Can He Handle The Truth? Cameron Slater has leveraged his extraordinary success as the author of the Whaleoil blog into the editorship of the once-mighty Truth newspaper. Now that they know what's possible, the Left's bloggers should aim for similar communications success.
“ALL I WANT is the truth!” It’s a measure of Cameron
Slater’s propagandistic flair that he should celebrate his appointment as Truth’s new editor by posting a
video-clip featuring John Lennon. Recruiting one of the Left’s pop icons to
celebrate his new job as right-wing press baron – that’s our Cam!
Though you wouldn’t think it to read the response of the
left-wing bloggers, who have, almost unanimously, greeted Mr Slater’s success
with the level of enthusiasm usually reserved for the Black Death, his
appointment is a very good reason to celebrate.
The extraordinary effort Mr Slater has put into his Whaleoil blog - propelling the
single-man operation to the Number One slot on Open Parachute’s New Zealand blog-rankings - is almost certainly the
reason he was asked to do the job. Mr Slater may not be a trained journalist,
but 600,000 page-views per month more than entitles Whaleoil to be compared favourably with most of this country’s
provincial dailies.
Certainly Whaleoil
reaches more people than Truth has
been able to attract over the past few years. And that, presumably, is the
point. As newspaper circulation figures continue to decline and publishers tear
their hair out trying to arrest the slide in both readers and advertisers, the
proprietors of Truth have taken a
punt on a guy who has proved that right-wing political blogging has mass appeal.
Okay, okay – so it’s not the sort of political blogging that
appeals to me, but in assessing the effectiveness of any sort of
blog the number of page-views it registers cannot be ignored. And by that
measure Mr Slater is a highly effective
communicator.
A crucial part of Whaleoil’s
appeal lies in its direct and simple prose-style. That, and its author’s
unerring eye for the political jugular. These are the qualities upon which Truth’s owners, Messrs Horton and Crow,
have staked their reputations – and their fortunes. They are betting that Mr
Slater can restore Truth to its
former status as one of the most influential newspapers in the country.
From its current circulation of 10,000 to 16,000 copies,
they will be hoping that Truth – both
as a newspaper and as an Internet presence – will once again become powerful
enough to make or break any citizen fortunate or unfortunate enough to attract
its interest.
At present, the paper’s readership is made up, to the tune
of around 80 percent, of the social group I have elsewhere dubbed “Waitakere
Man”. Mr Slater will be doing everything he can to keep these blokes attached
to the National Party and, if possible, recruit their friends and workmates to
the right-wing cause.
If ever there was a time to throw one’s hat into the ring as
a potential Truth columnist, it was
the day Mr Slater’s editorial appointment was announced and his left-wing nemesis,
Martyn “Bomber” Bradbury, resigned. Getting on board what could become one of
the great publishing adventures of recent years (and hopefully seeding whatever
left-wing ideas one could squeeze past the Fox News-style of journalism Mr
Slater so clearly favours) was certainly worth a try.
I did my best, but the ubiquitous Josie Pagani beat me to
it.
Well done that woman, I say, and congratulations to Mr
Slater. The challenge before the Left is now to build their own version of the
sort of extraordinary communications vehicle that Whaleoil
has become, and which the proprietors of the Truth newspaper are clearly expecting
its new editor to replicate
on their behalf.
After all, anything Cam can do, the Left should be able to
do better.
The last thing we need to see is Mr Slater, contemptuously
twitting his left-wing opponents by posting a YouTube clip of Jack Nicolson
snarling:
“You can’t handle the Truth!”
This posting is
exclusive to the Bowalley Road
blogsite.
21 comments:
It may not surprise you Chris but the advertisers have been calling today.
I advised Cam to print this post and Bombers post.
Yours will be going in the ad sales folder, bombers wil be going on the tantrum wall. I can only hope that he can calm down enough to focus on his real estate career.
And with your post being perhaps the smoothest job application I have seen in years. I am sure cam will make room for you.
"The extraordinary effort Mr Slater has put into his Whaleoil blog - propelling the single-man operation to the Number One slot on Open Parachute’s New Zealand blog-rankings - is almost certainly the reason he was asked to do the job."
I was thinking about this just now. I think his numbers are bogus. He linked to my blog quite prominently a couple of months ago and I got half a dozen hits at most, which just doesn't compute. Also, he has only 144 google reader subscribers. By comparison, you have 332. So let me ask you: do you get anywhere near his alleged 300k visit a month? My guess is you do not, by a couple of orders of magnitude. I think Slater has got where he's got by creating the false perception that he has a lot of readers.
Also: Josie Pagani beat you to the job.
Very classy reply Barnsley. And I'm willing to bet that the advertisers ringing have not been the proprietors of houses of ill repute.
Look forward to next Thursday.
So saving newspapers requires a complete abandonment of journalistic standards?
Quite sanguine about the descent of NZ into popular authoritarianism, are you Chris?
Giovanni, the blog stats are drawn from third party stat counters and compiled by a third party blog.
Unless Cameron has set up a bank of one hundred computers with mechanical cuckoo's leaning in and tapping the refresh key 24x7 your comment can only be viewed as envy?
What say you champ?
There was a time back in the early 2000's, when I thought about applying for some work at your NZ Politics Digest, which seemed to produce some good work (Michelle A'Court's column among the gems). However, it seems I rightly surmised that a radical is in the eye of the beholder/editor.
I presume the Truth has a good legal team.
Giovanni, there are 868 people subscribed to me feed according to Feedburner.
I ahve three stats packages recording information, Sitemeter, statCounter and Google Analytics as well as Word press internal stats...they all show similar results differing only thru the vagaries of their various methodologies.
To suggest I am cheating or juking the stats smacks of desperation like The Standard...and frankly I thought you were better than that.
According to Lynn Prentice I am a novice technologically, even inept, compared with his genius level prowess at manipulating the dark matter that controls the internet...his code level manipulations of the server is legendary.
If he isn't juking the stats yet somehow I have managed to do it then perhaps he is wrong about my meagre technical abilities or just maybe they are real.
I for the life of me wonder every day when people will cotton on to the fact that i do what i do for great belly laughs...for some reason they come, and I welcome them...for I enjoy their company.
You can try as they do though and ignore me, but you will find that I can;t be ignored.
To: Anonymous@8:22PM
Not at all.
But the remedy lies in the Left's own hands.
By dint of sheer, unwavering dedication to his mission, one right-wing blogger has been given the chance to restore a once great masthead to its former glory (if that is the right word).
Mr Slater should be an inspiration to all of us.
Most of what I've heard from the Left today has been fear - and envy.
Music to the man's ears, I'm sure.
"Unless Cameron has set up a bank of one hundred computers with mechanical cuckoo's leaning in and tapping the refresh key 24x7 your comment can only be viewed as envy?
What say you champ?"
There are a number of ways to game one's stats. Some of them are quite innocent. One of the most read NZ blogs has fourteen (14) Google Reader subscribers. But it's about celebrity news so it gets a lot of search engine traffic. However a much better comparison to Whaleoil is Kiwiblog, which has ten times as many Google Reader subscribers as Whaleoil, and a much larger community of commenters which would multiply its pageviews. Yet somehow it comes behind Whaleoil every month? I really don't think so.
"Giovanni, there are 868 people subscribed to me feed according to Feedburner."
That would include not just Google reader but all of the means of subscribing to your feed. I have 600 Feedburner subscribers, which is not much less than you, and my blog is not big at all.
"Most of what I've heard from the Left today has been fear - and envy."
They're just trying to avoid the unpleasant fact that NZ media tends to the boorish and authoritarian because NZers tend to be boorish and authoritarian. They'll do anything to avoid the unpleasant fact that a clear majority of the "people" they claim to represent are a mindless rabble of self absorbed, conservative nincompoops.
At least those who will buy Slater's paper know what they are getting. The real joke is the people who buy the Herald under the delusion that it's a serious newspaper.
You can't expect anything worthwhile from a 21st century democracy. Politics is just X-Factor with uglier contestants and sillier rules.
Out of neither fear and envy, I recall that I read something (I think on blubber boy's own blog) along the lines that his blog records visits for each page view. If you click between the "archives" (which usually include posts from the last 24 hours given the volume of journalistic phlegm the man hacks up) you are recorded as a separate page visit. In fact, everything about the way the blog is set up seems to encourage more reloading of the site (not something I've done in months - I only do so when gripped by sudden masochism).
@Giovanni Tiso
The dimension you are missing is the number of repeat visits the same person makes to the blog during the same 24 hour period.
It doesn't take a genius (or maybe it does?) to figure out that a blog that posts 20-40 times a day and regularly breaks timely new information is going to be visited more frequently than one that does one or two posts a day and is of the "come see what I think of the material others have originated" variety.
Even in 2012, Content is King, baby!
The dirty filthy tory “Truth” was an oozing suppurating sore of an excuse for a newspaper when numbers of dark kiwis did furtively buy it some decades ago.
“Hottie of the week” and a sizable sex worker directory will no doubt provide suitable amusement for Mr Whale but am not so sure about the rest of us. Mind you Auckland’s “Metro” only claims a 10,000 circulation these days so who knows.
I don’t rate Whale after his scabby failed attempts to undermine MUNZ members, so hopefully his pertard will soon be hoist.
'Not a trained journalist'- I would have thought that a huge advantage!
Could only have a vision of rats rushing to get aboard a sinking ship. That is if they are ethical rats, otherwise your look down the nose at Cameron and his work disguises a sneaky admiration and desire to coattail on his success that throws observers into a state of confusion as to your real beliefs.
I love the concept that people will pay money to buy Whales words in Truth...or for that matter Josie Paganis. That will be the true mark of the madness of the readership, should Whale succeed he has my full respect (for that anyway).
As for fear and envy from the Left...The Standard has its own denizens who share the characteristics of right wing nutters who will send you to purgatory for any ideological transgression. Whilst they have been driving Lefties away by policing their purist idea of the "Left", a RWNJ like Whale has gone off and done something positive to attract more to his viewpoint...like getting the Truth job. Envy or stupidity: let the Left choose.
“It doesn't take a genius (or maybe it does?) to figure out that a blog that posts 20-40 times a day and regularly breaks timely new information is going to be visited more frequently than one that does one or two posts a day and is of the "come see what I think of the material others have originated" variety.
Even in 2012, Content is King, baby!”
Wrong again. If what you said were true, then more than 800-something measly readers would subscribe to Slater’s precious, timely, content-rich feed. If he only has 800 subscribers, it really means that not a lot of people read him (or, from a technical standpoint, that he has few unique regular readers). Again, to put it in context: my (very modest) blog has 600 feed subscribers and I post once a week on mostly non-topical things, not several times a day offering a supposedly unique viewpoint on the most current issues.
Slater an editor!?
Slater a communicator!?
Long drops and rag newsprint dunny paper must be coming back in vogue then?
Tiger Mountain.
Been following the MUNZ story over the last couple of days?
No need to apologise, just try to be less stupid next time.
Those union have been hiding MILIIONS of dollars from their members. Whale and his team ferreted out that info and now the NBR and the authorities are all over them like a fat lass on a cream cake.
C’mon Barnsley, the Meatworkers Union and MUNZ both run a branch structure that handles dues at local level–i.e. shed or port. Typically other unions send dues to a national or head office for prioritizing and allocating. I am sure both unions would be most interested in where the “hidden millions” a) were generated from (given a small membership base), and b) reside at this time.
You Slater, Neville (Viagra) Gibson and Farrar run this shit because at the end of the day you detest unions, voluntary organisations that combine to give dirty filthy bosses like Gibson, Campbell etc the good slippering they well deserve.
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