A history of anticipating the future: an analysis of the AN Smith lectures,Andrew Olle Lectures and media commentary

Commercial performance and concerns over the decline of quality journalism

When the lectures explicitly discussed commercial pressures in the news media industry, it was often framed as nostalgia for journalistic quality. An orthodox position is taken to reinforce the existing doxa of the journalistic field to rally against change. Commentary about the lectures was framed in terms of commercialism versus quality journalism for most of the decade of the 2000s and into the early 2010s. An example is ABC journalist Maxine McKew who in her 2000 AN Smith lecture frames the contest between commercialism and journalism in terms of whether ‘journalism can survive constant cost-cutting and a mind-set that appears to be put too little value on experience and depth, as opposed to volume’. Here, McKew is emphasising traditional values of journalism that focus on the strength of lengthy and in-depth research that runs contrary to the fast-paced and large quantities of information required to feed the Internet. It could be argued that McKew, in the reporter habitus, draws on journalism’s cultural capital to defend against change wrought by technology.

On the other hand, Fairfax CEO Greg Hywood’s AN Smith lecture in 2011 de-emphasised the role of journalism in news media companies, suggesting instead that their business was primarily advertising – a classic interpretation of the battle between economic and cultural capital within the journalistic field. Hywood’s position within the journalistic habitus is ‘management’, therefore it relegates him to suggesting the orthodoxy of economic imperatives over those of cultural production. Hywood claims,

In the so-called ‘good old days’, when newspapers were a licence to print money, the journalism was an added extra, delivered by the proprietors to leverage political and social influence, and, in some cases, a dollop of public good. The business in those days was classified advertising.

This garnered a sharp rebuke from journalism academic Margaret Simons (2011) who in a commentary on the lecture pointed to the work of Sybil Nolan on the history of The Age newspaper. Nolan (2011) was critical of historical arguments, such as Hywood’s lecture, which attempted to revise what the core ‘business’ of journalism in terms of the ‘market’. For example, Nolan (2011) argues that instead of advertising being central and journalism secondary, she outlines a long commitment to what she calls ‘social justice’ journalism by The Age. Nolan and Simons both lament the loss of institutional identity and memory due to job loss and the outsourcing of editorial and production roles from newsrooms to interstate services.

The narrative of contestation between the cultural capital of journalists, represented by arguments about the value of journalism being commitment to social justice and similar, and the economic capital of news company management, such as Hywood’s attempted market-based valorisation of Fairfax’s history, is not reflected in the lectures; rather, it is indicated by the commentary about lectures. This distinction is manifest in different ways at different points in the lectures and commentaries analysed. For example, independent media publisher Eric Beecher used his 2000 Andre Olle lecture to address the threat to traditional journalism posed by technological change and the Internet:

I am not suggesting the Internet has not unleashed an industrial revolution that won’t alter the way business operates. But will the Internet replace traditional media as a vehicle for journalism? Not likely, in my humble opinion, and that’s largely because there is almost no Internet business in the world today where consumers are prepared to pay for content.

The main focus of Beecher’s lecture was primarily the challenge posed by the Internet and online journalism, and the dearth of business models that would fund quality journalism because of technological change, surely crucial topics for any discussion of the state of journalism in Australia, but the reports in the major newspapers did not focus on this. Instead they focused on Beecher’s comments about the new managing director of the ABC, Jonathan Shier, and the way Beecher allegedly framed the journalistic present as a battle of ‘quality journalism’ versus ‘commercialism’ (Barnsley, 2000). Only Banham’s (2000) commentary mentions the Internet and then it is in the context of commercialism and the Internet having impinging effects on ‘quality journalism’ rather than ‘quality journalism’ being something which has to be discovered anew in the Internet age.

Similarly, when sportscaster and television identity John Doyle presented the 2005 Andrew Olle lecture, it was reported in terms of a critique of the commercial media. The Australian newspaper ran a story derived from an edited version of wire copy from AAP (2005) with the lead that Doyle ‘delivered a scathing attack on commercial media last night’. The Australian actually used the AAP’s second par as its lead, with the AAP copy (Coopes, 2005) beginning,

In an age where terrorism cuts to the ‘violent brutal core’ of humanity and digital and media ownership changes threaten to neuter voices of dissent, the Australian media must remain vigilant, John Doyle says.

(Confusingly, The Australian newspaper published the piece with AAP in the byline, while Factiva entry for the original AAP wire copy lists journalist Amy Coopes.) Doyle’s more complex points about the quality and character of information changing were similarly not included in The Australian’s version of the AAP wire copy. The below text was in AAP’s copy, but not in The Australian’s story, and emphasises the larger context of the newly emerging media culture that was developing as a result of ‘information technology’ transforming the field:

The information age was dangerous because, in an era where populism and economy drove the media, culture and public accountability was falling by the wayside, Mr Doyle said.

‘In the past information bound culture. There was a shared sense of a gradually expanding library of sensible and responsible scholarship, whereas now information is serving more to fracture culture’, he said. (Coopes, 2005)

Doyle was attempting to point to impending shifts in the character of ‘information’ itself because of technological change, and this was identified in the AAP wire copy, but it was literally excluded from the field by The Australian’s version of the wire copy published.

The clearest example of how the contemporaneous coverage on the media lectures served to rearticulate the orthodox understandings of the field understood in terms of hierarchies of commercial power against which journalistic professionalism was in a continual contest is the commentary on Helen Coonan’s 2006 Andrew Olle Lecture. Coonan was the Communications Minister in the Howard Government at the time and had orchestrated legislative reform that grappled with the social, cultural and industrial changes being wrought by the Internet. It was an articulation of one of the last major pre-NBN communications policy positions in Australia. Her lecture explicitly addressed some of the key themes regarding technological change, journalism and the emerging role of the Internet in servicing the public need for quality information that would later be taken for granted. Coonan’s speech could not have been clearer in the way it set out how the Australian government anticipated changes to what Coonan described as the Australian public’s ‘information diet’. The Canberra Times, current newspaper cousin to Melbourne’s Age and Sydney’s Sydney Morning Herald, published an editorial that simply underscores the poverty of commentary:

[Coonan’s lecture] was a heaven-sent opportunity to explain exactly what the changes to Australia’s media laws were all about. She chose not to use it. Instead the minister in charge of those changes spoke for the best part of an hour about the exciting new world of computers.

The evidently disdainful tone of the editorial belies a catastrophic blind spot in appreciating the future that Coonan was working to articulate involving the Internet and digital technologies. Doyle and Coonan’s lectures represent the pessimistic and optimistic perspectives, respectively, on what impact the ‘Internet’ and ‘digital’ technology will present to the broader Australian public. The media commentary on these pieces largely ignores the positive and negative aspects of the ‘future’ that they were working to articulate.

Role of technology in surviving industrial change

The version of this argument that nevertheless is congruent with the commercial determinism of the first narrative: technology to appease business woes. Here, a heterodox position is taken whereby technology here is a specific agency that operates and adapts the field.

In his 2007 Andrew Olle lecture, Former News Limited boss John Hartigan, outlines how the Internet will bring more readers and viewers to journalism.

The internet hasn’t induced passive browsing in the same way but I think the content that achieves this will attract a huge audience … Quality is taking on greater meaning, not less … Competition for talent is intensifying. We will need to pay more and offer better opportunities to attract – and retain – the best people. This will enrich our craft and deliver a better return for audiences, for journalists, and for proprietors.

Only one piece of reportage on Hartigan’s lecture engaged with his focus on the changes wrought by the Internet and digital technology (Vallejo, 2007). His lecture and in particular comments about press freedom found traction in reports a few days later. There was an Australian Federal election in 2007 and part of the election was a debate between the leaders of the two major political parties. The debate was hosted by the Australian Press Club in Canberra and commercial broadcaster Channel Nine produced their own broadcast based on a live feed from the ABC at the Press Club. The feed to Nine was cut halfway into the debate. Nine’s director of news and current affairs John Westacott cited Hartigan’s comments about press freedom arguing that cutting the feed to Nine was censorship (Clark, 2007).

ABC managing director Mark Scott expanded on this theme in his 2009 AN Smith lecture:

The only media organisations that will survive will be those who know and accept that all the rules have changed. That the media business has gone from one of the most simple to one of the most complex. Only those who can see now what many generals only see after devastating loss – that the tactics that won them the last battle might just be the ones that deliver them defeat in the next.

Margaret Simons’ commentary on Mark Scott’s 2009 AN Smith lecture is framed as a critique of plans by News Corp to introduce paywalls in this way. Quoting Scott’s speech, Simons (2009b) writes that

Scott depicts this as the last frantic efforts of a media emperor to ‘deny a revolution that’s already taken place by attempting to use a power that no longer exists, by trying to impose on the world a law that is impossible to enforce’.

The timing of Scott’s lecture coincided with a period of government-directed enquiries into broadcasting, media industry and in particular the public broadcasters, ABC and SBS (Special Broadcast Service). Simons’ commentary on Scott’s lecture is in part an extension of ongoing critical discussions over the preceding year or so. In a contemporaneous piece, Simons (2009a) developed sophisticated points about the shifting character of public broadcasters and engaged positively with senate submissions from academics Terry Flew and Stuart Cunningham about the impact of technology on the institutional function of public broadcasters. Of relevance to our article is the way Flew (2009) describes two models of innovation that straddle a historical divide of socio-technological development: the older model of ‘centralised innovation’ from the centre to the periphery and a newer model of ‘social innovation’ that inverts this relationship with innovation occurring on the periphery. He is describing two ways that the dynamics of ‘change’ are incorporated in a field with different modalities of ‘control’. One rearticulates established positions in the field associated with the orthodoxy, while the other sees established players sacrificing some authority for the sake of the competitive advantage of recognising heterodox responses and new forms of capital.

Technological change is also framed as disruption to push back against potential regulation and government intervention at public broadcasters ABC and BBC. Here, an orthodox position is taken to reinforce existing journalism agencies and structures by deprecating the force of technology. Former editor and chief of The Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, used his 2010 Andrew Olle address to draw attention to the commercial media’s attempts to call an end to public broadcaster funding.

As digital eats into the press, so the press has turned its fire on public broadcasters, imagining that if only they went away everything in the garden would once more come out in bloom. We all know that digital forces are threatening to weaken, or even destroy, the traditional basis, role and funding of the press, and we know that digital enables everyone to disrupt everyone else’s business.

ABC journalist Mark Colvin continued this theme in the 2012 Andrew Olle lecture:

At News Corp, James Murdoch and Kim Williams have both in their different ways argued for restrictions on the BBC’s and the ABC’s new media operations.

But the ABC will be just one more player in this brave new world – that’s the reality you’ll be competing with, whether or not future governments fund public broadcasting.

Again this contestation, while taken under the guise of technological change, forms a classical journalistic field contestation in which those media organisations with higher cultural capital, arguably public broadcasters and newspapers like The Guardian, struggle for agency and power in determining the doxa with commercial media organisations.

The embrace of ‘innovation’ against rigid forms of hierarchical organisation begins to sour with the 2013 Andrew Olle lecture delivered by experienced television journalist Lisa Wilkinson. Wilkinson emphasised the traditional values of journalism as the saviour of the industry.

For despite this engulfing tide of social media, the rock of solid journalism is still there, still needed! And in a world of swirling communications on so many different platforms, the eternal values of traditional journalism have never been more crucial in establishing what the truth of a matter is, and putting it on the public record.

The metaphor of the ‘tide’ engulfing traditional journalistic professionalism was largely framed in terms of the (negative) experience of the journalist in this enlarged networked or participatory public sphere rather than the impact of such development on the public sphere itself. Hence, when Wilkinson discussed social media, it was reported in the commentary primarily in the context of Wilkinson’s overall message to do with the gendered character of institutional sexism and the ‘dangerous social media cycle of abuse’ (McMahon, 2013):

It has an anonymity and a narcissism and a nasty side to it. I was bullied as a kid and it’s that nasty bullying of the schoolyard you used to be able to leave behind. That was what I did. When I left school I decided, ‘I’m wiping the slate clean, I’m not going to let other people decide who I am’, and that’s the trouble with social media.

Conservative columnist for The Australian, Chris Kenny, used Wilkinson’s remarks as evidence of how ‘pervasive the power of social media is becoming in mainstream media’ (Kenny, 2013). He was highly critical of the way journalism has changed because of social media, taking an orthodox approach. Hence, Wilkinson’s ostensibly progressive feminist argument about the experience of the gendered public sphere can be used in a conservative critique of social media.

By the 2015 Andrew Olle Media Lecture, the Women’s Weekly editor Helen McCabe dismissed the often-refrained heterodox responses to the decline of quality journalism but still pronounces the inevitability of technological-lead change in terms of its banality, and thus it is part of the (new) doxa:

I will not say ‘content is king’;

Or that ‘this is the most exciting time to be in journalism’.

Or that readers are ‘time poor’.

But in all seriousness I will assume that we are all online, trying new things, and facing significant commercial challenges.

Fundamental change to journalistic practice; doxa challenged and rearticulated

In the final theme identified, technology is the pronounced agency of change. In this theme, a heterodox approach is taken where technology as the agent of change which is accepted as fundamentally changing the contours of the journalistic field and therefore the doxa. In the 2011 Andrew Olle lecture, Laurie Oakes proclaimed the Internet was good for journalism:

Anyone who thinks they’re being short-changed by the mainstream media can access directly most of the material available to political journalists – major speeches, press conference transcripts, policy announcements and the rest.

If there has been a dumbing down, the trend is now the other way. Which is good news.

The ‘material available to political journalists – major speeches, press conference transcripts, policy announcements and the rest’ is understood as the substance of the political public sphere and, exemplified by Oakes’ lecture, ‘access’ is understood in the liberal democratic sense of access to the public sphere. Similarly, News Ltd chief executive Kim Williams delivered the 2012 AN Smith lecture and emphasised that the so-called ‘digital revolution’ has allegedly increased diversity: ‘In a world with multiplying news websites, blogs and tweets, why do we need to regulate for more diversity?’ The multiplication of possible news sources is understood from the perspective of a pre-network media concept of diversity. Williams was critical of the recommendations handed down by the Independent Media Inquiry, which he framed in terms of increased media regulation.

The assumed importance of news media and the profession of journalism in liberal democracies is based on a normative belief that there is a positive relationship between number and diversity of news publishers and quality of democracy (McNair, 2012). In the previous era dominated by broadcast and print media, this relationship, and therefore an indirect account of democracy itself, could be represented in terms of number and diversity of news sources to which news consumers had access. This was because news publishers largely also controlled the distribution of news. Therefore, an increase in the number of news sources meant an increase in the health of liberal democratic societies. This discourse demonstrates a power shift in which fundamental norms of journalism are discarded or replaced reflecting changes to the journalistic doxa. In an era now characterised by the networked distribution of news-based media content and a scarcity of news consumer attention for – rather than a scarcity of access to – news-based media content, it is no longer appropriate to assume a relationship between number and diversity of news sources and the health of liberal democratic society (Picone et al., 2015).

At the end of his 2011 Andrew Olle lecture, Oakes made a series of four predictions that sought to map the future of journalism. At least one prediction has been proved to be entirely correct.

Political journalists will be bypassed more and more. I’m not talking politicians using talkback radio as John Howard did. Nor am I talking about Julia Gillard going on The 7pm Project or Julie Bishop starring on The Chaser, though there’ll be more of that, too. [… ]

But what I’m referring to here is politicians, parties, governments, interest groups and so on contacting voters directly via the internet. GetUp already does this very effectively.

In the US, Barack Obama’s communications director has taunted members of the Washington press corps that eventually they could be rendered obsolete through the use of presidential messages posted directly on to YouTube and other internet sites. (Oakes, 2011)

Oakes is describing what political communications scholars call ‘disintermediation’. According to Fisher (2017), disintermediation

means not being ‘mediated’ or having your message edited, interpreted or filtered by the news media. On the one hand, this shift offers greater opportunity for community participation in the political process and engagement with elected representatives. On the other hand, it offers politicians and parties an opportunity to skilfully target members of the community with unfiltered and one-sided spin.

From the perspective of political journalists, this is a profound reconfiguration of the field of journalistic practice, understood in terms of the necessary relations between journalists, politicians and the civic-oriented public sphere. A second of Oakes’ predictions was that ‘[b]loggers will start to usurp the role of determining what is news’. He cites chairman of the Australian Press Council, Julian Disney, who similarly argued that the ‘greatest challenge is the risk that the blogosphere, with its tendency to rush to judgment and circulate scuttlebutt, will push the mainstream media into a race to the bottom’ (Oakes, 2011). The ‘blogosphere’ does exist in the same way it did in 2011, and even in 2011 Oakes is using the language of the mid-2000s blogging era to describe broader reconfigurations of disintermediation and a news cycle that follow the affective contours of ‘outrage’ rather than print or broadcast schedules.

A nuanced appreciation of the role of the ‘public’ in the work of journalism was presented in the AN Smith 2013 lecture, by then Guardian Australia editor, Katherine Viner, who articulates the changes of journalistic practice wrought by technology:

Digital is not about putting up your story on the web. It’s about a fundamental redrawing of journalists’ relationship with our audience, how we think about our readers, our perception of our role in society, our status.

Commentary about Viner’s lecture focused on paywalls and the economic viability of The Guardian newspaper, again invoking the orthodox approach to examining journalism as the eternal struggle between economic and cultural capital. Writing in The Australian newspaper, Sally Jackson (2013) emphasised the commercial aspects of Viner’s comments about ‘open journalism’, quoting a related section:

Delivering the AN Smith Lecture at the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Advancing Journalism last night, Viner said it was too early, economically, to rule out the idea of newspaper paywalls.

‘But, journalistically, paywalls are utterly antithetical to the open web’, she said. ‘A paywalled website is just print in another form, making collaboration with the people formerly known as the audience much more difficult.’

You can’t take advantage of the benefits of the open web if you’re hidden away.

‘Print’ in this context is not only a medium but a kind of commodity. Jackson’s commentary juxtaposes Viner’s comments about ‘open journalism’ in the context of questioning The Guardian’s ongoing viability and therefore should be understood as an implicit defence of paywalls as a business model. The online news platform, Crikey, also ran an editorial on Viner’s lecture, albeit largely sympathetic to Viner’s claims about ‘open’ journalism while being critical of the way Viner allegedly did not address the economics of journalism. The Crikey editorial garnered a response from Viner and this was run in Crikey the next day. In her response, Viner distinguishes between a ‘journalistic’ approach and economics in clarifying her comments: ‘Just because something is preferable journalistically doesn’t mean it will always make economic sense’ (Crikey, 2013). Similarly, the choice of Guardian Editor Alan Rusbridger for the 2010 Andrew Olle lecture was questioned by Caroline Overington (2010) in The Australian newspaper’s The Diary section where the choice is described as ‘odd’: ‘The white-hot issue for media right now is: how can we make money? So they invite the editor of The Guardian?’ The occasion of Rusbridger’s lecture served to focus arguments for and against the use of paywalls by legacy newspaper brands, which became a de facto debate about pre-Internet journalism doxa compared with multiple developing forms across multiple platforms.