Meanjin Vol 81, No 2

Part of the story of the decline in Australian journalism can be told with data and dollars. Part of it is about belief and culture - a crisis of faith.

In her cover essay This Is Not Journalism, writer and journalism academic Margaret Simons takes a long hard look at both the history and current practice of Australian journalism, its trials, successes and many failures. Is journalism accountable? Does it feed the public conversation or poison it? Is it a craft in serious need of reinvention? Simons pulls no punches in her critique of a profession close to her heart.

In other essays, Yves Rees considers the enthusiasm for sobriety amongst younger Australians; John Kinsella writes on 'Ecojustice Poetics and the Universalism of Rights'; Ben Eltham details the Morrison Government's legacy of corrupt behaviour; Michael Winkler reveals his writerly 'struggle with structure'; Elizabeth Humphrys discusses the muddy historical remains left by the Westgate Bridge collapse; Subhash Jaireth reflects on the tragedy of lost Indigenous languages; Amaryllis Gacioppo considers the opening virgin, a remarkable religious artefact from the fifteenth century; Elina Abou Sleiman revisits the 2002 protests at the Woomera immigration detention centre; Jenny Sinclair goes in search of nineteenth-century colour for her writing; Chloe Ward revisits Nevil Shute's On The Beach in a new moment of nuclear anxiety; and Lucy Sussex introduces us to Sir Julius Vogel and 'A Feminist, Imperialist Utopia'.

New fiction from Karen Wyld, James Bradley, Jane O'Sullivan and Michelle See-Tho.

Poetry from Ashleigh Synnott, Alicia Sometimes, Glenn McPherson, Ben Qin, Simeon Kronenberg, Meredi Ortega, Michael Mintrom, David Brooks, Samuel Watson and Sarah Day.

Memoir from Madison Griffiths, Jessica L. Wilkinson, Sue Hall Pyke and Hila Shachar.

Reviews from Alex Gerrans, Elese Dowden, Megan Cheong, Isabella Gullifer-Laurie, Reuben Mackey, and Muhib Nabulsi.