Past Programs
Media, Information and Communication - 2007
Writing the West Wing Read Transcript
28/12/2007
The intelligence of the TV drama The West Wing is one of the more surprising aspects of television over the past five years or more, in contrast with the abundance of reality TV 'filler'. A show like The West Wing is a clear example of a direct attempt to glimpse the inner machinery of US politics.
The Book Show asks, what's happened in American TV? Are we seeing the US networks using their space, their reach, to allow some sort of genuine public debate and airing of issues of increasing concern inside and outside the country? And why aren't we seeing this sort of depth of TV scriptwriting in Australian TV shows, other than in comedy and satire?
Eli Attie, one of the West Wing scriptwriters, discusses how a sustained act of intelligent literacy survived on network TV. He is in conversation with West Wing addict former NSW Premier Bob Carr and cultural commentator Kath Albury.
Tom Staley ... the Harry Ransom literary archive in Texas Read Transcript
12/07/2007
A literary archive that contains thirty-six million manuscript pages, five million photographs, a million books, and ten thousand objects including a lock of Byron's hair must be a pretty impressive place. According to the New Yorker magazine, the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Centre at the University of Texas at Austin also has Ezra Pound's copy of The Waste Land in which TS Eliot wrote a dedication to him, as well as the corrected proofs of Ulysses, on which James Joyce rewrote parts of the novel.
For the last twenty or so years the director of the centre has been Dr Tom Staley, who joins Ramona Koval from the US to discuss the scale and role of the archive.
Neil James ... Plain English
11/07/2007
What do Shakespeare, Austen, Churchill and Martin Luther King have in common? According to Neil James, they all have a good handle on the merits of plain language, which is something that our workplaces and public institutions would benefit from.
Neil James is executive director of the Plain English Foundation, based in Sydney. You might have heard him recently on Radio National's Lingua Franca program, talking about the ethics of everyday language.
Neil James was a guest at this year's Sydney Writers' Festival, and that's where Catherine Freyne found him, to ask him about the relevance of Plain English principles to all kinds of expression, including poetry and literature.
She began by asking him about the origins of officialese.
Andrew Wilkins - Borders, Booksellers and Digitisation
09/07/2007
With the latest and most important news from the book universe Ramona Koval is joined by Andrew Wilkins, who's the publisher of the online Weekly Book Newsletter and the monthly Bookseller + Publisher magazine -- Australia's two major publishing-industry journals.
Last time Andrew was on the program, he spoke about the surprise decision by the US book giant Borders to withdraw from all its Australian and NZ operations. At that time Andrew discussed what this might mean for the local booksellers that remain.
Now the reason we would want to talk about this is, quite simply, that the arrival of Borders in the first place was so consequential for the way we thought about bookselling in Australia. And so their decision to go is both odd and, whether or not you liked Borders as a retail model, it'll leave a massive hole in the landscape.
Also, at the recent Australian Booksellers Association conference, the president of European Booksellers Federation (EBF) John McNamee gave a keynote address, in which he delivered a sobering assessment of the landscape for local booksellers. He basically said that the 'digitisation' of books was a reality, that it was not going to go away, and that, if booksellers wanted to survive, they'd better start trying to figure out how to live with, and take advantage of, the digital book.
Meanjin: the future
06/06/2007
On Wednesday afternoon, the future of one of Australia's oldest and most respected literary journals, Meanjin, will be decided by a subcommittee of the University of Melbourne's governing administration.
Meanjin was founded in Brisbane in 1940 and moved to Melbourne in 1945, and in that time it has been one of the most important conduits of contemporary thinking, with essays from some of the most distingushed writers from Australia and abroad.
In recent years, the magazine has become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Melbourne University, but has been able to operate with complete editorial and administrative independence. However, increasingly, there's been pressure on Meanjin to come under the umbrella of Melbourne University Publishing. And it is this decision that has divided opinion and caused quite a stir among supporters of the journal.
At first glance this might seem like little more than a structural adjustment, but in fact it goes to the heart of ideas of independence and of the trend towards convergence and streamlining that seems to be the corporate way within our modern universities.
I'm joined in the studio by the current editor of Meanjin, Ian Britain. We did also ask Louise Adler, the CEO of Melbourne University Publishing, to join us but have not had a reply.
However, we do have some of Louise Adler's comments about the proposal, made last Thursday to John Faine on Local Radio in Melbourne.
New-look Brisbane libraries
08/05/2007
You wouldn't normally expect to see huge plasma TV screens or Xbox games in libraries, but libraries are in the process of a revolution as they harness new information technologies and model themselves on airport lounges to maintain their civic importance.
For the Book Show, Sarah L'Estrange visited Brisbane's latest library redevelopments which sit opposite each other on the river: the Brisbane City Council Brisbane Square Library which has a Gibsonesque Neuromancer feel; and the State Library of Queensland.
She began her tour at the State Library, which was redeveloped at the same time that the Queensland Art gallery was given a facelift along with the building of the Gallery of Modern Art. The library still has its distinctive horizontal layers of concrete facing the river but the entrance facade is actually green and rather beautiful. The architect, Timothy Hill, starts by explaining the challenges of redesigning the library.
Writing the West Wing Read Transcript
04/05/2007
The intelligence of the TV drama The West Wing is one of the more surprising aspects of television over the past five years or more, in contrast with the over-abundance of reality TV 'filler'. A show like The West Wing is a clear example of a direct attempt to glimpse the inner machinery of US politics.
The Book Show asks, what's happened in American TV? Are we seeing the US networks using their space, their reach, to allow some sort of genuine public debate and airing of issues of increasing concern inside and outside the country? And why aren't we seeing this sort of depth of TV scriptwriting in Australian TV shows, other than in comedy and satire?
Eli Attie, one of the West Wing scriptwriters, discusses how a sustained act of intelligent literacy survived on network TV. He is in conversation with West Wing addict former NSW Premier Bob Carr and cultural commentator Kath Albury.
Voiceworks magazine for young writers
11/04/2007
The magazine Voiceworks is a platform for emerging writers, as well as cartoonists, illustrators and photographers to have their work published. Voiceworks is run by Express Media, which provides avenues for young people to be heard through the media.
For the Book Show, Sarah L'Estrange visited the busy office of Voiceworks and met some of the contributors. She started by asking the new editor Ryan Paine about his ideas for the magazine in the future.
