More than 100 staff from The West Australian newspaper have written to Channel Seven chairman Kerry Stokes – who is seeking two seats of the paper’s board – asking for assurance that ‘his vision supports a potent, intelligent newspaper respected and taken seriously in its community’. The letter comes after Stokes publicly criticised the paper and its staff last week ‘calling it a poorly laid-out, self-indulgent and unattractive product.’ A spokesman told The Australian that Stokes looked forward to responding to the letter in the next few days. Read more here…

The 2007 Tasmanian Media Awards were held at the Rydges Hotel, Hobart , on Saturday, March 29, 2008. Celebrating excellence in local reporting, 12 awards were handed out during the evening, including the Keith Welsh Award for Outstanding Contribution to Journalism - which went to The Australian's Tasmania correspondent, Matthew Denholm, for the second consecutive year.

The Alliance congratulates all entrants, finalists and winners. View a full list of winners here...

Calls by the NSW supreme court for the media to pay for trials "which result in the discharge of a jury even though the article does not amount to a criminal contempt" is a "huge overreaction" says Alliance federal secretary Christopher Warren.

The Alliance has called on the West Australian Attorney-General Jim McGinty to stand by his commitment to “sensible” shield laws that to protect journalists when they are acting in accordance with the journalists’ code of ethics. In the past 10 months alone, five Perth-based journalists have been threatened with jail and fines for refusing to reveal their confidential sources at series of secret hearings held by the WA Corruption and Crime Commission. Read the full press release here... 

The Alliance has written to the Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs recommending that if journalists are exempt from the permit system when accessing remote indigenous communities – under proposed changes to the legislation - the creation of a code of conduct is necessary to guide the actions of those journalists. Read the letter here...

After a concerted campaign from the Right to Know Coalition changes to the Freedom of Information laws in Victoria were defeated in the Victorian Upper House last week. The laws would have allowed for further delays when processing Freedom of Information requests; that's another 30 days on top of the 45 already allowed.