Yes, I was one of the 50 million people who downloaded Britain's Got Talent on YouTube to watch Susan Boyle sing her dear heart out. I laughed my ass off when Tina did Sarah and Amy did Hillary on Saturday Night Live, and I loved Jon Stewart's smart take-down of that Mad Money guy Jim Cramer. But when I first heard news of a deadly flu killing hundreds of people in Mexico, I didn't' go to YouTube, The Daily Show or Saturday Night Live to get the details. I read an AP story online For the Love of Blog, We Need Hard News
Cavalier Politics: The chameleon Crown: The Queen and her Australian governors Writing Party History
To see what's buzzing in my little corner of Sydney, I read Only the Blog Knows Parliament. It's newsy, often literary and a lot of fun … Nathan Rees's "no more spin" promise upon being elevated to the premiership is looking even weaker with the news that Walt Secord, the master spinner from former premier Bob Carr's office, is returning to Macquarie Street as chief of staff to the Treasurer, Eric Roozendaal. Secord was famous for pushing his "trolley of truth" around the press gallery at state Parliament dispensing government press releases during question time. With former Carr chief of staff Graeme Wedderburn back in Nathan Rees's office, it seems the old firm is getting ready to spin the 2011 poll.
David Clune, as Parliamentary Historian, is editing a book on the Governors of NSW, to coincide with the bicentenary of Governor Macquarie taking office in January 1810. David has recently been appointed to the government's committee on the Macquarie 2010 celebrations, chaired by the Hon John Aquilina MP, and the book has been formally endorsed by the committee as a key component of the commemoration.
• Parliamentary Stories; [Library collection; Former NSW Premier Neville Wran's speech to commemorate 150 years of responsible government. This volume is a collection of 22 vignettes spotlighting the contributions of lesser-known but important figures in New South Wales state politics over the previous century and a quarter. Sesquicentenary of Responsible Government 1856-2006 ; Each year, undiagnosed depression in the workplace causes huge losses in productivity and costs billions. Getting the right balance of work to create wellbeing can be challenging - but it is often the ones who want to work more that have a lower level of wellbeing Depression: the bottom line ]
• · In traditional journalism, you publish what you know for sure as quickly as you can while being assiduous about maintaining accuracy at all times. In financial markets, traders run with rumors and gut feelings and outright guesses on a regular basis, on the basis that they’ll change their mind (or, more to the point, their position) if they turn out to be wrong. And one of the reasons why traders like blogs — and why many journalists don’t like blogs — is that blogs tend to me more traderish than traditional journalism: they’ll run with stuff before it’s nailed down, without checking it, in the full knowledge that it might be wrong Wrong blogs are better than bad journalism; John Hatton on Corruption
• · Hard times, happy days. The former state MP John Hatton still talks fondly of his childhood growing up during the 1930s Depression in the new village of Hammondville. Joh Hatton on Depression; Ruth Richmond on John Hatton
• · · What to expect from Amazon and Apple ; Amazon to introduce larger kold river kindle this week Fourth Aussie Apple Store opens this weekend Jessa Crispin, founder of the literary review magazine Bookslut.com, is packing up and heading to Berlin in search of inspiration. Bookslut.com founder departs Chicago for Germany
• · · · We'll toast our city's rich literary heritage - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie will deliver the opening address of the Sydney Writers' Festival Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie ; A writer has more creative freedom compared to a filmmaker who is transposing a story into the fixed format of screen Writers have more freedom than filmmakers
• · · · · Guardian.co.uk named best online newspaper website for the fourth time in five years; IF media historians are ever searching for a symbol of the rising power of political bloggers they could do worse than to study the implications of a single pint of Guinness that was spilled on to a bar in a London pub one lunch-time in late January Pint goes west and blogging comes of age