Fairfax tweets itself into failure

THERE is a special place where no one cares how much the NBN costs. It’s called the Twittersphere.

THERE is a special place where no one cares how much the NBN costs. This is the Twittersphere where people such as the ABC’s technology editor Nick Ross are wide-eyed about “one of the most exciting and important things to happen to Australia ever”. When The Australian questioned the efficacy of the project this shouty, opinionated and millimetre-deep world objected to the scrutiny. The Labor government played to social media’s twisted conspiracy theories as “citizen journalists” told us “Why Murdoch’s media is gunning for your NBN” even though News Corp clearly stands to benefit commercially from faster broadband. This is where we see how the fun and bluster of Twitter has a pernicious effect.

Social media creates myriad connections that are useful for those in politics and the media who want to share feedback and information. This newspaper embraces these innovations, making our content more accessible and interactive. But nothing in the digital world can replace experience, knowledge and wisdom from mature journalists and commentators. The “digital first” strategy at our Fairfax Media competitors is already leading to a dramatic dumbing down of their content, with a deleterious impact on the national political debate.

Whether their desire for social media adulation leads them to naive acceptance of the NBN, recruitment of inexperienced journalists based on their Twitter followings, or the constant recycling of sex-related stories on their websites to provide click-bait, Fairfax is insulting its traditional readership in a race for digital domination. Yet it will never be able to compete with the free services of Mail Online at the tabloid end, or Guardian Australian and the ABC at the Green-Left end of the market. Frankly, Fairfax deserves to fail because in this pursuit it has eschewed a serious role in national affairs.

We see this in the shallow, ill-informed and abusive behaviour of Sydney Morning Herald columnist Mike Carlton. It is surprising the paper has sat back and allowed Carlton to hurl profane abuse at its own readership. Yet Carlton is given space to simply parade his prejudices, spit his bile and indulge in personal vendettas — in a similar vein to Mark Latham in The Australian Financial Review stablemate. Rather than maintain dignity on social media and engage with readers, Fairfax is uploading the news standards, jejune opinions and crass manners of Twitter into its major mastheads.

Yesterday Network Ten’s political editor Paul Bongiorno told ABC Radio National listeners that the Rudd and Gillard Labor governments could be excused for skipping a cost-benefit analysis of the nation’s largest ever infrastructure project. “Some people know the cost of everything but the value of nothing,” he ventured, with a level of economic irresponsibility that once would have been unthinkable in his position. But hey, Twitter loves it.

When political journalism can be reduced to chasing retweets or building a following it is little wonder some politicians seeking media adulation are led down the same path. Julia Gillard and her team often seemed to convince themselves they were rebounding as social media endorsed their latest lines on misogyny or media bias. But the siren song of the Twitterati only lured them ever further to the treacherous fringes of public concerns. Substance must win out in politics and the public must be able to find it somewhere.