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August 22, 2005
Double diary, as Margo Kingston goes freelance
Margo Kingston has taken her Webdiary freelance, ending what appeared to be a three-year contract with the Sydney Morning Herald.
After five years writing - or more to the point, building quite a team of writers - she says she'll open for business on her own account in four weeks time. In the meantime, her Fairfax page still seems to be active, although the last post was made on Friday.
The reasons for the split are as yet a mystery, although on her new site she declares, "Recently, my understanding of the nature of Webdiary and that of Fairfax suddenly and dramatically diverged, and as a result I ended my relationship with smh.com.au."
She invites further questions on the topic, however, and says she will "answer all bona fide questions unless I am unable to do so due to legal considerations arising from the termination of my contract to write for, edit and publish Webdiary for smh.com.au for three years". We can scarcely wait!
We'd be surprised if the SMH didn't come up with another writer for the original Webdiary, which would mean a fascinating struggle for those eyeballs. An obvious contender would surely have to be Tim Dunlop, who's just returned from the US, and is now to be found in Adelaide.
So let's see now, if we compare the list of contributors on the SMH site with those on the new site, who's missing, and who's been added?
On the old site, there's Carmen Lawrence, Craig Rowley, Darlene Taylor, David Roffey, Harry Heidelberg, Jack Robertson, John Miner, John Wojdylo, Kerryn Higgs, Michael Ekin Smyth, Noel Hadjimichael, PF Journey, Phil Uebergang, Polly Bush, Russell Darroch and Stuart Lord.
On the new, we have (so far): Rubens Camejo, Polly Bush, Craig Rowley, Jozef Imrich, Harry Heidelberg, David Roffey, Ian McPherson, Russell Darroch and Hamish Alcorn.
We can't help wondering if, in leaving the Herald, Margo might have lost sight of her original plan.
On the other hand, it seems to be a growing trend for journalists who blog to embrace what they call citizen journalism.
Posted by cw at August 22, 2005 02:00 PM