Some past and future challenges for publishing Australian cultural content

During the late 70s and 80s Australian publishing was enjoying an especially high time. Local lists from both international and Australian houses were giving their British and American competitors a run for their money. At first it was not a lot of money, admittedly. But that too was to grow as books and writers were gaining both popular and critical attention.

Then, as now, there were film & TV spin-offs - and, less visibly, spin-offs in confidence about Australian content. The high ratings of Australian television programs were proof that Australians wanted to read books by their own about life here.

And, of course, editors were leaders and crucial to building the audience.

It is the nature of your vocation - and I use that word carefully - to be entrepreneurs of ideas.

You well know that publishing is far from a passive activity or a matter of waiting for things to come to you.

The job of an editor is indeed one of knowing what to publish, how to get it, and what to do to help it achieve the largest readership.

In other words editors have to search, initiate and shape.

The best publishing houses have to have an editorial identity; one that is not cramped or confined by ideology or narrow political beliefs.

One could put it more grandly, but I suspect curiosity is the essential for finding and getting the best and most timely material.

Given my years in broadcasting, and especially my experience with the emerging new media, this might be surprising.

But it is not really.

That great editor, Max Perkins' simple declaration "That there is nothing so important as a book can be" remains true.

Continuity of experience is important but make no mistake we are in times of great change.

The historian, Eric Hobsbawm, writing about the US role in Iraq has argued that the present world situation is without precedent:

"The present state of globalization is unprecedented in its integration, its technology and its politics. We live in a world so integrated, where ordinary operations are so geared to each other that there are immediate global consequences to any interruption - SARS, for instance, which within days became a global phenomenon starting from an unknown source somewhere in China. The disruption of the world transport system, international meetings, and institutions, global markets, and even whole economies, happened with the speed unthinkable in any previous period."

There are two pillars of our rapidly changing world - convergence and globalisation. The former can be described as the coming together of telecommunications, the print and the electronic media, computer content and book publishing as a result of merging technologies. The latter arises when new companies and alliances that result from convergence cross international borders.

The epitome of both convergence and globalisation, of course, is Rupert Murdoch's International News Limited. Even in my time in publishing in the 80s, a pattern of company takeovers, the merging of large and small, national and international publishing houses was occurring. Interestingly, these mergers were frequently followed by companies re-forming in new incarnations.

Conglomerates are not always the best places for creative energy, originality and risk taking - essential qualities of a vibrant publishing house. Three major issues arise from the convergence and globalization: the culture of change, public policy and, above all, the national benefits in social and cultural terms that flow from new ways, new partnerships. But the important idea is that content would drive change. In other words, people would take up new technology provided it was a means of being informed and entertained.

Time passes frighteningly quickly in this information age. But continuity and experience remain of critical importance because in many ways the information revolution is as evolutionary as much as it is revolutionary. In fact the traditional media will continue to provide the oxygen for the new media.

The electronic media and film and print as well as book publishing will supply much of the content necessary to give the new forms of media momentum. This will be achieved by drawing on business and organisational skills as well as financial and creative resources of established companies to help provide the thrust for innovation.

In terms of continuity, let's not be mesmerized into believing that using labels like convergence and globalisation obliterates past practice and experience. There has long been a convergence of content. Fifty per cent of Hollywood films are adaptations of books and plays.

The book-publishing industry has long been a rich well of ideas and of choice. A good book shop has some 32000 individual titles. Book buyers have been confronting wide choices long before the multiple channels of television.

There are, also, wider issues in this environment of change, which need to be recognized if we are to take early advantage of the possibilities open to us. Note the early advantage. The tragedy of not keeping up is that in falling behind we will repeat the mistakes of the past in at least one vital regard - the failure to create our own Australian content. We are losing time.

The recent controversy about bias in the ABC has been a political blind by the Minister. You may need reminding that Senator Alston's fresh onslaught against the ABC of the grounds of its alleged bias in reporting the war in Iraq followed the ABC's Managing Director, Russell Balding's decision to discontinue the ABC's two digital channels because of lack of funds.

The ABC had sought $250 million over the next three years to keep these channels going and to develop digital broadcasting across the organisation. These are issues of real significance but just about completely lost in looking for traces of alleged bias in the ABC.

The closure of the ABC's digital channels delivers a heavy blow to the national broadcaster's capacity to be a catalyst for the rich creation and widespread use of digital Australian content. It is a barricade in the path of the ABC establishing an innovative infrastructure for digital broadcasting across the country.

The ABC's tremendously diverse online presence was secured by acting smart in the face of miserly government funding. What others have and are doing at the costs of hundreds of millions of dollars to operate on a scale the ABC is doing, the national broadcaster has achieved by efficient and imaginative use of its radio and television resources nation wide at a mere fraction of the cost.

The severe impairment of the ABC's ability to repeat this success with digital is crucially important, because of the Australian content that won't be created and broadcast.

The government's digital policy is in notorious disarray. It is paralysed as a result of ceding the main ground to the vested interests of major media players. Millions are being spent on an information highway that is closed to traffic because the multi channels are lying vacant. The government is reduced to operating on the margins exploring cluster development of new-media operations.

The issue is not whether the government should be assisting the development of new media - it should - but it should be doing so in tandem with policies that also develop the world of traditional communication.

A visionary approach is needed. It will be one that accepts convergence in all its implications and sets policy lines that take an integrated approach to regulation and content development. An approach that recognises that boundaries are blurring and the walls dividing the delivery of content are tumbling down.

This approach demands sustained rethinking of telecommunications and information technology policies as well as re-examination of familiar territories like the broadcasting and print media.

Don't hold your breath for that intense policy work to be done in Canberra or its bureaucracies. It is not simply a matter of will although that also is involved in these days of small government.

The politicisation of the public service has been accompanied by a steady leeching of its talent. Nevertheless, constantly emerging technologies will help bowl over economic self-interest of the old media players and government short-sightedness provided the knowledge, talent, creativity and investment housed in familiar industries are released.

The publishing industry is equipped to explore and develop the reservoir of creative talent that will make social sense of the rapidly developing digital technologies. Publishers are well placed to embrace new markets with new products and services that exploit new technologies.

The education sector, for example, is a powerful resource and a well-trodden ground for publishers. It is only the reach of educational publishing that has to develop.

For example, QUT has embarked upon its own path of convergence by establishing Australia's first Creative Industries Faculty and its own R&D arm, Creative Industries Research and Applications Centre. This is a bold and imaginative initiative being established on a campus that is open to industry and partnerships that will help drive the new information economy.

It's not hard to see publishing as being one of those industries. To be more specific, educational publishing could be the catalyst for the development of programs of educational content which could find a place in the new multi channel environment.

A dreadful result of the funding plight of universities and the concomitant pressure on them to earn ever-increasing revenue is the way they are forced down business paths for which they are ill equipped. Neither do they have the venture capital.

Perhaps the most exciting of the growth areas will be developed with the help of a new ground-breaking system that identifies and assists in tracking intellectual property in the digital environment. The system operates by assigning a number called a DOI - like an ISBN - to individual pieces of intellectual property content.

This creates enormous potential for the development of new online content partnerships; DOI can be used by publishers to market books directly and securely on line, or to build new business with old book industry partners, schools, TAFES, universities and printers. The Commonwealth government has made a $500,000 grant for a pilot exercise by a consortium of printers, publishers, libraries and universities now being organised by CAL.

These fresh opportunities are relevant to the current Australia-US Free Trade negotiations, on which the publishing industry must continue to keep an extremely watchful eye. The Coalition for Cultural Diversity, which comprises our major cultural organisations, has done a good job in attracting public attention to the importance of these negotiations. Yet the government is by no means naturally sensitive on this score.

A recent survey revealed that 71 per cent of Australians oppose a Free Trade Agreement with the United States that would lead to fewer Australian-made television shows and movies being shown on free-to-air television; 15 per cent would support it; 13 per cent are unsure and 1 per cent said it depends.

Surprisingly, Australians place local content rules above agriculture in the negotiations with only 56 per cent opposing free trade with the US if it excludes agriculture.

Clearly the Australian public has no problems in recognising the importance of our culture industries. Australia must be one of the most culturally open societies in the world, as evident from our book-review pages, our television programs and our film guides. While I am not persuaded that this is a healthy state of affairs, I'd hate to be as closed as either the US or the UK where foreign-sourced television programs amount to eight per cent and 10 per cent, respectively.

One way or another we need to force entry to overseas markets across the range of our cultural output because there is much we can't produce for ourselves.

In respect of the Australia/US Free Trade negotiations informed views are that the US is breaking with the past by taking a more relaxed stance about content regulations and subsidies - on the traditional forms. The new battle lines are being set to draw in digital forms.

In regional negotiations with Chile and Singapore the US has succeeded in redefining E-commerce to be so comprehensive as to include not only the audiovisual but almost anything that is digital.

Our negotiators should be vigilant not only if we are to safeguard current growth but with an eye to the future as well. Now is the time for builders who will move beyond the familiar, not being content with simply more of the same if we are to enjoy the enrichment of our own Australian content.