This recent publication from Margaret Simons, a writer for Crikey and a research fellow at the Institute for Social Research, Swinburne University of Technology, is impeccably up to date and manages to cover every news outlet, weird personality quirk of the major players in Australian media and a bunch of graphs pointing in the downward direction, all within one flashy book.Focusing on the ‘content-makers’ of the media industry, Simons highlights a few areas which point to the rise of user generated content. The decline of newspaper readership, the uptake of new media, approximately 6.4 million active blogs, Sunrise as an interactive, audience content creation experiment and the economy of the long tail.The battle and contested ground over information and dissemination is a particular feature of The Content Makers with Simons giving a detailed and rounded look at what it means to be a journalist. A job description which has been under much discussion following the rise of the blogosphere and Crikey in particular.Glenn Milne has some pretty strong views about teh netz.Realising the ABC as a commons and a public space is another interesting notion as is the ‘gift economy’, which can be seen in low-economy but high information output activities like blogging.Wow, this book has everything and a rad cover. It also has nothing to do with copyright or French Theorists…I’m not quite sure if that’s a good thing.
