Australia's government broadcaster the ABC has disbanded its New Media division, shifting responsibility for multimedia projects to its "old media" divisions.

The online news service will move in with the TV and radio news and current affairs team, while digital TV channel ABC2 will fall under the jurisdiction of ABC TV. There's no talk of staff cuts at this point.

It's tempting to see this as a backwards move by a luddite management team, time will tell, but I don't see it that way. Whether or not there are internal politics at play, the disbandment of the New Media division probably should be viewed as a positive sign that the ABC is coming to terms with new technologies. The ABC is not abandoning the internet (and hopefully not shedding talented staff) it's just letting the internet take its place within the organisation. The internet is just another medium, along with television, radio and print, and shouldn't be treated as some kind of special case. The same struggle has been going on in other media outlets for years and, despite what they might say publicly, it's yet to be fully resolved.

Eventually the "online" department of newspapers will disappear, although quite possibly because online assimilates the rest of the organisation rather then the other way around. One of the main things standing in the way of this is journalists themselves as, tech writers aside, they're generally luddites. The way to make most journalists happy is to write "Remington" on the front of their computer and tell them its a typewriter.

Having a management team that tries to force multimedia onto traditional journalists doesn't help either, it just reinforces the "us and them" mentality - especially as old media sees its budget stripped to fund forays into new media. The online arms of some media outlets are also run as separate kingdoms, with scant regard for the old media journalists that produce the bulk of their content. Such tensions exist within the ABC, but my sources tell me the success of vodcasting efforts such as Chaser: War On Everything has convinced a few cynics of the potential of working with their new media comrades.

The ABC is about to ramp up its vodcasting efforts and plans to offer access to its television archives online, although initially only at vodcasting quality because of Australia's pitiful broadband infrastructure. It's not quite on par with the BBC's iPlayer project, but it's a step in the right direction. The ABC's move to claim a place in the virtual world of Second Life is also an interesting advancement.

New media technologies are the future, there's no escaping that, but it's not going to be a smooth ride. Bringing the online prodigal son back into the fold could further help to heal the rift between old media and new.