Clearing out Howard’s office furniture is not Kevin Rudd’s only purging of the past. For his Australia Day diplomatic corps bash at the Lodge, Rudd or his office have chosen a jazz combo, replacing the old bush bands singing Aussie songs that Howard used to favour. And I thought Rudd was an Australian music fan!

The new editor of the Bendigo Advertiser is Peter Kennedy – two time Liberal Party election candidate. Announced to editorial staff on Wednesday – appointment made by Rural Press’s GM’s of Ballarat Courier and Bendigo Addy – staff not impressed with Kennedy’s appointment. Peter Dehnert, the GM of Bendigo Addy told staff words to the effect that he had confidence that Kennedy would not be biased … He also runs a successful PR company and has done since leaving the Addy in the mid-00s.

A major media organisation has been very busy on the phone this week contacting Media Monitors’ regional contractors across Australia about plans they have to utilise their expertise. As the only ones who have the contact details of contractors such as email addresses and phone numbers, many contractors are wondering where they got the contact information from? Some disgruntled staff at Media Monitors perhaps?

CommSec website upgrade is a basket case. I tried three different browsers and two different computers and followed all the CommSec help pages. The problems I see are not volume-related. The problems are about code-quality, probably due to incomplete testing. E.g. Watchlists and charting are not functioning correctly. I have not been able to trade because the tools I rely on are not functioning correctly. Anyone else?

Interesting to note that Kevin Rudd will celebrate two months as prime minister tomorrow but has only given two press conferences in Canberra. Is he scared of fronting the Canberra Press Gallery?