writepopmag: August 2007

A reminder about what we're doing this week.

Below are 4200 words. It's an edited version of a long interview I did a few weeks ago. I've changed some names and taken out some identifying material, but you'll get the gist.

Please read it (you may want to copy and paste it into a Word document), work out what your preferred intro is, write it and bring it to class. We'll discuss.

I think one intro, and angle, clearly stands out no matter which magazine you're writing for.

But there are some others as well.

Enjoy!

I was a member of the AJA district committee for nine years. WA vice-president for five years. And for more than 10 years a member of the AJA’s judiciary appeals committee (relating to ethics complaints about journalists). I was a lecturer in journalism at WAIT for several years, and a community rep on the WAIT council for four years to 1983. I was on WAIT’s advisory committee for journalism for about 10 years, and was a member of the advisory committee for Murdoch University’s postgraduate journalism course that started in 1992.
When the Australian law Reform Commission under Justice Michael Kirby was inquiring into the need for a uniform defamation law in Australia – and this is in the late 70s – I presented a submission on behalf of the WA branch of the AJA and I was later flown by the Commission to Sydney for a seminar to discuss its preliminary report. And of course that was discussed for the next 30 years until finally, was it this year, when Ruddock said to the states look we’re gunna have this and suddenly everybody said OK, and the Kirby report was an excellent report.
I was a founding member of the WA law media Committee, which was a group of lawyers and journalists who got together informally to discuss professional matters of mutual interest. There’s always conflict, I guess, between lawyers and journalists. This recent business with Wayne Martin, wasn’t that just nonsense. When as President I think of the Bar Association he managed to get past a ban on barristers talking to journalists. What nonsense. There was only a handful of people at that meeting. Most barristers think it’s absurd. And Wayne as Chief Justice is still suggesting it’s a good thing. I find that astonishing. It wouldn’t have happened in my day, because we had this Law media Committee which met regularly and we would have discussed something like that. It just wouldn’t’ve happened.
And he says he’s all for open access and TV cameras in court!
I contributed a chapter to the Australian Press Council booklet, to name or not to name, which was presenting views for and against identifying people who appear in court. In 1991 I helped produce a submission for the press council to a federal parliamentary committee, which of course they still don’t name, but at least we did succeed, I think the AJA was active and I’m sure I was involved in getting Family Courts, or the Family Law Act, changed, so at least people could go into the court, if they weren’t directly involved. (3.22).
Initially nobody was allowed in that court room unless it was their actual case. And so members of the public who perhaps had a forthcoming case and wanted to see how the court worked weren’t allowed to, and in those early days it was such a sense of injustice and hidden justice that several, I can’t remember, there were attacks on Family Court judges.
I also actively campaigned for the Family Court of Australia to be like the Family Court of WA but they never accepted, I mean it was stupid, the rest of Australia, in the rest of Australia the family court can only deal with Federal matters, that is marriage and divorce, and the matters arising out of them, whereas the state family court, under the state family law act, can deal with all those other matters like adoptions, custody of children of defacto marriages, it’s a much better system and yet the family law act was passed in 1975 and so its gone for 30 years still muddling along they had to start special separate magistrates’ courts and things in other states to try and get the whole thing going together but it’s never been a very clever system, one reason they were opposed to it was that at that stage the family court judges in other states were getting federal rates which were higher than state rates, I think they’ve long corrected that, a bit of that whole Federal dismissal of Western Australia as being insular and pernickety and not wanting to go along with the rest of the country.
I got involved in a lot of things of that type in those days.
I was involved because I was in the legal scene, I think perhaps there are still some people, The West is really the only paper here that will do in-depth features, Bill Bloggs does some for example, talking about the criminal confiscation laws, he’s written a number of pieces suggesting they’re unfair and over the top. When you’re in the position of being a legal writer you’ve got the opportunity to point out how the law’s working and how it’s not working. I remember when the Strata Titles Act came in and John Smith was chief of staff, I said I should write something about this, he said oh how boring, strata title, the property pages have dome something on that. Then we started getting all these calls from people who perhaps had divided their property into two, and they suddenly found themselves caught out by this act which was really meant to deal with multi-unit buildings, next thing I’m writing a series of features about it, talking to people who were totally confused, and they changed the law. To accept strata buildings of less than three, from the workings of the Act. Things like that, is I think an important part of the legal writer’s job.
It was quite funny: when my dad, I started in 1953, he became editor in 1956, obviously he was a senior executive on The West Australian, and in those days it was pretty easy to get a cadetship, it was particularly easy for me, I went and saw Jim McCartney who was the managing editor and was a family friend. I said Jim I would like a job, he said we don’t have nepotism here, I said what’s nepotism? He said go and look it up. He said you can have a job on the Daily News, your father’s on the West.
We’ve had some well-known media families here, they’ve all been good, the Olneys, the Cusacks, the Hummerstons…it happens in every business, children get interested in the areas their families are interested in, and they often go, my three children, two are lawyers and one’s a journalist. They basically did law degrees because they weren’t sure what they wanted to do. It’s a good background for anything.
When you hire somebody from a media family there’s a view they know what the life is like?
Well I started on a public holiday, that’s what the life’s like. Australia Day.
You were married to Bill?
Yes in fact one time we had Bill was writing the back-page column, I had a page one legal story and daughter Jacqui on the Daily News had a feature on the features page, all in one edition of the Daily News. Jacqui’s now a freelance journalist in Sydney. Jacqui Lang.
10.10
Would you describe yourself as being married to the job?
It’s been a major part of my life. I’ve loved my career as a journalist. It’s been terrific. Whatever I was doing, I’ve always been very enthusiastic about it. Of course there are days when things don’t go well, but on the whole I think it’s a privilege to be a journalist. I think we’re paid to do things and to experience things that other people would give a lot to get a chance to do. I’ve always looked on it like that. But it’s also a responsibility and I think young people can get carried away by the excitement of it without thinking through the effect of some of the things of some of their writing. 11.06.
I sorted of drifted into it, people started saying to me when I was about to leave school, are you going to be a journalist like your father? After a while I thought that’s not a bad idea. What really bugged me was that people would say of course you’ll be writing in the women’s’ pages. I just resolved I would never write for the women’s pages. It was interesting in 1960 when I went to Sydney there was a job going on women’s Day, and working there I came across the most professional group of women journalists that I’d yet met. They were career women, they weren’t filling in time between school and getting married, they were a terrific lot. I learnt a lot at women’s Day. And then of course in 1977 I was very frustrated with The West at the time, and women’s weekly under Ita Buttrose was looking to revamp her interstate offices, in those days the weekly had two journalists in each state, their main job was wearing hats and gloves and going to social functions, and Ita wanted to have real journalists. The word went out they were looking for somebody here and they were prepared to pay an A-grade. I was still a B-grade, it was quite shocking, I was appalled when Jack Jones, who was then editor, the first time ever I’d asked for a grading, I’d always got gradings before getting round to asking, I’d always been well-rewarded. I’d been back at The West full-time since 1973 and doing things they hadn’t had done, transforming the court reporting from long accounts at the back of the paper to news and picture stories, features about the law, I just wasn’t recognised and I got a note, he didn’t even see me, a note from Jack saying we are pleased to tell you we are giving you a $30 margin on your B-grade, I was so frustrated at the lack of appreciation for what I was doing. I said to Harry Hart about the Womens’ Weekly job, I’m going to apply for that, he said I thought you might, they didn’t makew the slightest effort to keep me. I went to the weekly, I had a great time, they liked what I was doing, I enjoyed working for them, I fell through the stage at the Miss Universe contest, I was there, the Weekly was a sponsor, I was up on stage to interview the winner, and whoosh, down onto the floor, nobody took any notice of me, there were all these bare-breasted girls crashing through the stage and I was in the middle of it all. I rushed onto the stage to get a quick quote from Miss Universe and was right beside her when the stage collapsed. I fell a metre or two, landing on my feet with screaming girls all around me. I scraped my thigh on the broken stage as I fell but no one rushed to help me - too busy looking after the beautiful girls, some of whom had suffered a wardrobe malfunction.
I had a great time at the Weekly, I travelled the state, it was frustrating in that they wanted, they didn’t really want serious stories out of Western Australia, because from Sydney they know nothing really serious happens in Western Australia, they wanted the quaint and the oddball, the nice result of that was about every three months or so I’d have a fantastic trip around the state. I was rung up one day, the news editor rang and said we want you to go to Port Hedland for the opening of Coles. I said what? But it was a huge event, it was the only real supermarket between Geraldton and Darwin. It was a fantastic event. On the opening day people came from hundreds of kilometres around, would go out with six trolley-loads they’d pile into their trailers, of course I did some other good stories while I was there. Coles opening, between 77 and 80.
Where did you go to school?
PLC. I enjoyed my time on the weekly, I had a great time travelling around the state, I went to Kununurra a number of times, at one time they said we want you to go into Broome for the Shinju, to Kununnurra for the Ord River Festival, I said I can manage that. I went to the Abrolhos and did a story on those people, I did a lot of travelling and it was fantastic. But when I left the West in 1977 Ross Cusack who was an old friend and who was night editor said you’re too young to die. And three years later he rang me up and said we want you to come back. I said well it’s taken you a while. I said OK we can talk about it. He said we’ll see you at nine o’clock tomorrow. Which was quite a big deal seeing he worked nights. He came to see me at the Weekly office in Vic Park and said we want you to come back and I said well to start with I’m an A-grade now and I’d want an A-1 to come back. I want to be in charge of courts, before we had Jackie Gould and I was sort of equal, nobody was in charge, it was inefficient and stupid, I want a proper training system for cadets, what a joke, we still don’t have it on courts, I wanted these various things which were to do with making the job better, and then I didn’t hear for three months and I thought oh well that’s it I’m happy where I am, and then he rang up and he said yep we’ve agreed to everything, and I had meant to say I would come, I had meant to say I won’t think of coming back unless this but anyway I got myself in a corner and I went back because I really love daily journalism, better than weekly journalism, so I went back, in early 1980.18.53
Travel editing: you must have clocked up millions of kilometres? 21.20
I don’t know about millions. I did a lot. A lot of trips and had a great time. People say what did you like best but how can you compare Antarctica with the trans-Siberian railway. Cuba, Mexico, fantastic. Seeing animals in Africa is wonderful. Iran, what a wonderful experience that was. Fantastic people, sophisticated country, so hospital, I wrote a beautiful story and it was published in 2001 just before the World Trade Centre, wouldn’t have dome, it was World Expeditions that took me, their sales any good at all. no-one wanted to go to Iran after that. I was amazed at what a fantastic place it was. Many times to Asia.
You were active in getting changes in the legal area, what about the disgraceful situation when women couldn’t be served in the front bar of the Palace?
Well it was very interesting. When I started on the daily News women weren’t considered for serious jobs. Certainly not at the Daily News. You couldn’t do police rounds. You couldn’t go on overnight trips with photographers. Who knows what you might have got up to. There weren’t any women photographers. In fact Adelie Hurley, who was frank Hurley’s daughter, a very accomplished photographer, got a job on the daily news and the male photographers treated her so appallingly she left after a year. It was just shocking, they were very very sexist. Women weren’t allowed to drive company cars, which was interesting because my father had a company car and I drove it at home but I couldn’t drive it at work. It was so silly. We were meant to be doing fashion, cookery, the weather, oddly enough although we weren’t allowed to do police rounds or industrial rounds, we could go to court. And so off I trotted to court. My early years were spent doing the weather I can spell the name of every country town in western Australia that had a weather station, I did the hospital round, I’d trot off to Princess Margaret and write cute kid stories, or stories about medical advances, general human interest, and courts.
But you weren’t allowed to drink in the front of the Palace?
You couldn’t. it meant we were shut out of a lot that went on at work. A lot of the deals and the office gossip and the cmaeraderie of the office, and we weren’t allowed there, and it did change. I don’t think, the men would’ve been all for it, its an absurd anachronistic law.
Women reporters weren’t allowed to drive office cars, or go on overnight assignments with photographers, who were all male.
Nor were they considered for serious assignments, such as political, business or industrial stories, which were then also the preserve of their male colleagues.
The paper’s star cartoonist, Bob Down, would make “five star awards” to the women reporters who were “looking particularly good today.”
Australia was very backward in the 1950s, was primitive.
The reporters’ room was incredibly primitive. There was a line of desks and there was some phones along the wall. You didn’t have a phone on your desk. You had to buy your own portable typewriter. I started getting six pounds and sixpence a week, in saved 2 pounds a week towards my typewriter that cost 50 pounds, in 1953, and I gave my mum 2 pounds, as I was living at home, I caught the trolley bus to work for tuppence. There were no traffic lights in those days. It was another world. No paid parking in Perth. Peter Parker who was a cadet with me was very pally with the police, and boasted he could fix anybody’s speeding fines.
I don’t think I ever got one. But in those days. But he certainly had connections, the police were pretty easy-going, you might say, in those days, you’d see them swatting up their lines, pacing up and down in front off the court room, while they’re making their free and spontaneous statement they’re learning by heart. Quite funny.
I was at home in the 60s. I missed the swinging sixties: I was at home having babies. In fact I think 61 when he was raging around the town. We were living in a little house in Claremont, I’d wake up in the middle of the night to feed the baby, and I’d be crouching down lower than the window because he was all around where we lived, and our back veranda just had flywire at the top, anybody could look it, it was a really scary time. Very scary time. So I missed all the good stuff, I didn’t do that. Court cases, my major one has to be Azaria, I went to the second inquest in Alice Springs, and then to the trial in Darwin.
Your big local one was WA Inc.
That was a year and a half. I won a press Club Prize for that, it was my second one. I remember it well, it was such a destruction of innocence then. You just had to feel so cynical at this look you got into the world of politicians who equated in their own minds their staying in government with the good of the state. And it was worth anything to stay there. What nonsense. 30.04
Now we’re looking at the Health Department records, you just wonder. When burke left he had a team of people for days destroying documents, and taking his name off documents, and David Parker when there was this business about yossi Goldberg and the SEC, a lot of records couldn’t be found. It was quite shocking. And the way the government just had such control of bodies like the R&I Bank, the sec, the government employees super fund, the SGIC, it was quite appalling. The government regarded the money from these quite independent bodies as their money, to do with what they wanted. $50 million of the government’s super fund into Rothwell’s and all those other shady deals, it was such an eye opener, made all of us who were there quite cynical.
They were just overwhelmed by the quantity of the stuff and didn’t read it. Sometimes I’d be telling people a few months later I was so shocked at this, and they’d say oh I didn’t know about that. A year 18 months they’d just see royal commission, boring, and just pass on. I have compliments from John Wickham who was one of the three judges on it, which said there was such a volume of stuff he then became one of the first CCC people, he said when he was looking up RC stuff he just looked at my stories, they were so accurate and just summarised the important stuff very well, I thought that was a compliment.
The whole RC was very disillusioning. But that’s what newspapers have to do to be vigilant.
I have always felt that the AJA and it still does, was important to represent the interests of the members, it deosn’t matter how often you might say employees are important, good employers need good employees, they work together to make a success of the business, there are times employees feel they’ve been treated badly, and or when perhaps inadvertently or deliberately they’ve been cheated out of what they should have, and I think the union has been stalwart in representing journalists’ rights. I’m very much opposed to militant unions browbeating employers, different unions have different styles but I think on the whole the AJA has been a moderate union and certainly when I was there and I’m sure it’s the same now we spent long hours discussing the problems of individuals and doing our best for them. That’s what unions are about.
I was always sorry I couldn’t be president. My dad was president in the 1930s and I would’ve loved to have been the first woman president of the AJA in Western Australia but my children were teenagers at the time and Jim Jones from the ABC was president at that time, and I said how much time a day does it take and he said about an hour, I was working so hard at work, I worked long days and I was doing a lot of major stories and it wasn’t another hour a day I could take from work, and it would’ve been from my time at home, I thought it was unfair to the family, so I didn’t stand, Tim Tidy was my co vice-president, I kept going for a couple of years after the, 1980, 1983 was I resigned, I spent nine years a lot of time working on behalf of the members, it was time for other people to do something. I would’ve loved that (being first woman president) and I would have loved to have had that interstate connection with the national body, but there we were.
I always thought I won the first clarion prize for contribution to the profession in Western Australia in 1983, but I looked in a recent scoop I think and I think somebody else might have been down for getting the first one.
Three PPC prizes and a Lovekin Prize, for the RC.
I haven’t won them all, I always thought it was unfair there was a prize for medical writers and not one for legal writers.
It was extremely sexist, we had equal pay from the time I started, but there certainly wasn’t equal opportunity. 39.17.
The theory was men had to support a wife and family, we had Jane Doe, who’s won more Walkley awards than any other Australian journalist, and she was a widowed mother of three daughters. And she only got a C-grade until later.
Personally I’ve never felt discriminated against. Although, who knows perhaps I could have been editor if I hadn’t been a woman. I didn’t even think of it because it’s sort of all-pervasive, you don’t get the opportunity and you assumer you wont get the opportunity. On the other hand I’ve always loved the writing. So much admin and stress, a 24-hour a day job. I saw my own dad, it nearly killed him. I’m really going to miss the buzz of the newsroom. It’s so exciting to work on a newspapers. The feeling that goes around the office, you know something’s happen. The cooperation between journalists. It’s going to be very strange.
My dad joined in 1926, first time a member of my family not working for WA Newspapers.
The DN was very good training for me, you learnt to be quick. Copy boy at 1130, court opened 10, or rang soon after 1130…you had the frist two pars in mind and did it off your notes. That was fantastic training.
Azaria: demanding assignment. Had taken 14 year old daughter to Bali the week before. Had a cold when left, got back quite sick, flew in, Bill met me at airport, caught flight to Darwin, when arrived, sat, I knew I had pneumonia, to old desk, nearest doctor? Have x-ray, can’t be in court by 10 o’clock, antibiotics, hotel made yoghurt, tropical fruit, lunchtime hour and a half ahead, writing for both papers, daily lunch, end of day right through for west. Did this for 4 days.

TGIF!

This post on a local blog is interesting.

The blogger spotted a pile of magazines at a garage sale. He didn't get around to haggling. But lo - the mags didn't sell, and they were put for the garbo*...

"...there were all the Australian Gourmet Traveller magazines sitting on the top and neatly packed in plastic bags. Maybe 50 kg of them. They were pleading to be rescued, so I obliged.These are wonderful, timeless magazines. It's easy to see why they were kept. They not only have terrific stuff on food, but also terrific stuff on people and places. The articles are well written and very informative.

"I have in front of me on my desk the May 2002 issue. There is a large section inside about mediaeval Arab cookery. That'll probably ring the terror suspect bell in some distant computer. If you're looking for the recipe for bastourma and Egyptian fried egg salad then this is where it is. There's a few recipes which use pomegranate juice too. The magazines have reminded me that I have yet to obtain replacement pomegranate and fig trees for the back garden.

"Actually the recipe mentioned above is a bit too fiddly for me. I can manage the fried egg part okay, but sourcing the bastourma which is Turkish air-dried meat could be difficult. As for two and a half tablespoons of champagne vinegar, that would have to be substituted with the ordinary stuff we get from the supermarket.

"Anyway the magazines are very nice to flip through and eventually I'll select a recipe to try."

How's that for re-inforcing what I said in this week's tute: magazines are desirable objects, both for their form and function.

See you next week.

(*garbo: Australian vernacular for people who collect your rubbish/garbage).

writepopmag

Blog Archive

Your tutor

Thursday, 30 August 2007

Intro to an Pulitzer winner

Sunday, 26 August 2007

the Reaper cometh...

Thursday, 23 August 2007

Exercise B

Wednesday, 22 August 2007

intro exercise

Wednesday, 15 August 2007

ideas into stories

Monday, 13 August 2007

newsagency blog

Friday, 10 August 2007

spam! spam! spam! spam!

Thursday, 9 August 2007

(not the BBC series)

Friday, 3 August 2007

"wonderful, timeless magazines"

Thursday, 2 August 2007

"cheesy"