Olivia: The news isn't broken because of social media. It's broken because for a century, media companies didn't see you as a customer. They saw you as the product. And the internet just blew their cover. Jackson: Whoa, that's a bold way to start. The product? That sounds incredibly cynical. You’re saying when I bought a newspaper, I wasn't the customer, the advertiser was? Olivia: That's the core argument. The business model was to gather up as many eyeballs as possible—that's us—and sell that attention to advertisers. The news was just the bait. And this is the central idea in Tim Dunlop's fantastic book, The New Front Page: New Media and the Rise of the Audience. Jackson: And Dunlop is the perfect person to tell this story. He wasn't just an academic looking at this from the outside; he was one of Australia's first major political bloggers. He was famously the first independent blogger to be hired by a huge, traditional media company. He literally lived this culture clash from both sides. Olivia: Exactly. He was on the front lines of the revolution. And to understand just how radical that revolution was, he takes us back to a time before the internet, using this brilliant analogy from his childhood: his dad's old service station. Jackson: A service station? Okay, I'm intrigued. How does pumping gas connect to the media apocalypse? Olivia: Well, think about what customer service used to be. At his dad's station in the 70s, a car would pull in, and the staff would rush out. They wouldn't just pump the gas. They’d clean your windscreen, check your oil, check your tire pressure. The customer was the absolute center of the business. You looked after them, and in return, they gave you their loyalty and their money. Jackson: Right, a direct, respectful relationship. I think my grandpa told me stories about that. It sounds like a different planet. Olivia: It was. Now contrast that with the media. For decades, they had a monopoly. If you wanted news, you had very few places to go. As Warren Buffett once quoted a publisher saying, their success was built on "nepotism and monopoly." They didn't need to care about you, the reader, as a customer. They just needed you to show up so they could sell your presence to Ford or Coca-Cola. The relationship wasn't one of service; Dunlop argues it was one of manipulation. Jackson: That completely reframes it. It wasn't a public service, it was a transaction that we weren't even the main party to. So when the internet came along, it didn't break the media, it just exposed a business model that was already broken. Olivia: Precisely. Suddenly, advertisers had other places to go, like Google and Facebook, that were cheaper and more effective. And more importantly, the audience—the product—suddenly had a voice. They could talk back. And that’s when things got really interesting.

Jackson: Okay, so the audience gets a voice. I think we take that for granted now with Twitter, TikTok, comments sections everywhere. But what did that look like in the beginning? Was it just chaos? Olivia: It was revolutionary. And one of the earliest and most important examples Dunlop documents happened in Australia with a journalist named Margo Kingston. In 2000, her newspaper, the Sydney Morning Herald, gave her a space to create an online column. She called it Webdiary. Jackson: Webdiary. Sounds quaintly retro. Like a digital Dear Abby. Olivia: It was anything but. Kingston decided to do something radical. She didn't just write her columns; she invited readers into the process. She’d post her thoughts, her reporting, and then open the floor. People could comment, argue with her, add their own information, and debate each other. She was fiercely committed to transparency, even posting her own ethical policy, saying, "if I got something wrong I would correct immediately." Jackson: So she was basically building a community, not just an audience. She was treating them like collaborators instead of passive eyeballs. Olivia: Exactly. And it was a massive success. It built a fiercely loyal following. People felt heard. They were part of the story. For the first time, the wall between the all-knowing journalist and the silent reader was crumbling. She was covering explosive political scandals, and her readers were right there with her, fact-checking and adding context in the comments. Jackson: That sounds amazing. It sounds like the democratic promise of the internet, realized. So why isn't every news site like that today? Olivia: Ah, well, that's the million-dollar question. The institution's immune system kicked in. While the readers loved it, the editors inside the newspaper got very, very nervous. Jackson: Let me guess. They loved the idea of "engagement" until the audience actually started… engaging? Olivia: You nailed it. They were losing control of the narrative. The conversations were messy, unpredictable, and couldn't be neatly packaged or controlled from the top down. One media commentator at the time, Crikey, wrote that the editors just wished Margo would go away, and that by marginalizing her, they were "constantly pissing in the readers’ faces." Jackson: Wow. So they were actively alienating their most engaged readers because they were scared of them. Olivia: It was a fundamental culture clash. The old guard saw journalism as a lecture. Kingston and the early bloggers saw it as a conversation. After five years of fighting internal battles, the newspaper shut Webdiary down. They killed one of their most innovative and beloved projects because they couldn't handle the loss of control. Jackson: That’s heartbreaking. It's like they were given a recipe for the future of news and they decided they preferred the taste of the stale, old bread they were used to. Olivia: And that decision, that fear, set the stage for the next decade of conflict. It showed that the real battle wasn't about technology; it was about power. Who gets to speak, who gets to set the agenda, and who is the gatekeeper? The old media wasn't going to give up that power without a fight.

Olivia: And that institutional immune response is the heart of our second topic. Because what happens when the outsiders, the so-called "pajama-wearing buffoons" as one journalist dismissed them, get invited inside the castle? Jackson: Right, the co-option phase. ‘If you can’t beat ‘em, hire ‘em and hope they assimilate.’ Olivia: And Tim Dunlop's own story is the perfect, and I mean perfect, case study for this. After building a huge following with his independent blog, he gets a call in 2006 from News Limited, one of the biggest and most conservative media empires in Australia, owned by Rupert Murdoch. They want him to write a political blog for their main news website. Jackson: Hold on. A prominent left-leaning independent blogger gets hired by the Murdoch empire? That sounds like a sitcom premise. What could possibly go wrong? Olivia: Everything, exactly as you'd expect. He launches his blog, Blogocracy, and for a while, it works. He has editorial freedom, he's building a community, he's providing a rare left-of-center voice inside this media giant. But then comes the inevitable test. Jackson: The moment he actually uses the independent voice they hired him for. Olivia: Precisely. He writes a post that's critical of an editorial in The Australian, which is the company's flagship national newspaper and a sister publication to the website he's on. The post is well-argued, it links to sources, it’s standard critical commentary. But the editor of The Australian, a very powerful man named Chris Mitchell, was not pleased. Jackson: I’m sensing a phone call was made. A very loud phone call. Olivia: A very loud phone call was made to Dunlop's editor. And just like that, the post disappeared. It was pulled from the site without any explanation. A reader had to tell him it was gone. Jackson: Unbelievable. So they didn't even have the courtesy to tell him they were censoring him? What was the official reason his editor gave him? Olivia: This is the most telling part of the whole book. His editor, who was sympathetic but powerless, told him, and this is a direct quote from the book, "You think of these people as your peers, but you’re playing with the big boys now and you don’t need to explain. You just write the next post and keep going." Jackson: Wow. "You don't need to explain." That says it all. It’s the code of the old world. Don't acknowledge the audience, don't admit fault, just maintain the facade of authority. It’s the complete opposite of the transparency Margo Kingston was championing. Olivia: It's the perfect illustration of the two worlds colliding. The blogger's instinct is to be accountable to the community. The institution's instinct is to protect its internal power structures and close ranks. And this attitude, this contempt for the audience's intelligence, connects directly to the next big battleground: the so-called "troll wars." Jackson: Ah yes, the trolls. The boogeymen of the internet. The media loves to talk about trolls. Olivia: Dunlop argues that the media's obsession with trolling became a convenient way to dismiss all forms of audience pushback. Of course, genuine abuse and harassment are serious problems. But the term 'trolling' was expanded to cover almost any form of sharp criticism, disagreement, or mockery directed at journalists. Jackson: So it became a shield. If a reader points out a factual error in your article, you don't have to engage with the substance of their criticism. You can just label them a 'troll' and dismiss them. Olivia: Exactly. It's a way to reassert gatekeeper status. The media positions itself as the arbiter of "civil" discourse, and anyone who doesn't play by their rules is an uncivil troll who should be ignored or banned. Dunlop points to the hypocrisy of figures like the shock jock Alan Jones, who would say the most outrageous, abusive things on air but then turn around and label his social media critics "cyber terrorists." Jackson: That's a great point. The call for 'civility' can absolutely be a power play. But to push back a little, isn't it true that a lot of online discourse is toxic? And that social media has just created these massive echo chambers where no one is exposed to different ideas? That's a very common criticism of the world Dunlop is describing. Olivia: It is a common criticism, and it's one Dunlop directly addresses. He points to research showing that the opposite is often true. Because of the networked nature of the internet, people on social media are often exposed to more diverse viewpoints than people who stick to a single newspaper or TV channel. You see what your friends are sharing, and your friends aren't all clones of you. Jackson: Huh. So the real echo chamber might not be my Twitter feed, but the newsroom of a major newspaper where everyone thinks the same way? Olivia: That's the provocative idea. The media was projecting its own insularity onto the audience. And in doing so, they made a catastrophic mistake. They started a war with the most engaged, most passionate part of their audience—the very people who cared enough to argue, to fact-check, to participate. They were the people who could have been their greatest allies in building a new, sustainable model for journalism.

Jackson: So in the end, the media's broken business model was a symptom of a much deeper problem: a broken relationship with its audience. They never saw us as partners. Olivia: That's the core takeaway of The New Front Page. The financial crisis was real, but the relational crisis was just as damaging. When journalists like Marcus Priest of the Australian Financial Review publicly attack a potential customer on Twitter, calling him a "cheapskate" for simply suggesting a more flexible subscription model, it reveals a deep-seated contempt. They still see the audience as an annoyance to be managed, not a community to be served. Jackson: It’s like the service station analogy again. It’s like yelling at a customer for asking if you could check their tires. You’d go out of business in a week. Olivia: And many of them are. Dunlop's conclusion is both a warning and a call to action. He argues that a healthy democracy still needs a strong mainstream media. Citizen journalists are vital, but we also need well-funded newsrooms that can do the deep, investigative work, like David Simon, creator of The Wire, argued for. But that can only survive if it fundamentally rethinks its relationship with the public. Jackson: So it’s not about going back to the old model. It’s about finally building the model that should have existed all along—one based on respect, transparency, and collaboration. Olivia: Yes. It’s about journalists seeing themselves not as gatekeepers on a pedestal, but as facilitators of a public conversation. It’s about treating the audience not as a product to be sold, or a mob to be controlled, but as citizens to be engaged. The "New Front Page" of the title isn't a website homepage. It's a front page that we, the audience, help create every day. Jackson: It really makes you wonder, then. If this New Front Page is created by us, the audience, what responsibility do we have to make it a better, more informed one? Olivia: That's the perfect question to end on. What do you all think? What does a healthy relationship between journalists and audiences look like today? Is it even possible? Let us know your thoughts on our social channels. We'd love to hear from you. Jackson: This is Aibrary, signing off.