Would you prefer Murdoch or Fairfax prolefeed?

I can claim some acquaintance with the Murdoch and Fairfax organisations. While I have never been on their payrolls, I have freelanced for both. Neither experience was entirely happy, though I owe Frank Dunn, editor of the Sunday Times in Perth, an everlasting debt of gratitude for giving for a start in journalism.

Between them, the duopoly owns just about every paper, including suburbans, in Australia. The other minor player, APN, formerly Australian Provincial News, is in an intensifying Fairfax bear hug. Tony O'Reilly, the APN's controlling shareholder, is sinking further into the Irish economic morass.

As for the West Australian, most advertising departments regard editorial copy as only worthwhile for filling the gaps between the ads, and that is nowhere more evident than in the West Australian. After first taking over the West without paying a takeover premium, Kerry Stokes has lowered  the West's editorial standards even further, something that was generally regarded as being impossible. The West was once one of the best newspapers in the Commonwealth

Prolefeed, for those have never read (or have forgotten) George Orwell's 'Nineteen Eighty-four' is a Newspeak term to describe deliberately superficial literature, movies and music produced by Prolesec, a section of the Ministry of Truth. Prolefeed keeps the proles content and prevents them from knowing too much. Too much knowledge might cause the proles to rebel against their masters (or should we say betters?)

Who are the betters? The Age certainly has no hesitation in inflicting unending stories promoting homosexuality as a valid alternative to traditional family structures, while most of their readers -- that is, those forgotten people who part with their hard earned cash to buy the paper -- are voting by keeping their cash in their pockets. As for the Age's 'Top 100' coffee shops booklet (almost all in the inner city) -- who gives a stuff? The  is that the Age is not long for this world. I'm a writer, I'm supposed to say it would be a tragedy, but they've never published anything of mine, so as far as I'm concerned the Age can go to hell, where it most deserved belongs.

As for Melbourne's other rag, the Herald Sun -- it doesn't deserve to be called a newspaper -- the editorial policy for the front page is said to be first run a scandal, second run a football story, or best of all, run a story about a football scandal. As for the Herald Sun's editorial page, this rag must be throwing off rivers of cash, can't they get a little variety? As for Mr Super Blog himself  Andrew Bolt, could his arrival on the scene as Resident Conservative be linked to the sudden departure of Paul Gray, whose opinion pieces relied more on exposition than invective? Quite frankly it doesn't matter is the Proles are Left or Right, they still consume the same garbage. At least with the Herald Sun, as a newspaperman I'd have to say you don't have to endure the Age's maddening spills jumping all over the place with no logic at all. My best advice to the Age is hire some good layout men. The Herald Sun at least looks like a newspaper, even if it isn't one.