ANNABEL Crabb is a terrific journalist. The former Fairfax reporter has a great nose for a political story and an engaging style that has won her many fans. Love her work.
So it isn't surprising that the ABC wanted her to join its stable of journalists, which she did in early December.
What catches the eye is what she's doing there.
Crabb is described on Aunty's website and by radio hosts as the ABC's ''chief online political writer''. Not ''reporter'', not ''correspondent'', not even the generic ''journalist''. Writer.
Other than a few special-interest exceptions - I'm thinking Gardening Australia and the now-defunct program guide 24 Hours and Sport Monthly magazines - the ABC has been in the business of radio and television.
Indeed, the government's australia.gov.au website describes the ABC's function as being to provide radio and television services within Australia and overseas.
But with the launch of its online journalism site The Drum - edited by another former Fairfax luminary (more recently of Crikey.com), Jonathan Green and for which Crabb writes - the ABC has staked out some new turf.
It's easy for a print journalist to feel miffed by this. Newspapers have a hard enough time surviving without competition in their traditional patch from a media juggernaut such as the ABC.
The Drum is sure to eat into the print media's following.
But see what Fairfax Media (owner of The Age) is doing: audio clips from Fairfax Radio interviews are regularly posted on our news sites; and Fairfax sites increasingly produce and use video to cover everything from news to the arts, sport, sex and economics.
A deal with Channel Ten, reported last week as being the subject of talks, would boost the amount and range of content available for Fairfax to post online.
These are the trends of the digital revolution in which media platforms are converging, the means of dissemination are broadening and the audience for their content is splintering.
A report conducted by the non-profit Pew Internet & American Life Project, released this month, draws a telling picture of how Americans' news habits are changing.
Among the report's more interesting numbers: 61 per cent of Americans consume news online - more than radio (54 per cent) or television (50 per cent); 92 per cent get news from multiple platforms; 75 per cent get news by email or from social networking sites; 51 per cent of social networking users get news items from people they follow, while 23 per cent of this group follow news organisations or individual journalists.
A third of mobile phone users get news on phones.
Given that Australians' use of social media is the highest in the world (according to Nielsen), we would expect figures for Australia to indicate similar behaviour patterns and at least as much penetration of new media platforms.
Negotiating the tumultuous transition to the digital landscape is not a cheap exercise and commercial operations are at a disadvantage when competing in the same market as the publicly funded ABC.
Add the loss of classified advertising revenue to the web and the task of retooling media empires in a fast-changing digital world becomes even more challenging.
Some radical thoughts are being thunk. Some bright spark last year worked out that if The New York Times ceased its print edition and instead gave subscribers a Kindle to read the paper each day, the newspaper would end up ahead.
I'm not sure whether that's a disturbing or inspiring thought.
Either way, it's not something that should bother anyone at the ABC.
Twitter: untanglingweb
