Perhaps it was his time in the prison system.  It’s obvious he’s seen it all.  And not just seen it.  Noted it, scrutinised it, sniffed it, and if it wasn’t clear the first time, revisited it and fossicked through the remnants, just to make sure he didn’t miss something.

Gary Tippet is from the old school of journalism. A seasoned features writer, who this week honored us with his presence in Reporting 101 at Monash University.

The lesson:  journalism is about storytelling.

The message:  suck in everything, learn the lingo of your subjects, use pause and rhythm to lure your reader in. But never forget, at the end of the day it’s about getting to the truth.

And the truth is, Gordon Kerr, murdered by a man he repeatedly raped as a child, probably did have it coming.

Tippet’s story about a child abuse victim that went on to kill his tormentor is repulsive content, told beautifully. It earned Tippett a Walkley, and was eventually made into a documentary. Tippet now sits on the board of the Dart Centre for Journalism and Trauma – an organisation that acts an advocate for journalists that cover violence.

Stories like these have impact. The problem is, Tippet says, the market for them is drying up.

It’s an issue that was discussed widely at this week’s New News conference. Who will pay for long-form journalism, now that the magazine and newspaper markets have dried up?

Tippet is hopeful demand will remain for weighty, honest journalism that takes readers to a place and guides them through it in an analytical and detailed way. He says newspapers might emerge from the current reign of confusion in a better place than they were before.

But if they don’t, Margaret Simons and the rest of the journalists behind the Public Interest Journalism Foundation are working hard to deliver some alternatives.

Simons told the New News conference audience it’s time to take an optimistic view of the changing media landscape. The PIJF hopes to build a sense of optimism within mainstream media, the public and journalists. Rather than treat the impact of new technology on journalism as a universally bad thing, Simons says we should embrace the opportunites it delivers.

The latest launch for the PIJF mirrors US community funded journalism initiative spot.us. YouCommNews allows the public to commission and pay for stories, which YouCommNews then distributes to news organisations.

It’s an honourable idea. Anyone that is a fan of ProPublica will understand the impact philanthropy can have on journalism. Bill Birnbauer, a member of the Public Interest Journalism Committee behind YouCommNews, asks “Are there any mini –Herbert Sandlers in Australia?”.

Now that YouCommNews is on the scene, it’s just a matter of time before we find out.

P.S. You can blame Bill Birnbauer (my lecturer at Monash Uni) for the soft intro to this post. He threw a pop quiz on us this Monday – we had to write five pars in feature story style about guest speaker Gary Tippet. We were given 10 minutes.

I did the safe thing and studied business. It wasn’t a complete waste of time, but there were few moments when I felt passionate about what I was learning.

“You won’t learn anything you can’t learn on the job” declared my ex husband, a journalist himself, as I considered embarking on a diploma in journalism while he helped me set up my publishing company and equipped me with the basic skills required of a news reporter.

I held off again, absorbed in building the start-up that would ultimately turn me into a journalist –the hard way.

“But you’re already a journalist” declared my journo friends when I told them post divorce and thirteen years on from finishing my first degree I was finally heading back to uni to get a Master of Journalism.

The arduous task of enrolling in one of the biggest bureaucracies in the country only added to my doubts, but while the journey to journalism study may have been long , my experience so far has me feeling I’ve ended up studying at the right time with the right people.

I chose Monash because of the skills and reputation of its teaching faculty. It’s a school that only last year revamped its journalism unit to turn what was essentially a print journalism degree into one that reflects the multimedia skills required of all journalists today.

I’ve studied the business of publishing for 7 years and sponged up every piece of news and analysis about the future of media. I love writing and no doubt always will, but I recently decided radio is the medium I’d like to pursue more seriously.

I couldn’t be happier that my first year sound and image lecturer is the very talented Mia Lindgren – a broadcast journalist whose experience is matched by her passion.

Already we’ve discussed the threats and opportunities of embracing a profession that has a largely unknown future, and debated the strange conundrum that has journalists ranked alongside used car salesman in the trust stakes, yet thousands of young people flocking to study it every year.

The end result of combining the popularity of journalism with the wholesale cutting of jobs in the industry is very few undergraduate journalism students will go on to make a career in mainstream media.

It’s something I put to the faculty as we sat around the meet and greet table discussing the future of media. Rather than being affronted by the question, teachers Philip Chub, Bill Birnbauer and Chris Nash along with Lindgren made a humble yet solid case for the role of study, professional skills, and something most journalists have little time for, reflection.

What resonated most were the words echoed around the table by a group of individuals that have clearly taken an active interest in the future of their students:

At the end of the day “If you really want to be a journalist, you will be”.

Sources say Fahour has engaged the services of former NAB colleagues Michelle Tredenick and Andrew Maitland to investigate the Greenfield bank opportunity.

At last month’s Senate Committee hearing forming part of the inquiry into access of small business to finance, two Senators took a line of questioning related to the possible entrance of an Australia Post bank, backed by the Government.

Senators Nick Xenophon and John Williams sought input from industry groups as to whether a Postbank could help drive more competition in business lending.

A Postbank could certainly be given the remit to explore new banking models, and meet the needs of alternative markets. It’s likely it would also be expected to embrace ethical causes. It’s not out of the question that a Postbank could foster an Australian microlending industry, or invest in start-ups that might find getting funding elsewhere difficult.

Some in the industry argue a Postbank would simply be left with the business the major banks aren’t interested in, but it’s doubtful Fahour would be thinking this way. Armed with a sizeable distribution network and Government backing, there would be plenty of scope for a Postbank to rethink the business of banking. It could source IT in an entirely different way to that of its major bank competitors, it could pick and choose partners whose products it could distribute, and it could explore a new service proposition.

That the industry is chattering about Postbank is proof it is a little scared of what a major new competitor might do to the market, particularly when the big four banks command 84 per cent of all residential lending and 82 per cent of all retail deposits* in Australia. That’s enough share for any non-complacent competitor to chip away at.

*Data analysis by Retail Banking Review columnist and banking analyst John Phillips from APRA and RBA sources

One thing the participants could agree on at the World Economic Forum, however, was the erosion of trust being felt by bankers around the world, in an industry where trust has been historically assumed.

The GFC and economic interdependencies of globalisation have forced a rethink about the purpose and business models of financial institutions says World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab in the Davos report: The Future of the Global Financial System.

Trust in banks has taken a major hit, declining by up to 40 per cent around the world since 2007, according to the 2010 Edelman Trust Barometer.

The problem is, as the economy has started to rebound, bankers seem to have taken it as a prompt to return to business as usual. “It seems as if the sense of urgency for change among bankers and politicians has somewhat diminished lately, now that we see the first signs of recovery” said Nout Wellink, chairman of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision in a speech last week.

The Davos report calls for more action, arguing the current period of profitability enjoyed by many financial institutions should not be mistaken for a final return to normalcy.

Economic cycles mean there will inevitably be another downturn. At question is what has been learnt from this one, and how those lessons will be applied to improve the industry.

More regulation is inevitable. The industry won’t like it, but it’s been dealing with increased regulation for years, and in the case of Australia, that regulation has paid dividends through the crisis.

But Wellink reminds us of one very important fact in his speech: You can’t supervise everything.

“We have to realise that more supervision and rules also creates a moral hazard problem, because we take away the incentive for institutions and clients to take their own responsibility and use common sense when engaging in financial products” says Wellink.

The Davos report argues the industry also needs to take responsibility for delivering more value to its customers and creating improved transparency of processes.

By and large the public still understands the purpose of a bank is to make money and deliver returns to shareholders, but the days of easy profits are over and today it’s value, transparency and accountability that people are seeking.

The Edelman Trust Barometer reveals transparent and honest practices now head up the list of factors contributing to corporate reputation, overtaking high quality products and services.  More frequent communication is also highly rated.

So the next time you’re developing a new product, tinkering with processes, or devising your next strategy, ask yourself: How will this add value to the customer, is what we’re doing transparent, and is it responsible?

I have just checked the Walkley Magazine’s website, and sure enough it states “all contributions are unpaid”.

The Walkley Foundation may be a non-profit group, but the last time I picked up the magazine I remember seeing advertisements within its pages. The Foundation also counts some of Australia’s largest blue-chip companies among its sponsors. Surely some of that philanthropy could be directed towards the contributors who help make The Walkley Magazine a quality publication that advertisers wish to support?

If a publication produced by journalists for journalists isn’t rewarding those journalists, then what hope is there for an industry struggling to prove its worth?

My journalist colleague is trained and experienced, recently turning freelance to pursue issues she is passionate about.

From her perspective being published in a magazine read by the most senior of her peers is a milestone, and certainly something I was happy to congratulate her on. But therein lies the problem. As long as journalists are writing for kudos and not cash, publishers will continue to place downward pressure on pay rates.

I’m both a publisher and a freelance writer, so I’ve seen things from both sides. For me as a publisher it’s black and white. If a contributor makes the majority of their income from writing then my business pays them 50 cents a word, or $35-$40 an hour, depending on the type of work involved. If a contributor makes the majority of their income elsewhere, such as consulting or working in a role for a company not related to publishing, then I happily accept their contributions for free, since raising their profile with my audience is likely to lead to opportunties and possibly payment in their main profession.

Occasionally I’ve had consultants ask for payment for their contribution, and I’ve made the odd exception, but generally this approach has worked well and makes sense to all involved.

On the other side as a writer I’ve seen vast inconsistency. I’ve been asked to contribute guest posts to blogs for free, and offered princely hourly rates for producing content for websites. I’ve been paid $1 a word for publications with stories never shorter than 1,500 words and 50 cents a word for websites that rarely run more than 600 words. Like most journalists I am loathe to negotiate, so I generally just accept the offered rate, unless of course that rate is nothing.

The elephant in the room is of course bloggers. Since I’m not a trained journalist, and I blog, I would never argue that bloggers aren’t journalists. Blogging platforms have given a voice to many wannabe writers. Many are excellent wordsmiths with incisive knowledge of the industry they are writing about. And in most cases they write for free. It is with bloggers that journalists compete for audiences, and this fact can’t be overlooked when having a discussion about what journalists get paid.

In any industry competition is what drives down prices, and journalists have never had more competition. Competition also helps improve quality, and increases the expectations of customers as the bar is lifted. Personally I welcome competition. It makes me a better writer. But let’s not let competition drive us to writing for free. Yes, we have to work harder and we’re increasingly expected to do more for the money, but good editors recognise that and are willing to reward the journalist willing to go the extra mile. Editors under pressure from their more commercially minded masters will always take advantage of good work provided for free. It’s up to journalists to stand their ground and prove their worth.

Sadly his entrepreneurial vision was held back by an energy sapping corporate restructure, and a heavy load of volunteer work already taking up his night hours.

But as with all ideas, there are no monopolies, and late last year along came Pearltrees, turning LeLaissezFaire’s vision into reality. You can read LeLaissezFaire’s review of Pearltrees here.

Pearltrees is a new way to organise and store the content you consume online. The visual elements of Pearltrees make it a vastly more intuitive way to bookmark your web browsing, particularly for people with a dominant right brain.

But Pearltrees goes beyond bookmarking to incorporate some interesting social elements and integration with other social media sites, including Twitter.

Some of the most valuable tools offered by Pearltrees allow you to:

Tag content as you browse, to be stored in a dropzone for later categorisation

How often have you been browsing some content and promised yourself you will come back to it later, only to get sidetracked with something else? Pearltrees offers an add-on that sits in your web browser and allows you to quickly tag, and if you like, categorise, any page you are browsing

Store and link out or embed stories on one hot topic

If you’re following all the stories on one topic, you can easily create a pearltree to store all the stories you’ve found on that topic. You can then link out or embed that pearltree, encouraging others to comment or contribute. For example, I recently did this for all the stories on Virgin’s plans to enter the banking market in the UK.

See what your friends and colleagues are browsing

Click on the “What’s connected” button in Pearltrees and you can very quickly and clearly see who is interested in similar content to you. Explore the trees a little deeper and you can start discovering content from like-minded people that you may not have stumbled across elsewhere.

Store the links you tweet in a more organised manner

By syncing Pearltrees with your Twitter account it can continuously scan your Twitter account and index every link you share on Twitter. Instead of losing track of what you’ve tweeted, you can store it more permanently on Pearltrees.

Be reminded of the hot topics the people in your industry are following

Without the added element of connection or reminders, del.icio.us quickly became stale for me. (Incidentally you can easily import your del.icio.us tags into Pearltrees). Pearltrees sends you an email when the people you’re connected to on Pearltrees add one of your content pearls to their tree. The pearls in Pearltrees also flash when your connections have added new content.

Pearltrees is still in beta, so can only improve. It takes a little time to understand the interface, and quite a bit more time to think about what you’d like to store and how, (no-one likes filing), but I think the end result is worth the effort.

Perhaps it may ruin the clean look of Pearltrees, and go beyond what the founders are trying to achieve, but I’d like to see the group add the ability for users to comment on the content that they have added to their trees, within the site.

Teamstream, an automated content collection tool from Wotnews, allows users to add notes to the end of stories, so their colleagues can get a better understanding of what they think about the content.

I wonder if it will actually lead us to discover more diverse content, or if it will act as an echo chamber?

I guess Pearltrees will only be limited by the imagination of its users. And if we think like the designers of Avatar, our trees will soon be looking ethereal.

It includes all of the free content from Online Banking Review & Retail Banking Review (we’ll be loading more of the archived content over time, so bear with us), and is taking over from the Better Banking Blog to deliver a more comprehensive and frequent news service to the financial services industry.

In 2010, my main goal is to spend more time reading and writing. I’m actively seeking more freelance writing work, so this site has been set up to showcase some of my experience and interests.

Beyond banking I’d like to share some insights here on the world of media and publishing, and will also be talking about the crowdsourced book I’m hoping to publish this year with a fantastic group of innovators from the financial services industry.

I hope you can join the conversation.

Here’s to new beginnings in 2010.