Transitioning back to work post COVID restrictions – Interview with author and RUOK director Graeme Cowan

As many of us make the transition from COVID isolation back to our workplaces, what are we concerned about? Author and speaker, Graeme Cowan is a director of the mental health charity – the R.U.O.K? foundation. In a recent webinar survey, of over a hundred people, Graeme asked participants: What are you most concerned about in transitioning back to the office? The survey identified four main concerns – I asked Graeme what they are…

Why Zoom messes with your mind – Interview with Psychologist Dr Marny Lishman

For many of us, it seems we’ve spent the past couple of months inside a Zoom meeting. But why do we sometimes find video calls so difficult? And so exhausting? What is going on in our minds that makes them feel so unnatural and how can we make the most of this new Zoom life?

I spoke with Health & Community Psychologist, Dr Marny Lishman about how to deal with Zoom Fatigue… I began by asking her: “Are Zoom calls something we need to get used to?”

What does the future hold for music, artists and music consumers? – Interview with Demelza Leanard

Music plays an important role in keeping us entertained and occupied – especially when we are more confined to our homes than ever before.

The Australian music industry is increasingly using online technology to maintain connection with audiences – with innovative online festivals, music lessons and jam sessions.

And it seems there’s been noticeable shift from audio to music-video streaming, as consumers look to other ways of listening to music in self isolation…

As the world interacts with their favourite artists online, will these shifts be temporary and what will the future hold for music consumption and the industry moving forward?

I speak with Music and Pop Culture guru and Social Media Expert – Demelza Leanard from DLSocial.

I asked Demelza: How is our current self-isolation affecting the consumption of music – considering we’ve been hanging out at home a lot more over the last few months?

BuzzFeed News closes Australian doors amidst ongoing national newsroom decline – Interview with Dr Alexandra Wake

BuzzFeed – the popular global digital news and entertainment platform – has announced it will cease news operations in the UK and Australia – they say so they can focus more on US coverage. BuzzFeed Australia first launched in 2014 but will now cut back its Australian arm…

Program Manager in Journalism at RMIT University Alex Wake has been a journalist for 30 years – and an academic for 15 – In the Conversation this week she’s listed 9 reasons you should be worried about the closure of BuzzFeed News in Australia.

I asked her why has this happened?

BuzzFeed has announced it will cease news operations in Australia, shedding its local newsroom staff.

The popular online news and entertainment platform launched its Australian news operations in 2014 and says it will focus more on global content.

A Buzzfeed spokesperson said the decision was made for “economic and strategic reasons.”

It is understood that Buzzfeed will maintain some Australian staff – including entertainment and food writers – but the news division will be furloughed, costing five Australian editorial staff their jobs.

Dr Alexandra Wake, Program Manager of Journalism at RMIT says a major reason for the news shutdown is lack of advertising.

“It is very difficult to get people to pay for journalism generally,” she said. “Buzzfeed relied on advertising and published mostly onto social media platforms.”

“People aren’t advertising as much as they used to – and no longer can we rely on advertisers to fund journalism,” says Dr Wake.

A decision by Facebook has also affected Buzzfeed’s advertising revenue.

“Facebook recently changed its focus to more family and friends posts over news – and this affected Buzzfeed news revenue,” she said.

Wake suggests the decline in popularity may also be due in part to a “disconnect” – triggered by the placement of authentic news alongside Buzzfeed’s brand of humourous listicle-style content.

Whilst Buzzfeed is infamous for its traffic-grabbing 10-reasons-why-articles (or listicles), their journalism has received Pulitzer Prizes and Walkley nominations.

Despite this journalistic prestige, BuzzFeed was ranked least trusted news brand in 2019 – according to University of Canberra’s Digital News Report.

Wake says that Buzzfeed is well known for its “interesting, quirky, not-always-accurate, viral content… yet, through their news division, were doing some “really great pieces of journalism.”

She describes this as a disconnect: “What do we do with that? As a consumer of news, do you trust it? Do you not trust it? Are you supporting cat videos or are you supporting strong investigative journalism?”

She says this confusion may have eventually driven users from the site losing potential advertising customers.

The end of Buzzfeed’s Australian newsroom is indicative of news closures across the country.

The Australian Newsroom Mapping Project documents 157 shutdowns since January 2019 and Network Ten announced it will close its online news site 10Daily – leaving 30 staff unemployed.

This follows AAP’s closure in March causing another potential 180 journalism job losses.

Pet cats kill 390 million animals per year in Australia – Interview with Jaana Dielenberg

I spoke to Jaana Dielenberg – Science Communication Manager, The University of Queensland (National Environmental Science Program)

“Collectively, roaming pet cats kill 390 million animals per year in Australia… On average, each roaming pet cat kills 186 reptiles, birds and mammals per year, most of them native to Australia. Collectively, that’s 4,440 to 8,100 animals per square kilometre per year for the area inhabited by pet cats…”

Article here: https://theconversation.com/one-cat-one-year-110-native-animals-lock-up-your-pet-its-a-killing-machine-138412

 

about this thing

Shouty me in 2010 – fronting blac blocs

Hello World!

I’m Allan Boyd – Gen X poet, activist, poetry-slam organiser, media-maker, antipoet, web-dude / developer, ex-university lecturer, tree-planting contractor etc etc etc.

And currently a FIFO Trades Assistant in the Pilbara.

This particular blog is a place to gather my journo articles, interviews etc… an organic, rambling attempt to explain WTF I’m doing… a kinda exploration of a middle-age wadjella.

I’m studying Broadcast and Digital Journalism and Cyber Security at Edith Cowan University, Western Australia.

But I’m on a working break at the moment to help pay off my mortgage.

I contribute regular content to Perth Indymedia and On The Record talk shows on RTRFM 92.1.

I’m no stranger to journalism. I was a founder of Perth Indymedia way back in the ancient times of 2001. Alongside our global cohorts we invented open publishing. Indymedia (or IMC) was inspired by the 1999 Seattle WTO protests, the rapid growth of the Web – and an overarching necessity for activists to tell their own story (as opposed to the dominant narrative dished up by corporate media and the State).

Corporate and government media (often inseparable) have a necessary capitalist interest to tell stories in a certain way in order to maintain the status quo – whereas activism by definition requires change! 

The narrative of activism is frequently described through the lens of violent disruption. Activism is painted as a threat, a disruption, an anomaly to the norm. And any telling of activist’s stories is decidedly biased.

In Perth at the time, we were inspired locally by the burgeoning post–911 anti-war movement, the plight of Noongar people, the harsh treatment of asylum seekers, systemic racism, homophobia, misogyny and the utter lack of voice for marginalised people.

Perth Indymedia was formed to empower the voiceless.

My self-taught efforts as a Perth IMC editor and reporter during those times are now long gone and the archives missing in action – but I spent most of a decade reporting on political grass-roots activism here in WA and beyond.

In 2005 I also contributed over 100 news articles (and Editor/Administrator) at Wikinews

On the Perth Indymedia website, I’d written hundreds of feature articles, news reports and interviews about anti-war, human rights, Indigenous issues and helped tell the untold stories of environmental activists. At the time we didn’t think to back them up. And for various reasons they no longer exist.

The Perth Indymedia website, which had over 20,000 pages of content, eventually drifted off the web and we all went off doing other things.

As a broadcaster, I initiated, produced and presented the Perth Indymedia Radical Radio program (which still continues, thanks to the efforts of Ray Grenfell and others) on RTRFM. I was a regular presenter of the Morning Mag talks program and other shows there.

I’ve also presented and produced stuff on Twin Cities radio in Joondalup.

The web-development, coding and content management skills I picked up building activist websites with Indymedia led me to to develop websites for community groups, politicians, individuals, business and education. People just kept asking me to build them stuff – including the WA Greens, the Australian Greens and several WA MLCs.

By 2007, web design and development had become a successful, sustainable business for me – and in 2016 I was consulted by the WA Government to build a bunch of websites and intranets – including a complete overhaul of the EPA’s website. 

I’ve been doing that stuff since 1998. What began as a way to help activists and artists tell stories and share content online, has become a business. I can (and often do) build websites in my sleep!

But the challenge has diminished – and replaced with with a burden, a constant dread, of ongoing malicious exploitation.

The increased vulnerability of every new website means a new level of maintenance and security. And I seriously cannot be responsible for the bots, script-kiddies and state actors working underneath the surface of the web. Indeed, nobody wants to pay for the real time to keep sites secure.

In 2017 I enrolled in the ECU Cyber Security degree. Amidst some cool computer sciencey stuff, I learnt all about penetration testing and ethical hacking. I now know from hacking into things for research, how easy it is to penetrate what we generally consider as secure systems – how utterly vulnerable we are as users of the internet.

Indeed, there is no such thing as a secure system. It has been said that: the only truly secure system is one that is powered off, cast in a block of concrete and sealed in a lead-lined room with armed guards (Source) – and this refers to any networked device.

By design, the Internet is an open network which facilitates the flow of information between computers.

This is even more problematic as we are consumed by the Internet of Everything.

To be blunt, I do not want the responsibility to protect what is considered by cyber security analysts as inherently unsafe.

This led me to have a good think (now in my 50s) about what do really want to do for the next 20 years or so.

What I do not want to do is attempt to protect ongoing malicious attacks on what is basically a flawed system.

And that’s where I am now – I’ve switched back to what I really want to do: make good journalism!

Maybe journalism about cyber security. I don’t really know – lets see where this goes…

So this blog is a place to share that journey…

Get in touch if you like: allan@radicalhack.com

https://www.facebook.com/allanboyd.antipoet and twitter.com/alboydperth

phone 0402 573 580