I gather ABC Managing Director Mark Scott has been giving a lot of thought to the AN Smith  lecture, which he is to deliver in Melbourne next month.  Under the title “The Fall of Rome: Media After Empire” he promises an examination, among other things, of  the Murdoch pay-wall decision, and its implications for public broadcasting. Given his former position as a Fairfax senior exec, it would be surprising if he didn’t have something to say on that organisation’s troubles as well.

I suspect I’m going to agree with a lot of what he says. I used the “end of empire” idea in my book on the media, (you didn’t pinch it, did you Mark?) and recalled the scene from the Monty Python movie “Life of Brian”.

The revolutionaries of the Judean Popular Front are sitting around complaining about the Romans. Someone asks “What did the Romans ever do for us?” The answer comes back: aqueducts, civic order, education, health care, sanitation….quite a lot really, damn those imperialists!

In the case of the much-cursed media empires, the list includes creation of community of interest, lubrication of democracy, journalism, public information etc etc.

Which doesn’t mean to say that we weren’t colonised.

Now we are entering the post-colonial era, a time of chaos and opportunity, and will be thrown on our own resources to a much greater extent.

So, that’s my line. I wonder what Scott’s take will be? I have to be in Hobart to attend the Future of Journalism Conference the following day, but if I can manage it I might try a little live blogging from Scott’s address on 14 October at University of Melbourne.

Look here for the who, what, when and where.

In his A.N.Smith Lecture Mark Scott
will examine where media might be
headed after the fall of the great media
empires. Like its economy, Australia’s
media market was built on a balance
of public and private enterprise. In
commercial television, the age of media
moguls is passing. Private equity now
dominates. In newspapers, the Murdoch
media empire has responded to the crisis
of advertising by proposing to transform
the online world in the same way that
cable transformed television – by making
consumers pay.
What happens to quality journalism when
its reach and audience are limited in this
way? What will Australians expect of the
ABC in the next decadeIn his A.N.Smith Lecture Mark Scott
will examine where media might be
headed after the fall of the great media
empires. Like its economy, Australia’s
media market was built on a balance
of public and private enterprise. In
commercial television, the age of media
moguls is passing. Private equity now
dominates. In newspapers, the Murdoch
media empire has responded to the crisis
of advertising by proposing to transform
the online world in the same way that
cable transformed television – by making
consumers pay.
What happens to quality journalism when
its reach and audience are limited in this
way? What will Australians expect of the
ABC in the next decade?