The Informer

Ballarat’s Frolic Festival is back. Informer reporter Nicholas Kameniar-Sandery spoke with two of the organisers about the festival and why it’s important not just to Ballarat but to the bigger LGBTIQA+ community.

This week, we took a deep dive into a few issues with David Macca McCarthy, JOY 94.9’s new president. Macca spoke about Hillsong pastor Brian Houston, challenges (and opportunities) for JOY and the state of our democracy.

Macca is also one of the two hosts of Saturday Magazine, JOY’s longest running current affairs program.

The third annual Frolic Festival is back in Ballarat. The week-long festival features a lot of LGBTIQA+ arts and culture activities over a week. We spoke to three people involved with the festival about what it means to them and why you should head up to Ballarat.

Intersex Awareness Day was last week. We spoke to Dr. Agli Zavros-Orr, academic and Intersex Advocate about some of the issues the intersex community faces. Dr Zavros-Orr is also the director of Diversitywise Educational Services.

Let’s Talk About Suicide is a new JOY 94.9 podcast. Hosted by Hamish Blunch, it explores suicide in the LGBTIQA+ community. It focuses especially on suicide bereavement.

This is a topic that can bring up issues for people. If you need to talk to someone, we encourage you to contact QLife on 1800 184 527, the Suicide Call Back Service on 1300 659 467 or Lifeline on 13 11 14.

The Internet has played a major force in changing – and normalizing – the way people speak. Some of it is based in memes, some is abbreviations (gr8 m8) and some is just daggy (I can haz story?).

Arion Potts spoke with Canadian Internet linguist Gretchen McCulloch about her new book: Because Internet – Understanding the New Rules of Language.

 

Saudi Arabia was found to have paid Instagram influencers to travel to the Kingdom and post positive travel stories on the ‘gram. It’s part of an image makeover the Kingdom has been pursuing recently, trying to shed a more positive image as the country opens up to tourism for the first time in decades. We spoke to Dr. Raihan Ishmael from ANU about the situation.

An unusual grouping of media organisations got together last week to discuss press freedom. The companies involved ran from News Corp to Nine News to The Guardian. We spoke to Guardian journalist Paul Karp about how laws get in the way of his work to shed light on stories in Australia.

Earlier this year the State Government made a commitment to ban gay conversion therapy in Victoria. As part of that process, they are looking for community input into the legislation. We spoke to Dr. Timothy Jones from Latrobe University about the process.

If you’d like to take part, you can find the submission here.

Not into Melbourne Cup or horse racing in general? Again this year an alternative Cup Day event is taking place in Flemington. The event, called Farshans on the Field, will be held at Newmarket Reserve, opposite Flemington Racecourse. We spoke to event organiser Tenfingerz about what people can expect at the event.