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LEADER DISPLEASED
An ethical lapse at Webdiary?
On Sunday I forwarded Margo a very thoroughly researched article, and was told it would be published later in the week. Margo had first asked me to write something and to replace Darlene Taylor. Margo, Hamish, Kerri, and the gang were all very excited about its publication. That is, until they read it.
Once they realised I had trashed the new ABC program “Vulture” and analysed the Catharine Lumby versus George Pell spat, they ran. My article concluded by asking what processes could possibly be at work in Australian media that somebody as syntactically and grammatically-challenged as Lumby is published as an “expert” on art, literature, or the HSC syllabus. I also asked why it was OK for Lumby, Assoc. Prof of “Media Studies” to publish her ill-educated rants, yet Andrew Fraser gets sacked?
Since Sunday, not only have have banned me from contributing to Webdiary but Margo forwarded my article to Catharine Lumby, who took the surely unprecedented step of trashing me in “The Age” the following day.
Discussion follows in comments, featuring a number of former Webdiary participants.
UPDATE. In recognition of Andrew Olle’s journalistic legacy, Webdiary misspells his name.
I wouldn’t call this an ethical lapse. That assumes that the merry inhabitants of Margoland had any ethics to begin with.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2005 10 08 at 04:48 AM • permalinkWell, Webdiary lost me when they challenged the authenticity of that great Frenchman, Pierre Petain. I really liked Pierre despite his professed desire to start a revolutionary organization of gaulists and his ardant over-the-top admiration of Margo.
He had, what should I call it, panache.
(Thank goodness for dictionary.com. I was going to use the word “pistache”. Evidently, that’s a tree. Not exactly what I’m trying to say. And yes, I have to consult dictionary.com when I write a comment here. The Real Jeff S checks my spelling and marks me down a grade if I miss one. Stinker).
Posted by wronwright on 2005 10 08 at 05:16 AM • permalinkNo need to feel wremiss Wron, the pistachio is indeed a very fine tree, and a favourite for that inimitable insect the pissant. (apparently pissant is an Australian word stolen by those garlic munching culture thieving snail slurping froggies)
For those new to us Australians our culture revolves around the consumption of enormous amounts of alcohol, known affectionately as “gettin’ on the piss”
Time well spent in our wide brown land is time on the piss.
Next time I select an organic Southern Ocean happy cow full cream ice cream I might bypass the pisstachio and wobble over to the rum & raisin, thats if I am up.to.it.
Speaking of on.the.piss has anyone heard of Margo lately?
She missed the last 2 meetings….
Noelenet linked to the Catharine Lumby article in the other thread. It describes Webdiary as “a professional site” that “abides by a detailed set of ethical house rules”, and refers to Noelenet thus:
Not that Webdiary’s house rules stopped a regular flaming for my first contribution recently in the following terms: “Can anybody explain to me what Catherine (sic) Lumby actually stands for? How on Earth is she a ‘Professor’ for goodness sakes.” Kingston put a rider on this comment asking the contributor to refrain from personal insult and to go and read other stuff I’d written.
And it’s in the Business section, of all places. WTF?
Posted by Evil Pundit on 2005 10 08 at 06:31 AM • permalinkDid anyone read the Lumby article? How’s this for starters?
ROBERT MANNE is consistently hailed as one of Australia’s most important commentators. In a recent Sydney Morning Herald poll of opinion makers which resulted in a list of Australia’s top 100 public intellectuals, Manne came in at No.1.
ooooooh, The SMH, thats quite a surprising stamp of approval. Where are the others Catharine? Then this:
As Manne once argued, the best metaphor for public intellectual life is not the lecture but the conversation.
This coming from Manne, who does nothing but pontificate and lecture.
The Age is a sham. How can they print an article that is;
a) a catty, snooty, ‘get square’, and
b) an attempt to grease a few ‘friends’.Unbelievable.How can they print an article that is;
a) a catty, snooty, ‘get square’, and
b) an attempt to grease a few ‘friends’.It’s in the Business section. Business people and investors need to know this stuff ... don’t they?
Posted by Evil Pundit on 2005 10 08 at 07:15 AM • permalink#13 CkHart, Is being told to piss off in a personal email from Margo and having your work ordered to be “unpublished”(see below) count as being banned??
If it does then I might be one of the remaining three with this effort from a couple of weeks ago. ;-)“I’m sure Jack is right. Webdiary has become the journalistic equivalent of Mecca. Margo you have built and they will come to pay homage to you the messiah of political news and views for the masses.
Only thing left to do is discover the fountain of youth so that you and Webdiary may survive all millennia.Posted by: Rod Finch | 25/09/2005 2:18:47 PM”
Rod - Ah! I remember that post, thought it was beautiful work! Lurve your stuff.
MargO seems to have a very wobbly grasp on the English language, both in its use and meaning, as we all know. I am thinking that, maybe, just maybe, MargO has her own unique interpretation of “banning”. Is it plausible that 50% of her bannings in five whole years happened only the last couple of weeks?
See, I’m thinking Rod, that she may not include you in the body count, because she only told you to “piss off”, she did not “ban” you. Now, wonder how many others have NOT been banned?
Hi to Noelene.
Noelene always used to leave interesting and sensible comments over at Webdiary when it was with the SMH.
Rod Finch exhibits major delusional qualities.
Look, Margo’s not a bad sort and she’s more bearable than some of her readers when she is not smoking weed. However, she is surrounded by yes-nongs and fawning nuts.
That’s not good for anybody’s sense of perspective.
A persecution complex is also not a good thing.
Webdiarists need some sense of balance in their lives.
Posted by Major Anya on 2005 10 08 at 06:03 PM • permalinkOff-topic, but maybe someone can help me out with this.
I was at ANU from ‘94-‘99, and most of the time I was there, the dude running the Young Commies, and Revolution Now! and so on and so forth, was called Hamish. His most collectivist action was getting arrested for spitting on a cop at an anti-Pauline protest. He also had some sort of paying position in the Student Union, Secretary of Minitruth or something, I can’t remember now.
After many years of “Smashing the right” (words I heard his Indian side-kick commradette express breathlessly to The Hamster in what I’m sure was a prelude to a steamy session of reading Marx aloud to one-another), he was fired from his “job”, and banned from campus. The word was, that in order to be a paid employee of the Student Union, you needed to be a student. Turned out, the old Hamster had never been a student at ANU, and was therefore commiting some sort of fraud by taking my Union fees and spending them on placards, bandanas and Che T-shirts.
This was all just what I heard, and at the time politics bored me to death, and student politics were hell on earth, so I didn’y too much attention. Now I’m a little more curious about such things, can anyone tell me if this Hamish is the same Hamish issued from the same communal womb that issued Margo? I think it would be a pretty huge coincidence if it weren’t the case - two radial Hamishes in Canberra? I think not. Still, if there are two radical Hamishes I’d like to know, if only so I can work “Hamishes” into conversation more often, and construct hilarious puns based on the similarity of his name to the rodent. Say it three times and you’ll agree - despite its connotations, it’s a pretty word.
Posted by heethcliff on 2005 10 08 at 08:45 PM • permalinkheethcliff, a google search returns no results.
Incidentally, there was another nutter by the name of Zane Alcorn who was a member of the Newcastle socialists. He wrote letters into the paper all the time, and I once remember reading a truly dreadful article by him to do with depleted uranium. It was published in a zine I was writing for up to the end of last year.
A family connection? It’s possible.
Thanks everybody for your support. Having done some more research on Lumby, I’m now really pissed off at all this “ethics” charade spun by the likes of Lumby, her postmodernist politburo, and the Webdiary footsoldiers of righteousness. What a sad-sack of sanctimonious windbags.
NOW, they’re backtracking claiming, Noelene’s original article contained much opinion, a little fact, and some extensive criticism of another Webdiary feature writer.
Jeez, Loise, my article had 50 links, quoted George Pell, Lumby, Wayne Swayer, The “Vulture” program, Dorothy Parker, several novelists, playwrights, and on and on.
Yes, the whole piece would have been confronting for the Webdiary cabal who gave up any hope of being “independent” thinkers years ago; but at least I tried! And I challenge them to show my piece to a lawyer and find anything amiss. Trust me, had they published, traffic to Webdiary would have gone throught he roof!
And imagine, if every Webdiary piece that expressed an “opinion!” were not published!? There’d be nothing but a white screen! Oh well, I guess it would be more cerebrally enriching to read than the currecnt whingeing dross of a coven who’ve not only lost their mojos, but clearly their bloody anti-depressants as well!
This whole hypocritical racket has to be exposed now. There are far too many mediocre Establishment fembots like Lumby and her ilk given fat too much airplay as it is. Time for the media tarts to get back to the kitchen I say.It’s time for quality, not quantity.
And wronwright: I never hit you. Fibber.
Uh RebeccaH, I beg to differ. My gawd, someone dangles an opportunity to drive Karl Rove home and you get all Mean Mean Wolverine on me. I thought, dang, since I’m wiping the floor with my shirt, might as well crawl out of here and let RebeccaH, McEnroe, Dave S, and the rest of you fight it out.
And then I crawled over to McEnroes’s table and finished his Phillie steak sandwich. He only ate a fourth of it before the melee started. It was great. Although my chin was smarting thanks to you.
Posted by wronwright on 2005 10 08 at 10:54 PM • permalinkCK Hart/Tim T/Darlene
Hi, hi, and again, thanks for the support. It just gets even weirder. I was just looking back through the Webdiary archives to when this all started.
I had TOTALLY forgotten that it was Margo who challenged me to write a piece about her “good friend” who was made a Professor because she “earned the title.” Now, I have respect for Margo is many areas, but as an arbiter of professorial appointments is not among those areas. ;)In fact, Margo said “I’m awaiting your piece with trepdidation and excitement.”. It’s all just too spooky. The piece I wrote for Webdiary was 3,500 words long. It was titled “You can take a whore to culture, but can you make her think?” A bit of an ironic tip of the hat to Julia Baird’s book, “Media Tarts” as well as an homegae to one of my heroines, Dorothy Parker.
Come to think of it, Baird is another one of Margo’s protected species. Hmmm….I wonder if I included this bizarre melodrama and expanded it to 5,000 words, would somebody publish it?
Maybe I could expand it even further, and see if Robert Manne megaphone “The Monthly” would touch it? :))
Noelenet - haven’t had time to follow up your links, or to see how this is being rationalised over at WD, but will do, in due course.
Lurve your title - five stars! Gorgeous!
Just in case you missed it, The Age, also totally tashed the new ABC culcha show in the TV column yesterday.
I gather you do not have a blog? If you can send me the article, I will be very happy to publish on my blog, during the next 24 hours. (I’m actually working this weekend, so won’t have time to do it as promptly as I would like to.)
Or one could publish, and others link to it.
Brilliant title—I can see why they didn’t like it very much.
However, I’d want to give the article the once-over for compliance with Australia’s harsh defamation laws before putting it to air. It pays to be careful because any attack on a person’s professional reputation can cost big bucks if it’s done the wrong way.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer but I talked to one once.
Posted by Evil Pundit on 2005 10 09 at 12:34 AM • permalinkMajor media players admit that internet based news services and linked accesory sites are the future and are willing to pay big money for the right ones.
Big money as in $M’s, News Corp have spent $1B lately.
Imagine Margo’s chagrin at being booted from Fairfax without so much as a brass razoo. All that fuss and botheration for nothing!
I think Margo is seriously deluded and appeals to a very small circle of like minded.
Captain, why should Noelene have any respect for Margo, after the way she was treated?
Does anyone have respect for Margo? Anyone sane, that is?
Posted by Evil Pundit on 2005 10 09 at 05:44 AM • permalinkEvil Pundit, I understand how my earlier post was misread. What I was trying to say (and I will now say in a less ambiguous manner) is that for Noelene to have respect for Margo (which she stated she did) she has got what she deserves. Margo, as we all know, is a despotic cult leader. Anyone who is seduced by her pseudo-egalitarianism is just waiting to be disappointed. Just ask poor Harry.
Sorry for misunderstanding your post, Captain.
Posted by Evil Pundit on 2005 10 09 at 06:37 AM • permalinkI must at this point apologise to Rod Finch for claiming he had major delusional qualities.
Rod, I am a tosser for not getting the joke.
Posted by Major Anya on 2005 10 09 at 04:31 PM • permalink#39 Darlene apology accepted, Jeez! What a classic though. That means you truly believed that webdiarists could really think that much of Margo.
Now I’m really scared. LOL
Perhaps my next post on Webdiary could involve the inter-galactic launch of Webdiary on Mars.
Alien Zon pulls alongside Marilyn Shepherd during a routine interplanetary refugee smuggle and asks “take me to the leader of your collective”. Zon docks to the LoonStar 2100 and travels seven light years in the boot compartment to meet the chosen one, Margo!captain
What an invidious and cruel indecision you have forced me to resolve; either withdraw my former support and admit that I now how no respect at all for Margoyle (who incidentally, STILL has not responded to me personally since the hour I submitted my anti-Lumby article to her) OR I must endure the ignominy of being branded “intemperate.”
Decisions, decisions. Oh the humanity.
Noelenet - I notice that David Roffey is saying they will publish your piece, upon submission of your real name & contact (not for publication).
Which is a curious thing. If they are prepared to publish your article, then why have you been banned from posting comments, which is a much smaller level of participation & access than publishing articles, surely? Or is their assumption and hope that you will be pillared by other WDer’s, thus why they now want to publish?
I thought MargO’s initial comment to your was oozing with sarcasm, bile and condescension. I’m surprised you took the bait -
Margo: Noelene, have you followed Catharine’s career? She is a Professor because she’s earned the title. I’d like a piece from you about what you believe “Catharine Lumby actually stands for” after you’ve read her body of work, which spans more than 15 years. BTW, where is the piece you promised me? Take your time, of course, but I’m awaiting your piece with trepdidation and excitement.
I notice that MargO suggests, unambiguously, that YOU will only be qualified and permitted to comment if you have read everything Lumby has written over the last 15 yrs. MargO and her minions, on the other hand, feels qualified to express OPINIONS about everything under the sun, from a basis of total ignorance. (Remember Zionism anyone?) She is not one for exercising any rigour in her “work”, yet expects peer review standard of academic and research output from everyone else.
Okay, they only apply that standard to views they doesn’t support (which means about 90% of all possible views in the world), for everyone else published on WD (articles or comments), subjectivity, unadulterated opinion, and ignorant puffery are the norm.
She was hanging you out to dry on this, right from her very first comment to you.
Here’s another blogger who copped a spray from Lumby.
Posted by Evil Pundit on 2005 10 09 at 10:39 PM • permalinkNoelene’s expulsion seems to have become a bit of a lightning rod for discontent among Webdiarists:
* Solomon Wakeling has left as a result.
“Webdiary is policing its dogma in a way that I’m not comfortable with and wont ever be comfortable with.”
* And Geoff Pahoff has was out the door shortly after.
“For what it’s worth this is the final straw for me as well. I’m out of here too… You administer your moderation and other policies with a heavy lean to port while at the same time making strenuous and frequent claims about ethics and professionalism… Your treatment of Noelene is disgraceful… If you decide to make a bona fide attempt to structure balance into some of your decision making give me a call. Otherwise it’s good-bye and I wish you all the very best.”
ekb87 - thanks for sharing. Glanced through the thread for a few seconds, and came across Hamish’s announcement:
ed Hamish Alcorn: I am sad to announce that until Noelene a) calls me about some matters as I have requested (or gives me her phone number), and b) demonstrates that she is a real person, she is banned from Webdiary. My email requests for her to call have been answered with layers of abuse. At this time we are assuming that she is a fraud.
This is stunning news - WD has uncoverd that Noelene is not a real person!
I think this is a valid point. Now, can all those gathered on TB’s site please demonstrate that they are real people, otherwise I will have to presume that a monstrous fraud is being perpetrated.
I await all demonstrations with trepdidation and excitement.
If Noelene isn’t a real person, what is she? A robot? A ghost?
Posted by Evil Pundit on 2005 10 10 at 01:02 AM • permalinkEkb87, there seem to be quite a few poeple jumping ship on that thread.
Posted by Evil Pundit on 2005 10 10 at 01:05 AM • permalinkOK. Given the following two situations, I have decided how to proceed with this bizarre affair:
1. Margo has only directly contacted me once since I sumbmitted my Lumby piece Sunday lunchtime. And that was a request to include a short bio to accompany my article. She posted this very soon after receiving my article, and thus probably would not have had time to read it.
From that moment on, no more of my posts were published on Webdiary. In particular, I was posting to respond to some pretty virulent attacks from a gang over there who have trageted me since day one. None of these responses was published; though WD continued to publish the attacks ON me.
Unfortunately, two of my posts DID did get posted with a DNP (“Do Not Publish”) and an agressive message from Margo attached. The mistake by whoever was guest editor was soon discovered and my posts were deleted; but not before I had had time to copy them.
Since my “going public” Webdiary has insisted that it banned me and withheld my post because I would not provide them with my address and phone number. While there is absolutely nothing exceptional about this request, I will say that this request was only made on Wednesday morning. I opened the email with that request after I had emailed them demanding an explanation of the Lumby article, that I had only been alerted to minutes before.
So that leaves no publication of any posts on Sunday evening, all of Monday and Tuesday. One of Margo’s paid editors DID respond to my many emails for clarification telling me that “Margo wants this whole article re-written.” The editorial criticisms were bizarre, and clearly are not required on any other Weddiary “feature article.”
I tweaked that they were stone-walling and giving me the run-around because the article was about Margo’s “dear friend” Lumby.
2. Since this issue has become cyber-public there has not been a cyber-peep from Lumby; though she had been quite active on various blogs after her “Age” piece appeared.
Given these 2 situations I intend to publish the full submitted Webdiary article, along with a short introductory background, and a shory revelation of what has happened since.
Can anybody advise what would be the easiest way to achieve this? I do not want to buy my own website from an ISP. I understand there a lots of free methods of establishing a site for this kind of thing.
I have neither the time nor the inclination to pretty the site up with photos or graphic design.
So any hints?
Thanks everyone for showing an interest in this issue, because quite frankly, it is a fucking disgrace!
My article is professionally-approached, even though I am neither media-savvy nor a lawyer. The article is thoroughly referenced and linked, with no ad hominem references; not even of the Lumby misunderstood sort, which shows that Lumby does not even know what “ad hominem” actually means. Ironic, given that that is her main rhetorical “talent.”
Noelenet - go to the google blogger home page. It literally takes five minutes to set up a blog, you can call it whatever you want, and you select a template. You have to do your initial “post” before the blog site is published, and you can see how it looks, so have your material at hand. Other than that, it’s highly intuitive, and you will have no problems.
Then you just have to let us all know your blogger address!
Can’t wait to read your piece.
For Web Dairy to demand real names is absurd - there is no reliable way of checking.
I tried to post but was rejected because I wouldnt give a real name. I could have used Hamish Alcorn but some other clown is using it.
Mar-go and her fellow inmates sit there and continually butt in and interupt with their own emboldened comments - how “democratic” is that?
I think this is a valid point. Now, can all those gathered on TB’s site please demonstrate that they are real people, otherwise I will have to presume that a monstrous fraud is being perpetrated.
Well, I don’t know about the rest of you guys, but I’m a poorly-written spambot.
Anyone wanna gamble online with super cheep Canadan \/|@6r@ while earning $3.14/click and a new iPod(TM)?
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Tsk, tsk, tsk Margo; thats not cricket.