Adrian, thanks for your response. Regarding your comment “I don’t have a dog in this fight,” allow me to disagree. One dog is your Sydney friends. They and ultimately all Australians will suffer from a weaker Sydney Morning Herald. Public debate will suffer, democracy will suffer, alternative perspectives and challenges to power will all suffer.

Also, this is an international story, Adrian, dragging your dogs into it yet again. I see a link between cost-cutting media corporations and cost-cutting airlines, even the previously reputable carriers. We are all at risk from both prospects, in the media sense from many international versions of my SMH example, and in aircraft through a risk to our lives.

Similarly our wages are at risk. I wouldn’t mind if the world’s wages were rising as the West’s fell. But the Western trend is for capital to increase its share of the “pie” at the expense of labour. Apologies for using Marxist terms; I am more of a Buddhist than a Leninist. But the figures support this, at least within the Western countries.

As for your comment, Adrian, that “I was really trying to draw attention to Berelson’s original — not widely available online,” I appreciate your point because this is your blog and you can do what you will. I was angered though that someone was using this Fairfax fight for an unrelated purpose, in a way that I didn’t see as constructive. But I acknowledge you have contributed particularly by starting a debate.

It’s interesting that Mike saw less of the contrast between today and 1945 though, given your attempt, Adrian, to highlight that contrast. If you heard the conversations around Sydney cafes you might revise your thesis.

As for Crikey not existing “to comment on its woes if the media landscape hadn’t changed fundamentally” I would respond that many blogs, and perhaps smaller websites such as Crikey, could not exist without the huge output of information from serious media, which they often get for free now on the internet. All too often bloggers consume this information, and regurgitate it through the prism of their own opinion, along the way attacking or criticising the professional product that fed them.

None of that should suggest that I don’t have a critique of corporate media myself. Later…

Good luck with your expanding girth.

The weekend newspapers were, however, unreadable. Even the headlines were shocking, in a bad way, and it must have been apparent — even to the management — that a product of such shabby quality has a half life of weeks — hence the resolution of the strike early this week with a revised pay offer and capitulation from the union. On Saturday, with Mike Carlton unceremoniously dumped for the likes of Miranda Devine, I felt like Berelson’s subjects.