Thirty years ago – when I was driving a fruit-delivery truck and was a messenger for the CT — I thought there must be an easier way to put myself through law school at ANU. So as a temporary measure I applied for a full-time position as a cadet journalist on the CT.
I was answering the editor’s array of general knowledge questions reasonably well, until he asked me, “”Where are the Limestone Plains?”
I told him I could not hazard a guess and he politely told me, “”You’re sitting on them.” I thought it would be the world’s shortest journalism career and roared with laughed. “”Well,” he said, “”If you have got a good general knowledge and sense of humour you might make a good journalist. You can start ON SUNDAY with a day off and report to the Chief of Staff on Monday.
The day off was a ploy to all the COS to roster me for 10 days without a real day off.
But in fact, every day was a day off. For 30 years, it has been a hobby every day, a joy not a labour.
So a couple of weeks ago when the new general manager after being in the place for just 2 weeks before giving me and Robert Macklin the flick was at least correct in thinking I was grossly overpaid.
The rest of his reasoning has escaped me and quite a few others. But it is silly to dwell on it. The reasoning probably has nothing much to do with me or my work as a journalist. One should not expect the world to run on merit, logic and decency. If it did there would be no journalism.
Thirty years sounds like a long time in one job. Not so. Every day was a different job. A dead Pope one day. A disgraced Minister the next. A sacked Government. Court cases. The Chamberlain case. Native title. The Dams case. Aircraft into the world trade centre. Residents fuming over development. As a journalist every day is a new job and you are at the centre of whatever is happening in the world, nation or city.
You never know what might happen when you go to work.
(Insert Googong Dam and the F rating story.)
It was my welcome to the high technology of hot-metal printing.
We eventually computerised. About the first newspaper in Australia to do so.
(Insert Ken Kennedy tapes story.)
Production managers are still be conned by computer companies.
And journalists are still skeptical.
Journalism is a privilege. That sounds like a cliché, but it is the right word. It means to have special access that others do not get.
You carry the public trust and you go to places, and see and meet people that others rarely get to and they give you insights into power and human nature.
I was once in the Northern Territory for a constitutional convention and was interviewing the then Attorney-General and Minister for Aboriginal Affairs Shane Stone.
(Insert Shane Sone story)
Didn’t write that bit at the time. Bit unfair. Later, though, when Young Shane had risen and was falling from the Chief Ministership, I thought enough time had lapsed and it was apposite.
Member of ACT Libs wrote to the proprietor in high dudgeon saying I could not possible have remembered all the direct quotes in the story and what an appalling piece of journalism it was. Fortunately, my then editor could tell the proprietor that there could be little doubt about the quotes – from the time I got back from the NT he had heard the story at least 10 times, and every time was word perfect.
Though the job is different every day, as a journalist you only have one boss – the public. Proprietors come and go. I have been technically employed by four: Fairfax, Packer, Stokes and Rural Press. And editors come and go. I have worked for Allen Mathews, Armstrong, Grattan, Waterford and Stevens. The public remains constant.
(If time do Native Title story)
Editors can be demanding. Very demanding. I have forgiven Michelle Grattan (just) for an incident during the election campaign in 1993. I was not on the campaign trail. I was doing legal stuff mainly and had been invited to Murray Island in the Torres Strait the starting point for the Mabo case and native title. I had interviewed everyone. Filed a few thousand words of stories and features. Walked around the island twice. Climbed to its highest point. Read every book I had. Killed five days and was about to get the flight home. Then a call came through from Michelle on one of the three phone on the island – a public phone. She could find you anywhere. The then Opposition Leader John Hewson and four shadow ministers were coming to Murray Island in a week’s time. I was to STAY ON THE ISLAND NO MATTER WHAT. I was sentenced to seven more deadly days. I even went to church on the Sunday for something to do. Hewson came by helicopter. The others by charter aircraft. They were in and out in under two hours. I got out later that day to Cairns and even filed a picture of Hewson looking sheepishly uncomfortable in a primary school full of black kids. (It was one of the few times a federal poli cal picture did NOT appear on Page 1 – though the Cairns Post used it on Page 1 as the price for transmitting it to Canberra.
Anyway. Michelle is forgiven because of what happened the day before Hewson arrived – which I would otherwise have missed.
I had been talking to one of the elders about Native Title and told him I was a lawyer as well as a journalist. Year after Mabo no one knew what it meant.
No Native Title Act. No test on the mainland. No transmission. The first native title conveyance.
In Canberra there is always an expert – experts on the weather, on 16th century Peru and on the glue in book binding are among the few that have caused me grief.
In Canberra as a journalist you are close to the national action and you can still cover and serve the Bush capital, the big country town. The audience is witty educated and appreciative at times and dull and isolent at other times. But they own the paper and proprietors should be careful not take them for granted.
I sincerely hope that the departure of Robert Macklin and me was an act of incidental idiocy or corporate capriciousness. For if the stated reason is real, it augurs poorly for the reading public and the CT itself. If it was cost reasons, it means that the CT cannot afford me. Now, I am not a big star or even highly demanding on the salary front. I just want a reasonable go for someone with a couple of degrees and professional experience. If the Canberra Times is really in such desperate financial straits that it cannot afford to keep me and Macklin, it sends a dreadful message to younger people wanting a career from newspaper journalism. It also means the financial priorities of the paper are for journalism on the cheap — big pictures, agency copy, the quick sensational grab. Forget journalism that requires research and brain power. It costs too much and the CT cannot afford it.
So let us hope that this is momentary madness not a statement of long-term economic and intellectual poverty.
Either way, though, newspapers are soon going to be an a dreadful economic bind and technological dilemma. The threat from the internet is most likely going to be fatal. It may take a decade or even two, but the trends are there. Many in the industry seem oblivious or complacent. It would not matter so much if there were a simple transition from paper to the net or even a dual system, because this would result in enough money to support quality journalism. But it will not be like this.
And the CT in this city of internet connectivity is perhaps the most vulnerable to it.
The threat to classifieds is already profound. Les than half a page of For Sales in CT on Saty. The advertisements have migrated to departmental intranets. Wardrobes, gym equipment, beds and bar stools once sold through newspapers are no longer. Advertised on Monday sold on Tuesday before the Saty paper is out. Jobs and real estate are next. Already the ANZ job index – based on newspaper ads — is no longer a reliable guide to the jobs market.
Newspapers organise their RE ads according to agent. But no-one wakes up on Saty and says, “”I’m going to buy a house from Southside Real Estate today.” Net sites are organised according to what buyers want: geography description and price.
In the old days the sheer cost of setting up a press made a challenge to monopoly newspapers unlikely. Now the customers and others are paying the start up cost with their high speed internet connections and Telstra and TransACT broadband.
As the AB market and young market gets saturated with high-speed internet coverage, people simply will not wait to Saty to get wads of poorly organised paper. They will turn to internet sites that organise according to what they want, when they want it.
The rivers of gold are slowly turning to creeks of bronze.
I don’t say this because I have left the newspaper industry – I said it while I was employed by the CT. Few were listening. They argued that everyone likes paper and its portability. But at what cost. If the classies dry up the cover price becomes prohibitive.
Then there is the newspaper dilemma of whether to put editorial on the net. Most do. It kills circulation. Circulations are stagnant. They are not falling, but the growth that should come with population is not there. The CT has not increased its paper circulation since putting editorial on line. But there is so little advertising revenue on line that it will not sustain the journalism. Perhaps, net readers tend to be highly focussed, not browsers, so they ignore the ads. In any event advertisers think their ads do not work as well and pay less.
One thing that will not change whether written journalism is in print or electronic – is the reader complaint – they range from bias to inaccuracy or sometimes defamation or contempt.
Invariably the reader (or lawyer) will accuse the journalist of malice or some sort of deliberate conspiracy or conflict of interest. But invariably it is the cock-up not the conspiracy that causes the error.
In my 30 years, I think the worst cock-up I ever had to deal with was a couple of years ago. It resulted in one of the most humiliating correction the CT ever ran (and there have been some real dozzies)
A distinguished Sri Lankan academic at the ANU died. And it was thought we should run an obituary. A certain freelancer was commissioned. It was his last task on the CT.
He wrote the obituary at great length. And came to the final paragraph which talked of his charming wife and three lovely daughters.
Alas, before sending the obituary in he ran it through the spellchecker and instead of ignoring the suggested corrections to proper nouns, he accepted them. The sub-editor failed to pick the errors. And thus Professor Wirra What Na’s lovely daughters Kirsten, Gizelle and Ingrid appeared in The Canberra Times as Keratin, Gazelle and Ingrate.
Well, I am not an ingrate for the 30 years I spent at the Canberra Times. I loved every bit of it. I am grateful for the appreciative if sometimes testy readership.
And despite my forbodings about the internet, I wish all my former colleagues at The Canberra Times long and happy careers.