That Australian life - the remarkable story of Jessie Litchfield

Very interesting piece on the ABC's Radio National Earshot program -
Holding a tiger by the tail—Jessie Litchfield.
It tells the story of Darwin based author and journalist Jessie Litchfield. She settled in the Northern Territory in 1908, and grew to love its frontier, masculine atmosphere and its unique mix of cultures. Jessie developed close contacts with local Aboriginal people. In 1930 she became the editor of the Northern Territory Times—one of very few women in Australia to hold such a position. Jessie’s news sense and her unbeatable local contacts and knowledge meant she continually scooped her male competitors with breaking news. Throughout her life she was a passionate defender of the Territory and its peoples.

Listening to the program, I found the descriptions of Territory life as interesting as Jessie's story. She was obviously a remarkable woman. She was not the only female country editor but, as Rod Kirkpatrick (the doyen of  the history of Australia's county press) notes, she was unusual in gaining the position in direct competition in a male world.    

You can listen to the program on-line; link above. I think, I'm not sure, that it's available internationally. Perhaps you might advise me if its not. You can also find out more about her from Barbara James' Australian Dictionary of Biography entry.

ABC cuts and the progressive reduction in the capacity of the Australian media to reflect us back to ourselves

The cuts to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) budget had been well foreshadowed. And, yes, whichever way you cut it, it is another broken promise. The reactions on both sides have been very stereotyped.  In this short post, I want to come at the issue another way, one that reflects my own biases

Background

This is the web site for Australia's Channel Nine news, this for Channel 7, this for Channel 10. Now compare it with ABC TV or, for the sake of completeness, SBS news.

This is the web site for NBN TV news, this for Prime TV. I have deliberately selected these TV stations because they still have local and regional news.

Prime local news has declined as the network spread, while its regional news has always been fairly narrow. The third Northern NSW TV network, Northern Rivers TV, also had local news, but this vanished after it became absorbed into the Ten network.

Regional TV is an area where the commercial networks were, still are, much better than the ABC. You see, ABC is state/metro based and has no local or regional TV coverage at all except, I suppose, where the state or territory entity is is so small that the coverage is by definition local.

ABC radio is quite different. This is the ABC Kimberley site, this the New England North West site. ABC radio is the main source of news and events at regional level outside the still very important if struggling local newspapers. Those papers themselves have an increasingly localised focus.

This is the web site of the Fairfax owned Armidale Express; I write the Express's history column. The site format is the same for all Fairfax regional papers. The regional referred to there is not regional in the old sense, but regional in the sense of feed from other Fairfax papers in regional (ie non-metro) Australia.  

If we now turn to special interest broadcasting, ABC radio is the medium par excellence when it comes to country or regional Australia with programs like the now to be closed Bush Telegraph.

Discussion

We all have our own biases and perceptions. I would argue, for example, that the earlier decision to close the ABC's international service was an own goal of monumental  proportions. In similar vein, faced with cuts the ABC is choosing what to cut with varying responses depending on your perceptions of the value of those things being cut or, alternatively, being saved or even extended. The Australian Financial Review, for example, mounted a swinging attack on the ABC's decision to extend digital coverage.

In all the changes that have taken place in the media, the ABC cuts and consequent re-orientation are just the latest, the things that I have most noticed are a gradual impoverishment at two levels.

One is simply access to news and information. Yes, I am a news junkey, but I think that it's still true. The second and the one that I am most interested in, is the progressive reduction in the capacity of the Australian media to reflect us back to ourselves in all our local diversity.

 The Financial Review argued that the proliferation of on-line sites meant that there was no justification for the ABC to move further into the digital space. That may be true, depending on the way that the arguments are phrased. But I operate in the digital space the paper is talking about.

I created two regional specific New England blogs in part because I was interested in the area in question, in part because there was very little coordinated coverage of the broader area I was interested in. Then I realised that my blogs had become in part journals of record because there was no longer any, I mean any, media source that you might go to for this stuff.

Now here there is a problem. I am a single person with broad interests. How do I find the time for my self-identified journal of record role?  Clearly there is demand; the stats show that, but I struggle to maintain the blogs.

This brings me to the simple take-home message from this post. The decision by the Government to cut funding, the subsequent response by ABC management, further reduces coverage in areas (geographic and subject) that I am interested in. There is no point me arguing about the cuts, for or against, because that won't actually affect what has become a firmly established trend.

If I want to do anything, I am going to have to do it myself, using the platforms I have. Whether that makes sense I leave it to others to judge. For the moment, I'm just thinking about responses.

Saturday morning musings - relevance & the ending of a column

This has been a somewhat mixed week dogged by slowly lifting flue. So just a bit of a review.

On Tuesday, my long running Express column was abruptly ended by the new editor who advised in a short email

"I am writing to inform you I've made some decisions about the sort of
columns I'll be running as part of the new-look Express.

From next week I'll be running 3 new columns - From the editor's desk, Gen Y
it matters, and a Friday Soapbox (featuring all the movers and shakers in
Armidale putting forward ideas to help improve the town).

I will no longer require you to send your columns each week. I put a note at
the bottom of your column in tomorrow's paper that it would be your last
column in the Express, but that readers can still follow you online at the
addresses you gave.

I wish you well in the future."

After 164 columns and over 80,000 words, I didn't quite want to vanish into the night Via a one sentence at the end of the column: "Editor's note: this will be Jim Belshaw's final column" followed by the blog details. So the editor has agreed to run a short letter to the editor next week allowing me to at least thank my readers.

The column replacing mine is "Gen Y it matters" subtitled in the promo "Issues that matter to our youth." At this stage it has yet to appear, so I cannot comment on the content. However, it is still an interesting and very clear example of a shift based on particular perceptions of reader interests and newspaper demography.

While I tried to write broadly in the column, the evidence is that the column appealed most to an older demographic in Armidale. It also appealed most to those who identified themselves as local, who thought of Armidale as home and wanted to know more about the place, as compared to the large transient or semi-transient (Armidale has quite a high population turnover) group who had less identification with the city.

This actually created a bit of a problem in writing. I wanted to write broadly, but my highest response columns were often those that centred in some way on Armidale past.

As it happened, my former and long standing editor Christian Knight himself belonged to one of the groups that the column really appealed to, providing a measure of protection and even a somewhat privileged position. I always knew when Christian really liked the column.

The new editor, Matthew or Matt Taylor, has worked for a variety of papers including the Canberra Times and Newcastle Herald and, most recently, edited a Rural Press newspaper in a popular tourist resort. He is a very experienced newspaper man and clearly wants to put his stamp on the paper. So in my case he has disposed of a column whose primary  appeal was to one demographic with a second that he hopes will appeal to a younger and broader demographic.

It all makes perfect sense, but I happen to know Armidale with all its sometime byzantine complexities rather well. I will be interested to see just how Matt balances it all, whether he can in fact achieve what he hopes. In the meantime, I have been demographied!

  One of the problems I face as a person, sometimes social analyst and as a writer is simply staying relevant. I have written a little on this before.

For much of my writing, it's not a problem. My historical and public policy writing stands alone, although even here I have to remember what people know and don't know. The body of what we might call common knowledge shifts with time, a process that has accelerated over recent decades.

In other cases, it's a real problem.

All writers mine their own experiences for material. As we grow older, our past experiences bulk larger and larger relative to our current experiences. The present becomes a layer on an ever growing past. Yet to our potential audience, that thin present layer is (as it was to us) is the dominant real.

Musing on this yesterday on the bus, this has been another reflective week for me, I shut my eyes. In front of me was a group of chattering university students about the same age as my daughters. Behind me, sat a girl around the same age engaged in a long personal chat on her mobile. With my eyes shut, I just listened.           

The cadence of language was different, the technology was different, but really it could have been conversations from exactly the same stage in my own life.

Technology is important, cadence more so, shared experiences most so. Technology I can understand, although here I have gripe that I will share in a moment. Cadence I can't do, it would just sound silly. Shared experiences I don't have beyond those now separated by an increasing gulf in time. The conversation is the same, but the wrappings are different. 

All this means that a growing gap is inevitable. The most that one can hope for is to understand a little about the nature of the gap, to try to identify and account for key features.

    My gripe about the new technology? It's so anti-social and even atomistic! We have a situation where people may be watching TV together while also playing on a variety of computer devices or just checking emails. There is little conversation. Each sits in a world of their own, isolated from each other unless they happen to be playing a computer game together while watching TV!

I think that this is really where I part company with the current, where I have to accept my lack of understanding. I actually like to talk and listen to people, not engage in social interaction increasingly mediated through devices! Here I do not wish to be relevant and current.  

Saturday Morning Musings - premium, freemium & the dreaded app

In Thursday meander through the blogging world, I mentioned News Ltd's plans to introduce pay for view to the Australian. The links I gave in that post will provide further information to those interested. Since then, the Australian has launched its new web site, with digital subscription launching 24 October.

As I noted in my post, my immediate interest lay in its likely impact on blogging and on my blogging in particular.

On first impression, I don't like the new web site. I am a fast reader and indeed rely on that speed. I used to be able to quick scan the site, whereas the new site slows me down. In fairness, once you dig inside it gets better, but I still don't think that it's brilliant.

Something of the same issue comes up with the new mobile and magazine formats within blogging. I don't like them because they slow me down. 

However, my big problem is the expected one: what content will be free in circumstances where the "premium" content line can shift? I try to be punctilious in not copying in full and in providing links, but there is not much point in all that if readers cannot then access the material.

I use the Australian a fair bit because its reporting is strong in certain areas. The other main metropolitan daily I read on a regular basis is the Sydney Morning Herald. This, too, is going into a subscription mode, with an iPad app already under trial. 

In a comment on Belshaw's World - caught between a tweet and a print place, the Armidale Express's Janene Carey wondered if some bundling of SMH and Express might not meet my needs for certain types of content. That comment raised a new issue in my mind.

I read a lot of media online and for different reasons. I scan media from other countries to try to get a broader perspective. I scan the major Australian media outlets for national or state material. I also scan newspapers across New England to try to provide a broader New England perspective. I use the media as a source of leads, often following through to get the original source material. I am interested in reporting as reporting.

While my writing reflects my own idiosyncratic interests, while I do not pretend to be a reporter as such, I do try to add a measure of value through my analysis, consolidations and commentary. Access to a diversity or reporting is central to that. This becomes more difficult in a world of pay. I could not afford, for example, to take out a subscription to every newspaper in New England, let alone all the other outlets I look at.

The world will not end tomorrow, but the trend and consequent problems are clear.

  Still musing, another problem from my perspective is the proliferation of delivery mechanisms and outlets and the way they affect writing and reading. I mentioned that I didn't like the new mobile and magazine formats within blogging because they slowed my reading down.

The hardware plus delivery systems that can be used to access material continue to proliferate. Take a train trip in Sydney during peak hour and just watch. You will see half a dozen different pieces of hardware in use, each with its particular characteristics. At a personal level I am quite out of touch. I have chosen consciously not to attempt to understand them all, nor to tailor my writing to suit them. It's just too hard!

This is starting to take me in new directions and I have other things to do today. Time to stop.   

Saturday Morning Musings - economic turmoil, education, New Zealand & the Armidale Express

I am feeling a bit moody this morning, not really wanting to concentrate. It's part connected with the Australian papers; depression in talk, depression in mood. Not happy, Jan.

I find the detailed economic reporting difficult to read at the moment. Quite a bit of it is actually dominated by ideological positions of one type or another. I would find it easier if there was some re-weighting between specific analysis and attacks on opposing views.

I am not being especially critical. I just find it hard to read.

National planning for global downturn is the start of an attempt on my part to refresh my own thinking. I suppose that I am trying to define to my own satisfaction an approach that might actually allow Australia to take some advantage of its relatively strong position at a time of continuing economic turmoil.

I have had many goes at what I see as short termism in Australian politics; Belshaw's World - big issues missed in political discourse is a recent example. On 23 September, Opposition Leader Abbott outlined his approach to improved productivity. Outside the ideological stances that affect the varying approaches, I actually see little difference between the two sides in that both have a mechanistic focus on a small number of policy measures; pull this policy lever, push that policy bail and the sun will shine again.

I said that I was feeling moody!

In earlier posts, I discussed the mess that had been created for Australia's export education sector by (among other things) shifting Government visa requirements. During the week the report of the Knight Inquiry into student visa requirements was released. I quote from Bernard Lane's story in the Australian:

UNIVERSITIES will be allowed to entice foreign students with quick visa approvals and the right to two years of work after graduation as part of a reform package to stem further losses of overseas student income.

Immigration Minister Chris Bowen and Tertiary Education Minister Chris Evans said yesterday they would act on a remarkably frank report on Australia's education export industry by former NSW politician Michael Knight.

By mid next year, foreign students keen on an Australian university degree will have access to a new, fast-track visa system.

Those who are interested can find the full report plus Government response here. I haven't read it yet, but it's apparently a very readable report. Blind Freddy could see that something would have to be done, if only to counter successful competition from New Zealand's eight state universities!

One issue that I haven't looked at for some time is the relationship between the university and vocational education sectors. The latest changes again favour the university sector.

On New Zealand, I have often tried to point to the importance of that country to Australia. This is not just my Kiwi side coming out, nor am I talking solely about economics. Relative to its size, New Zealand has had a disproportionate influence on Australia. If you doubt this, have a look at this 2006 post of mine, Changes in Public Administration - the New Zealand Model.

As a small, open economy perched on the edge of the world, New Zealand is exposed to change in a way that Australia is not. As an example, consider this quote from a paper by Dr Andrew Butcher of the Asia New Zealand Foundation:

New Zealand, among Western countries actively engaged with the Asian region, has a significant Asian population. At the 2006 census nine percent of New Zealanders identified themselves as ethnically Asian and we can reasonably suppose that had the census been held this year we would see that percentage increase. Based on projections from the 2006 census, 16 percent of New Zealand’s population will be ethnically Asian by the year 2026.

I have said before that the changes taking place in New Zealand and especially in Auckland dwarf those taking place in the larger and more insular Australia.

Border myopia is an interesting thing, Just as most statistical analyses of NSW ignore the presence of the ACT (an absurdity), so analysis of Australia ignores New Zealand. Yet for many practical purposes, Australia and New Zealand form a single entity in social and economic terms. Of course there are differences as there are between WA and the eastern states, yet New Zealand change does flow on to Australia, if with a lag.

Changing directions, I was fascinated by a story on the ABC, Aboriginal DNA dates Australian arrival. I quote:

The finding, published today in the journal Science, rewrites the history of the human species by confirming humans moved out of Africa in waves of migrations rather than in one single out-of-Africa diaspora.

The study is based on a lock of hair donated to British anthropologist Alfred Haddon by an Aboriginal man from the Goldfields region of Western Australia in the early 20th century.

The genome, shown to have no genetic input from modern European Australians, reveals the ancestors of the Aboriginal man separated from the ancestors of other human populations 64,000 to 75,000 years ago.

Leave aside the rather breathless reporting with its modern attitudinal overlays. The key thing is that it suggests that the Aborigines arrived early and by a southern route. On the surface, the story actually fits with some earlier DNA analysis carried out in India that I reported on back in 2009, An Ancient Australia-Indian connection.

I do love the way that science allows us to lift the veil from aspects of the human past!

Finishing this post with a change in direction, my Armidale Express column Belshaw's World - the online myth discussed aspects of education delivery in the on-line world. A little later, the paper carried some remarks by UNE VC James Barber on on-line education that I thought were remarkably silly. That reaction may be unfair; I will review and write later. 

I have been arguing for some time with my Express editor, Christian Knight, that he has to put more of the paper on-line. I say this now because the Barber story is not on-line.

The Express is a slightly unusual paper because of Armidale's role as an educational centre. It's not just that I write for it, but so do many others. Here I want to quote from Janene Carey, an Express journo who has by-lined national stories from her Armidale base:     

I'm always surprised by how many people discount country journalism and don't bother to buy the local paper. I had lunch with an academic friend recently who seemed bemused that I'd want a part-time postdoctoral fellowship so I could continue working at the Armidale Express. She even asked me if I'd 'ever considered journalism as a profession?' - by which she meant a job on a "real" newspaper, a daily in the city covering serious, important stories.

Although the list of things that I'll be working on today by no means represent a typical day at the Express, tasks like these do come along often enough to keep me hooked:

1. Writing up the speech Walkley-award winning journalist David Marr gave in Armidale on Tuesday about the 'politics of panic' driving Australia's asylum seeker policies
2. Waiting to hear back from federal MP Tony Windsor about his reaction to what Armidale-based environmental activist Carmel Flint said about the bill he's just introduced to Parliament (it's aiming to protect water resources from coal seam gas exploration - something dear to Carmel's own heart - but she's called it 'a toothless trigger')
3. Interviewing former PLC student Fiona Simson, who in July became the first woman to head the NSW Farmers Association (largely on the strength of her campaigning against CSG exploration and its effects on food production) for a profile in our next glossy Seasons magazine

I reckon that sounds like an interesting day's work!

And indeed it does, Janene!

Christian, I will continue my campaign. You are downplaying your own paper, and its contributors!