Former Brisbane Lord Mayor Jim Soorley sank the boot into the media’s role in city planning and development this week.
He was attacking the Living City project inspired by businessman Terry Snow.
Soorley said of the media: “They do not help in the long run, because hard decisions are about serious, deep consultation and problem resolving, and media, no matter who owns them is about tomorrow’s headlines”.
It shows a complete misunderstanding of the Australian media. Probably no country on earth has a media more interested in the planning and development of cities. The reasons are historic and economic rather than altruistic.
In Australia, the great distances made nationally circulating newspapers impossible until the 1960s when pages could be transmitted electronically for printing in distant cities. But by then the main state-based newspapers were too established to budge.
Newspapers serve state jurisdictions from state capitals where decisions that affect the lives of their readers are made, and they circulate within those jurisdictions.
Added to this is the fact that Australia is one of the most urbanised nations on earth. The main city in each state and territory usually contains a half of more the state’s total population. The single city which is the state or territory’s capital dominates each newspaper’s circulation. It drives the debate upon which newspapers thrive.
The exceptions are The Australian and The Australian Financial Review – both of which have far lower circulations than any of the main papers in the five largest cities.
The broadcast media is similarly structured. ABC radio and television is carved into state jurisdictions. Commercial radio and television is licensed according to city. It, too, is interested in city development and planning.
This is quite unlike any other developed nation’s media, with the possible exception of Canada.
In the United States, the state capital is usually not the state’s main city and the whole nation is more decentralised than Australia.
Most European nations and Japan are quite small. Since about 1850 you could throw bundles of newspapers on to trains in the capital and they could be on the breakfast table next day anywhere in the country. They developed a national press – categorised not geographically, but politically and economically. For example, in Britain, The Guardian is upmarket left-wing, The Sun is down-market right-wing, The Telegraph is upmarket right-wing and The Mirror is down market left-wing and so on. They are British papers, not London papers. And they compete fiendishly throughout the nation with less home delivery and more newsstand sales than in Australia.
In the British environment, Soorley’s comment that “it is about tomorrow’s headlines” might be apposite. The headline that grabs some circulation is imperative.
Not so in Australia. Most copies of the geographically based main papers in Australia are already sold through habit and subscription without resort to the dramatic headline. These papers survive through their very engagement with the city in which they circulate. They provide reliable long-term reportage of issues.
Small wonder we see, for example, The Canberra Times backing a $20,000 competition on plans for the city centre and The Sydney Morning Herald running its Campaign for Sydney series. The Age, the West Australia and The Advertiser in Adelaide, too, are keen to the point of obsession about the cities in which their readers live.
The Sydney Morning Herald’s Campaign for Sydney has exposed huge failings on the part of Carr Government on public transport, water, road and rail freight, greenfields development and so on. And contrary to Soorley’s view, it does help. Without the searchlight of publicity who knows what mischief business and government could get up to?
Up to a point it may be true that newspapers do not care about the direction of a debate provided there is one. But newspapers are vitally interested in the cities in which they publish. They prosper more when the city functions well – though a cynic might say commuters in a city with unreliable public transport are more likely to buy a paper to while away the time.
The newspapers in Sydney and Canberra are showing a major interest in their cities even if the problems are almost opposite. The newspapers are testing both the extent of the difficulties and the proposed solutions. Sydney’s difficulties seem to lie with over-population, too much growth and not enough planning. Canberra’s difficulties, at least according to Terry Snow, stem from too much planning, too little population and not enough growth.
I know whose difficulties I’d rather face.
In fact, if you take away the harbour (the natural part), the human-created part of Sydney is a rathole of the first order — a testament to the folly of a lack of planning and unrestrained growth.