There’s been a burbling backlash to Channel Seven’s plan to include a short horoscope segment in the nightly news.
Presumably AstroTash – the celebrity astrologer otherwise known as Natasha Weber – saw it coming.
The veteran journalist Tracey Spicer said she had assumed it was a joke. Self-described “bovine excrement detective” (and public health emeritus professor) Simon Chapman proposed a leprechaun-sightings slot could be next.
Tom Elliot on 3AW called it a “load of rubbish” and a “stupid set of beliefs”.
“Astrology? In the news? It is not science. It is not fact,” Elliot said.
AstroTash is the “resident astrologist” on Seven’s The Morning Show, and her normal fare seems vague enough to not be inaccurate. Her predictions for 2023 (Mars retrograde) included “frazzled nerves, frustration, fatigue and brain fog”. There would be clashes of opinion, and people juggling too much and spreading themselves too thinly.
“The key to surviving and thriving through Mars retrograde is to prioritise your commitments and delegate where possible,” she said. People would talk about climate change, and there could be some relief on the interest rate front in October.
The rate held steady that month.
Channel Seven was contacted for comment. In a statement to news.com.au, Seven West Media’s editor-in-chief, Anthony De Ceglie, said his team was “exploring new ideas and concepts”.
Channel 7 journalist Sharyn Ghidella posted on her Facebook page on Thursday that she was getting her hair done for work when she got a call to tell her that, after 17 years, her “time was up”.
“It wasn’t quite how I expected it to end at Channel 7,” she wrote. “Here’s hoping my horoscope for tomorrow will be for brighter times ahead.”
Slam poetry
Australia’s first national, regularly published prison newspaper has launched. About Time is a monthly publication featuring letters, poems and stories from people who are or have been inside, as well as crime, legal and inquest news.
According to the first editorial, at least 67 prison newsletters and magazines have begun previously, but none were distributed regularly nationally.
The letters from prison include an anonymous detainee writing about how hard it is to eat healthy food, with inmates fed a diet of bread, bread and more bread. Lunch is bread “with two thin slices of meat, either chicken loaf, beef or salami – which actually isn’t salami but apparently called Devon”, the person writes. Cheese is “extremely rare” and vegetables hard to get.
James (not his real name) writes about his time in and out of jail, his alcoholism, his resentment of authority, and his attempts to get better now he is out. “I’m enjoying some small wins every day like getting to the gym and eating some healthy food,” he writes.
Maybe Maggie Beer could look at prisons for a sequel to Maggie Beer’s Big Mission, which tackled the quality of food in aged care homes.
Pedestrian walking
Dozens of journalism jobs are set to go after the restructure at Pedestrian Group, which means news websites including Vice, Gizmodo, Refinery29, Kotaku and Lifehacker will no longer publish in Australia.
There are also reports News Corp Australia will cut 20 journalism positions. That’s on top of reported cuts at Nine, Seven West Media and Network 10.
And in more sad news, Lismore City News is set to close at the end of the month. The managing director of Australian Community Media, Tony Kendall, cited factors including rising costs, a lack of government support for regional newspapers, and Meta’s decision not to renew agreements to pay for news.
The paper launched during the Covid pandemic, after News Corp pulled out of the region. ACM received about $10m in Covid funding after it had suspended many of its regional mastheads.
Kendall said closing the Lismore City News was hard.
“This is a very difficult decision to have to make given how proud we are of everyone’s efforts to make this publication work since its launch in November 2021, especially in the aftermath of the floods that devastated the region barely three months later.”
Stuff going missing
There’s more concerning news about technology’s effects on the media from across the ditch.
The leading New Zealand news site Stuff prevented ChatGPT using its stories to learn how to generate answers.
Since then, a new study has found, Stuff links have dropped off in visibility in Google and Microsoft searches. Merja Myllylahti, the co-director of Auckland University of Technology’s research centre for journalism, media and democracy, found the AI search engines “increasingly link to random, non-news sources such as industry forums and press releases”.
It’s part of mounting evidence that the new AI search tools “can increase the risk of returning false, misleading or partially correct information”, she wrote in the Conversation.
Sexagenaraian festival
The Australian has surpassed those annoying people who insist on having a birthday “month”. It launched a festival of self-love on 3 June to celebrate 60 years since its first issue on 15 July 1964.
This week alone there has been a heady mix of marketing and nostalgia, including a celebration of four of the best opinion pieces of the past four years (subjects: pro-Palestine protesters as Islamists’ “useful idiots”; “reckless, hysterical governments” and lockdowns; eight reasons the Yes campaign failed; and RIP Queen Elizabeth).
But the climax will come on Saturday, with the broadsheet promising a 104-page collectors’ edition, including the 60 most influential people of the past six decades, six big ideas, stories from journos, and presumably some lovely, glossy advertising.
Then there’s the Sky News doco starring Rupert Murdoch (it’s an exclusive!), which will air on Monday. And a party at the Australian Museum on 25 July, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. And a staff dinner. And 1,000 cases of commemorative wine.
Twists and turns for Ten
Pity the staff at Network Ten, whose jobs are subject to the vicissitudes of global corporations.
Paramount took control of Ten in 2017. The company said in February that hundreds of positions would go globally, but it’s not clear how many of those would be in Australia.
This week, Paramount Global merged with Skydance Media to form New Paramount.
The press release from Paramount is full of big numbers. Skydance’s owners will invest more than US$8bn ($11.8bn) in New Paramount and strengthen it as a “world-class media enterprise”. New Paramount will be valued at about $US28bn. There are other billions mentioned, but not the billions in savings reported elsewhere.
According to Reuters and the media and marketing website Mumbrella, Paramount is looking for $3bn in savings, and job cuts were part of the plan. The business website Capital Brief reported that Ten boss Beverley McGarvey told staff there were no plans to cut jobs … in the short term.
Guardian Australia has contacted Network Ten for comment.
Human cost
Newsrooms around the world are using artificial intelligence in different ways. News Corp Australia said last year it was using AI to generate 3,000 stories a week, overseen by journalists.
Now the Local and Independent News Association (Lina) is offering human subeditors for as little as $20 for 600 words to check AI-generated news.
A longer piece edited by a senior subeditor will cost $95.
It’s a pay-per-article service that offers fact-checking as well as grammar and spell checking. The executive director of Lina, Claire Stuchbery, said having “real humans” reviewing content was key to tackling mis- and disinformation.
The Guardian’s approach to AI is outlined here.
