PANDER POLITICS  It’s Friday and finally sub editors around the country can start looking forward to a time when they can stop thinking exclusively in China puns. There have been some doozies — “Great Gall of China,” “Nice to Xi You,” “Any Storm in a Port” (think Darwin) — and a few wince-inducers, like The Daily Telegraph’s “PM Goes Weak at the Chinese.” Today’s entrant is “Panda Politics,” the homophone doing duty to frame the trip as indulgent, wavering, groveling — at least according to the opposition.  In The Age (“PM rejects opposition claims on China”) and The Sydney Morning Herald (“PM eyes 'rewards' of panda politics”), Paul Sakkal addresses those critiques directly. Albanese has shrugged off barbs that his stops to visit soccer coaches, a tennis centre, a really very old long wall, and a big bamboo muncher or two were self-indulgent, arguing instead that Australia will reap economic benefits from demonstrating 

After completing a full refurbishment of the publication’s website, GadgetGuy’s Valens Quinn believes that many publishers see, “the landscape is changing about the way people consume content,” and as a result, it's “important to keep up with the times.”  “What we wanted to do with Gadget Guy was to do two things. One, it allows us to post quicker because there is an overhead to writing articles, getting all the images, and entering them into the CMS,” Quinn told Influencing.  “Two, it was to take content from all the places we invest in. We're putting a lot of effort into video and socials, and you must create content relevant to that platform.” After the new publication’s website was soft-launched in May, Quinn said the main changes were on the homepage.  “We have our tech ticker, which is the main feed. We've designed the tech ticker to include in-feed articles, meaning you read them directly. That could be our latest social posts that you're alread

<>   In the early days of The Conversation, a small team of ten journalists huddled around a single IKEA table, their phones constantly ringing as they reached out to academics across the country.  Editor-in-Chief Misha Ketchell remembers assembling that table himself with an Allen key, creating what would become the humble beginning of a groundbreaking media organisation which has now spread globally.  The initial pitch to academics seemed almost comical, Ketchell told Influencing Insider. "We've just started, we have no audience, no money, and we can't pay you - but would you write an article in the next three hours?"  Despite numerous rejections, the team persevered, gradually building trust and understanding between the worlds of journalism and academia. Arguably their breakthrough moment came during one of the darkest events in recent history - the Christchurch massacre. When the editor called Ketchell suggesting they wait a few weeks before covering the tragedy,

Australian Podcast Ranker for June has revealed the ABC has topped the charts with a podcast that averages just over 6000 downloads an episode. ABC News Top Stories produced 415 episodes in June, with 2.5 million downloads between them. With a monthly listenership of 781,067, according to Triton’s ranker, the podcast toppled Hamish and Andy from the top spot. The duo Hamish released four new episodes in June, to 776,321 listeners – and 1.5 million downloads. ABC’s Mushroom Case Daily scored 3.35 million downloads across 29 episodes, to land in third place this month – its highest placement to date, and no doubt its peak. But there’s still the sentencing to come, so expect another ABC News Daily and Conversations also performed well for the national broadcaster, with 1.17 million and 2.1 million downloads respectively, and monthly listenerships of 405,000 and 365,000. Mamamia Out Loud slipped to fourth place, with 537,000 listeners and 1.74 million downloads, while Sha

  ALBO WALKS THE WALL — BUT ON WHAT GROUND?   The Prime Minister’s six-day diplomatic blitz through China has so far delivered all the visual clichés of serious statecraft: smiling CEOs, a Shanghai glad-hand, and a photo-op atop the Great Wall meant to echo Whitlam. But beneath the grand optics, the substance feels murkier. For instance, in The Age (“Albanese defends ‘status quo’ position on Taiwan to Xi”), Paul Sakkal reports that Anthony Albanese had to downplay Xinhua’s portrayal of his remarks as a shift in Taiwan policy, a portrayal that’s part of Beijing ramping up pressure over Labor’s decision to reclaim control of the Port of Darwin.     Meanwhile, The Australian’s Peta Credlin saw something else entirely, if not exactly for the first time when it comes to the PM - or as she calls him “the student radical from Marrickville”. In her column “If PM had his way, we’d be Switzerland of the South Pacific”, she dismissed Albo as

    Google has quietly struck new deals with a string of digital and independent publishers, in some cases on significantly reduced terms, as Labor prepares to resume work on fresh laws aimed at forcing tech firms to pay for news, reports John Buckley at Capital Brief.  Buckley revealed Google has reached agreements this year with Schwartz Media, publisher of The Saturday Paper and The Monthly, and Mamamia, as well as with Yahoo, Australian Community Media, Crikey publisher Private Media, and youth publisher Junkee. “Some of these new deals carried reduced values,” he reported one of the sources had told him,, speaking on the condition of anonymity as the information is confidential.  Negotiations were opened in some cases with offers as much as 40% below their original values, said Buckley.. “Google has continually demonstrated strong support for public interest journalism, and is the only technology company with an extensive number of significant commercial agreemen

  Network18 reported a year-on-year revenue dip for the June quarter, largely due to a high base from last year’s election-linked advertising and a muted ad market. The company cited persistent weak consumer demand and a sports-heavy quarter as further pressures on ad revenue. Despite these headwinds, the news business declined only 4.9 per cent, while overall revenue rose 9 per cent compared to the same quarter in FY24--a period that also lacked election-related boosts. Chairman Adil Zainulbhai noted that Network18 continues to deliver strong operating performance, with recent product launches underscoring its focus on diversification and future growth.