Making media policy: Looking forward, looking back

Seeking papers for the media stream at the conference and articles for this issue of Media International Australia, our aim was to examine contemporary media policy issues that benefited from some kind of historical analysis. Rather than starting with history, confident that it served up powerful and useful lessons, the idea was to begin with the current policy challenges and see whether history helped. Unsurprisingly, most authors found it did---though not always, and for different reasons.