The revolution may not be blogged

My recent travels in Melbourne, Barossa Valley and McLaren Vale

Can Rudd save his ETS, or will it destroy him?
Rudd is a control freak. His government is run along command and control lines (read Cameron Stewart’s interesting piece in last Saturday’s Australian magazine). His media strategy is a campaign strategy. Win the day, stay in front.  Make your opponent the issue. Control the message. Make no mistakes. This is the goldfish in a bowl approach. Every day is new day, every week is anew week. It works for politics, it’s hopeless for government. Government is about implementation, not just rhetoric and across-the-despatch box abuse. The ETS (emissions trading scheme) is the focal point of Rudd’s first term as prime minis

The Internet and the damage done (to story-telling)
We’re seeing more articles like this one in the Times: Click, tweet, e-mail, twitter, skim, browse, scan, blog, text: the jargon of the digital age describes how we now read, reflecting the way that the very act of reading, and the nature of literacy itself, is changing. The information we consume online comes ever faster, punchier and more fleetingly. Our attention rests only briefly on the internet page before moving incontinently on to the next electronic canapé. Addicted to the BlackBerry, hectored and heckled by the next blog alert, web link or t

Journalism – a defence
It’s easy to take the piss out of journalists, and to blame the media for everything. Journalists often over-estimate how much they know, and exaggerate their own importance. But they’re not alone in having those shortcomings. Where you sit is where you stand. And people in different sectors of our complex democracy are quick to identify and lampoon the failings of everyone else. Journalists ridicule academics for being long-winded (and dull), academics ridicule the superficialities of journalistic analysis. Public servants sometimes think everyone in business is a spiv of one sort or another, while in the private sector bureaucrats a

Business needs to keep perspective on social media
I had a great time talking to a business group in Sydney today, my theme was that social media is suited in some corporate circumstances and not others. I made the point that there was nothing blue sky or revolutionary about social media and, indeed, it has some real drawbacks for corporates. I made four points: Mainstream. The yes or no debate is over, its now about how. Social media is here and its important that we understand it and use it or respond to it in ways that are consistent with our corporate objectives. So social media should be in every comms strategy even if we consider it and decide not to use it or not to use it much

Corporate blogging: Telstra trys again
The good thing about Telstra and social media is that at least they are trying. This is important in a country where very few large organisations do. So full marks for effort. No doubt, Telstra’s re-entry into the fledgling field of corporate social media will be generally applauded within the small band of people who care passionately about this stuff. But looking at Telstra’s new blog, called, in best marketing speak, Telstra exchange, I can’t help feel a little sad and a little more convinced that big c