Down under but not out there?

Australia's web journalist community has come under fire from one of its own for its lack of radical or independent news sites.

In an interview for Online Journalism Review (OJR), Steven Mayne - Australia's only celebrity internet writer - bemoans the fact that there is so little competition to his site, www.crikey.com.au.

"There's a total reluctance by journalists in Australia to get online and run their own show. Nobody wants to leave the established mainstream press. There's no Drudge here. Even individual industries don't have anti-sites, like Overlawyered.com and PRWatch.com in the States. There's nothing."

Mr Mayne regularly edits his one-year-old site, which specialises in media and political gossip, from internet cafes. The income he makes does not even cover his mortgage repayments, he claims.

Yet 28 per cent of the nation's households have internet access - higher than most European countries - and most of the country's businesses are also online.

Mr Mayne says few Australian journalists are entrepreneurial, and the economics of setting up and running in a site in a country with a population of just 18 million do not add up.

One of Australia's few successful independent web journals is On Line Opinion, assembled over two days each week by Queensland businessman and publisher Graham Young. In two years the site has risen from fewer than 100 hits per month to 19,000 per month. It has run articles by various politicians and academics, including a recent piece by Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson.

Mr Young tells OJR: "Australians tend to be timid when it comes to artistic output... and they have become heavily reliant on state support and funding from overseas publishing houses for their information."

South Australian journalist Brian Forte said: "I've not been adding my viewpoint to the web because writing for US online ventures pays better and keeps me busy enough not to have time. Online publishers there don't particularly care that I'm on the other side of the world and they aren't routinely interested in my regional perspective either."

Regular internet user and online news watcher Paul Flynn said: "On the whole Australian politicians are just too boring to care about. According to top100.com.au, Aussies like the web for banking, real estate and employment sites.'

But all this may be about to change, with the setting up of the country's first undergraduate course for web journalists.

Lyn Cleary, journalism student at Central Queensland University, said this week: "Education in Australia is about the catch up with the online revolution. Central Queensland University has this year introduced Australia's first-ever Bachelor of e-Journalism. I've just transferred on to this course because I believe the mix of old journalism and new technologies is the best training for today's journalists."

See http://ojr.usc.edu/content/story.cfm?request=535

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