Correction:

Crikey writes: Re. “ABC journo signs off” (Wednesday). In Wednesday’s edition, we wrote that former ABC journalist Karen Barlow had been made redundant through a round of job losses at Radio National. Barlow was actually made redundant along with 70 others as a result of the Australia Network termination.

The clear and present threat of New Zealand

Jim Harker writes: It was a good article from Guy Rundle about the coming East-West conflict. It’s a topic that our leaders never address. It would be nice to think that our leaders have a quiet plan to deal with it, but I fear that they prefer to keep believeing that  US dominance of world affairs will last forever, because thinking about the alternative is too uncomfortable for them. They spend much more time in the foreign affairs arena talking about the situation of Israel in the Middle East, something of absolutely no strategic importance to Australia.

ABC does not want to repeat history

ABC director of corporate affairs Michael Millett writes: Re. “Recycled rhetoric: Mark Scott echoes the ghosts of ABC’s past” (yesterday). What seems to have escaped David Salter’s understanding of Mark Scott’s speech is that former ABC managing director Brian Johns correctly predicted convergence and its disruptive impact on the media sector at a time when most people were grappling with dial-up modems. To dismiss any attempt to reposition the ABC now for the challenges of the digital era because of the failure of a strategy pursued two decades ago (arguably ahead of its time) is nonsensical. As Kim Williams states today in a Fairfax op-ed piece: “In a digital sphere, nothing and no one is safe. Merit, ingenuity, speed, flexibility and performance increasingly now rule the day in the media.” Print companies concede that their response to the digital challenge was both too little and too late, and that now they are paying the price. That is the history that the ABC does not want to repeat.