# Once a Jolly Jumbuck
Today, Australia’s progressive intellectuals are grieving a loss.
No. Don’t worry. As far as I’m aware, David Marr is still alive, well and blaming John Howard for everything from the dwindling of the arts to the quality of bread.
It’s something even more precious than an aesthete they’re mourning. To wit: a possible blow to their income.
In the case you hadn’t heard and might give one eighth of a fuck, local progressive opinion site New Matilda is shutting up shop. And, lordy, is it being lamented.
Go here, here or here for the sort of story that never fails to elicit real media interest. What, after all, is of greater importance to a journalist than the death of a potential future client?
Reporting consensus squares with the sentiment of editor, Marni Cordell. In short: it’s so very, very sad that an unfeeling landscape can no longer nourish a sensitive progressive.
I am not certain who this fellow is but I certainly admire his balls. He uses both of them to point to the bleeding obvious. Viz. the failure of the forum had less to do with an aggressive market and more to do with being shit at math.
He has some insight. How on earth they remunerated anyone for anything is a mystery. For a little while, I worked for the publication and was agreeably shocked when my paycheck showed up. Things always felt a little doomed.
I had a dim feeling that few people actually visited the site. I had a dim feeling that the management team weren’t particularly troubled by the “elite” nature of their readership. I had a fairly clear feeling that the only acceptable reflex for contributors was to the orthodox Left. And, for the most part, that’s exactly what I provided.
This is not to say that I custom-fit my views to the organisation. I just selected from my views those that would suit the organisation. Which means I was shit boring. Once or twice, I didn’t fit and my stuff was returned to me. This is one of the offcuts. A piece on media treatment of hot girl-on-girl action following Lindsay Lohan’s “outing”. Not my finest comic moment, sure. But I think the use of the phrases “vagatarian”, “kettle of fist” and “box luncheon” were sufficient to warrant publication of the piece in full.
The point is, even though that’s a silly piece of writing, the Matildas rarely waltzed free-form. A piece, for example, about hotted-up homophobia in the mainstream press was outside their remit. With few exceptions, most provided by my talented associates Ben Pobjie and Shakira Hussein, the range of expression on the site was terribly narrow. If it wasn’t cookie-cutter progressivism, it wasn’t getting published.
Of course, the team was perfectly entitled to publish what they would. But, a Leninist approach to both copy and contractor relations ensured I wasn’t the only one who pissed off. I think readers did, too.
The talk today is about how difficult it is to find a place in such an odd market. And, certainly, it is difficult. The economic futurists of the past didn’t get it completely right. Certainly, after years of over-investment, it turns out that portions of the New Economy has more negative equity than Detroit. There ain’t much money to be made providing written content online. But, there is a little.
I think it might be more useful to look not at how the market failed an organisation like New Matilda but how an organisation like New Matilda failed the left. And, goodness knows, we need some new, engaging voices in Australia. We need to be provoked and challenged out of our malaise.
Perhaps the end of New Matilda cannot be attributed to bad bookkeeping, lazy SEO or challenging economic conditions. But its end wasn’t written in the stars either; it was written in the articles.
May 27th, 2010 at 9:32 pm
Who? Could it be they failed because no one had heard of them?
May 27th, 2010 at 9:41 pm
Well, quite.
On the upside, they did pay for my LCD Television and a few quality dinners.
May 27th, 2010 at 10:25 pm
Hurray – New Matilda closing. What a tedious plod it was. Best news I’ve had in years
May 27th, 2010 at 11:34 pm
So, it’s not just Helen and her embittered work history, then? It really is dull and meekly well-intentioned, right?
May 28th, 2010 at 10:25 am
The print papers are compromised beyond belief. I pay my money to Crikey to get less biased news summaries in intelligent, digestible chunks, and to direct my further reading. Rundle writes from the left the way it needs to be written – with dripping vitriol, entertainment,intelligence and the occasional good joke. You have to fight the right, not out bore them. New Matilda were deeply not informative and not entertaining when I dipped in.
May 28th, 2010 at 11:01 am
YB, this is a decent take on NM and how it failed to do some basic online business.
I’ll add the comment I left there, too,
May 29th, 2010 at 9:02 pm
hi helen,
i’ve never understood why you lost it with me, to be honest. i never meant you any harm and enjoyed working with you. i was trying to give you some time to deal with your bad news. i stand by that.
hope you are well
Marni
Editor (NM)
May 29th, 2010 at 9:46 pm
Hey Marni.I don’t think this is the best forum to discuss our final words. I’ll email you privately about a matter that I did not raise in this post.
If only you’ll give me your address: http://badhostess.com/?page_id=86
June 3rd, 2010 at 1:01 pm
“sniffy and elitist”
Something I have personally expereinced and only got after watching leading authors on ABC a couple of weeks ago is the difference between mainstream and literary fiction. In mainstream fiction, if the reader does not understand it then it is the author’s fault; in literary fiction, if the reader does not understand it then it is the reader’s fault for not being worthy enough.
Hence, leading mainstream authors need to be much better wordsmiths than literary authors.
Analogy: If something is “sniffy and elitist” then it is badly written and deserves to fail unless it can attract a massive price premium from a particular niche market.
June 3rd, 2010 at 1:13 pm
Crawling P.S.: I have political views ranging from Mill to Thatcher and am morally impaired by the presence of a white penis, but I read your material when I find it because it is well written, entertaining and I agree with most of it.
Hence, your name has brand recognition to me and other people with hopefully positive cash flow implications (A capitaliste concept you may not be averse to). Some netizine didn’t have this because it was boring.