Philip Gomes

It's a fun bit of political mischief, we hear that Malcolm Turnbull may have once sounded out the possibility of a career with Labor. But so what? Politics as it's practiced at the national level by the two major parties is too similar for it to have mattered much if it had eventuated.

And in other political news, Glenn Milne runs down a rabbit hole he clearly found at the bottom of a shot glass. The shorter version? Rudd is playing politics and Turnbull is nobbled by a party hopelessly out of touch with reality.

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One of the genuine Canberra press gallery villagers writes a column about Twitter and new forms of media.

Politicians believe that through mediums such as Twitter, YouTube and the like, they can reach a whole audience that doesn't read newspapers or watch the nightly TV news. These are high-tech mediums with low-tech, simple, often simplistic, messages. Tweets are a line or two; political messages on YouTube are often like those old, plain Jane free broadcasts in elections when TV was new.

Twitter is the latest, scaled-down model of "talkback", still a popular political tool and one that John Howard, in particular, made his trademark communication of choice. With talkback the politician gets rid of the reporter who writes up his or her words, with editing and interpretation. But there is still a presenter who asks questions. Twitter allows them to get rid of the presenter, too.

The new technology provides plenty of fodder for those who complain about the trivialisation of politics. There are some crazy things in blog land, not least of them a few months ago: "An important message from Mellie!", Malcolm Turnbull's dog, all about losing a leg.

Turnbull tweets his dogs' blogs. Of course.

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Long before there was The Punch, the Australian blogosphere was graced with the Stoush. Is the independent Australian blogosphere reawakening?

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I've written earlier here and crossposted (re-edited) at Larvatus Prodeo about News Corp's plans for a pay-to-play model for online news.

Of course a successful implementation of this assumes other mass publishers will be encouraged to get on board.

Today brings further news that here in Australia, Fairfax will follow the lead of News Ltd in attempting to introduce some kind of paid content model.

Speaking before last week's announcement by Mr Murdoch, Mr McCarthy said the industry faced a challenge in ''monetising'' its online news.

''Monetisation will have to happen, because without monetisation of the online sites that the newspaper industries have operated very successfully, we can't afford to keep the big newsroom staffs we have,'' he said.

Fairfax was looking at a number of pay models, including offering readers two levels of access - free entry for a mass audience, with a charge for ''more upmarket, high quality data''.

Mr McCarthy said a two-level scheme could work for Fairfax's new national online news, commentary and analysis site, nationaltimes.com.au, to be launched next month, initially free.

He said theage.com.au and smh.com.au could also have free and paid access levels.

The line that caught my eye was this.

Fairfax was looking at a number of pay models, including offering readers two levels of access - free entry for a mass audience, with a charge for ''more upmarket, high quality data''.

There are two things going on here.

One is an aspect of collusion between the dominant players in the Australian media market to lock down news in their financial favour.

This is not really about making users pay, that alone will never cover the cost of production for these bloated dinosaurs. This is about re-establishing or manufacturing a  'scarcity' in order to drive up advertising rates.

The other will be in unintentionally creating a market where the wealthy have access to a higher quality version of news and data. Further deepening divisions in terms of class, education and culture.

On equity terms alone this has implications for society, and democracy.

For example, imagine a coming electoral season (2010) that sees the broader mass of readers locked out of a more detailed analysis and commentary about electoral manouvering.

Many voters are already disengaged from the political process to some extent, so something like this might deepen this disengagement further - with voters feeling even less informed about their choices.

Of course this would present some unique opportunities for a developing (some would say stillborn) independent Australian political blogosphere.

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