ABC managing director Mark Scott has taken on critics who suggest that his leadership has been more about technology than about quality news content, and that initiatives such as the 24-hour television news service risk spreading Auntie’s journalists too thin.

Speaking at the Melbourne Press Club as Crikey is published, Scott takes as his topic the culture of journalism, and how the national broadcaster might build and foster it.

Scott also announces a revision of editorial policies, with the aim of making them briefer, but underpinned by guidance notes.

“We want a culture that is not simply about staying within the rules — but doing the best broadcasting, the highest quality practice of journalism.  This is less about limits than it is about aspirations.”

He says the new ABC News Online Investigation Unit has been designed to support ABC reporters engaged in investigative journalism across the organisation.

The unit, under the leadership of Lateline reporter Suzanne Smith, will help with research, data analysis and as a sounding board as well as helping to make sure that stories are properly followed through, he says.

Scott admits that the ABC is not always good at capitalising on its own news stories, but rebuts critics (including me) who have suggested that the ABC does not break news.

“Sometimes at the ABC, due to our structures, territorialities and history, our news rooms have not followed up stories broken by our current affairs programs as assiduously as they should have. Our news reporters have often had neither the understanding, contacts nor the brief to do so. Now none is this is best practice, nor is it wise.  Which is why we are already at work to correct it.”

He talks about how the ABC should use Twitter and other social networking platforms, while retaining its credibility.

And in what can only be interpreted as a hit at his former employer, Fairfax Media, he talks about how broadsheet newspapers become more tabloid in their online versions.

“There is nothing wrong with tabloids, I hasten to add, nodding in the direction of journalistic colleagues from the Herald Sun … In the online space, however, [the] distinction blurs — tabloids and broadsheets tend to behave the same way, as if the online audience’s primary need is to be entertained.  The result is the kind of editorial thinking that means we get far more coverage — as has been noted — of Paris Hilton than Paris, France. More Angelina and Brad than Angola and Chad.”

Scott also responds to those who have suggested the 24-hour news channel is an unwarranted invasion of a space best left to commercial operators, and pay television in particular.

“When radio and television were being established in Australia and the nation itself was still in the making, our policy makers looked to existing examples around the world to work out what might be best for Australia.

“They did not emulate the British model, with the public broadcaster BBC established as a monopoly, nor the American, where broadcasting was dominated by commercial interests. They went for the mixed model, in the belief that it delivers the greatest possible public benefit. For 50 years now we have offered an ABC television news service, alongside offerings from commercial networks — the mixed media market at work.”

It’s a slightly dry and defensive speech compared to Scott’s ground-breaking “end of empire” stuff from last year — but it’s nice to see someone in media talking about what it takes to create good journalism, however it is delivered.

Read the speech in full here.