Papers

I've had this bookmarked for some time, and it occurred to me today that I should post the link...
Papers from the Australian Media Traditions Conference 2001
Some that I found particularly interesting:

Sybil Nolan's Half a century of obscurity - The Age 1908-1964

"Journalists’ accounts of The Age in these years generally suggest that the paper was second-rate, outdated in both its outlook and appearance. Walker (1982, p.293) described a newspaper which had fallen asleep in the embrace of the Liberal Party; ‘querulous’, ‘doddery’ and ‘turgid’ are some of the epithets applied by other journalists. It is inevitably criticised not only for its increasing conservatism, but for its failure to keep pace with innovations in layout and editorial technique so dramatically demonstrated in papers like the Sun News-Pictorial and the Melbourne Herald. A survey of the newspaper archives shows these criticisms are readily supportable."

Rod Kirkpatrick's War and lasting change: The battle for survival on the provincial newspaper front

"The Second World War had a big impact on the future of newspapers in Australia, accelerating the amalgamation of titles and the concentration of ownership. In addition, newsprint rationing, better newspaper design and the demand for war news combined to complete the transition of the front-page from advertising to news. What was the full impact on newspapers of this second world conflict? This case study sets out to explore the changes wrought in the Australian provincial daily press through a comparative study of the impact of World War II on three regional daily newspapers from different states. The author finds that the main effects on newspapers caused by World War II resulted from the rationing of newsprint. The newsprint restrictions led to reduced paging, with significantly less space for advertising and so reduced revenues. Another result was that the main news of the day shifted on to the front page and gained an unshakeable hold there.) Newswriting became more concise, and, more hurried, with accuracy suffering. Despite the thinner editions, the demand for war news led to significant increases in circulation. The economic pressures led to the closure of 64 provincial newspapers in five States during the first four years of the war."

Paul Kelly's keynote address in which he touches briefly on the design culture:

"I think that when one looks back at the industry we’ve gone through two enormous revolutions in technology in the last 30 years, and I went through one as Editor in Chief. And the interesting thing about that for me was that what the accountants told us would be the impact of technology had absolutely nothing to do with the impact of technology. The impact is riddled with all sorts of unintended consequences and consequences which cannot be predicted, and of course, that’s the story of technological change.
I think that one of the interesting results of this is a tremendous emphasis these days on design, design is king, how things look. We’re very interested in looks as a society and certainly in newspapers and we’re into all sorts of tricks; Photo enhancements , what you can do with colour, and of course, the web site."

And the panel discussion which followed..., which contains a number of points relevant to design but one by Catharine Lumby interested me in particular:

"I don’t know if you’ve seen the redesigned Sydney Morning Herald recently, but you know there’s this fabulous split they’ve made between Spectrum which now looks like The Times Literary supplement, so it looks like something you’re going to get tested on it over breakfast, it’s in really posh type. And they only deal with high culture and they they’ve taken all this supposedly low culture stuff and shoved it into the metropolitan section and it’s full of break-up boxes and bright graphics and colour sections. And yet, you know, there are some really intelligent things that one might say about television or film or popular culture."