They attributed the lift in quality to greater engagement through blogs and fact-checking efforts, and the media increasingly pushing back against politicians’ attempts to dictate campaign terms.

The Guardian’s political correspondent Katharine Murphy and blogger Greg Jericho joined a senior editor of The Conversation, Gay Alcorn, and the Director of the Centre for Advancing Journalism, Margaret Simons, in the session titled: “WTF – Why the Farce? Election reporting”.

Ms Murphy said the improvement was due in part to a vibrant blogosphere, citing her “live” politics blog at The Guardian, which she previously published on The Age and Sydney Morning Herald websites, as an example of effective reader engagement.

But she noted the sheer speed of the Internet was like “white water rapids constantly running for 24 hours — political parties can air ideas but the pity is they get lost within minutes”.

She said one of the improvements this year was there were fewer journalists tagging along dutifully with politicians in convoys. The Guardian had sent its photographer but believed door stops worked better for reporters as there was greater opportunity to ask probing questions.

Speaking to The Citizen later, Ms Murphy said one of the reasons why she was attracted to The Guardian was because “audience engagement is not optional”. “The conversation is important, and I really enjoy talking to my readers on my blog”.

Mr Jericho said the role of fact-checkers had come into play during this election campaign, not just benefitting readers but providing a useful resource for journalists.

“So, when Kevin Rudd refers to a $70 billion black hole, the journalist can quickly check and counter with ‘bullshit’,” he said.

There was little disagreement from the panelists when he described reporting of the 2010 election as “woeful”, something he had highlighted at the time on his Grog’s Gamut blog, now featured on The Guardian’s site.

Ms Alcorn, a former editor of The Sunday Age and regular Fairfax columnist, said one reader had recently asked her on Twitter the difference between fact-checking and reporting, the inference being that all reporters should be fact-checking ordinarily. But she had responded that journalists were increasingly stretched for time and the Internet now allowed for a dedicated site for fact checking.

This election has seen the entry of three newcomers — Politifact Australia, The Conversation’sElection FactCheck and the ABC’s FactCheck. Not everyone, however, has seen the trend as all positive, with media commentator Tim Dunlop identifying a potential downside .

“By outsourcing the fact-checking process — the actual judgment — to independent sites, media organisations can now safely report those sites’ findings in the way they report other stories: not as something they themselves have made a judgment about, but as something someone else said.” 

Gay Alcorn who edits The Conversation’s fact-checker admitted the advent of stand-alone sites wasn’t perfect, but was nonetheless a useful addition to the overall coverage of the election.

Meanwhile, she cited as potentially the biggest story of the 2013 campaign the role of the Murdoch press, notable the Daily Telegraph and Courier Mail bias, which was “deliberately orchestrated”.

Mr Jericho agreed, citing other examples. “The best news coverage is [that of] the Australian Financial Review, which gives both sides a kick when they deserve it,” he said.

He added that the divide between those voters who were information-rich and information-poor was massive, and increasingly would determine how political parties ran their election campaigns.

A quick poll of the audience showed that the majority used on-line news sources to get their news rather than print media.