Road Tripping

The appeal of a long drive to a destination which promises rest and relaxation resonates so strongly with me that nearly every uni break I have to get in a car and drive somewhere. Last year it was all about heading down to Denmark and Albany, two of my favourite places in WA. I was in great company and both times I came back and felt so refreshed and energised. One of the best things about getting away to places by car though is the inevitable road-tripping playlists that come about.

When I was a little girl I used to look forward to getting the cassette-tape Dad would make with all the songs on it for our holidays. He’d always go to such an effort, each song carefully considered, the cassette box had its own home-made cover which would have the year, season and our destination blaring from the front. It was like my own little trophy and when we got home I got to keep the cassette as a reminder of our great trip.

Now of course the cassette-tape has been replaced with the iPod but I still go to a bit of an effort to make a road-trip playlist. Over the summer my ‘road-trip’ got blown out to international proportions, but the playlists were still there. I still put on my “New York Baby” playlist sometimes and smile smugly to myself. Music has, for me and my family and friends anyway, always been such an important part of the travelling experience. It has that ability to take you back to places and memories that no-one else will ever quite remember and you will never quite be able to put your finger on or experience again. For example, every time I listen to Fingers of Love by Crowded House I am sitting in long grass in Augusta looking out across the harbour and I can hear my Mum calling me in for dinner.

Last month on our drive up to Hervey Bay, which is about 5 hours north of the Gold Coast, I got to share a road-trip with my best friend and her Dad, who for all arguments sake is like an uncle to me. We started off listening to the usuals, but then got to sharing songs with one another that we thought the others might like. I showed my friend’s dad The Black Keys because he’s a blues man, he and my friend tried again (for the one millionth time) to get me to appreciate the beauty (?) of Steely Dan and then me and my friend insisted on punishing him with The Beatles. On the way home a few days later we got to talking about the perfect Australian road-trip playlists and I decided to collate my own, albeit youTube assisted online road-trip playlist. Of course I won’t fill up 5 hours of your time, but just go with it for a little while. Imagine you've packed your bags, the car's full of fuel.....

Heading out of Perth on the Kwinana Fwy. Paul Kelly MUST feature on every Australian road-trip. It's an unwritten law.

Crowded House-has to be done. The trees and fields of the south of Perth just fit with the Finn Brothers.

Put this Hoodoo Gurus classic on after your halfway stop. It'll get you ready for the road again.

Dad would be proud of me for this one. The Australian road is full of characters. I can imagine Peter Garrett driving a caravan like this one.

This track should be saved for if you're running late to your destination and the stars are coming out, or for when you've settled in, lit the fire and you're going outside to admire the beauty. Majesty.

Astroblog: Animated Southern Cross

And finally....the destination

I know they're not Australian so this is cheating but it's still good.

Totally biased, totally Australo-scentric and totally "Top 100 Aussie Driving Songs" but I love it.

Back To It I Suppose

The concept of the media will change now. A prediction which in and of itself is rather superfluous as the media has proved itself to be an ever-evolving and constantly changing entity. Something has happened in the last two weeks however which has brought the seemingly unstoppable forward motion of the new media to a grinding halt and could bring about the first serious step towards regulating an industry which was, and possibly still is, spiraling out of control.

The modern media consumer is, generally speaking, fairly savvy about what information they are being fed- or rather, what information they are choosing to be fed. Most media consumers choose to read or watch the news from the sources they know and to a lesser extent trust; because really and truly, do any modern media consumers wholeheartedly trust their media sources? People are likely to consume media from sources which are consistent with their attitudes and beliefs and so it is difficult to pick holes in the media you consume every day. But after years of scandals within the media being exposed and the actions of the media being scrutinised by competitors and watchdogs, the modern consumer usually has at least some awareness of where their news is coming from and the agenda behind the source. This has lead to a degradation of the notion of the journalist though. The journalist is now no longer a truth-seeker, the journalist is just another employee of a company who is getting paid to write a certain way and certain things. But perhaps the News of the World scandal is just big enough and just awful enough to be the giant wake-up call the media needs.

No journalist should need to lie to get a story, no journalist should need to steal information or documents to get a story and no journalist should ever deliberately break the law for a story. I am not so naive as to believe that these practises do not occur but that does not make them acceptable and it certainly does not set the right example for those wishing to mend the cracks in the trust that media consumers have with the media and with journalists.

I am very young and exceptionally humble in my hopes and expectations of my career in the media, but I thought I would be graduating into the ‘real world’ at a time when the Murdoch empire showed no signs of slowing and looked to be pushing the consumption of media to its ugliest form. I feared for my ideals of integrity as so often I am often met with "I hate journalists" when divulging my plans for the future and feared that one day the seemingly cut-throat nature of journalism would get the better of me. I worried because I had hoped that no matter the money, no matter the prestige and no matter the easy-way-out, I would never work for a person like Rupert Murdoch or in an environment where true journalism is not encouraged. Tonight though, I watched that tyrant look like nothing more than a confused old man. What worried me was the sympathy I felt for him. Sympathy that quickly melted after careful consideration of the very real and very dangerous situation his company and its subsidiaries has afforded itself. Yes Murdoch, today is your humblest day. But what does this mean for the media and the steps that now need to be taken towards regulation and accountability for the actions of those who have disgraced themselves? I simply don’t know. But what I do know is people are angry now. Angrier than they’ve ever been that this situation has been allowed to mutate and become so ingrained that people have stopped asking questions because they feel there is nothing they can do to change it.

The “chicken and the egg” question for media students is “does the media reflect the community” or “does the media shape the community”. Ultimately it comes down to each media outlet and their audience. No media source can please everyone and you would be a fool to expect to do so. But not pleasing everyone should never come at a cost to integrity. News Corp’s integrity has been shattered and the irony of the timing is almost too sweet. Murdoch’s grasp on the control of the British media was tantalisingly close and yet now here we are, a mere few days later and what seemed so daunting and ominous now seems feeble and obsolete. Murdoch did not want to please everyone, but I cannot accept that someone so out of touch with his media outlets, someone who only called an editor of a newspaper he owned once a month, could genuinely be encouraging of reflection. Murdoch is a shaper, not a reflector. I do not know what will happen to the media now this has unfolded and continues to unfold. I can only hope for the best and strive to join a media where integrity is at the forefront of each journalist, editor, owner and reader’s mind.