This is Press-Mill Wednesdays (we were going to call it WTF Wednesdays but thought this title was maybe a little less abrupt) .

Press Mill Wednesdays is a new fortnightly column where we’ll be summarising all the crap, cool, scary, delightful, misguided, spot on, angry and supportive articles that have run through the more “mainstream” press week in and week out. We thought it would be a cool way to keep you all up to date on what is happening in media-land, and what the current opinions and issues are out there … and, maybe even spotlight a few artists along the way, who have been showcased in the press – if we can do that as much as possible, we’ll be happy…

This is an experimental column, and if we feel it doesn’t work or if anyone has rational issues as to why we shouldn’t link to news articles, we’ll discontinue it. Also, if anyone has issue with any specific links to public domain articles, just let us know and we’ll remove them. We will admit that this column will show a little pro-bias towards graffiti, street and urban art (that said, we don’t condone illegal activities – we just understand that it is a part of the culture, and that it is being combated incorrectly), but we’ll attempt to keep it as neutral as possible, as always, where we can. There is a lot of goodness out there in “mainstreamland”, so don’t let all the negative media get to you – we’ll do our best to weed through it all, and find the good, as well as the bad …

• The big one for the past week, is that new NSW Attorney General feels that the government should “emphasise more the anger that society feels toward the damage done by graffiti.” with his new plan to toughen of NSW graffiti laws, he also thinks that artists should go to jail for it – apparently painting pretty pictures more than once is a “serious offence”, so much so that the artists who do it should be thrown into jail with all the murderers and rapists, because, allegedly, street art and graffiti are gateway crimes. There’s a great blog entry on the ABC showing the other side of the argument as well – have a listen to it.
• Cairns artists are apparently running out of space to get up on the walls – they’ve been working really hard to get the back lanes and uglier spots looking beautiful again, but they really need more spots, and more support from local businesses (ed. having gone to high school and lived in Cairns for many years, I love seeing this shit happening up there). If you know anyone up there that has a business and could use a lick of cool paint, let them know.
• We don’t hear too much news from up in the NT, but this show looked like it was pretty cool – it included an urban street art laser exhibition, and the comment from the curator, Carol Phayer,  was pretty cool – “Street Art seeks to connect the everyday viewing audience with the streetscape and in doing so link the community back to the creative, cultural and natural landscape.”
• Strathmore Secondary College is encouraging their students to brighten up the environment by painting colourful and rad murals – its nice to see councils and educational institutions teaching the up and coming artists of tomorrow that street art can be beautiful.
• Skaters & artists honoured a fallen mate as a part of Mannings Youth Week Celebration, where “youths learnt the finer points of professional graffiti art during a session at Manning Regional Art Gallery, and came up with their own concepts and designs for the mural to adorn the skate park.” – grand.
• Apparently Graffiti is on the rise in Ballarat and the police there are “working hard to tackle the city’s growing graffiti problem” – if you’re in Ballarat, you might want to go and check out Eureka street, because apparently its “just become a big billboard for everyone else to spray tags on there.” – they should just get someone to paint the wall up – maybe someone should give Ballarat City Council a call or something …
• It’s a little older, but we liked this article of a piece that was done down in Tasmania by Hobart artists Trent Fischer and Lukan Smith on the MyState Financial building – cool stuff, dudes!

There’s so much more – but that’s enough for this first round. If you see something in the news and general media thats interesting, and relevant, and want to send us the link to include in this column, then please feel free to contact us and we’ll put it up for you …