Talking Point

AFR miss Walkley finals

The AFR has failed to make the final of this year's prestigious Walkley Awards for business journalism. The finalists were announced yesterday with The Australian scoring two of the three finalist positions alongside the Sydney Morning Herald.

Something is seriously amiss at what is supposed to be Australia's premier national business newspaper when they publish six editions a week and can't score a Walkley finals birth. In the past 12 months, senior journalists Jennifer Hewitt, John Durie and Andrew Main have defected to The Australian. Less experienced reporters have also departed and the "cash for copy" web strategy has been a failure. The Walkley snub caps off a shocking 12 months for what should now be regarded as the "thin" review. Let's hope some changes are made in the next 12 months. A good place to start would be to reduce their heavy reliance on syndicated copy and beef up their journalist ranks.

Full credit must also go to The Australian who have significantly improved their business coverage with more pages for both national and international stories and better opinion.

Talkback says no to tax cuts

The Age.com.au

Prime Minister John Howard and treasurer Peter Costello will be surprised to learn that callers to talkback radio this morning were overwhelmingly critical of the federal government's $34 billion tax cuts package that they announced yesterday.

Channel surfing in Sydney today indicated a similar response.

SMH readers howl down tax cut plan

Like talkback radio, online discussion forums are often infiltrated by hacks pushing party political lines and endorsements of policy. But if Sydney Morning Herald reader comments regarding the Coalition's $34 billion tax cut plan are to be believed, the policy is not exactly universally popular, despite the announcement putting Labor on the back foot and re-inforning their opponent's "good times"economics credentials.

Many SMH readers complain the tax cut cash is a bribe (what do you expect?), will fuel interest rate increases or would be better spent on health, education and infrastructure. In an online poll in The Daily Telegraph, 47 per cent of people said it would not change their vote while 45 per cent said it would make them more likely to vote for the Coalition.

With the Coalition spend-a-thon well and truly in full swing, how far will Kevin Rudd go with his tax policy?

PM's seat in weakest position

The Australian.com.au

Therefore I can inform readers of a unique feature of this election. It is the first time that a prime minister is contesting the median seat. There is no case of a prime minister contesting a seat weaker for his party than the median seat.

Malcolm Mackerras points out that no PM in history has been in a weaker position in his own seat than John Howard is today In Bennelong.

Managing the election debate

It’s interesting, at least for the political junkies, to see Howard proposing that Sky News host the election debate. Given the majority of Australians don’t have pay television, it’s likely the mainstream news networks and the national broadcaster will only take snippets of the debate for their news programs. In previous campaigns, Howard was beaten in the debates by his opposing candidates. This time around the PM clearly does not want to take such a risk given the appalling opinion polls. He is attempting to manage the risk by limiting his exposure with Sky News and proposing the debate be held in the first week of a six week campaign.

2007 election observations - the announcement

I haven’t had a chance to wade through the mountain of election coverage in this morning’s newspapers but there are a couple of immediate observations I made in the last 24 hours.

The interviews with both Howard and Rudd conducted by 60 Minutes last night and again this morning by the Today Show showed the PM was focused, disciplined and unwilling to stray outside the tight boundaries of his key messages. His central argument was the Coalition had the strong and experienced leadership to maintain and even improve a robust economy.

On the other hand, Rudd seemed nervous and loose and was easily distracted by questions that he could not easily bridge back to his key messages. The stripper incident and the perceived lack of experience in public administration were just two examples. I was also unmoved by the ALP advertisement last night highlighting the 22 per cent interest rates when John Howard was Treasurer in the 70’s. My memory does not stretch that far back as I was barely of school age alongside millions of other Australians currently paying off their home.

The ACTU Work Choices ads, which again aired last night, are a much more powerful symbol of the failure of Government policy in the minds of many people. They've worked in the past given their focus on real people so the ALP administration should learn from that experience.

A marriage made in heaven

The Australian.com.au

WHEN General Motors Holden's new CEO, Chris Gubbey, ventured to the top of Mt Panorama on Saturday morning, he came face to face with the Holden faithful: the fanatics who take brand advocacy to new levels.

A recent Nielsen Company poll shows just how important those red-shirted and flag waving Holden fanatics can be. 78 per cent of those surveyed in the online poll said they trusted other people's recommendations ahead of any information gained from marketing campaigns.

Clutching at political straws

From SMH.com.au

If he could mobilise the entire 7 per cent, the Government would be back in business with 51 per cent of the vote, all else being equal which, of course, it never is.

An impossible ask. Howard's strength is clearly the economy but today's Nielsen poll showed just how far the PM is away from victory rather than delivering a glimmer of hope. It's a view not lost on those at the Liberal and Labor Party functions I attended last week.

Property group launches industry first wiki

The Australian construction and property industry has employed social networking technology to help make commercial buildings greener.

The Co-operative Research Centre for Construction Innovation (A Lighthouse client) led the development of a wiki, called Your Building, as a way to improve the flow of information on sustainability, encourage people to share their own ideas and experiences and educate the next generation of property industry executives using the technology they understand.

A small but important step given commercial buildings account for 10 per cent of total greenhouse gas emissions in Australia and 12 per cent of water consumption.

You can check out the site here. Comments on the wiki are also welcome and I will be happy to pass them on.

Is bad publicity good for your share price?

A new study has come to the extraordinary conclusion that bad media exposure helps fuel a company’s share price.

The far fetched study, to be published in the forthcoming in the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, found that small time investors often overreacted and sold their shares in the wake of negative publicity, leading savvier institutional investors to pick up stock at cheaper prices. The increased trading activity by the institutions caused individual share prices to spike. The study was based on an analysis of companies which have appeared in Business Week’s Worst Boards list in recent years.

While I haven't seen the full study yet, it's difficult to swallow the conclusions that appear in the summary. The study ignores the fact that bad publicity impacts a company's ability to retain and attract quality employees and is a powerful turn-off for existing and potential customers. Indeed, the no brainer fact that that good publicity is better than bad makes this study totally pointless.