I just got my renewal notice for Crikey, a daily email newsletter about Australian politics. I won't be renewing, even though there's an election coming up.
My main problem with Crikey is Christian Kerr, a member of the Canberra Press Gallery and right-wing ideologue. Crikey was started by Tories, so it's not surprising that most of its contributors tend to have fairly right-wing points of view, and that can be useful stuff to see things from another perspective.
What annoys me about Kerr is that, in between often quite incisive reporting and commentary, he feels the need to drop outrageous green and left baiting crap. It's the kind of thing you expect from the ideologues of the tabloids and talkback, like Piers Ackerman and Andrew Bolt. They write this kind of shit just to provoke a reaction. The more angry letters to the editor the better.
I signed up to Crikey so I didn't have to read crap like that. It's why I read The Guardian instead of the local weekend papers.
If Crikey is going to measure its commentators' success by the reaction they receive, which can really be the only reason they tolerate this shit from Kerr and the only reason they keep David Flint on the roster, it's not the publication for me.