Incidentally, we had a guest speaker come to work today. John Silvester, much respected crime reporter for The Age and author of Underbelly: The Gangland Wars gave us some sound advice: “No matter what happens, it’s the quality of journalism that counts.”

So from Australia we have the above story sounding like the far-off ringing of funeral bells. With the right kind of ears you can hear the nails being hammered into print journalism’s coffin. Compare this with the rise and rise of South korea’s Ohmynews, who are not just adapting to, but dictating trends in online news. Hard to believe when you consider the Korean War of the early 50’s. Infrastructure in the country was destroyed and an economy was virtually non-existent throughout the 60’s. The Koreans proved industrious though and slowly built a stable and profitable economy. Heavy censorship of South Korean media in the 80’s led to widespread condemnation and resulted in heavy liberalisation of the media in the late 80’s.

What I found most interesting in the reading this week, is the side-comment that legislation prevents Koreans from owning both a newspaper and a TV station. There’ll be no News Ltd or Fairfax duopoly in South Korea, thank you very much. They prefer to let the people do the reporting, and who could argue with that. It means no marketers, managers and faceless CEO’s wielding overwritten emails about “a period of centralisation of business support services” (read: over the next few weeks some of you will be sacked) and means free and unfetted journalism.

It’s not all roses though. Sure, the idea of anyone being able to report the news is irresistibly democratic and free-spirited, but where is the integrity we are guaranteed from a legitimate publication bound by journalistic ethics?

Ohmy I have so much more to say…