For Australian media, the centre cannot hold

Why the audience for public interest journalism is desperately seeking alternatives

If you don't like what's being said, change the conversation.

— Don Draper

This is an assessment of the current state of Australian media. The focus is on political journalism, or more broadly, public interest journalism: that part of the industry which considers the media as a civic institution, as a cornerstone of a functioning democracy.

What underpins the discussion here is my own belief—one shared by many inside and outside the industry—that we can’t continue with the mainstream media we have and expect to have the democracy we deserve. Something must give, and in the event of continuing mainstream recalcitrance, we can only hope that a viable alternative emerges elsewhere in the media clade.

Even if you put News Corp in a category of their own—with their particularly perverse corruption of the idea of civic journalism—the rest of the industry too often allows itself to be swayed by values that seek conflict over explanation, the insider view over that of the citizen, and a lecturi…