Media in the News — How it works

What this is

A running, curriculum-tagged feed of media stories, podcast episodes and videos for use across Year 7-8 Media, Year 9-10 Media and VCE Media (Units 1-4). Built to seed lesson hooks, assignment prompts, and discussion starters from current real-world media stories.

The pieces

Media in the News — the database. Every processed item lives here as a row with summary, classroom-use notes, and discussion questions. Filter by year level or curriculum theme to find what you need.
Inbox — where new items get dropped during the week. Rob (or anyone) adds URLs, headlines, or pasted text.
Weekly digest task — runs each Monday morning. Reads the inbox, fetches whatever it can, summarises, tags, files, and posts a digest.

Sources we're tracking

ABC Media Watch
ABC RN Download This Show (podcast)
triple j Hack (podcast)
ABC Behind the News / Story Lab
The Conversation (Media section)
Crikey & Guardian Australia (media sections)
On the Media / Pod Save the Media (US, for comparative work)
Anything else worth dropping in — just add to the inbox and pick "Other" as the source

Important note about auto-pulling

The ABC website (abc.net.au) and Apple's podcast directory (itunes.apple.com) are blocked by this environment's network egress policy, so the digest task can't directly scrape Media Watch, Download This Show, or Hack from their official feeds.

Workarounds that do work:

Paste the transcript — Media Watch publishes transcripts; copy and drop in the inbox.
Paste a summary or your own notes — even a paragraph is enough to generate a classroom-ready entry.
Use a non-ABC mirror when one exists (e.g. The Guardian or The Conversation often cover the same media-criticism beats).
Subscribe via email/RSS in your own reader, then forward links + content snippets into the inbox.

The Conversation, Guardian Aus, Crikey, and On the Media will likely auto-fetch fine when their URLs are dropped in.

Schema reference

Each row captures: Title · Source · Type (article/video/podcast) · Original URL · Published date · Year Levels · Curriculum Themes · Summary · Classroom Use · Discussion Questions · Duration · Status.

The pieces

Media in the News — the database. Every processed item lives here as a row with summary, classroom-use notes, and discussion questions. Filter by year level or curriculum theme to find what you need.

Inbox — where new items get dropped during the week. Rob (or anyone) adds URLs, headlines, or pasted text.

Weekly digest task — runs each Monday morning. Reads the inbox, fetches whatever it can, summarises, tags, files, and posts a digest.

Sources we're tracking

ABC Media Watch

ABC RN Download This Show (podcast)

triple j Hack (podcast)

ABC Behind the News / Story Lab

The Conversation (Media section)

Crikey & Guardian Australia (media sections)

On the Media / Pod Save the Media (US, for comparative work)

Anything else worth dropping in — just add to the inbox and pick "Other" as the source

Important note about auto-pulling

Workarounds that do work:

Paste the transcript — Media Watch publishes transcripts; copy and drop in the inbox.

Paste a summary or your own notes — even a paragraph is enough to generate a classroom-ready entry.

Use a non-ABC mirror when one exists (e.g. The Guardian or The Conversation often cover the same media-criticism beats).

Subscribe via email/RSS in your own reader, then forward links + content snippets into the inbox.

The Conversation, Guardian Aus, Crikey, and On the Media will likely auto-fetch fine when their URLs are dropped in.