New: A deep dive with some alarming new revelations on the silencing of one of the few remaining independent progressive voices in Australian media. Who killed Meanjin?

Very easy to do: support.academia.edu/hc/en-us/art...

"It's been put to me that literary magazines are ephemeral, and when established ones close, their absence creates a space for new magazines to thrive... And yet in Australia in 2025, the space left when a cultural organisation closes is hardly fertile terrain. It's more like a vacuum"

New newsletter out in the world: just one more thing about the Meanjin debacle; a 1963 open letter on funding Ozlit mags; a tough review of a book that will sell; a bad date movie. infra-dig.ghost.io/so-long-mean...

diving back into the newsletter with a new outlook www.the-end.news/after-kirk-r...

I wrote for Crikey about the decision to shut Meanjin down - and to sever a connection to a hopeful progressive vision of Australian culture

I am distressed and angered by this decision - but want to interject that in the current dire Australian cultural funding environment, and in the context of equally dire cuts to universities, a few hundred thousand dollars is hardly a trivial demand. Our sector has been pared to the bones.

Grim tidings here for Meanjin staff and contributors, and for Ozlit more broadly. A surprise to me to because I’d been under the impression that Meanjin’s situation at UniMelb afforded the journal some enviable financial security. Clearly I was wrong. I have a lotta questions about this.

Valentine’s Day release wtf. Withering Heights is a helluva novel but a date movie it is not!! (unless cursed intergenerational abuse narratives put you in the mood for lurve.) This maxim applies to the film heralded by the lurid trailer below or any other of the thousands of WH adaptations.

Israel has killed 180 Palestinian journalists since Oct 2023. There are 120 of us in this video remembering our slain Palestinian colleagues - it's staggering to see so many faces and realise that more than this number of media workers have been killed. #StopKillingJournalists #SanctionIsraelNow

I wrote about Brandon Jack’s debut novel Pissants for Guardian Australia. It evoked in me a similar response to Trainspotting back in the day, and I guess whether or not that’s a positive evaluation depends on your reading of that novel. www.theguardian.com/books/2025/a...

Your move, Albo. It’s time.

Usually when it comes to Oz publishing my default is to blame the broken system and cut authors some slack as they try to survive. Here? No way. These three authors each have the clout to demand the time to dignify their subject and, cough couch, the craft. What a repellent, shameless cash-in.

I wrote about the kind of gutsy artist-centred leadership I’d like to see at Writihg Australia in the wake of the Lattouf decision and the Biennale debacle. (Am I holding my breath? No.) infra-dig.ghost.io/help-wanted/

I wrote about the kind of gutsy artist-centred leadership I’d like to see at Writihg Australia in the wake of the Lattouf decision and the Biennale debacle. (Am I holding my breath? No.) infra-dig.ghost.io/help-wanted/

Hi Scott, thanks for the reminder why you're one of the most hated politicians this country has ever seen.

Most Gen Xers like Murray Watt and me and bloody Albo won’t be alive in 2070 - but Woodside will still be chugging on. What a legacy.

'All the time I was writing these words, a voice in my head whispered, you will be punished.' Brava to Michelle de Kretser for using her platform to speak up for the women and girls of Gaza. www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQ2j...

I moved my newsletter to Ghost, took a long break, and now I'm back on the horse. Thanks to Creative Australia and the SLQ for pissing me off enough to get back to it. infra-dig.ghost.io/back-from-th...

In 2016 I was one of the winners of the Black&Write! fellowships/awards. It was a life changing award, leading to the publication of my Terra Nullius and all the awards, accolades, and publications I have achieved since. Without B&W and the SLQ I wouldn't be a writer ... 1/

A statement from @asauthors.bsky.social on the appalling rescindment of the black&write! fellowship this week. "This represents yet another alarming instance of the undermining of freedom of expression and arms-length arts funding from a major institution." www.asauthors.org.au/news/state-l...

This is very useful reporting about the disgraceful decision to rescind Ren Wyld's black&write! fellowship - and it's confirming a pattern of serious consequences for Australian artists - especially First Nations and Arab artists - who speak out on Gaza. www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

We can blame AI for this but also this wouldn’t happen in a media industry where owners and publishers didn’t view the articles as just some burbling noise to tuck in around the ads

This is very grim - but also the product of a metric-driven media culture that cannot see the value in cultural journalism and has ceaselessly boosted cheap, pointless content such as these lists. Yes, it's an AI problem, but it has its roots in the summer reads-ification of cultural journalism

This is a relief, but it will only really matter if there's a new focus on holding Labor to account - in much higher resolution and at a much higher frequency. Renewables, transport and heavy industry progress should all be tracked without bias. "Give them more time" is no excuse, now.

Enough fucking around would be a great slogan for an ALP second term after doing little for the past four years but fuck around, consult the polling, and prospect for the centre.

I’m seeing the word ‘gracious’ being bandied around with reference to this concession speech, as opposed to, inconsistent with everything we’ve seen from Dutton thus far.

I’m always startled by how cheap books are in Canadian bookstores compared to Australian ones. This very clear piece by @alicektg.bsky.social shows why AU books are so expensive and why they may need to be priced up for the industry to survive.

Murdoch maths 💯

Happy Federal Election Day, Australia! May the 2029 election present voters with more appealing options than the prospect of another term of Albanese's gutless, fossil-fuel loving ALP, or the worse option, dare I say the nuclear option, Dutton at the helm.

Our turn next, Australian voters. See ya later, Peter Dutton, stop sending me text messages, Clive Palmer, and get your frigging act together, ALP.

Yes Canada! 🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦 Taking this as a very good omen in advance of lodging my postal vote at the Australian consulate in downtown Vancouver tomorrow.

Suck it, cupcake

“Right now in Australia, no-one seems to think they owe writers very much. The cost of living is rising, but rates are still low, advances are low, grant funding is dwindling, and prizes are a lottery… most authors make very little income from their writing.” AI is brazen theft—but there’s worse:

I wrote about Meta's unlicensed use of copyright material to train their AI tools for Crikey. Big thanks to @jodimca.bsky.social, Cher Tan, Yumna Kassab and Felicity Castagna for talking to me about their experiences being pirated and about teaching and writing in the age of LLMs.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Spoiler - there's a lot of NO WAY in the replies to this thread. This is what I hear from my Vancouver friends and neighbours, even those who have family across the border. And those who have to travel for work are freaked out and unhappy about it. As for me (and my big mouth), I am staying put too.

This is getting tiresome but here is a thread with a selection of my reporting on “conservative activist Christopher Rufo”. Firstly, he cited a eugenicist researcher in his takedown of Claudine Gay www.theguardian.com/world/2024/j...

Absolutely incredible photo choice here. A+

Co-sign 👇

What a great line-up. I’d be there with bells on if I was in town 🔔

‘Maybe, as some like to point out, the vibe is shifting.’ You reckon? Yet another piece lamenting how hard it is for white dudes to get published (it is not). Usually I ignore such drivel but the head-in-sand quality of this one is particularly galling. www.compactmag.com/article/the-...

What a piece of shit. (It’s not like there aren’t a thousand other pieces of evidence that point to this conclusion.)

Some of the AU anti-woke brigade have gone quiet since the Inauguration. Not Parnell, who seems to have doubled down and gone full deranged Trumper. There might be clicks in this drivel but this shit should make every sentient journo at Nine despair and/or strike. www.smh.com.au/world/north-...

I'm baffled as to why Black Inc is rushing this for two reasons. One, why they want to chuck IP (theirs and authors') at LLMs in the first place. Is there a stack of money in it that hasn't been declared? And two, at this moment of industry turmoil, why go out and damage your reputation like this?

A helluva closing act from Trudeau, who seems to be communicating better about the human effects of Trump’s policies than most Democratic leaders. My neighbours and the school gate crowd in Vancouver are right behind him.

They are transvestigating the Shrek reboot on Facebook.

'OMFG! It’s another riff on the death of God – this time masquerading as an empirical description of the effects of social media on the masses. Parleyed, moreover, into an ecstasy of academic referencing.' A break from the horror: Justin Clemens on Ryan Ruby sydneyreviewofbooks.com/reviews/the-...

Amazing that the very job description is able to convey the dire need for crisis management/ strategic comms advice at CA