Guest post: With The Punch we will celebrate journalism
In this guest posting, David Penberthy, editor of newly-launched The Punch explains what he and his team are trying to achieve.
The launch today of thepunch.com.au adds a new dimension to the Australian journalistic landscape and fills what we believe is a gap in the market for readers.
There are many excellent opinion sites in Australia but there is no mainstream opinion site aimed at general readers with a love of broad discussion and debate.
Despite the explosion in the size and scope of the blogosphere, opinion sites in Australia are generally confined to a particular industry or field of interest – sites such as Breakfast Politics, which brilliantly serves the needs of political junkies, or Mumbrella, which does a great job covering media and marketing. Others such as Larvatus Prodeo or individual blogs by journalists such as Andrew Bolt or Tim Blair come at issues in a provocative and energetic way but from a generally set position on the ideological spectrum. And then there’s Crikey, which operates on the presumption that nothing good has ever come out of mainstream journalism.
This is an impressive declaration, David. Thanks for taking the time to explain your intentions and goals. I’ll watch the site with interest.
It would be good to see a like\dislike function on comments to push all the gold to the top. I imagine the threads are going to get quite large so it would be good to get a thumbs or thumbs down to encourage people to have their say without posting comments.
Good luck with it David.
Well, at least you admit The Punch will be totally biased David:
at any given time the conversation may range from the politics of group sex to the unfairness of modern cricket, the flawed defence by civil libertarians of biker gangs, the full-cream fascists running our trendier coffee shops and the commercialisation of Kokoda”
Doesn’t sound like there’ll be much of a debate about any of those issues…
True Blue
John Howard grew here, Frank Nejad flew here.
Costello was born here, Frank Nejad just torn here.
Frank Nejad bashed here, Rodney Adler cashed here.
Rodney Adler dashed here, Sydney lawyer cashed here
Offset Alpine ripped here, Rene Rivkin tipped here.
Small business chocked here, Aussie people shocked here.
ACCC hugged here, Frank Nejad mugged here.
Graeme Samuel watched here, his work was just botched here.
Darling Harbour made here, small tenants fade here.
Peter Charlton paid here, Frank Nejad laid here.
Shifty Nifty dipped here, ICAC tipped here.
ICAC bugged here, Frank Nejad Tugged here.
Marcus Einfeld judged here, legal system nudged here.
Marcus Einfeld jailed here, 4 corners named here.
ABC famed here, Frank Nejad was shamed here.