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 Post subject: The way we were
PostPosted: Sun Jul 11, 2004 7:24 pm 
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The Australian newspaper is celebrating its 40th anniversary this week by publishing facsimiles of old front pages.
The first is from October, 20 1987 when the Oz reported on the previous day's falls on the sharemarket.
The thing that strikes one is that we have become better, not worse, at our craft.


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 Post subject: Re: The way we were
PostPosted: Sun Jul 11, 2004 8:11 pm 
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<blockquote><font size="1" face="TImes, TimesNR, serif">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Paul Wiggins:
The Australian newspaper is celebrating its 40th anniversary this week by publishing facsimiles of old front pages.
The first is from October, 20 1987 when the Oz reported on the previous day's falls on the sharemarket.
The thing that strikes one is that we have become better, not worse, at our craft.
<hr></blockquote><p>Actually, the first was published Saturday: it was the April 30, 1965, edition and the whole front page was on how Australian troops would be sent to join the Vietnam War.
I'd be interested to see some specifics about how we have become better... design? writing? editing? what?


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 Post subject: Re: The way we were
PostPosted: Sun Jul 11, 2004 8:47 pm 
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Where to start?
1) Not using Broadway caps in the sky box
2) We use graphs that are prettier and more mathematically accurate
3) Nowadays there would be a coherent refer box to a biznews specialist like McCrann or Gottliebsen or Gittens
4) There wouldn't be an advertisement island in the index box
5) There would be at least one piece of ragged right setting on the page
6) Rule weights would be more restrained and vertical drops more precise
7) We'd nowadays depart from slavish adherence to the 8-column broadsheet grid
8) We'd have the common sense to include the first name of the Prime Minister and other ministers for the benefit of people passing through the join
9) Note the repeat of information in the two main stories on the page, which defeats the purpose of not putting the Australian news high up in the lead sstory.
10)And of course we now have colour by the barrel load.<p>The crash of 87 was an easy one for editors to plan for. New York trading after the Friday Australian close pointed clearly to the events of the Australian Monday. Looking back, it was one of the most fun days I've ever had in the business.<p>[ July 11, 2004: Message edited by: Paul Wiggins ]</p>


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 Post subject: Re: The way we were
PostPosted: Sun Jul 11, 2004 9:04 pm 
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<blockquote><font size="1" face="TImes, TimesNR, serif">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Paul Wiggins:
Where to start?
1) Not using broadway caps in the sky box
2) We use graphs that are prettier and more mathematically accurate
3) Nowadays there would be a refer box to a biznews specialist McCrann or Gottliebsen or Gittens
4) There wouldn't be an advertisement island in the index box
5) There would be at least one piece of ragged right setting on the page
6) Rule weights would be more restrained
7) We'd nowadays depart from slavish adherence to the 8-column broadsheet grid
8) And of course we now have colour by the barrel load.<p>The crash of 87 was an easy one for editors to plan for. New York trading after the Friday Australian close pointed clearly to the events of the Australian Monday. Looking back, it was one of the most fun days I've ever had in the business.<p>[ July 11, 2004: Message edited by: Paul Wiggins ]
<hr></blockquote><p>What! Ya don't like the cute Broadway caps?
I agree with most of your points, but turn the section over and look at today's front page. Do you see a story set ragged right? The Australian uses rr for colour items, not for hard news. You don't see any rr in today's edition until you get to page 8, the arts page.
Look back 10-20 years earlier in most Aussie broadsheets and assault your eyes with the 10-col grids and the 8-point gutters (and rules). The Aus was the first of the broadsheets to use wider columns. In fact, you don't even have to go back that far... in 1987 I was working at a broadsheet which used 10 on the news pages. It generally wasn't the choice of the editorial departments; they were locked in by advertising measures.<p>[ July 11, 2004: Message edited by: Lee ]</p>


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 Post subject: Re: The way we were
PostPosted: Sun Jul 11, 2004 9:26 pm 
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<blockquote><font size="1" face="TImes, TimesNR, serif">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Lee:
<p>The Australian uses rr for colour items, not for hard news. <hr></blockquote><p>That's a hard mindset to break out of, but worth the effort.


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 Post subject: Re: The way we were
PostPosted: Sun Jul 11, 2004 9:32 pm 
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I'm not working today so can't check up, but keep an eye out this week and next for a page from '82-3. Larry Lamb (the Brit editor who introduced Page 3 girls to London's Sun newspaper) was then editing the Oz and "distinguished" himself by not publishing any photos on page 1. Here's why. It's a quote from Errol Simper's Media column(June 1, 2000) after Lamb died:<p> <blockquote><font size="1" face="TImes, TimesNR, serif">quote:</font><hr> The scribe well recalls, too, an early Lamb news conference at which the then pictorial editor, Barry Norman, was called upon to present offerings for the front page. There were, perhaps, 10 prints lying there for Lamb's appraisal: gesticulating politicians, opening ceremonies, closing ceremonies, perspiring sportspeople, auditioning chorus lines, and so on. Some might have regarded it as a reasonably impressive short list. But Lamb frowned, then announced there'd be no photograph on the front page next day. Photographs, he said, had to carry genuine news resonance. If they didn't, the paper would get along all the better not running any. <hr></blockquote><p>[ July 11, 2004: Message edited by: Lee ]</p>


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 Post subject: Re: The way we were
PostPosted: Sun Jul 11, 2004 10:07 pm 
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Sounds like a worthwhile one-off bottom kick from the boss at a paper that had yet to turn a profit.


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 Post subject: Re: The way we were
PostPosted: Sun Jul 11, 2004 10:50 pm 
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<blockquote><font size="1" face="TImes, TimesNR, serif">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Paul Wiggins:
Sounds like a worthwhile one-off bottom kick from the boss at a paper that had yet to turn a profit.<hr></blockquote><p>Here's one view of the profit issue from an essay in Australian Book Review (Feb, 2004):<p> <blockquote><font size="1" face="TImes, TimesNR, serif">quote:</font><hr> Rupert Murdoch founded The Australian in 1964 as a bold statement of his belief that this country needed a quality national daily newspaper. His action was based on a nation-building vision that he shared with the leader of the Country Party, John McEwen, who deeply influenced him at that time. For twenty years, The Australian lost money, a strange anomaly in the life of its ruthlessly commercial owner. In a 1994 address to the free-market thinktank, the Centre for Independent Studies, Murdoch mentioned these losses but argued that some things were more important than short-term profits - ideas in society. He went on to quote John Maynard Keynes's famous lines about the significance of political and philosophical ideas to men who regarded themselves as supremely practical. In the media business, 'we are all ruled by ideas', Murdoch added. Most Murdoch critics see him as a man of crude power interested largely in profits. This significantly underestimates him. He is a man of ideas, and his tenacity with The Australian meant that throughout the 1970s and 1980s it had a major ideological impact on the national agenda. It became the most consistent populariser of hardline free-market economics. Today it is the most important outlet for the culture war being waged by the intellectual right...
In the 1980s The Australian called for a world ruled by markets. We now live in that more selfish and less egalitarian world. But throughout this upheaval, in which The Australian played such a significant role, there was a striking paradox: if the newspaper itself had been judged by strict market criteria, it would have folded within a year of its birth. <hr></blockquote><p>In fact, it almost did. About a year after The Oz was launched, Murdoch was having problems with the banks and feared he would have to sell. Happily, the crisis passed; most of the editorial staff were not aware at the time of how close they'd come to the unemployment line.


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 Post subject: Re: The way we were
PostPosted: Sun Jul 11, 2004 11:31 pm 
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The Australian Financial Review faced a similar 20-year period before coming into profit. In the late 1980s and early 1990s we at the National Business Review in New Zealand proposed a similar long-term view but the rationalists won and the paper reverted to from a daily to a weekly.


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 Post subject: Re: The way we were
PostPosted: Sun Jul 11, 2004 11:49 pm 
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<blockquote><font size="1" face="TImes, TimesNR, serif">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Paul Wiggins:
The Australian Financial Review faced a similar 20-year period before coming into profit.<hr></blockquote>
It's interesting that the Fin Review first began to find its feet in 1960 (but not yet its black ink), when Max Newton took over as managing editor. Newton was the first editor of The Australian in 1964, having been poached by Murdoch because of his success at Fairfax. There's such a well-worn path between the two companies...<p>[ July 12, 2004: Message edited by: Lee ]</p>


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 Post subject: Re: The way we were
PostPosted: Mon Jul 12, 2004 12:03 am 
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<blockquote><font size="1" face="TImes, TimesNR, serif">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Lee:

. There's such a well-worn path between the two companies...<p>[ July 12, 2004: Message edited by: Lee ]
<hr></blockquote><p>One should try everything once, except incest and Morris dancing.


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 Post subject: Re: The way we were
PostPosted: Mon Jul 12, 2004 12:09 am 
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I tried Fairfax for a few months in 2000 (Sunday night moonlight shift on the Fin Review). They could do with a bit of morris dancing there; it was the quietest newsroom I've ever worked in.


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 Post subject: Re: The way we were
PostPosted: Mon Jul 12, 2004 7:42 pm 
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This discussion continues under the heading Maintain The Page.


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