being genuine, there seems to be a lack of them actually getting into it and getting involved beyond simply going to shows and getting tattoos.

Here’s the thing - a lot of females just aren’t interested in getting involved, and the ones who are interested are too busy creating opportunities for themselves to have the time to whinge about equality. Sure, it’s important to have female “voices” and “perspectives” on the “music scene”, but the last time I checked, equality doesn’t mean giving a shitty sound engineer work just because she is female.

I’d like to leave you with this photo taken by John Hatfield.

In a group of dudes at a hardcore gig, only my friend Big Will (front and centre in the navy shirt and green shorts) is actually “getting into it”. The rest of of them are standing there with their beers, arms crossed. I don’t know if the surplus of dicks is the biggest problem here.

Ah, this must be the philosophy of my local rag.

(via my-ear-trumpet: yeoldenews: [source: The Atchison Globe, March 14, 1878])

“ I think that the press has been all over the iPad because Apple puts on a good show, and because everyone in journalism-land is looking for a daddy figure who’ll promise them that their audience will go back to paying for their stuff. The reason people have stopped paying for a lot of “content” isn’t just that they can get it for free, though: it’s that they can get lots of competing stuff for free, too. The open platform has allowed for an explosion of new material, some of it rough-hewn, some of it slick as the pros, most of it targetted more narrowly than the old media ever managed. Rupert Murdoch can rattle his saber all he likes about taking his content out of Google, but I say do it, Rupert. We’ll miss your fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the Web so little that we’ll hardly notice it, and we’ll have no trouble finding material to fill the void. ”

From Cory Doctorow’s article “Why I won’t buy an iPad (and think you shouldn’t, either)”.
Yes, I am typing this up on a Mac and no, when this one dies I won’t be replacing it with a PC; but I really struggle with the philosophy behind Apple products.

If this isn’t the First World Problem to beat all, I don’t know what is.

The Edge.

After a fortnight of nasty surprises, I was thrilled to learn I’d been chosen as one of five residents to work on their creative practice at the State Library of Queensland’s new centre for digital culture, The Edge.

I told Facebook and didn’t get the cavalcade of congratulations I’d hoped for; probably because as one friend succinctly put it, “I couldn’t work out what the fuck The Edge actually is and what you would be doing at it.” I think I also confused some Rockhamptonites - The Edge is the flashest apartment building in Rocky, also located on the river bank. Big Will is the night receptionist. I digress.

Basically, The Edge is giving me a stipend and access to their shiny new facilities (iMacs, recording studios and an espresso machine are just some of the facilities relevant to my needs) in exchange for me creating awesome stuff and helping out the other residents. Their facilities will also be bookable by the general public and there will be plenty of conferences, workshops, lectures, performances and panels on interesting things being held there. I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity and hope like hell I can make my project AWESOME.

“Stop fishing and tell us about your project!” I hear you grumble. COOL YA JETS, MATE. Here it is.

A FASTER HORSE - A fortnightly podcast profiling young people with careers your guidance counselor wouldn’t have heard of.

When asked whether he sought the opinions of his customers, father of the automobile Henry Ford replied, “If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they would have asked for a faster horse.”

Similarly, many young people’s views on future possibilities in both life and career are shaped by their limited life experience and the viewpoints of those around them.

“A Faster Horse” will profile young people doing crazy things that they never set out to do – from touring in an ABBA tribute band in South Africa to droving cattle across Australia. It will be available fortnightly from the iTunes store and through The Edge website with accompanying multimedia material.

I think the best thing about the internet (and something that has remained mostly unexplored by mainstream media thus far) is the ability to choose which medium would tell the story best. If a combo of text and sound would do it, then great. If a story would be more engaging as a vodcast, I’d like to give that a go. Anyway, we’ll see. There will definitely be 12 audio podcasts being distributed fortnightly from mid-March and a heap of multimedia stuff on the accompanying website. Keep an eye on the A Faster Horse twitter for updates.

The Edge has their grand opening tonight (Feb 26th)! If you’re in Brissie you should come along from 5pm. It’s a really neat space, DZ are playing and there might be free t-shirts.

News values - a dead duck?

Early this morning, the Courier-Mail’s online editor John Grey tweeted a link to this story. Click through if you like, but basically a family of ducks (two adults and DUCKLINGS OMG!!) were run over near Enoggera this morning.

Being a country girl who has (accidently) killed her fair share of wildlife on the roads, my first thoughts were “oh, that’s sad, but I’m sure the driver didn’t mean to.” Clearly many readers thought differently and yes, as Grey notes, they did respond in the calm and well thought-out manner of online news site commenters. *cough*

Anyway, Grey raises a valid point. Is this news? It might not be but golly, it sure is getting some hits. In the first year of my journalism degree, we had the concept of news values drummed into us ad nauseum. News values are meant to help us hapless hacks figure out what is news and what is, well, not really news. Here is my analysis of the story with the aid of theoretical news values. Text in bold is taken from this website.

1. Impact: The number of people whose lives will be influenced in some way by the subject of the story. For instance, a bakery strike may have less impact than a postal strike.
   I’d say the people who were stuck in duck carnage-induced traffic were affected by the incident.
2. Timeliness: Recent events have higher news value than earlier happenings. Of particular value are stories brought to the public ahead of the competition. These are known as scoops.
   This was a scoop this morning, I’m assuming.
3. Prominence: For the same occurrence, people in the public eye have higher news value than obscure people. For example, we cared that Magic Johnson had AIDS, while an ordinary citizen with AIDS would not have commanded the attention of the national news media.
   This story’s got nuthin’, sorry.
4. Proximity: Stories about events and situations in one’s home community are more newsworthy than events that take place far away.
   I’d like to think nobody outside Brisbane found this newsworthy, but people lurking news.com.au probably found this more interesting than the re-naming of the Gateway bridges.
   
5. Bizarreness: A classic example of this is dog-bites-man vs. man-bites-dog. Man-bites-dog is more bizarre. Dog-bites-man usually is not news.
   Speaks for itself, really.
6. Conflict: Strife is newsworthy.
   Smooshed duckies on the road OMG how sad!
   
7. Currency: More value is attributed to stories pertaining to issues or topics that are in the spotlight of public concern rather than to issues or topics about which people care less.
   People appear to be concerned about the safety of wildlife in close proximity to roads. Also people care about animals - especially if they are cute, defenseless and/or dead.

What do you reckon? Is this news or are the old concepts of news values quaint in the new world of hits, tits and mainstream media consolidation and syndication?

niki:

An hour’s worth of changes to a news.com.au article image about a Wii pirate’s $1.6m fine.

Niki brings the goods and highlights why paywalls won’t work on holding back information.

(via elegantslum)

Or just work in broadcast, where nine times out of ten, your best option is “says”.

Puns ahoy #2

Tonight on Twitter, ABC Brisbane’s brekky host Spencer Howson posted a coy shot of himself in a calming bubble bath, ahead of his first 4AM start of the year.

*applause*

Good night, everyone! I’m here all week.

If TV journalism were really like this, I would not want to work in any other medium. This theme music would play every time I entered the office with a coffee in one hand and my jacket slung over my arm. I would zoom around in my “News Update” van with perfect hair and makeup, wooing the general public with my sweetness and intelligence while covering the stories that really matter.

I spent a couple of days this week exploring Great Keppel Island, off the coast of Yeppoon in central Queensland for a feature article I am working on.
The proposed development of the island by Tower Holdings has been the topic of much conversation, misinformation and many conspiracy theories over the past few months, but I didn’t have the time or health to investigate while I was working in Rocky.

It was an amazing experience. I’m incredibly grateful to Petros Khalesirad for his research, resources, passion and quad bike skills and the residents of GKI for being generous with their time, food, quad bikes and accommodation.

Upon our return to Rockhampton, Petros and I did an interview on 4RO 990AM about the trip. The article and accompanying video and pictures should be up and ready to go within a month, but I thought I’d share a few snaps as a bit of a teaser for anyone interested.