Jock Serong

Lachlan Murdoch’s top adviser Siobhan McKenna resigns from News Corp Company’s Australian broadcast chief, who was involved in negotiations over Murdoch family’s succession plans, to depart media giant

News Corpse CEO Robert Thomson strides through the media release sludge with a barrage of five-dollar words: 'non-pareil,' 'inflexion point,' and my personal fave, 'efficacious.' Writes like a swollen bollock.

“Tell your children who the cowards were.”

ffs every news story has some boggle-eyed American screaming ‘weaponise’ Are there any other serviceable verbs we could be using here, people?

Just got a participant survey from Bendigo Writers' Festival. A naïve part of me thought good - looks like they're reflecting. Nope. Not a word of contrition. Not even a mention of Codes of Conduct, Gaza or external lobbying. 'How was your festival experience?' Don't waste my time.

BREAKING: First images of Tony Abbott's new "mothership" concept for UK asylum seekers.

A government of ultraviolent toddlers

What’s this? Yet more research concluding that robust public investment in the arts yields economic benefits?

A great outcome for Ireland, and a rebuke to all those tired cliches about freeloading artists sapping the resources of the state.

But also, art enriches us all, economic benefits or no.

I've never seen bone spurs on a papadum

Christ on a bike - Dan Tehan just managed to tether nuclear power to AI and the US government. What could possibly go wrong with that combo?

So cool that they got Joe Biden to do the honours

Explains those improbable choppers

Warrnambool Victoria says 'hold my beer.' Or better still...

Just a paean to the vibe of the thing should do it - I'd be honoured.

Manuscript's gone to the publisher. Every living witness interviewed, every rabbit chased down each burrow. And then... 'oh, would this box of 250 Kodachrome slides be any use?' Unseen for sixty, seventy years. A treasure trove...

Is steepled fingers a new level in rock paper scissors?

It’s fascinating that, given a clear choice, Americans have binned the first amendment and not the second.

A thousand speechwriters couldn’t come up with a better endorsement of a policy

Got to say, the universities are really excelling themselves at supporting Aus lit right now

And here’s me thinking Drax was the bad guy on an Arctic whaler

If you don't want to surrender to AI's relentless enshittification, never refer to yourself as a 'content creator.' Or a 'creative.' You're a writer. Take some fucking pride in it.

Rummaging for other things, I found a photo I took in 1997 at the Wittenoom asbestos mine. The sign was meant as a workplace speed limit, but it stands as an unintended confession.

"Publishers are in the business of stories, so they must be fluent in numbers, but they need at least ostensibly to give primacy to words, or they may as well be in the far more lucrative business of shoes or weapons manufacturing."
Grim realities, beautifully woven, by @radiomoderation.bsky.social

Pro-Israel group lobbied La Trobe and Bendigo Writers Festival over Palestinian academic's institution A leaked letter reveals pressure from a pro-Israel group in the lead up to the Festival

Well there you go. Bendigo Writers Festival has been absolutely played, forced to do the dirty work of lobbyists by their sponsor. When these threats come knocking, academic institutions should be doing everything to protect and defend this country’s cultural events, not become Israel’s enforcer.

Absolutely right. It’s one thing to grossly misread the room. It’s quite another to lie about it. Never seen a single instance of a “code of conduct” anywhere, ever.

So disappointed to discover the Bendigo Writers Festival thinks our words are just ‘content,’ to be forced into alignment with corporate values. Writers are there to pursue difficult conversations. That’s the job. If that makes you nervous, you may as well play pre-recorded music out of a speaker.

Murray Watt's got a knack for doing mournful face when asked about disasters like SA's algal bloom. "Terrible," "tragic," yada yada. Someone bloody PUSH HIM on the link between these events and his ongoing approval of fossil fuel projects.

External journalists aren’t allowed into Gaza and the entire @aljazeera.com team in Gaza has been murdered by Israel with the killing of Anas al-Sharif, Mohammed Qreiqeh, Ibrahim Zaher and Mohammed Noufal today

Every day they try to hide the truth of the genocide they are committing

“Food insecurity” rapidly becoming the pre-eminent gutless euphemism of our age. Take a bow, Dave Sharma.

While politicians pollute the planet, First Nations leaders are defending Country with heart, culture and community As a new Patagonia documentary sheds light on the climate advocacy of frontline Torres Strait Islander communities in Australia, journalist Jock Serong explores how First Nations activists across the ...

adventure.com/first-nation... Adventure have done a beautiful job presenting this story - really proud of it.

The Productivity Commission is floating AI copyright exemptions – with worrying implications for Australian authors and publishers Exemptions to copyright legislation for AI would disadvantage Australian writers – and set a bad precedent.

'Imagine grabbing the keys for a rental car and just driving around for a while without paying to hire it or filling in any paperwork .... and the government changed the law to make [it] rental car legal.'

@alicektg.bsky.social on Productivity Commission & AI 👏

theconversation.com/the-producti...