News Hit

New York University Journalism Professor Jay Rosen was in Melbourne last week for a series of talks organised by the Walkley Foundation.

While he was here, Bill Birnbauer and I caught up with Rosen and interviewed him for the Melbourne Press Club. The ten minute interview can currently be found on the homepage of the Melbourne Press Club's website (if it has been moved, try this page).

A meeting of the Labour Party at 9am today has voted Julia Gillard the new Prime Minister of Australia.  She is the first woman to ever hold the position.

In the short space of 24 hours, Kevin Rudd was first challenged and now diposed of his position within the party.  He is the first Australian Prime Minister to be dumped within his first term.

Prime Minister Gillard is expected to make a statement within the hour concerning her future plans for the party and Australia.

A video showing a US military Apache chopper gunner mowing down a group of journalists in Eastern Baghdad in 2007 has been recently leaked onto the internet by Wikileaks. The U.S military has always claimed that the civilians killed were insurgents; this has been disproved by the recent release of this footage. 

Mirroring events in early 2009, Israeli F-16 fighter planes unleashed eight air strikes upon Gaza in response to increased Qassam rocket attacks out of Gaza that targeted southern Israeli communities.

BREAKING NEWS: The US Healthcare Reform Bill has been passed in the Senate, 219 votes to 212. It's been a difficult road for Obama, and this is the first major victory for his cabinet. 

More information can be found here.

For any of you with an interest in Australia's involvment in Afghanistan, and were dissapointed with Sophie McNeil's SBS Dateline report 'Questions from Oruzgan' (aired March 7th) which looked at the Feb 2009 deaths of 6 Afghan civilians at the hands of Australian Special Forces, 5 of which were children, feast your eyes on this:

http://www.theage.com.au/world/deadly-afghan-raids-expose-leadership-fai...

Dr. Ahmed Abu Halabiya, the head of al-Quds International Institution, has warned that the reopening of Hurva synagogue is part of an Israeli plan to erect a Jewish temple on al-Aqsa ruins. The reconstructed synagogue was officially opened on March 15, 2010 in the presence of Israeli politicians and chief rabbis. The reopening of Hurva has reignited fears in the global Muslim community about the possible destruction of al-Aqsa.

The New South Wales State Emergency Service has issued a tsunami warning ranging from Point Danger to broken bay area of the NSW coastline for Sunday. The tsunami according to authorities originated under water and extremely close to Central Chile, which was hit with an earthquake cited at 8.8 magnitude on the richter scale early on Saturday.

At the time of this post the death toll is 76 and rising. Considering that the disaster struck Chile at 3:36am, most Chileans being asleep may not have gained the opportunity to escape to safety. Thus the casualties are expected to be extemely high.

In yesterday's Sunday Age there was an article about a hardline cleric named Sheikh Abdalqadir as-Sufi, who has placed a fatwa on paper money claiming that Muslims should use dirhams (silver coins) and dinars (gold coins) instead. His call has been heeded in parts of Indonesia, with the number of gold and silver coins in circulation doubling in the past year. Here's the article: Indonesians heed call to scrap paper and go for gold.

According to columnist Michael Kinsley, there is no future for the feature. Yes, I'm talking about journalism. Mr. Kinsley's used his column in The Atlantic to express his opinion that the new age of journalism ought to be short and sweet. He asserts that 'hard' news, in which the writer aims to be as succinct as possible, is the only way to hold the attention of readers in today's age.
And yet, he managed to use almost 2000 words to do so.
I agree with The Punch's stance on the matter. To write 2000 words of engaging, quality content is an art equal to brevity.
What do you think?