Political journalism for Australians

A response to Amy Remeikis

Journalist Amy Remeikis used to work at Guardian Australia but has recently taken up a job with the Australia Institute: very much the Oz Institute's gain.¹ On Sunday, she used the currently booming social media platform, Bluesky, to ask readers for some ideas about “how to cover politics in Australia a bit differently.”

“What would you like to see?” she asked.

The fact that she received hundreds of replies—even allowing for the obvious self-selecting bias of a site like Bluesky—bears out my regular contention that people who are interested in politics are absolutely desperate for good journalism. They yearn for authoritative, reliable and trustworthy outlets capable of holding politicians to account, informing them, and explaining things in a meaningful and entertaining way.²

People clearly feel legacy media is not providing any of this.

I’m not throwing shade, but it is no coincidence that it is a non-media organisation like the Australia Institute that is canvassing solutions in this way…