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Prime ministers inevitably attract media scrutiny and public criticism. But Julia Gillard has had it particularly tough … with some of the fiercest opposition coming from within her own party, and…
The iconic Australian ideal of the ‘fair go’ is under threat, says Nick Cater.He identifies a new breed of ‘sophisticated’ Australians, who hate corporations, miners and the Murdoch media – as well a…
In this very special event, two generations of Australian reportage royalty come together, as the world- renowned Helen Garner interviews Anna Krien, one of the brightest writers of her generation…
By Greg Foyster In the midst of a stellar advertising career, Greg Foyster came to the realisation that the work he was doing had grave consequences for the health of the planet. He became a walking…
Presented by the Melbourne International Comedy FestivalWebsites, blogs, social media, YouTube, iTunes, live streaming and podcasts…The worldwide web has put a worldwide audience directly into the…
‘Advertising’s re-branded public image troubles me. I’m an old employee of the industry, and The Gruen Transfer reminds me of conversations I had within the walls of advertising agencies, where…
Privacy in the digital age is a hot-button issue, from WikiLeaks to who owns your Facebook photos. With Liberty Victoria, we present a hypothetical discussion encompassing the church, child abuse…
A co-presentation with Melbourne Conversations.Popular comedian and contrarian John Safran is known as a seeker of awkward and unusual truths. He infiltrates a secret world of madness, agitation and …
2012 was a bad year for the print media. What Queen Elizabeth might call an annus horribilis. So, after a year packed with announcements of staff layoffs at Australia’s major newspapers, it’s nice…
The obsession with the perfect diet, germ-free homes, selective socialising, harm minimisation through choice of the correct fabrics, risk minimisation with helmets, knee and elbow pads, stranger…
The ‘I’ word was once taboo in journalism – but these days, the ‘I’s seem to well and truly have it. The online age has heralded the rise of the celebrity journalist: ‘personalities’ with…
The online age has heralded the rise of the celebrity journalist: ‘personalities’ with headshots, Twitter accounts and guest spots on Q&A. How does this impact on the quality of our journalism? What …
As the Communist Party of China’s 18th National Congress oversees the biggest leadership transition in decades, Sally Warhaft catches up with China watcher and correspondent John Garnaut to examine t…
There’s a huge public appetite for non-fiction storytelling in all its forms, from literary and political essays to the shelf-filling genre of memoir, and the much-maligned reality TV.This is a…
In today’s wired-up world, we can be with anyone, anywhere at any time. We have hundreds of ‘friends’, habitually ‘follow’ strangers and work from virtual offices. What does all this mean for…
In today’s wired-up world, we can be with anyone, anywhere at any time. We have hundreds of ‘friends’, habitually ‘follow’ strangers and work from virtual offices. What does all this mean for…
Today’s consumer culture persistently uses girls as icons of sexual attractiveness in advertising, film and television. In the nineteenth century, print media did not dare positively associate girls …
Conversations about sex and sexual identity are constant in our times: from the debate about gay marriage to the intense discussions and disagreements about consumerism and commercialisation of sex. …
By Clementine Ford In this edited version of her Lunchbox/Soapbox address, Clementine Ford asks why men like Alan Jones think women are ‘destroying the joint’, exposes how Hollywood contributes to…
by Karen Pickering Freelance writer and editor Karen Pickering had a ‘learning experience’ recently when she was commissioned to write a piece for a national publication – then wasn’t paid for it…
Today’s American media is sharply divided along left and right political lines, with little room in the middle for the objective news and current affairs that was once the norm. From Fox News to The…
Today’s American media is sharply divided along left and right political lines, with little room in the middle for the objective news and current affairs that was once the norm. From Fox News to The…
From the old days of The Brady Bunch and Bewitched to today’s ‘golden age of television’, where screenwriters and show-runners like Joss Whedon and Matthew Weiner have become household names –…
In a passionate attack on the idea that gender equality has been reached and feminism is irrelevant, Clementine Ford explains why there is much left to be achieved – and presents a slew of…
David Marr’s Quarterly Essay on former PM Kevin Rudd marked the beginning of the end. Was it a well-timed coincidence, or a body blow he never recovered from? Now, Marr turns his pen to…
The Fifth Estate is the Wheeler Centre’s new series of fortnightly forums: a more measured approach to news and current affairs. Provocative and studied, authoritative and unhurried, this is real…
India observers, devotees of immersion journalism and lovers of good writing agree: New Yorker staffer Katherine Boo’s account of life in a Mumbai slum is the best book about India in decades. The…
The media coverage of the weekend’s mass shooting at a Colorado movie theatre continues to roll out, dominating front pages and news headlines. Myriad questions are being asked, with blame laid in…
The Fifth Estate is the Wheeler Centre’s new series of fortnightly forums: a more measured approach to news and current affairs. Provocative and studied, authoritative and unhurried, this is real…
What is the future for media in Australia? How can newspapers adapt and survive in the digital age? And what is the role of the national broadcaster in a rapidly changing media landscape? As Gina…
Ita Buttrose is, as she says, experiencing something of a renaissance, in the wake of the ABC TV biopic Paper Giants.‘A lot of the things I’ve done through Paper Giants are now back in the public…
‘Only connect,’ said E M Forster. Could Mr Forster have envisaged a world in which one person connected with another, thousands of miles away, through free video and voice calls, instant messages…
Too often, the big issues feel ill-served by parliamentary question time or the 24-hour news cycle. Big issues and bigger ideas deserve informed and passionate consideration. Beyond the soundbites…
Anna Rose is co-founder and Chair of the Australian Youth Climate Coalition. Her new book Madlands: A Journey to Change the Mind of a Climate Sceptic tells the tale of her extraordinary journey with …
WikiLeaks – the rise, the backlash, the perilous fate of its Australian founder, Julian Assange – is one of the biggest news stories of the new millennium. WikiLeaks’ revelations have exposed…
Join Lizzie O'Shea, Greg Barns, Bernard Keane, Scott Ludlam and Suelette Dreyfus for a discussion about the facts of the case against Julian Assange – founder of WikiLeaks – the role of media and…
Join Michael Shmith, Age Senior Writer and Opera Critic, for hi-jinks and hilarity, as he runs through his A-Z hitlist of terrible words and phrases he never again wishes to see in print or hear in n…
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of The Australian Writers’ Guild, David Williamson AO – president of the AWG and acclaimed playwright and screenwriter – presents a major State of the Industry…
Brilliant in a bust and selfish in a boom – that’s the assessment of ‘the Australian moment’ by one of our most authoritative and independent political commentators. George Megalogenis speaks on…
Agitators, as Oscar Wilde observed, are essential to progress. Reforms are more likely to be achieved when sections of a social movement behave badly and demand more than reforms. In this…
In The Fifth Estate’s debut event, and in the wake of Kevin Rudd’s challenge to Julia Gillard’s leadership, Lindsay Tanner, former Finance minister and ALP heavyweight, talks with Sally Warhaft…
In her book The Journalist and the Murderer, Janet Malcolm argued that if they are honest with themselves, most journalists know that ultimately, they betray the people they cover. What did she…
In her book The Journalist and the Murderer, Janet Malcolm argued that if they are honest with themselves, most journalists know that ultimately, they betray the people they cover. What did she…
Working with Words is a Wheeler Centre web series where we talk to writers and publishing folk about their work and other bookish things. This week, we talk to broadcaster, journalist and…
Foreign correspondent Kim Barker’s personal account of reporting in Afghanistan and Pakistan, The Taliban Shuffle, is a fiercely honest – and occasionally hilarious – dissection of the absurdities…
Earlier this week, anti-porn activist Melinda Tankard Reist sought legal advice from a defamation lawyer after a blogger labelled her a “fundamentalist Christian”, The Sydney Morning Herald reports. …
Through century upon century, societies have located much of their moral panic and hysteria around a victimised view of youth. Whether it’s generational or technological change, the shock of the new …
In this session helmed by Maxine McKew, veteran pollster Irving Saulwick, former Federal Opposition leader John Hewson and journalist George Megalogenis investigate the instructive power of the…
The words ‘psychopath’ and ‘psychopathy’ have a chequered history in psychiatry. Widely used in the mid-20th century, they’ve become more contested in recent decades as the psychiatric community…
This year has seen unprecedented scrutiny of Rupert Murdoch’s empire in Britain. There’s even been talk of the end of the empire. Some of that has spilled over as far as our shores – where it all…
This year has seen unprecedented scrutiny of Rupert Murdoch’s British interests. There’s even been talk of ‘the end of imperium’. Some of that has spilled over as far as our shores – where it all…
The Australian yesterday published an extensive piece by editor-at-large Paul Kelly in which the newspaper’s former editor responded to the current issue of Quarterly Essay, penned by Robert Manne…
(Click to watch video.) Former Victorian Police Commissioner Christine Nixon delivered last Thursday’s Lunchbox/Soapbox on the subject of leadership…
Lunchbox/Soapbox returns for its third season in 2011 with former Victorian Police Commissioner Christine Nixon reflecting on the nature of leadership.Nixon compares what she argues are old and new m…
As part of the 2011 Melbourne Writers Festival, a two-day conference called ‘New News’ was held at the Wheeler Centre last weekend. The keynote speaker was Jay Rosen, who chairs the journalism…
A two-day conference being held tomorrow and Saturday as part of the Melbourne Writers Festival is taking a look at the impact of digital technologies and culture on the business and practice of…
One of the world’s largest and most powerful media dynasties threatens to unravel after a scandal that has veered from high to low drama and back again. Join a panel of leading media commentators…
One of the world’s largest and most powerful media dynasties threatens to unravel after a scandal that has veered from high to low drama and back again. The scandal may well permanently reshape the m…
The Enthusiast reports that legendary US comic artist Robert Crumb has cancelled a scheduled appearance in Sydney later this month following a Daily Telegraph report he believes misrepresented him…
The Sydney Opera House’s Festival of Dangerous Ideas released its program today, and for many Melbournians, the festival’s most dangerous idea is that we would have to skip the AFL Grand Final to…
In partnership with the Sydney Opera House and the US Studies Centre, three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and acclaimed author Thomas Friedman speaks at the Melbourne Town Hall. A…
Sociology professor and author John Carroll takes issue with the “excessive fearfulness” he argues is common in modern Western upper-middle-class life, illustrated by the paranoia about children…
“[A] reviewer is entitled to be spiteful as long as she is honest,” wrote Mr Justice Tugendhat last week in his summing-up notes of the first libel case against a national newspaper in the UK since 2…
When Jonnie Marbles attacked Rupert Murdoch with a foam pie during Murdoch father and son’s appearance before a parliamentary committee last week, he chose a fine time to do it. It was just after…
Image via WikiCommons Expensive, time-consuming, redundant – and still necessary. News of the death of investigative reporting has been greatly exaggerated, if Hackgate is …
The News International scandal, or ‘Hackgate’, set the Australian public imagination alight this week. For proof, we need only be reminded that every single television network, other than SBS…
In today’s New Matilda, Mark Fletcher asks, has News Limited done anything wrong? For those looking for a neat summary of why the Hackgate story is such a big deal, not just in the UK but for the…
Tony Wilson reflects on his eerie, and entirely unintended, prescience.My novel is coming true. It happened with my last novel too. No sooner had I written Players (Text 2005) – the story of a Sam…
The panel discussion featured in this video is the intellectual equivalent of the Big Day Out, Lollapalooza or Glastonbury. Three of the world’s most outspoken figures in philosophy and journalism…
Any hope senior New Limited executives might have harboured that fallout from the phone hacking scandal might be quarantined in the UK seems to be fading. The Nation, an openly progressive weekly…
“Throughout Australia there is a strong appetite for debate and discussion about WikiLeaks and Assange,” writes journalist Barbara Gunnell in a piece published last week in the Financial Times…
The recent very public stoush between Bob Ellis and John Birmingham has provided for some compelling reading. It’s always risky for an author to respond to public criticism. The background: Bob…
Obviously we’ve all heard that it’s end of days for old school print media, but where does that leave journalists?Each month at the Wheeler Centre, two writers discuss the points of difference and…
Julie Posetti is a lecturer in journalism at the University of Canberra, and a social media researcher and consultant. She is writing a doctoral thesis on ‘The Twitterisation of Journalism’. In this …
“Climate science is a cumulative enterprise built upon hundreds of years of research. The heat-trapping properties of CO₂ were discovered in the middle of the 19th century, pre-dating even Sherlock H…
(Click to watch video.) In his recent Lunchbox/Soapbox address, Bruce Guthrie, former editor of The Sunday Age, The Age, Who Weekly, the Weekend Australian…
La Trobe University’s Ideas and Society Program and ‘Thesis Eleven’ present a special symposium exploring the implications and ramifications of Wikileaks. What does it mean for journalism, for…
At the launch of the celebrated quarterly journal Griffith REVIEW 32: Wicked Problems, Exquisite Solutions, UK journalist Barbara Gunnell outlines the arguments from her lead essay exploring…
Bruce Guthrie has been editor of The Sunday Age, The Age, Who Weekly, the Weekend Australian Magazine and Wish. His most recent appointment, in 2007, was as editor-in-chief of the Herald-Sun – a…
Writer and journalist Guy Rundle uses his Lunchbox/Soapbox to explore the essentialist and adversarial racial politics which have emerged from what he calls a contemporary identity crisis in the…
“The two key rules that now govern the practice of Australian politics are: (1) look like you’re doing something; and (2) don’t offend anyone who matters.”In 2010, one of the Wheeler Centre’s most…
A new online publishing venture is helping aspiring writers, journalists and publishers under the age of 18 learn the ropes on the job. The Under Age is the initiative of The Age and Express Media…
After the extraordinary outcomes of the 2010 Federal Election, Australian voters, pundits and politicians alike are asking the same questions: what happened? Where does this apparent disillusionment …
The Australian Book Review has launched on online edition. Although ABR has long had a website with magazine information and excerpts, the online edition marks a new stage in the magazine’s online…
Yesterday saw the launch of a significant new presence in the Australian online media landscape. Joining Crikey, New Matilda, Online Opinion, the ABC’s The Drum and News Limited’s The Punch is The…
Opponents of a decision by Fairfax Media to outsource its subediting from 2012, and thus make redundant its subeditors, will take to the streets at lunchtime today. The publisher of The Age and The…
