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Fresh in the New Matilda inbox a short time ago (along with about 1,000 other media releases, plus template emails pretending to love our “blog” with offers to contribute free but really interesting stories about a range of exciting things… i.e. advertising masked as editorial) is a media release from the Melbourne Press Club.
If it was designed to ‘get ahead of an issue’, or ‘make an issue go away’, then whoever designed it also invented the two-humped camel, queues, and committees.
Over to the Press Club:
“Over the course of the past 48 hours, the Melbourne Press Club (MPC) has received resignations from President Adele Ferguson, Vice-President Michael Rowland and Chief Executive Mark Baker.
The resignations followed a successful mediation process this week with a Club member, as governed by the MPC’s rules.
The MPC has with regret accepted the resignations and thanks Adele, Michael and Mark for their significant contributions to the club over many years respectively.
The MPC Board met this morning and resolved that current Vice-President Eileen Berry will become Interim President and Acting CEO, and that the search for a permanent CEO will commence immediately. In addition, the Board has committed additional resources to the MPC’s administration to ensure forthcoming events and activities continue as scheduled.”
Naturally, now EVERYONE wants to know WTF happened at the Melbourne Press Club, and the story is significantly larger than it would have been because they sufficient detail (i.e. not enough detail) to make it now really, really interesting.
Our money is on the mediation with the ‘Club member’ being Andrew Bolt, and the mediation about him demanding the words ‘Convicted Racist’ be removed from the nameplate on his club locker.
While we wait to find out, tips and mockery can be sent here.
UPDATE: BELOW
For the uninitiated, or for those who believe the world doesn’t revolve around Melbourne, the MPC is one of the more stuffy journalism establishments in the country, and home to the self-proclaimed ‘Australian Media Hall of Fame’.
Sycophancy and poor taste being a hallmark of the media, the MPC’s ‘HOF’ includes such media luminaries as John Laws, Alan Jones and Rupert Murdoch, proving that you can do cash for comment and hack the voicemail of dead British children, and still be lauded by your colleagues.
Also… comment below or on our Facebook page if you think you worked out the point of the main image…
UPDATE: The Guardian broke this story late yesterday… which makes the media release even more ridiculous, because the Guardian reveals who the dispute is between (over to Amanda Meade to break the story … )
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