The winner of the Storyology national slide night people’s choice award was Brisbane-based photographer Dean Saffron for his short film about a bicycle curator, titled The Spokesman.
Saffron’s video received 538 Facebook likes, qualifying him for the mantle of people’s choice winner. Its closest competitor had 232 votes and the others far fewer than 100.
It’s the first time the Walkleys competition has used Facebook as a voting tool and will almost certainly be the last. Before the award was announced, the Walkleys received a complaint about the voting process, alleging that the “likes” on the Saffron post were highly suspicious and may be from fake Facebook accounts.
Several photographers have told Weekly Beast they are furious about the way the competition has been handled and at least one Walkley advisory board member believes the voting on that entry appears to be fraudulent. Complaints to the new president of the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance, Paul Murphy, have been dismissed.
The complaint to the Walkleys alleges that about 500 out of the 538 votes came from Facebook accounts that were neither friends with Saffron nor followers of the Walkley Foundation, nor indeed any Australian media pages; only a few accounts were from Australia and the majority were from Russia, the US, the Middle East, Asia and South America.
We asked Louisa Graham, the general manager of the Walkley Foundation for Journalism, if she thought the voting looked fraudulent. Graham confirmed there had been a complaint and an allegation of fraud but said she stood by the decision to award the prize, a substantial Nikon voucher, to Saffron.
“After reviewing an allegation regarding voting on the people’s choice award, our finding is the award should stand,” she said. “The people’s choice award is not a Walkley award; it is voted on by members of the public. The Spokesman is a well-recognised production that has received widespread international broadcast in cinemas and online, including selection at numerous international film festivals. It has also been widely represented on ABC since its creation.
“Subsequently, total viewings of Mr Saffron’s creation reach many thousands of views worldwide. There is no suggestion that Mr Saffron facilitated or engaged in invalid voting practices and the Walkley Foundation cannot be certain that the vote was attended by improper conduct. Rules and conduct of the continuation of the people’s choice award will be reviewed.”
Saffron told Weekly Beast he had nothing further to add to what the Walkleys had said.
SBS loses another senior staff member
The Canberra bureau of SBS has lost another senior journalist since the departure of political correspondent Karen Middleton.
Former ABC journalist Karen Barlow has been reporting for SBS since September last year, when she was made redundant by the closing of the Australia Network. But Barlow’s contract has not been renewed and she leaves her SBS post at the end of the financial year.
In a note to staff, SBS news chief Jim Carroll said Barlow would be replaced on 1 July by Brooke Boney, a journalist who has covered federal politics for NITV.
“Karen has made a highly valuable contribution to our political coverage during a busy and challenging period and was a great addition to the team over this time,” Carroll said. “I much appreciated her commitment and enthusiasm and she will be sorely missed by her colleagues in the SBS bureau.”
Insiders say SBS is letting experienced staff go and hiring younger, cheaper ones to replace them.
Hunger Games at the ABC
Hours after appearing at the Senate estimates committee hearings in Canberra on Wednesday morning, ABC managing director Mark Scott quietly announced another restructure to staff, this one to create a big new regional division under Fiona Reynolds in Tasmania.
In what has been described as a “spill and fill” internally, 50 regional content manager jobs have been declared redundant and another 52 chief of staff positions created. All new positions will be internally advertised but they will not be quarantined to potentially redundant staff because the ABC needs the “right” skills, sources told Weekly Beast.
It does sound a little like the “Hunger Games” process the news and current affairs staff went through last year. But Reynolds says the changes are necessary to strengthen editorial leadership and quality control in the regions.
“We’ve been seeing a steady decline in commercial media in regional areas – in recent weeks alone commercial operators have announced cuts to news broadcasts, the number of journalists and days of newspaper publication,” Reynolds told Weekly Beast. “There is no more important time for the ABC to create a regional division that is focussed on providing high-quality, timely and relevant content to almost one third of Australians living in rural and regional areas.”
Community and Public Sector Union ABC section secretary Sinddy Ealy said: “ABC staff are understandably worried. It’s hard to reconcile how putting regional workers’ jobs on the line equates to increasing the ABC’s regional presence. We will be putting this and many other questions to ABC management when we meet with them on Monday.”
Young journalists recognised
The winner of the 2015 Walkley young Australian journalist of the year award will be announced on 29 July at Beresford Hotel in Sydney. How old is a “young” journalist? You have to be 26 or under to apply.
The lucky winner gets flown to the US for work experience with CNN, Twitter and the Huffington Post. There are nominees in three categories: text, radio/audio and TV/video.
In the text category, Taylor Auerbach of the Daily Telegraph has been nominated for his reports on slum landlords and Amnesty international, and Guardian Australia’s own Michael Safi has been recognised for his reporting on terror and asylum seekers. In the TV category, Joel Tozer of SBS’s The Feed has been nominated, along with Elise Worthington for ABC’s 7.30. Previous winners include Latika Bourke of Fairfax Media and Sophie McNeil of the ABC.
News Corp told to focus on print, not evil internet
We’ll leave you with some stirring words from the inner sanctum of News Corp Australia, about the future of newspapers. At a News executive gathering the group editorial director of Rupert Murdoch’s Australian operation, Campbell Reid, accused “internet darlings” Google and Facebook of allowing their platforms to be used for “porn, cyber-bullying, recruitment of terrorism and pedophilia,” according to a report by media editor Sharri Markson in the Australian.
“Facebook is not a media company and Google says their intention is to do no harm, but they don’t really care when others use their channels for evil and they don’t take enough responsibility for it,” Reid told the Australian.
In a presentation titled “Newspapers – A Love Story” Reid talked up the role of newspapers in society.
“The world is not changing, it has already changed,” Reid said. “The question is not when is the internet going to kill newspapers, but why has it failed to do so. My contention is if the digital revolution was going to kill papers, it would have already done so, but I think the world is coming to understand the incredible duty that a paper performs in its society. We have to be a lot more aggressive and confident about what we do. It’s us who sets the agenda.”
Four days after the story appeared on the Australian’s website there is a single comment on the report titled “News Corp editors told to focus on print”. Reader John says: “Why is it nearly impossible for me to renew my print home delivery subscription on the News website?
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