Waltzing (New) Matilda

So Jason says I have to blog about an online news source that I consume regularly, and compare it to an offline source. This is a little difficult for me as when it comes to my news diet I am more of a nomadic grazer than someone that eats (reads) the same low fat/low calorie/bland/wheatgerm-enriched content every day.

I unashamedly hop, skip and jump around the internet, some would call me a news hussy- I hold no loyalty to one website. Depending on what is happening in the world, what people are recommending on twitter and my general mood of the day ends up dictating where I go.

Browsing through my computer’s history for some sort of inspiration for this blog post, I asked myself if I had to go on an atkins-esque diet, and could only read one site a day, which would it be? My checklist included: local and international content, analysis and commentary on the ‘big’ issues, pictures and intelligent banter. It came down to Crikey and New Matilda, and as we’ve discussed Crikey to death in class, I’ll go with N.M.

Putting aside their funding problems and weird business model, N.M has a lot to offer a young journalist. According to their website they:

“publish breaking news and stories which provide background and context to current affairs. We don’t reproduce material that is available in other outlets or that has already appeared on New Matilda. We do publish commentary pieces but in an online environment which already offers Australian readers plenty of opinion-driven writing, we are keen to focus on journalism. Stories which feature original research, fresh thinking, new ideas and sharp arguments are most likely to catch our attention and that of our readers.”

I think it’s priceless to have a ‘hub’ that provides background information and commentary on issues that I am simply too young to know about, remember, or have enough historical context to analyse current issues correctly. The benefit of having a forum where people with qualifications discuss issues as well as journalists is that you get accurate, in-depth information. In a society where we have mountains of basic information, but not a whole lot of detailed analysis you often get media stories that scare the living daylights out of people un-necessarily.

Comparing it to an ‘off-line’ source is actually really difficult. All traditional ‘off-line’ content producers now have a strong on-line presence. Not having a website to go with your newspaper/magazine/radio show/television programme is pretty much unheard of these days. It seems you can have a website with no ‘off-line’ presence, but you’d be crazy to have an ‘off-line’ presence without an ‘online’ counterpart.